The Ties That Bind The Economic Relationships Of Twelve Tebtunis Families

An intimate insight into the lives of twelve families in the Ancient Egyptian village of Tebtunis. Tebtunis, an ancient village formerly located in lower Egypt, is one of the most enduring subjects of study from the civilization's Roman era. This fascinating volume details a dozen newly-discovered family papers that have survived from the second century AD. Belonging to families of various different classes, this unique documentation provides a rare opportunity to explore how local elites under Roman rule exploited their wealth in the countryside and interacted with its rural inhabitants. Ties That Bind is the first book to investigate these family papers holistically, focusing on the economic activities in which the families engaged: land leases, loans in cash and kind, and the employment of managers and laborers on landed estates. This study also addresses strategy and decision-making among both elite families and villagers, the complexity of interfamilial relationships, and the implications of this social networking. This micro-historical study elucidates the diversity of socio-economic life in a village where no single family dominated.

Aimed at students, instructors and general readers interested in the experiences of enslaved persons in ancient Egypt, from the Old Kingdom to the early Islamic period. Provides nearly three hundred primary sources in translation, arranged both chronologically and thematically and accompanied by contextualising introductions.

One of the greatest benefits of studying the ancient Greek and Roman past is the ability to utilise different forms of evidence, in particular both written and archaeological sources. The contributors to this volume employ this evidence to examine ancient housing, and what might be learned of identities, families, and societies, but they also use it as a methodological locus from which to interrogate the complex relationship between different types of sources. Chapters range from the recreation of the house as it was conceived in Homeric poetry, to the decipherment of a painted Greek lekythos to build up a picture of household activities, to the conjuring of the sensorial experience of a house in Pompeii. Together, they present a rich tapestry which demonstrates what can be gained for our understanding of ancient housing from examining the interplay between the words of ancient texts and the walls of archaeological evidence.

This publication presents fascinating new findings on ancient Romano-Egyptian funerary portraits preserved in international collections. Once interred with mummified remains, nearly a thousand funerary portraits from Roman Egypt survive today in museums around the world, bringing viewers face-to-face with people who lived two thousand years ago. Until recently, few of these paintings had undergone in-depth study to determine by whom they were made and how. An international collaboration known as APPEAR (Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis, and Research) was launched in 2013 to promote the study of these objects and to gather scientific and historical findings into a shared database. The first phase of the project was marked with a two-day conference at the Getty Villa. Conservators, scientists, and curators presented new research on topics such as provenance and collecting, comparisons of works across institutions, and scientific studies of pigments, binders, and supports. The papers and posters from the conference are collected in this publication, which offers the most up-to-date information available about these fascinating remnants of the ancient world. The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at www.getty.edu/publications/mummyportraits/ and includes zoomable illustrations and graphs. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book.

In World History as the History of Foundations, 3000 BCE to 1500 CE, Michael Borgolte investigates the origins and development of foundations from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. In his survey foundations emerge not as mere legal institutions, but rather as “total social phenomena” which touch upon manifold aspects, including politics, the economy, art and religion of the cultures in which they emerged. Cross-cultural in its approach and the result of decades of research, this work represents by far the most comprehensive account of the history of foundations that has hitherto been published.

Thousands of documentary and literary texts written on papyri and potsherds, in Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Persian, have transformed our knowledge of many aspects of life in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. Here experts provide a comprehensive guide to understanding this ancient documentary evidence.

This study sheds new light on identity formation and maintenance in the world of the early Christians by drawing on neglected archaeological and epigraphic evidence concerning associations and immigrant groups and by incorporating insights from the social sciences. The study's unique contribution relates, in part, to its interdisciplinary character, standing at the intersection of Christian Origins, Jewish Studies, Classical Studies, and the Social Sciences. It also breaks new ground in its thoroughly comparative framework, giving the Greek and Roman evidence its due, not as mere background but as an integral factor in understanding dynamics of identity among early Christians. This makes the work particularly well suited as a text for courses that aim to understand early Christian groups and literature, including the New Testament, in relation to their Greek, Roman, and Judean contexts. Inscriptions pertaining to associations provide a new angle of vision on the ways in which members in Christian congregations and Jewish synagogues experienced belonging and expressed their identities within the Greco-Roman world. The many other groups of immigrants throughout the cities of the empire provide a particularly appropriate framework for understanding both synagogues of Judeans and groups of Jesus-followers as minority cultural groups in these same contexts. Moreover, there were both shared means of expressing identity (including fictive familial metaphors) and peculiarities in the case of both Jews and Christians as minority cultural groups, who (like other "foreigners") were sometimes characterized as dangerous, alien "anti-associations". By paying close attention to dynamics of identity and belonging within associations and cultural minority groups, we can gain new insights into Pauline, Johannine, and other early Christian communities.

The first book-length overview of agricultural development in the ancient world A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is an authoritative overview of the history and development of agriculture in the ancient world. Focusing primarily on the Near East and Mediterranean regions, this unique text explores the cultivation of the soil and rearing of animals through centuries of human civilization—from the Neolithic beginnings of agriculture to Late Antiquity. Chapters written by the leading scholars in their fields present a multidisciplinary examination of the agricultural methods and influences that have enabled humans to survive and prosper. Consisting of thirty-one chapters, the Companion presents essays on a range of topics that include economic-political, anthropological, zooarchaeological, ethnobotanical, and archaeobotanical investigation of ancient agriculture. Chronologically-organized chapters offer in-depth discussions of agriculture in Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia, Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome, Iran and Central Asia, and other regions. Sections on comparative agricultural history discuss agriculture in the Indian subcontinent and prehistoric China while an insightful concluding section helps readers understand ancient agriculture from a modern perspective. Fills the need for a full-length biophysical and social overview of ancient agriculture Provides clear accounts of the current state of research written by experts in their respective areas Places ancient Mediterranean agriculture in conversation with contemporary practice in Eastern and Southern Asia Includes coverage of analysis of stable isotopes in ancient agricultural cultivation Offers plentiful illustrations, references, case studies, and further reading suggestions A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is a much-needed resource for advanced students, instructors, scholars, and researchers in fields such as agricultural history, ancient economics, and in broader disciplines including classics, archaeology, and ancient history.

Questions of ethnic and cultural identities are central to the contemporary understanding of the Roman world. The expansion of Rome across Italy, the Mediterranean, and beyond entailed encounters with a wide range of peoples. Many of these had well-established pre-conquest ethnic identities which can be compared with Roman perceptions of them. In other cases, the ethnicity of peoples conquered by Rome has been perceived almost entirely through the lenses of Roman ethnographic writing and administrative structures. The formation of such identities, and the shaping of these identities by Rome, was a vital part of the process of Roman imperialism. Comparisons across the empire reveal some similarities in the processes of identity formation during and after the period of Roman conquest, but they also reveal a considerable degree of diversity and localisation in interactions between Romans and others. This volume explores how these practices of ethnic categorisation formed part of Roman strategies of control, and how people living in particular places internalised them and developed their own senses of belonging to an ethnic community. It includes both regional studies and thematic approaches by leading scholars in the field--Publisher website.