System under the cholas

Political history of Kashmir

Iron age in India

This thesis is concerned to demonstrate that Egypt had an important part to play in the formation of the Roman empire. There is a tendency for Classical scholarship to discuss Rome’s relationship with Egypt in terms which fall very far short of the way in which Rome’s encounters with Greek culture are treated. Within scholarship today, any perceived problems with Egypt are still often overstated, while any respect which the Romans may have held for Egyptian culture is dismissed, underplayed or only grudgingly accepted. I intend to re-appraise certain aspects of Egyptian/Egyptianising material culture in order to demonstrate that while some areas of the Roman literary corpus are scattered with apparently derogatory remarks about Egypt, the material evidence tells a quite different story. The aim of this thesis is to examine Egyptian/Egyptianising material culture in order to put the evidence of written texts into a fuller cultural context and perspective. I shall take a chronological approach and intend to focus primarily on artefacts found in the public sphere. The exception will be Chapter Four in which I shall discuss notions about Egypt in the private sphere. The final Chapter will conclude with Hadrian’s era in which the Villa at Tivoli may be seen as an expression of the merging of aspects of both public and private. Octavian’s so-called ‘propaganda’ campaign is central to the question of how scholarship deals with encounters between Egypt and Rome. After Egypt’s incorporation into the new empire of Rome, it was not in Octavian’s interests to continue a hostile disparagement of the country, given his status as pharaoh. I will argue that Octavian set in motion a rehabilitation of the country’s reputation by a policy of appeasement towards Egypt and by incorporating aspects of Egypt’s culture into Rome. It is my contention that Egypt had a greater role to play in the ideology of Rome’s empire, particularly through its first Emperor, than modern scholarship allows. I conclude that the ‘question of Egypt’ while complex, fluid and often contradictory, nevertheless was very much less negative than modern scholarship portrays.

<p> Prior to the addition of Egypt to the imperial state of Rome, the presence and influence of Roman culture in Egypt was not as strong as it was in other regions surrounding the Mediterranean. Under Augustus&rsquo; rule, Egypt was added to Rome&rsquo;s growing empire and the grain which grew so very well along the Nile began to flow out of Egypt towards Rome. Egyptian cities such as Alexandria became entrepots for Rome where trade was centered. This addition to the empire provided larger and different markets of exchange which enabled goods and ideas to be transferred within the cities of Egypt. These goods and ideas permeated the centers of exchange and their surrounding regions. As the influence of Rome grew within the metropoles of Egypt during its imperial reign, the lines which previously categorized and defined the boundaries of ethnicity and identity in the region began to blur.</p><p> In the wake of decolonization, historians have postulated that identity has become less of an absolute within modern empires. Recently there has been an increase of scholarship surrounding the phenomenon of identity in the ancient world, specifically looking at identity within imperial political systems. This work will utilize some aspects of modern imperial theory to attempt to show that identity within Rome&rsquo;s empire was in many ways similar to more modern imperial states. I will be using a variety of primary sources to supplement the secondary academic work I will also utilize. Specifically I will be looking at Imperial decrees, coins, papyrus documents (personal letters, receipts, legal documents, and army discharges), inscriptions, material culture, public spaces, and recent archaeology (funeral arrangements and Roman Mummies). Through looking at and analyzing these primary sources I will attempt to show how identity formation in Roman Egypt was blurred and not set by clear distinctions. The use of multiple differing primary sources and modern imperial theories have not, to my understanding, be attempted thus far. Nor has my claim been argued, that while there was a Romanization of those in Egypt, there was also a slight Egyptianzation of those Romans living in Egypt.</p>

Asclepius was worshipped in over 900 sanctuaries across the Graeco-Roman world. Although the cult had been disseminated across eastern Mediterranean from the 5th century onwards, it was only when the Romans took over the cult that it was dispersed all over the empire to become an empire-wide cult. This thesis looks at the impact of the Roman Empire on the cult, examining how Rome took over the existing cult, the ways in which Rome influenced it, and the relationship between the religion of Empire and local religion. The key questions that this thesis aims to ask are: How did the Roman Empire impact upon the cult of Asclepius? How were global and regional cult identities articulated in response to each other as a result of this impact? How did increased connectivity between areas play an important part in the creation and stimulation of cultic identities? Did Asclepius’ spheres of influence grow or adapt as a result of Roman benefactions? and What were provincial responses to Roman worship and dissemination of the cult? The timeframe for this thesis will be from 27 BC until Severus Alexander’s death in AD 235. Chapter One will introduce the scope of this thesis as well as the general theories which underpin this research. A survey of the cult before the Augustan period will be presented in Chapter Two. Further chapters will each examine a different aspect of the Roman impact on the cult, with the third focussing on imperial influences and the worship of the god by Roman and provincial elites; the fourth on how the Roman army influenced the cult; the fifth how multiple forms of the god were worshipped side-by-side in North Africa.

As the nascent power of Rome grew to dominance over the Mediterranean world in the Middle Republic, they carried out mass killing, mass enslavement, and urban annihilation. In doing so, they showed an intention to destroy other groups, therefore committing genocide. This study looks at the kinds of destruction enacted by Romans between 343 BCE and 146 BCE, using a novel application of definitions and frameworks of analysis from the field of Genocide Studies. It proposes typologies through which the genocidal behaviours of the Romans can be explored and described. Mass killing, enslavement, and urban annihilation normally occurred in the context of siege warfare, when the entire population became legitimate targets. Initial indiscriminate killing could be followed by the enslavement of the survivors and burning of their settlement. While genocide is a valid historiographical tool of analysis, Roman behaviours were distinct from modern patterns of mass killing in lacking a substantial component of racial or ethnic motivation. These phenomena were complex and varied, and the utter destruction of groups not regularly intended. Roman genocidal violence was a normative, but not typical, adaptation of the Romans of the Middle Republic to the ancient anarchic interstate system. In antiquity, there was no international law to govern conflict and international relations, only customs. This study posits that the Roman moral-based custom of fides as an internal preventative regime that inhibited genocide through rituals of submission to Roman hegemony. This process was flawed, and cultural miscommunication risked causing mass violence. Furthermore, the wide discretion of Roman commanders accepting submission could result in them flouting the moral obligation to protect ii surrendered groups. In such cases, attempts at punishment and restitution from other members of the elite were only partially effective.

<p> The human pinworm, <i>Enterobius vermicularis</i>, is an intestinal parasite that is transmitted through close interpersonal contact. Because this parasite is human-specific, pinworm DNA can be used in population genetics studies as a proxy to track the migration patterns of human hosts. At least three genetic haplogroups of the mitochondrial <i>cox1</i> gene have been identified in <i>E. vermicularis</i> pinworms extracted from modern fecal samples. </p><p> This parasite has also been identified morphologically and genetically in preserved fecal material, or coprolites, from numerous archaeological sites. Analyses of Ancestral Pueblo coprolites indicate that the inhabitants of the prehistoric American Southwest experienced particularly high levels of pinworm infection. The Ancestral Pueblo archaeological tradition represents ethnically distinct groups that shared certain cultural features. Prehistoric architecture, material culture, and skeletal remains, in addition to modern genetics and linguistics data, have been used to explore the level of direct contact between Ancestral Pueblo sites and surrounding areas. A comparison of pinworm genetic haplotypes from coprolites provides an additional means of assessing the migratory histories of the Greater American Southwest. </p><p> In this study, genetic fragments of the <i>E. vermicularis</i> mitochondrial <i>cox1</i> gene were isolated from 14 of 43 Ancestral Pueblo coprolites sampled from Antelope House and Antelope Cave in Arizona, from Salmon Ruin in New Mexico, and from Turkey Pen Ruin in Utah. Attempts to amplify pinworm DNA from La Cueva de los Muertos Chiquitos in Durango, Mexico were unsuccessful. Five coprolites from Antelope House generated sufficient genetic coverage of a 268 nucleotide fragment of the <i>cox1</i> gene for phylogenetic analyses. Comparison to modern genetic haplogroups indicates the presence of a unique haplotype of pinworm mitochondrial <i>cox1</i> gene in the prehistoric New World, haplogroup D.</p><p>

This thesis examines the cultural, religious and therapeutic functions of Roman baths and bathing during Late Antiquity, as they are presented in a wide range of primary literary sources, and the way in which they are addressed in current research. The chronological scope of the work stretches from the late 3rd to the early 7th century. The geographical focus is on the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. The aim of the thesis is, primarily, to analyse aspects of bathing during this period that have not been previously addressed in detail (such as medicinal uses of bathing) and to examine the issues that have been discussed in the past but had not been answered unequivocally, or which have not been treated in an exhaustive manner – such as the matters of nudity and equality in a bath-house environment, or of Christian attitudes to bathing in this context. The thesis also considers what the knowledge of the subject topic contributes to our understanding of the period of Late Antiquity. The thesis examines the changes that occurred in the bathing culture during Late Antiquity and their causes, exploring in detail the impact of Christianity on bathing customs, and devotes special attention to how the perceptions of bathing were presented in the contemporary sources. This will be achieved by investigating passages from a wide range of texts mentioning baths and bathing and subsequently drawing conclusions based on the analysis of the primary sources.

No description available.