Ancient history Books

By triangulating the Greco-Roman world, classical reception, and disability studies, this book presents a range of approaches that reassess and reimagine traditional themes, from the narrative voice to sensory studies.It argues that disability and...

The only critical guide to the theory and method of Mesopotamian archaeology, this innovative volume evaluates the theories, methods, approaches and history of Mesopotamian archaeology from its origins in the nineteenth century up to the present day...

First Published in 2004. The span of time, when most of Britain was under Roman influence, stretched from 55 BC to c. AD 500, when control had passed into the hands of Germanic peoples, many of whom had been living here already for over a century as...

Xenophon's Socratic Works demonstrates that Xenophon, a student of Socrates, military man, and man of letters, is an indispensable source for our understanding of the life and philosophy of Socrates. David M. Johnson restores Xenophon's most ambitious...

Published in 1984: The Waltharius and Ruodlieb are considered by many scholars to be among the finest works of medieval Latin literature. Both the Waltharius, composed by an anonymous eleventh-century poet from Southern Germany, are heroic narratives...

This fascicle describes the background of the Franchthi project and its excavation history and methodology. Particle size, mineralogy, and chemistry are all taken into consideration as the cultural remains and the sediments from the cave are analyzed to...

What do rituals have to do with knowledge? Knowledge by Ritual examines the epistemological role of rites in Christian Scripture. By putting biblical rituals in conversation with philosophical and scientific views of knowledge, Johnson argues that...

The Neanderthal is among the most mysterious relatives of Homo sapiens: Was he a dull, club-swinging muscleman, or a being with developed social behaviour and the ability to speak, to plan precisely, and even to develop views on the afterlife? For many,...

Studying references and writings in over 900 personal letters, an unparalleled source, this book presents a rounded and intriguing account of the three women who, until now, have only survived as secondary figures to Cicero.In a field where little...

There are many books devoted to explicating Jewish laws and customs relating to death and mourning and a wealth of studies addressing the significance of death practices around the world. However, never before has there been a study of the death and...

Articles examine the city of Jerusalem and other Jewish communities of the Mediterranean diaspora, as reflected in the writings of Luke, Josephus and Philo. Topics covered include social identity, everyday life and religious practice.This will be of...

This book caused a sensation when it was published in Germany in 1992, and was front page news in many newspapers. For readers of English, it will be an authoritative survey of four centuries of Roman history, and a unique window on the German tradition...

From Solon to Socrates is a magisterial narrative introduction to what is generally regarded as the most important period of Greek history. Stressing the unity of Greek history and the centrality of Athens, Victor Ehrenberg covers a rich and diverse...

This volume demonstrates the development of Roman military bureaucracy during the Middle Republic, expanding on recent research to examine these administrative systems that made possible Rome's expansion in this period.

A detailed case for the plausible literary dependence of the Gospel of Mark on select letters of the apostle Paul. Contends Mark sought to anticipate Paul by constructing narrative precursors concordant with Paul's teachings. Makes...

With Part I of the two-part fifth volume of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shi chi (The Grand Scribe's Records), we enter the world of the shih chia or "hereditary houses." These ten chapters trace the history of China's first states, from...

The past thirty years have seen an explosion of interest in Greek and Roman social history, particularly studies of women and the family. Until recently these studies did not focus especially on children and childhood, but considered children in the...

This volume examines biblical wisdom literature both in its historical context and as it relates to a host of contemporary themes, including overcoming social divisions, reading from a place of inclusion, healing from trauma, and challenging religious...

The Roman official and intellectual Pliny the Elder's Natural History constitutes our primary source on the figural arts in Classical antiquity. Since the Middle Ages, Pliny's encyclopaedia has enraptured the imaginations of its readers with anecdotes...

Iran's heritage is as varied as it is complex, and the archaeological, philological, and linguistic scholarship of the region has not been the focus of a comprehensive study for many decades. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran provides up-to-date,...

As the oldest literary Latin preserved in any quantity, the language of Livius shows many features of linguistic interest and raises intriguing questions of phonolgy, morphology and syntax.

Sex and the Second-Best City deals with the topics of sex and society in the Laws of Plato with recourse to historical context and modern critical theory. It examines reconstructions of ancient "sexuality" with a view to increased clarification. The text...

The Realness of Things Past proposes a new paradigm of historical practice. It questions the way we conventionally historicize the experiences of non-modern peoples, western and non-western, and makes the case for an alternative. It shows how our...

Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures puts historical disease concepts in cross-cultural perspective, investigating perceptions, constructions and experiences of health and illness from antiquity to the seventeenth century...

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World explores the relationship between the work of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the study of classical antiquity. The collection of essays engages with Greek and Roman history, literature, society, and...

This study identifies specific features in the legal procedure and social perception of homicide in Athens in the time of the orators and examines how these features affected and were represented and utilised in forensic rhetoric.The socially...

First published in 1934, this book covers a broad array of ancient Greek literature, taking into account the most acknowledged of the Greek authors as well as those less well known. H. J. Rose presents the latest findings of the time in terms of research...

Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was Keeper of the British Museum's department of oriental antiquities from 1894 until his retirement in 1924. Carrying out many missions to Egypt in search of ancient objects, Budge was hugely successful in collecting...

Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was Keeper of the British Museum's department of oriental antiquities from 1894 until his retirement in 1924. Carrying out many missions to Egypt in search of ancient objects, Budge was hugely successful in collecting...

During the inspired years of the Athenian empire, through the tragedy of its collapse, to the more prosaic era that followed, most of the great names in Athenian history were involved in the procedures of criminal law. Political Trials in Ancient Greece,...

Graffiti are ubiquitous within the ancient world, but remain underexploited as a form of archaeological or historical evidence. They include a great variety of texts and images written or drawn inside and outside buildings, in public and private places,...

This volume offers an unparalleled range of comparative studies considering both persecution and genocide across two thousand years of history from Rome to Nazi Germany, and spanning Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

Compiling the results from contemporary and exciting areas of research into one single important volume, this book stands ahead of its field in providing a comprehensive one-stop Handbook reference of biblical interpretation. Examining a wide range of...

First published in 2007. Reading like a detective thriller involving the highest of stakes, this is the story of a discovery that is still to be fully realised one that has split the scholarly community worldwide and which may yet transform our...

Today, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden is internationally known for its outstanding archaeological collections. Yet its origins lie in an insignificant assortment of artefacts used for study by Leiden University. How did this transformation...

The Letter of Aristeas tells the story of how Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt commissioned seventy scholars to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Long accepted as a straightforward historical account of a cultural enterprise in Ptolemaic Alexandria,...

Imperialism and Biblical Prophecy is a radically new interpretation of prophetic poetry. Using more than thirty new translations from the Hebrew Bible, it shows that this poetry is inseparable from imperialism, that each of the three major waves of...

Between Poverty and the Pyre examines the history of the experience of widowhood across different cultures. It brings together a collection of essays by historians, anthropologists and philologists. The book shows how difficult it is to define the...

Using almost a thousand case studies, both real and fictional, Dr van Hooff provides us with a unique and engaging insight into self-killing in the Graeco-Roman world.The author analyses the methods and motives which lie behind self-killing relating...

The Wayneflete Lectures, given under the auspices of Magdalen College, Oxford, delivered in 1983 by Professor Francis, and published here under the title Image and Idea in Fifth Century Greece , are important because they challenge the way that the...

First published in 1929, this highly influential study offers a historical perspective on the Byzantine Empire, from the establishment of Constantinople by Emperor Constantine around 330 AD, through to the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the...

In this new edition Pat Southern examines the anarchic era of the soldier Emperors that preceded the crisis of AD 260, and the reigns of underrated and maligned Emperors such as Gallienus, Probus and Aurelian, whose determination and hard work reunited...