Volume VII, 2010, 448 pages
Res Antiquae (RANT) is a journal dedicated to antiquity. It deals with the antique civilizations that developped around the Mediterranean Sea and its aim is to establish links between the various disciplines that are too often separated.
ISSN 1781-1317
55,00 €
= Paper =
During Antiquity, Men live everyday the constant presence of the sun. Therfore their lifestyle is influenced by the sunlight and its positive heat. It could explain the fact that the Sun God becomes one of the main divinities. However civilizations from diverse regions of the Ancient Near East perceive the Sun in the same way. The representation is it invented in each place? Or is it broadcast a culture to another ? This concern centred on Anatolia is the heart of this paper that will attempt to highlight different points of view of the symbolism of the Solar divinity.
14,50 €
= Paper =
Within the lexicographic framework, the metrological texts in Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform discovered at Ras-Shamra provide a testimony for the formulation of metrological knowledge at Ugarit towards the end of the Late Bronze Age. I Have chosen to compare these data with the older material from Nippur and hope to show that the Ugaritic measures of content and surface show Old-Babylonian antecedents for some of their elements while others are of local origin.
14,50 €
= Paper =
P. BORDREUIL. — The myths of Ras Shamra-Ugarit contain a western legacy illustrated by the gods Kôtharu wa Ḫasisu and Qadīšu wa ʾAmrāru and related to the migration of skills…
14,50 €
= Paper =
Studies on the origin and development of the alphabet are very abundant: considering the last twenty years only, I listed more than thirty papers and monographs, which focus their attention on the mother script and antiquity of the Greek alphabet or the place and modalities of its transmission. In this paper, I shall comment three key theories, namely these of B.B. Powell (1991), related with Homeric epics, R.D. Woodard (1997), related with Cypriot syllabic writing, and S.-T. Teodorsson (2006), related with oriental literature. I chose them because they offer a global model of the alphabet’s historical reconstitution, which takes into consideration all parts of the question. Powell’s “Homer related” theory and Woodard’s, on a Cypriot origin, apparently completely opposed, seem to be combined to a certain degree by Teodorsson, who proposes a kind of compromise between literary influence and trade routes.
14,50 €
= Paper =
In the 52nd and last epistle of the Brethren of Purity, one finds a passage which is a very faithful translation of Plato’s famous narrative about the ring of Gyges. Taking into account the literality of the translation, the size of the passage (about 30 lines) and the precision of the reference made to the original text, it may fairly be assumed that it is a unicum in the history of the transmission of Plato to the Arab world. The purpose of this paper is to take up again this issue and try to bring up some new elements to the discussion.
14,50 €
= Paper =
In the absence of integral and litteral Arabic translations of Plato’s dialogues, the transmission of Platonism in the Muslim world was an indirect one, passing through different channels such as medical works, doxographies and gnomologies. The complexity and relative obscurity of this ‘voie diffuse’, in which according to Pierre Thillet oral transmission played an important role, led to all kinds of hazardous speculations about the existence of a Platonic Academy among the ‘Sabaens’ in Ḥarrān, which was supposed to be still in activity in the Xth century. This article proposes a critical analysis of one of the most quoted ‘evidences’ for this theory: al-Mas‘Å«dÄ«’s report about a Platonic inscription he claims to have seen on the door-knocker of the maǧma‘ of the Sabaeans in Ḥarrān. Rather than proving the existence of a ‘Platonic Academy’ there, al-Mas‘Å«dÄ« offers us an eloquent illustration of the way Platonism was transmitted in the Muslim world.
14,50 €
= Paper =
J. DEN HEIJER et P. LA SPISA. — This paper addresses the important phenomenon of contacts and influences between the various religious communities of the pre-modern Near East in the field of the written heritage, and more particularly in that of Christian Arabic literature…
14,50 €
= Paper =
In this paper, I want to show the influence of the hippocratic treatise On airs, waters, places ((Περὶ á¼€Îρων, ὑδάτων, τÏŒπων) and Galen’s commentary in particular, on the arabic scientific literature. Of course, we find it in medicine but also in geography. In this field, the Galen’s commentary of hippocratic text determined the base of the theory of geographical determinism, giving a conceptual structure (physic and even physiological) to the influence of the man’s environment. The mediaeval thinkers applied this theory to the humanity and in this context, the hippocratic opposition between Schythians and Egyptians is replaced by the one between Turks and Egyptians or Slaves and Blacks. They used it also to explain the physical constitution and the ethics of a specific population.
14,50 €
= Paper =
The creation of the alphabet and its diffusion occurred in a very particular climate, characterized by an extreme freedom and inventiveness.
This apparently irrepressible outburst appears not only in the very beginnings of the alphabet in the Middle East (from ca 2000 BC) but also when it was diffused in Asia Minor and Occident — in the Phrygian world, since the end of the IXth c., and in Greece and Italy, since ca 775.
This apparently irrepressible outburst appears not only in the very beginnings of the alphabet in the Middle East (from ca 2000 BC) but also when it was diffused in Asia Minor and Occident — in the Phrygian world, since the end of the IXth c., and in Greece and Italy, since ca 775.
14,50 €
= Paper =
The Arabic Grammatical Tradition aims at studying the Kalâm-ʾl-Ê¿Arab or “Language of the Arabs”, relying on texts written before 130/750. ʾAbû Ê¿Alî al-Qâlî (Manâzgird 280/893 – Cordoba 355/966), after having learnt Arabic grammar in Baghdad, has left the city in 328/939 for teaching in Cordoba from 330/941, applying the principles of Basra Grammatical School Tradition. He wrote several books, but one of them may be considered as typical for this Tradition : “The Book of Shortened and Extended Noun”, a critical edition of which has recently been published by Dr. al-Haridi. Al-Qâlî does no more regard “shortened noun” (ʾism maqá¹£ûr) and “reduced noun” (ʾism manqûá¹£) as synonymous as Ancient Grammarians did. In his view, a shortened noun is a noun where a /y/ or a /w/ is included as a radical. He looks for a main structural principle organizing grammatical rules, putting aside the nawâdir or unusual words. So that we may think about him as occupying an intermediary position between Ibn Sarrâǧ and Ibn Ǧinnî in the history of Arabic Grammatical Tradition.
14,50 €
= Paper =
I. KLOCK-FONTANILLE. — The discovery and knowledge of Chinese characters in the 17th century nourished reflections about the principal ideas that occupied the thinkers of the 17th century. Kircher, best known as an Egyptologist, popularized information about China…
14,50 €
= Paper =
In this contribution we find an approach of the problematic relating to the Hurrian influence on the Hittite Civilization during the Bronze Age.The Hurrian science and literature comes from the Sumerian country until Kizzuwatna (Cilicia) via Syria (Alep). During the 13th century B.C. the Hurrian rituals, the religious conceptions and the cultural influence arrived mightily in Hattusa, namely during the reign of Great King Hattusili III and Queen Puduhépa with aid of kizzuwatnean scribes such as the Great Sribe Walwaziti.
14,50 €
= Paper =
The analysis of the Turkish popular literature, which was told and sung by the âşık, the story-tellers who used to recite their folk stories in the remote villages of Anatoly, shows that though these folk stories are original, some of their episodes go back to former traditions, like the Armenian legends and the Byzantine epos. In the same time, the religious and/or ethnic minorities of the Ottoman Anatolia – Greek, Armenian and Georgian Christians, but also Jews and Shiite Muslims – developed various attitudes toward these Anatolian folk stories. In some cases, they adopted it as they were told and they introduced them in their own repertory. In other cases, they adapted, partially or totally, these folk stories, making their heroes Christians or Shiites, changing their names and their places of birth. All these attitudes show the extreme vitality of the oral tradition in Anatolia.
14,50 €
= Paper =
D. MOINE. — There is still a false look about commerce in Antiquity. Many clichés like life in autarky always exist. But, in Roman Egypt, commerce seems to be something of more complex…
14,50 €
= Paper =
Scholarly opinion on the origins of Ugaritic mythology, in particularly the myths having to do with the storm deity Baʿlu, has varied considerably over the eighty some years since the discovery of these tablets. Traditional Mesopotamian sources were cited as parallels early on, then Amorite influence was posited. Recently, the hypothesis of a Mesopotamian connection has been revived under a new form. These varied explanations for a Levantine mythology showing similarities with other Near-Eastern mythologies, not to mention Aegean ones, will be passed rapidly in review and the peculiarities of the Ugaritic version will be emphasized.
14,50 €
S. SALMON. — The excavations on the site of Tell Masaïkh (Syria) brought to light a ceramic material, dated the Iron Age II. His study allowed the identification of typologies belonging to the Neo-Assyrian tradition and others which are certainly local…
14,50 €
= Paper =
This article focuses on the transfer of knowledge and wisdom between Mesopotamia and Elam…
14,50 €
= Paper =
The technical developpment of the dome has been improved step by step during the islamic period. Political rulers have understood that the knowledges in architecture may serve the spread of Islam. In Iran, the power encouraged different groups of builders that became under the supervision of experts in the art of construction true shools giving birth to different styles and moods in architecture. According to the territorial increase of Islam, teachers and their most skillful students were invited to built monuments through the islamic world. They greatly helped the spread of knowledges. With regard to the problem of the weight of the dome, they contribued to the progressive increase of its stability through more simple forms.
14,50 €
= Paper =
About 218 AD, the Syrian author and nobleman Bardayá¹£an met with an Indian embassy, on its way to the Roman imperial court in the city of Emesa. We try to demonstrate that his report, strongly marked by his Stoic concepts about cultural identity and relativity, became the source of Greek and Arab knowledge about the Buddhists and the Brahmans, starting from his contemporary Philostrates to AbÅ« ‘Īsā al-Warrāq and Ibn Zur‘a in the 10th Century.
14,50 €
= Paper =
S. VANSEVEREN. — This article aims to deal with some aspects of cultural comparison and reconstruction in Indo-European studies…
14,50 €
= Paper =
L. BOMBARDIERI & A. M. JASINK. — Le Kouris Valley Project est un projet de recherche mené par l’Université de Florence en collaboration avec les Universités de Chieti et de Turin dans la région de Kourion (Limassol, Chypre)…
14,50 €
= Paper =
M. CAVALIERI. — Cette contribution affronte le problème complexe du peuplement antique de la partie nord-orientale de la péninsule italienne du IVe siècle a.C.n. jusqu’à l’Antiquité tardive…
14,50 €
= Paper =
D. DÅUGOSZ. — L’article aborde le problème complexe de la transformation urbaine entre l’Antiquité tardive et le Haut Moyen Age ; le contexte enquêté est celui de l’Italie du Nord entre le iiie et le viiie s. de notre ère, en particulier les siècles de la domination lombarde de la péninsule…
14,50 €
= Paper =
D. GRODDEK. — La fête ḫišuu̯a, composée dans la forme classique à l’ordre de la reine Puduḫepa, comprend treize tablettes. Dans cet article, la dixième tablette est traitée sur la base de tous les textes identifiés actuellement.
14,50 €
= Paper =
D. MOINE. — Dendour is a tiny but very interesting temple made by emperor Augustus in the Dodekaschenos, in the south of Egypt, next to the frontier with Nubia…
14,50 €
= Paper =
S. POLET. — The purpose of this article is to determine if Pepy-ankh Heny-Kem (tomb A2 at Meir) wrongfully took the title of vizier…
14,50 €
= Paper =
Ch.-G. SCHWENTZEL. — What were the queens’ and princesses’ official functions in the Commagenian kingdom? The goal of this paper is to study their place in Antiochos I Theos’ religious reform…
14,50 €
= Paper =
C. VANDERSLEYEN. — In 1931 to designate the Red Sea in the egyptian texts, Spiegelberg could list seven names. Eighty years later, none of them still has this signification…
14,50 €