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The Priestly story of Jacob at Bethel in Gen. 35.9–15 is commonly interpreted as a Priestly delegitimization of the pre-Priestly Jacob/Bethel story in Gen. 28.10–22*. This interpretation has arisen largely from the different ways in which the texts conceptualize the maqôm and maṣṣēbôt, with the Priestly text supposedly desacralizing the standing stone and turning the 'place' into merely a location of remembrance, not the dwelling of the deity. This article challenges this assumption, especially addressing the similarities between the Priestly conceptions of Bethel and the redactional 'vow narrative' in Gen. 28.20–22*. It then relates the redaction-critical findings with the historical situation at sixth-century Bethel, which seems to have been the main cultic site in Yehud during the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods. On the basis of this analysis, the article concludes with the suggestion that Bethel be taken more seriously as a possible compositional context of P. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing plausible causal associations between the impact of climate and/or environment and past human societies presents many challenges, as the case of the decline of the S. Arabian kingdom of Himyar in the sixth century CE indicates. Evidence from a new high-resolution stalagmite record for the last 2,600 years shows that a period of drought in the early sixth century, hardly mentioned in the sources, was of unusual duration and severity. We argue that, while this likely contributed to undermine the sociopolitical resilience of Himyar and thus contributed to the societal changes in the region from the 520s to the late sixth/early seventh century, identifying the exact causal relationships involved is fraught with difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of women exercising power and influence appears to be central, if not fundamental, to gender studies, as it allows an in-depth reflection on both societal norms and the way we perceive them today. The historian’s vision has been biased for a long time by a dichotomic consideration of society, with a clear gendered partition where women would have been confined to the private, domestic sphere. Their actions were thus perceived as inconsequential at best, invisible at worst, for they were perpetually limited to private quarters and familial intimacy, while men’s authority and actions supposedly influenced the public sphere and politics in a larger measure. It would be a mistake, however, to keep considering that politics and familial intimacy should be studied separately. The palace environment in particular proves to be especially favorable to women’s authority, for they often benefit from a specific access to the sovereign that even major dignitaries can be deprived of, seeing as they are generally not received privately by the ruling dynasty. Studying women’s quarters thus brings to light a mosaic of interdependent relationships, of intercessors, factional processes, and intricate political networks. Although women can be, and often are, limited in some specific ways, such as their physical presence within the public space, they can still achieve political relevance and play a key role within the palace hierarchy and court mechanics. In other words, women are not only instrumental in displaying royal authority but can, at times, fully embody it without specifically causing a break with tradition. Merovingian private quarters in particular offer a very meaningful example, in that they are a reflection of the Merovingian matrimonial practice—polygyny. By multiplying the female pole within the palatial structure, power and authority come into play, taking various shapes and influencing many areas of the political and private life of the sovereign.

This viewpoint is meant as a contribution to debate over the nature and significance of the 'Justinianic Plague', which struck Western Eurasia between the sixth and eighth centuries ce , and the methodological challenges posed by attempting to reconcile historical evidence with that derived from the realm of the Natural Sciences. In recent years, major advances have been made in our genetic understanding of the Justinianic Plague. Yet growing scientific interest in the disease has coincided with a concerted effort amongst some historians to seek to downplay its historical importance. This article surveys our current state of historical and scientific understanding with respect to the sixth-century pandemic, responds to the recent attempts to argue that the disease had only a minimal impact on the societies that it struck, and considers how historians should respond to the burgeoning scientific evidence in order to take study of the plague forward. For co-operation between geneticists, environmental scientists, archaeologists and historians, it argues, offers the chance to transform our understanding of how, when and where the plague spread and to assess its impact across the Afro-Eurasian world as a whole, and not just on the Mediterranean, for which we have our best written sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sixth century is the Seljuk period from exciting times to different centuries in Iran. This study analyzes the causes and factors of changes in the style of poetry and its content and themes and changes the sponsors of poetry and finding poetry among the common people Mysticism and Sufism have dealt with the needs of the troubled society of that century. In this study, due to the tendency of the monasteries towards the monasteries in the sixth century and the lack of attention of the Seljuk kings to the poets, there was a lack of introspection of the poet and interesting mystical agreements in his view and attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to place the study of urban protest and violence in the period from about 300 to about 600 CE in a broader perspective and to subject the investigation of plebeian activism to the basic precepts of analysis of collective action developed by social scientists and historians studying other periods. Its main argument is that, contrary to wide held assumptions in the historiography, what characterized Late Antiquity was not simply the exacerbation of violence or its tighter control, but the crisis of aristocratic hegemony and the expansion of opportunities for popular intervention in city life. What has been perceived as the product fanaticism, irrationality and deprivation of the masses, of the manipulation of bishops and aristocrats or of the failure of the mechanisms of coercion was actually the result of a dramatic social change that, on the one hand, involved a new dynamic of power and, on the other, a shift in the way the people understood their role and power in local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses twenty-six Latin and Greek letters dating to the fifth and sixth centuries CE, written under the name of empresses and queens and originating from the later Roman Empire, Ostrogothic Italy and Merovingian Gaul. Where these letters have received attention, scholars have usually approached them with the intention of analysing a single letter’s content for evidence of a specific woman’s biography. This article studies them as a corpus instead. Comparing them with the male letters most of them travelled with and using insights from linguistic research on gender-specific language in antiquity, the article argues that probably none of the letters expressed an individual woman's ‘authentic voice’. Written by the equivalent of modern speech-writers trained in adopting a female register, they are testimony to political strategies common to the late Roman and post-Roman world that used the female voice to publicly perform sentiments that male rulership on its own could not. They are therefore evidence for wider late antique trends towards male and female co-regency visible also in art and ceremony of the period. These female letters are a specific late antique art form, which nonetheless holds truths for all scholars of female writing in antiquity and the early Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Christians who had been deprived of the direct sponsorship of the state articulated their claims for political and religious freedom. I examine four cases from the fifth and sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran. Here I argue that Scriptural models provided an important reservoir of political ideas that could be used by clerics to undermine state authority, whether to underscore the conditional nature of Roman claims to authority or to deny an equality of religious freedom to non-Christian co-citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three advanced exercises practiced in the rhetorical schools of the first to the sixth centuries ce featured artists. Ēthopoiia portrays the emotional sufferings of artists as they struggle to control their subject matter and media. In ekphrasis, the artist as heir to a long tradition extending back to the world of myth seeks to understand his subjects' physical and emotional sufferings and to use them to teach moral lessons to the viewer. Declamation pits artists and honorands against their communities: the artist's claim of artistic license is sometimes at odds with the needs of his community, and the war hero's private interest sometimes conflicts with the community's desire for a public commemoration of his victory. Collectively these advanced exercises invited elite young men in the rhetorical schools to explore the potential conflicts between the private pursuits of those who, like themselves, possessed technical expertise and the public good of their local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Archeologické Rozhledy is the property of Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Institute of Archaeology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Life of Martha, the mother of the sixth-century stylite Symeon the Younger, has been almost completely neglected in modern scholarship. Yet the text possesses considerable historical interest as evidence for the contested development of a cult, as a literary composition with a unique structure, and as the Life of a holy woman who was neither a martyr nor a nun. Martha's hagiographer eschews most traditional emphases of the Lives of female saints, such as celibacy and asceticism, presenting instead an original, inclusive vision of piety focused on participation in liturgy and the sacraments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the construction of the foreign woman as a category that could explain, in the sixth century, the agency or the dangers of wives in different narrative contexts. The diffusion of foreign women in the sixth and seventh centuries as brides of kings and aristocrats is compared to contemporary archaeological funerary evidence. The very important role of Theoderic as wife-giver king and the context of his power - Italy - developed the concept of a new foreign subject, identifiable in particular among peregrini both from and within Italy. This development heightened the possibility of creating networks and exporting foreign models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Povijesni Prilozi is the property of Croatian Institute of History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Expanding our knowledge of the history of dementia may be beneficial for its holistic understanding. This article aims to review the trajectory of the concepts of dementia in the world and Japan. Historical backgrounds of major dementia diseases are also addressed. The first reference to “imbecility” appeared in Greece in 6th century BC. A Japanese term “Mow-roku” (aged and devitalized) first appeared in 11th century, was replaced by “Chee-hou” (absent-minded imbecile) in 1960s, and then by “Ninchee-show” (cognitive impairment) in 2014 for humanistic reasons. In 1970s, dementia was delineated from normal aging, and the present concept of dementia was established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the bishops of Hispania in the construction of churches in the late antique period has been highlighted by a traditional historiography which considered the religious unification under the Catholic creed by the Third Council of Toledo in the year 589 C.E. as the starting point of an active period of construction characterized by close collaboration between the church and the Visigothic monarchy. The principal objective of this paper is to call into question this hypothesis by presenting in an orderly fashion the documentary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence regarding the sixth and seventh centuries. Conclusions force to reconsider not only the role of the bishops, actually often recorded as responsible for consecration rather than for construction, but also of the private patronage and that of the church-monarchy alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The byzantine diplomacy has been for long time an object for the historical research, its efficiency being considered one of the explanations for the so long survival of the Empire. The barbarian embassies sent to Constantinople were studied mainly in the context of general discussions on byzantine diplomacy. We intend to focus on the possibility of deciphering a barbaric point of view regarding the relations with the Byzantine Empire, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, when the narrative sources that are available to us have a Byzantine origin, or, when referring to barbarian kingdoms in the West, they are profoundly influenced by Roman and Roman-Byzantine traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexander of Tralles, writing in the late sixth century, combined his wide-ranging practical knowledge with earlier medical theories. This article shows how clinical experience is used in Alexander’s works by concentrating on his therapeutic advice on epilepsy and, in particular, on pharmacology and the group of so-called natural remedies. I argue that clinical testing is used not only for the introduction of new medicines but also as an instrument for checking the therapeutic effect of popular healing practices. On another level, this article discusses Alexander’s role as the author of a medical compendium; it suggests that by marking the cases of clinical testing with a set of recurrent expressions, Alexander leads his audience to reflect on his medical authority and personal contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fifty oil lamps from the catacombs of ' Ponte della Lama' ( Canosa di Puglia, second to sixth centuries ad) were analysed to understand the correlations existing between types and fabrics and to determine their provenance. Petrographic and chemical analyses confirmed the archaeological hypothesis of local production of the oil lamps, using fluvial deposits. However, the three samples of oil lamps imitating the African ' Atlante VIII' are considered chemical outliers compared to the rest and are supposedly of foreign origin. The extensive and original repertory of lamp types characterizes Canusium as the production centre in the late Roman period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At Santa Filitica, a Roman settlement in north-western Sardinia occupied until the ninth century ad, archaeological excavations have found the remnants of a furnace consisting of a semi-circular base made of stony slabs and tiles bound with clay. The furnace is attached to a wall of Roman age. Layers of the sixth century ad, bearing several variously oxidized slags, were found close to the furnace. These findings first testify to an ironworks in Sardinia, within a well-defined context. XRPD and SEM- EDS mineralogical and textural analyses suggest that the slags derive from a bloomery and smithing work that was the first evidence of this type documented in Sardinia during the Early Middle Ages. Chemical analyses (performed with ICP and INAA) of rare earth elements and trace elements in two slags and in two Sardinian iron deposits allow some conclusions to be drawn on the local provenance of the ore. Our comparison of the Sardinian findings and some slags representative of archaeological smelting sites at the front of Elba island-the largest and longest lived iron-working sites in the Mediterranean-also improves the methodology with which iron slags derived from different ores are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the framework of the EU-UNDP project ' Rehabilitation of Old Nicosia' ( Cyprus, 2004-9), a high-resolution geoelectrical survey has been performed inside the partially ruined monumental complex of St Nicholas of the English, now called the Bedestan, which was designed to become a venue space for cultural activities. The aim was to detect buried traces of a Byzantine basilica of the sixth century, on the ruins of which, according to tradition, the construction of St Nicholas was begun in the 12th century. The survey has been conducted on the floor of the monument, using a dipole-dipole electrode array along two perpendicular sets of profiles. In order to model the resistivity distribution, the probability-based electrical resistivity tomography inversion ( PERTI) method has been applied. Sets of aligned blocks with resistivity in the range 100-400 ohm·m, bounding a three-room rectangular space, and traces of a rounded structure with mean resistivity about 150 ohm·m, appearing at one extremity of the central room, are the main resistive features recognized down to 4 m depth, within a conductive background with resistivity in the range 20-40 ohm·m. Altogether, these resistive features, showing in plan the shape of a church characterized by a central nave with an apse and two side aisles, have been interpreted as an evidence of the existence of remains of the earlier Byzantine basilica. Moreover, small volumes with resistivity in the range 10-12.6 ohm·m have been found, scattered underneath the whole surveyed area. Taking into account the PERTI results, ground-truth has been performed in two sites, designed to become two permanent protected exposures of the archaeological findings beneath the floor of the newly restored Bedestan. At one site, excavations detected remains of masonry in correspondence of the alignment of resistive blocks at the left margin of the left side aisle of the churchlike structure. At the other site, graves, entirely filled with wet debris in an alluvial soil matrix, have, instead, been found in correspondence with the greatest conductive volume, detected outside the perimeter of the churchlike structure. Both findings have been dated back to the sixth century. Since the Bedestan case-history is one of the first applications of the PERTI algorithm to real field data sets, its performance has been tested using the well-known ERTLabTM commercial software as benchmark. The comparison has shown a general consistency between the two inversions, and also confirmed the much higher computing speed, better filtering capacity and greater versatility of the PERTI algorithm, already outlined in a previous paper where only synthetic models were tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is initiated as an oriental communication model with special reference to "Kalama Sutta", named "Communication Model of Epistemology" as an alternative model to the western models of communication. This model is not a model of Buddhism or Buddhist Philosophy. The origin of this model which explains how to grasp a message properly came to existence during the period of Buddha who lived in 6th century before Aristotle. This new model is based on the special segment of the "Kalama Sutta in Anguttra Nikaya" (see Appendix, pp. 170-175) in Thripitaka (Three Baskets). This may be the first Sri Lankan communication model on epistemology, of how one can accept or reject the message wherever he gets it from. When one goes through this sutra, one can find how a message can be grasped without taking prior beliefs, stances, reports and religious texts and so on. This theory is structured as "The Communication is 'One who gets a message from anywhere with whatever consequence after scrutinizing it by himself epistemologically.'" This could be explained as a part of self-communication and communication with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The great poet and novelist Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) once remarked that he was extremely sad that he was not alive when Gautama Buddha was still around. Tagore very much wished he could have had conversations with Buddha. I share that sentiment, but, like Rabindranath, I am also immensely grateful that, even now, we can enjoy—and learn from—the ideas and arguments that Buddha gave us twenty-five hundred years ago. Our world may be very different from what Buddha faced in the sixth century bce, but we can still benefit greatly from the reasoned approach to ethics, politics, and social relations that Gautama Buddha brought to the world of human understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original meaning in early classical Roman law of the term natura, to express external and internal characteristics, was extended to contracts and actions in late classical law. It also refers to the substantive characteristics of contracts and actions. By using φύσις in his Digest teachings, the sixth-century Byzantine jurist Stephanus was able to explain changes to contracts and actions. Not only could a contract be changed into a completely new contract, but a pactum could also transform the contract itself. Stephanus also used φύσις to explain the use of the general condiction, ὁ κέρτος γενικὸς κονδικτίκιος instead of another specific condiction. The term φύσις does not cause new rules of law to be enacted but the application of φύσις explains their effect in practice. Stephanus used fixed verbs for the changes, transformations and adaptions. He appears to have been unique in this theory. In the Byzantine lexicon Ῥωμαϊκαὶ ἀγωγαί and the Meditatio de pactis nudis parts of Stephanus' Digest teachings about φύσις can be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]