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This dissertation delves into the formation of legal identities among commoners in China’s earliest empires, focusing on the transitional period from the fourth century BCE to the first century CE. It seeks to contextualize the interest of early Chinese philosophers in self and identity within broader social engineering projects initiated by the early states. It examines how the ancient Chinese states constructed and tracked identity through administrative devices, creating a rudimentary version of a “status credit system.” Analyzing recently unearthed documents including birth registries, passports, “wanted” posters, and funerary relocation documents, my work particularly highlights the experiences of underprivileged groups, which recent archaeological discoveries have depicted in unprecedented detail. Examining a diverse array of such groups, including petty officials, slaves, and convict laborers, I seek to complicate the relatively static models of social stratification of this period, paying special attention to how legal punishments and various administrative devices shaped identity, status, and relationship to the state. My dissertation proposes a framework that views status as a form of currency, emphasizing the fluidity of social mobility and the fungibility of merits and debts within the social order.This dissertation is structured in four chapters, each focusing on a certain group or an aspect of identity and status in early imperial China. Chapter 1 traces the formation of legal and administrative identity from the late Warring States period to the Han Dynasty, examining the bureaucratic drive to identify and categorize the population. This process, detailed in various registers and local census documents, involved gathering comprehensive information, and materially transformed individuals, integrating them into the state’s legal and administrative framework. Chapter 2 contextualizes commentaries on the term “jiaren” (lit. “family member”) to consider family relationships in early imperial China and to reflect on the status of domestic servants in Chinese history. Chapter 3 traces the pre-history of hereditary occupations, emphasizing the role of occupations in the shaping of identity and social status. Chapter 4 explores how ranks of honor served as status credits, influencing social hierarchy and defining one’s merit and debt to the state. These chapters provide an in-depth analysis of the various mechanisms and factors influencing social mobility and status change, from legal punishments, occupational roles, and the ranks of honor system.

This dissertation explores connections between early Iron Age alphabetic writing culture in the southern Levant (13th – 6th centuries) and Egyptian writing practices, both to posit the direct inheritance of various aspects of the former from the later and to shed light on documentary and writing practices in the southern Levant from the much well understood, and better materially attested, corpus of Egyptian. The dissertation combines anthropological and sociolinguistic views of writing, viewing writing as both human technology and visual communicative media, as broad theoretical frameworks for the investigation of writing as a “culture” and to provide some framework for beginning an investigating into its “origin” in the southern Levant.As human technology, written objects are here viewed as emblematic of the choices of actors in deliberate engagement with the material world. As such, epigraphs are viewed as material culture and themselves pieces of writing as a technological system. Thus, evidence is not limited to the epigraphs for their linguistic content but expands to include linguistic evidence related to writing and the evidence of writing associated material culture that shed light of the activity of writers (weights, seals, etc.). Aspects of production and use of materials are integral to understanding written objects as material culture. As such, linguistic, technological, and material data are brought together to describe the material processes of bringing a text into being, with a focus on the ways in which particular materials both index and generate socially significant meaning in the community of writers.As visual communicative media, written objects are here viewed as the creative products of writers who make distinct choices about the way in which a written object appears and how a text ultimately comes into being. As such, the letters on written objects become emblems of the techniques writers use, the postures they embody, and assumptions that they must make in constructing a written text. The method of drawing a letter (orthography; ductus), the final appearance of the letter (typography; allography), the use and integration of notation systems and associated symbols (numerical, metrological, and mathematical), the color and size of the letters (semiotics of typography), the direction of the letters, and the organizational plan of letters and written sigla (format and layout) are all valuable evidence for understanding writing culture as indwelt and shaped by writers themselves. These two aspects of writing culture undergird parts one (material) and two (practice) of the dissertation, respectively.The dissertation argues that Egyptian influence can be shown in both regards. From the material basis for writing, which includes the distinct writing lexicon (pen, ink, and palette) to the meaning and organization of visual aspects of writing, the influence of Egyptian writing culture on the communities responsible for proliferating the early alphabet at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 1st millennium was pervasive and original. Appreciating the depth and breadth of the influence of Egyptian writing practice on alphabetic writing communities in the southern Levant during Late Bronze and Iron ages encourages further inquiry into cross-cultural exchange between Egypt and the Levant at the level of literature and religion.

This project investigates the theory of melothesia, which refers to the assignment of the 12 Zodiac signs to different body parts or bodily regions. We explore the development of astrological melothesia in the 1st century CE and its subsequent influence on Roman and Sanskrit astral sciences through an examination of the interplay between astrology, religion, and medicine in ancient Rome and India.Chapter 1, "nulla ars sine religione: Vedic and Roman Religious Metaphysics and Astrology," examines the semiotics and complex systems of meaning present in sacrificial rituals in Vedic India and Rome. Zodiacal astrology was a Babylonian science that established itself in both Mediterranean and Indian cultures, and I suggest here that the same sacrificial semiotic systems which enabled communication between the realms of the gods and men were further developed with mathematical precision by astrologers who used the positions of the planets and stars to create a highly detailed predictive science. Here we examine how the adoption of a science like horoscopic astrology, considered foreign by both the Romans and Indians, relied on earlier semiotic systems to establish itself and flourish in each cultural context. Secondly, we outline a theoretical framework for “religious metaphysics,” which served as the mechanism facilitating the semiotics system that connected different mundane, cosmic, and divine substances on the divine, celestial, and terrestrial planes. I argue that the system of associations established by religious metaphysics provided the groundwork for astrology’s rich network of cosmic connectivities. To do this, I first outline the Vedic religious metaphysical system, which is more generously explained by the Sanskritic textual tradition, and highlight similar patterns in the Roman material. My comparative approach presents, for the first time, a discussion of Mediterranean religious metaphysics originating from sacrificial and divinatory practices. Although religion had created the categories of man, animal, and divinity, astrology integrated humans with Time and Temporality in a highly personalized way. Our theoretical intervention is a critical advancement in explaining astrology’s success in the Mediterranean and Indic science and religion.Chapter 2, "medicina sine fine: Astrological Medicine & Anthropology," delves into astrology's role in ancient Roman and Indian conceptions of the body and its interaction with the medical science. It discusses how astrology and medicine sought to understand and predict life outcomes, and how they competed for clients in the Mediterranean, in contrast with the Jyotiṣa which integrated itself with Āyurvedic and Dharmic treatises. We also explore the micro- / macro-cosmic conceptions of the body and the use of amulets to counteract harmful planetary influences. We also examine astrology's role in ancient Roman and Indian conceptions of the body as a product of its environment and as being subject to a specific and, debatably, unchangeable fate. Manilius combines melothesia and Hippocratic environmental determinism to provide an anthropology of Roman provinces governed by the zodiac, endowing different races of men with particular psycho-physiologies. Even in “rational” Greek and Roman astral science and medicine, micro- /macro-cosmic conceptions of the body remained a central component of understanding Rome’s self-positioning in the realpolitik of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Astrologers recommended wearing engraved gemstone amulets to mollify harmful planetary influences sometimes in conjunction with medical treatment and at others in competition with it. Sphujidhvaja describes Brahminical geographical regions, social classes, and religious orders of Indian monks governed by each sign, weaving his work into earlier Āyurvedic theories. Both astrology and medicine sought the causes (aitia) of particular events and predicted life outcomes, which naturally led experts in each field to compete with one another for clients. Medicine endeavored to lengthen a person's lifespan by 1) diagnosing an illness, 2) prognosing its duration and outcome, and 3) prescribing treatment for the patient to lessen its harmful effects. While the doctor was limited to only prognosing health outcomes, the astrologer was capable of predicting all aspects of one's life, including personality, health, wealth, profession, and marriage. While Greeks and Romans looked to astrology to learn about the future, Indians who subscribed to saṃsāra (cyclical rebirth) used it to investigate not only their immediate future in their current life and body, but also their past and future births. Ancient Mediterranean peoples, Brahmins, Jains, and Buddhists also believed that Time passed at different rates for humans, gods, and other types of beings, which materialized Time and temporality variously for different species of beings. Ancient Mediterranean and Brahminic rites of passage rituals (saṃskāras), and civic and household ritual calendars dictated daily life and each person’s actions. Though people celebrated birthdays and death anniversaries as part of this domestic ritual calendar, only with astrology did individuals conceive of themselves as a product of eternal cosmic clockwork. This re-conceptualization of Time served as a central framework for understanding the human body’s lived experiences and made Time a highly personal matter long before the rise of 19th-century Phenomenology. Finally, this chapter examines the development of the practice of using astrological gems for healing by using the example of Roman engraved gems employed in averting Sirius’ dangerous influence and the use of the Navaratnas (assembly of nine planetary gems) in Jyotiṣa.Chapter 3, "astrologia universalis: śastra and ars as global sciences," critically examines the category of technical sciences in Sanskritic and Roman contexts. It analyzes the transliteration and translation of scientific theories through inter- / intra-cultural exchanges, challenging the Eurocentric narrative of scientific development as being driven solely by Greek rationalism. I critically examine the category of technical sciences in the Sanskritic and Roman contexts to highlight key differences in their development and purpose, and the mechanisms through which scientific theories were transliterated and translated by inter- / intra-cultural exchanges. I wrangle with the inherent messiness of studying astrology, the oldest interdisciplinary subject, a quality that rendered it antithetical to the specializing impulse that drove ancient Roman sciences. This discussion decolonizes the history of science, which often draws direct connections between 1) modern, positivist scientific methods, 2) the 17th century European Enlightenment, and 3) ancient Greek-Roman rationalism. My research refutes this Orientalist narrative of the unidirectional, chronological movement of ancient scientific methods from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece and then Rome. This narrative insists that Greek rational science arrived in an India which was home primarily to irrationally spiritual modes of thought and magic. This linear, Eurocentric narrative precludes us from appreciating astrological texts (and other scientific texts) in their full cultural contexts while considering the scientific literatures and traditions that already existed in India. My work relies on a more open reading - à la Eco - of ancient “scientific” texts alongside “non-scientific” texts with the intention of understanding how ancient science developed from, and remained in conversation, with other intellectual traditions both within and outside of their respective cultural boundaries. This better contextualizes the Astronomica and Yavana Jātaka within the corpus of the global scientific pursuit that was astral science.This dissertation expands the boundaries of Classical Studies through its deep engagement with global scientific perspectives. It explores the cultural and intellectual transformations that occurred directly and indirectly during the imperial interactions between Rome and India. By examining the intersections of astrology, religion, medicine, and culture, this study sheds light on the enduring relevance of astrology in our modern world. We emphasize the importance of understanding ancient intercultural interactions in the development of globalized scientific discourses throughout history and advocate for a "Global Classics" approach that recognizes the contributions of diverse cultures. My project shifts the academic discourse of traditional Classics, which emphasizes the importance of Greece and Rome over other cultures, to a "Global Classics" which repositions the Mediterranean as one of many ancient cultures with their intellectual traditions and languages. Thinking of Greece and Rome as the peripheries of other imperial cultures can shape how we think about Classics' impact historically and now in a post-colonial world. This research, with my philologically rigorous approach of working from primary sources in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, brings Classics into the 21st century by engaging with scholarship across disciplines and expands the scope of Classical Studies beyond the Mediterranean as we strive for a more diverse and decolonized Classics and Humanities.Additionally, my project addresses essential aspects of Classical Studies, South Asian Studies, the history of science, and the relationship between the sciences and humanities. I place Classics in conversation with religious studies, the history of science, and other disciplines to foster discussions that transcend disciplinary boundaries. This is crucial in the modern academy where the silo-ing of disciplines has led to great advances in every subdiscipline, including Classics, but it remains the fact that innovative work in the humanities develops through collaboration across the STEM - Humanities divide.

This dissertation presents a theoretical analysis of the interaction between the clauses in correlative constructions in Hittite at the syntactic, semantic, and discourse level. I argue that the relative clause is not connected with the main clause in the syntax, only at the discourse level. I defend this claim by examining the syntactic and semantic relationships that the correlative has with the main clause and the resumptive correlate.I argue that the correlate is a discourse anaphor coreferent with the correlative, not a variable bound by it. This is the simplest explanation of the fact that the distribution of NP types as correlates is completely explained by Hittite-wide principles governing the distribution of NPs as discourse anaphors. There are no special requirements attributable to the correlative construction itself. Moreover, numerous correlatives are linked indirectly to the main clause and not resumed by a coreferent correlate — a fact incompatible with variable binding but ordinary for discourse anaphora.I argue that the correlative’s position cannot be derived by movement from within the main clause. Moreover, the correlative is not syntactically integrated into the main clause, despite being semantically dependent on it. The correlative is a clausal hanging topic and is external to the main clause, linked to it only in the discourse. This accounts for a variety of complexmulti-clausal correlative constructions that pose difficulties for integrative approaches.I propose a model of correlative semantics framed in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (Asher and Lascarides 2003), a dynamic framework that models the rhetorical relationships between segments of discourse. I posit a function REF that makes the correlative into a referential expression and a rhetorical relation HT that predicates the main clause conditionson the correlative’s referent(s). I demonstrate how this model encodes the characteristic maximal interpretation of correlatives in definite and indefinite readings as a reflection of referent identifiability in context.A common assumption in the theoretical literature is that dependent clauses are syntactically subordinate to their main clause. I articulate a different view of the division of labor between syntax and discourse, and I suggest that standard assumptions should be re-examined.

The Avantisundarī is a work of Sanskrit literary prose attributed to the South Indian poet and theorist Daṇḍin (late-seventh to early-eighth c. CE). The Kāvyādarśa, Daṇḍin’s work on poetics, is renowned in the field of early literary and aesthetic criticism. And his other prose work, the Daśakumāracarita, has been the subject of a number of studies and translations. Yet despite being one of the few works of early gadyakāvya, “literary prose,” the Avantisundarī has not received much attention. This dissertation calls for a more serious engagement with the Avantisundarī, and in doing so, it calls for a re-engagement with theories of gadyakāvya. For, even though the work conforms through its ornate prose style to other early gadyakāvya works, it defies several other genre features, thus creating a more complex picture of the prose form. With its biographical depictions of its author, Daṇḍin, the Avantisundarī’s paratextual material also brings to the fore new definitions of sociability and refinement. While the dissertation is grounded in its engagement with the Avantisundarī, it also offers new tools for literary analysis and for thinking about literary representations of the historical author and the social dynamics of the poet in early-medieval South Asia.

I investigate how verbal aspect was expressed in multiple Sanskrit and Middle Indic language varieties andwhat changes in aspectual semantics accompanied the radical changes in verbal morphology that occurredover the many centuries separating Vedic Sanskrit from late Middle Indic. My discussion is based on dataextracted from text samples representing each variety covered. I collected from each sample all verbalpredicates with past reference (or encoding states caused by past events) and identified the viewpoint aspectof each form wherever possible. This enabled me to describe the morphological expression of aspect ineach linguistic stratum under consideration. Furthermore, I discuss and suggest theoretically informedexplanations for the diachronic changes observed. The major predicate categories observed in Sanskrit arethe imperfect, perfect, aorist, past participle and past-referring present. The imperfect and perfect (earlierdistinct) were both aspectually neutral at the Vedic prose stage and so remained. The aorist encodedanterior aspect in Vedic prose, becoming compatible with perfective and imperfective readings in post-VedicSanskrit (so merging semantically with the imperfect and perfect). In Middle Indic the merger was bothsemantic and morphological, since only a single aspectually neutral finite past, itself lost in later varieties, isattested. I suggest that the aspectual merger of the finite past tenses in post-Vedic Sanskrit may be due toMiddle Indic influence. The past participle, like the aorist, was an anterior category in Vedic prose and laterunderwent semantic generalisation, since it has perfective readings in all later Sanskrit and Middle Indiccorpora; however, generalisation never proceeded to a point where the participle became compatible withimperfective readings. I argue that the past-referring present, originally aspectually neutral and still neutralin Vedic prose and at least one early Middle Indic variety, later became associated with imperfective aspect(in both Sanskrit and Middle Indic) due to blocking of non-imperfective readings by the past participle. Ialso draw attention to the presence of perfective-looking presents even in later forms of Middle Indic anddiscuss semantic and contextual regularities among them, especially a high frequency of verbs denotingspeech events.

ABSTRACTThe Boy whom Hector called Scamandrius: The Natural World and Cosmic Time in the Iliad of HomerByJulio Cesar VegaThis dissertation presents a new analysis of the natural world in Homer’s Iliad. Focusing on descriptions of landscape, trees, and rivers, within similes and in the main narrative, the thesis has three main arguments: first, representations of Gaia in the Iliad can productively be read through and against representations of Gaia in the wider epic tradition, as in Hesiod’s Theogony (and to a lesser extent the Cypria). It is only through a more expansive intertextual analysis that we can see how, for Homer, the destruction of the natural world has cosmic significance. Second, descriptions of the natural world are not just part of the realism of the poem; rather they are motivated, ideological, and play a significant role in differentiating Achaeans from Trojans. These differentiations afford a richer and more complicated dimension to violence and death than has previously been recognized. Third, the representation of the natural world is an inextricable part of Homer’s creation of temporality: the epic’s reflections on the past, present, and its visions of the future offer insight into the question of human interaction with the environment and the implications of that changing relationship. The dissertation aims to make a contribution to our understanding of Homer’s epic, but also to how ancient texts can reveal, and reflect upon, today’s most urgent political issue: the destruction of the environment and what this will mean for humans and for the earth. Chapter 1 analyzes the representation of Gaia in Hesiod’s Theogony, the Cypria, and finally in Homer’s Iliad to suggest that when the poet of the Iliad uses the simile of Typhoeus at Il. 2.780-85 s/he evokes the narrative of cosmic war and progress as detailed in the Theogony, thus projecting the Hesiodic narrative onto the Homeric. As a result, the Gaia we see in the Iliad is constantly between subject and object, helper and destroyer, in a duality bound with time and space that plays out in the inextricability of Trojans to the natural world, and the Achaeans as destroyers of that world. Chapter 2 briefly considers the state of the natural world as envisioned before the events of the Iliad, envisioned as practical and interdependent with both Trojans and Achaeans as seen in the funeral of Eëtion in Il. 6.416-20, before moving to a broader discussion of the natural world in the present narrative of the poem. The move from past to present reflects a shift in the relation between the Trojan people and the natural world to one of unity and connection in a strictly symbolic and figural sense, as in the formulation “the Scaean gates and the oak tree”. Chapter 3 moves towards a catalogue of the destruction of the natural world in the present narrative of the poem at the hands of the Achaeans who act as the executors of Zeus’ will within the re-framing of the cosmic narrative, and suggests an ethical dimension to the killing of Trojans in nature-centric terms. Finally, Chapter 4 discusses “future time” and the natural world as revealed in the poem’s ominous vision of a post-war world which suggests the permanence of nature beyond its cosmic entanglement with time and space in the Iliad, a future which is envisioned at the expense of the human. By analyzing the fragility of human-made tombs and the makeshift Achaean wall in the poem, we see that the Iliad portends an apocalyptic future brought upon by earth and water which sees the forces of nature destroy the works of humans, reacting in turn to the human destruction of the natural world in the present.What we are left with is a complex web of interrelationships between humans, gods, and the natural world that presents a hybrid and dynamic vision of interaction. The Iliad’s representation of past, present, and future coincides with different categories of interaction between humans and the natural world. The past suggests an idyllic vision of coexistence and collaboration, the present carries out the reenactment of cosmic war and thus brings climatic devastation upon the natural world, and the future reveals the divorce of gods and nature from the human world.

The aim of my dissertation is to trace an intellectual and theoretical trend in classical Greek literature and philosophy that ironizes and theorizes dramatic mimesis as transformative. The texts I will examine in my dissertation are loci classici for thinking about ancient literary criticism (e.g. Aristophanes’ Frogs) as well as mimesis (Plato’s Republic), and the originality of my project lies in bringing these texts together in order to think through a cluster of related concepts: mimesis, the body, and being and becoming. I will show show that the literary texts of Aristophanes and Euripides, in particular, shed light on dramatists’ views of mimesis, and I argue that they offer an alternative to the view of mimesis in Republic Book 10 as an image impoverished of being and knowledge. In Aristophanes and Euripides putting on a costume can change one’s bodily comportment and ultimately one’s character and behavior.By sketching a history of mimesis that precedes the work of Plato and Aristotle, my project brings out an alternative view of mimesis. I read the language surrounding mimesis in Aristophanes, Euripides, and Plato closely in order to show how mimesis is put into conversation with important thematic binaries such as being/becoming and seeming/being. Mimesis is often depicted not merely as a disguise or copy, but as a transformational force that affecting poets, actors, and audiences. By unpacking the depth and diversity of the discourses surrounding mimesis, we can see that it is connected to other topics in the intellectual revolution of the 5th c. BCE, such as nomos and physis and the development and profusion of rhetoric.In the dissertation I use the term “mimetic metamorphosis” to convey this notion of mimesis as metamorphosis. “Mimetic metamorphosis” is a helpful term because it covers both the scenes that depict poets or characters becoming or representing different people (such as Dicaeopolis becoming Telephus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians) and the theoretical discourse surrounding these scenes. In order for authors of literary works to theorize mimesis as transformational, the scenes in which these transformations are depicted are often highly metatheatrical. This allows for commentary on the nature of mimesis. Thus, “mimetic metamorphosis” applies both to the metamorphoses that are represented through the enactment of dramatic mimesis and to the metatheatrical, often ironic, commentary surrounding mimesis as a transformative force. Characters draw attention to the costumes, gestures, and language they put on to appear like another, and the language surrounding these scenes reveals a concerted interest in recurrent themes of being and becoming, often with reference to the words εἰμί (“be”) and γίγνομαι (“become”). Ultimately, my aim with this project and the term mimetic metamorphosis is to revise the view of mimesis as a mere imitation or copy that is inherited from Book 10 of Plato’s Republic. I trace these alternative views of mimesis in order to show that there is a rich conception of mimesis prior to Plato and that this discussion has an undercurrent in Plato’s poetics. My project offers new insights into the texts in question as well as ancient literary criticism and mimesis. By placing these texts in conversation with each other, I argue that Aristophanes, Euripides, and Plato theorize that mimetic poetry is a medium affecting authors, performers, and audiences in a similar way. By imitating a character and taking on that character’s defining traits, one differs from the person one was before. This kind of transformation and self-likening to another also allows for one to empathize with a fictional character. By reading for the literary representation and theorization of mimesis, or “mimetic metamorphosis,” I argue that classical Greek literature views poetry as an affective, transformational force that challenges being and notions of the self.

This presentation (for LTaDH-RA 2023, Sofia, Bulgary)focuses on the linking potentials offered by the EpiLexO web-based front-end for the creation and editing of an ecosystem of digital resources for ancient languages, developed in the context of a project on the languages of fragmentary attestation for ancient Italy. The focus is particularly on some mechanisms introduced for creating attestations by linking lexical forms to their variants in the inscriptions, as well as for linking lexical data to external independent LOD datasets available on a remote endpoint. Finally, the conclusion briefly introduces the final platform component, a fruition application that will allow for smart cross-querying and visualisation of the created interlinked ecosystem.

ABSTRACTThe Palladion and National IdentitybyMorgan Elizabeth HunterDoctor of Philosophy in ClassicsUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Mark Griffith, ChairThis dissertation takes its start from the observation that people of Sixth and Fifth Century Athens, the Hellenistic Troad and Pergamon, and Republican Rome with its Latin Colonies all made use of stories and symbols taken from the Trojan War in the process of creating an acceptable national identity for their states. The Homeric Cycle of epics and their derived tragedies at Athens, the Iliad’s Mount Ida and Temple of Athena Ilias in Pergamon’s Ilion, the legends of Aeneas at Rome all became central to the way people in Athens, the Troad, and Roman Italy came to see their community. These elements of an imagined Trojan past became part of the complex of activities and formal behaviors that being a member of a socio-political community entails, and especially the symbolic associations of these activities to that community, what Abraham Lincoln called the “mystic chords of memory.”My particular focus is on three very odd stories about women that I show lie at the beginning of this process in each case: the story that a tall woman, dressed like Athena and riding in a chariot with Peisistratos, tricked the Athenians into making him tyrant; the story that for a thousand years a small city in Greece annually sent two aristocratic maidens to Troy to be tortured and work as slaves for the rest of their lives; and the story that the Roman Senate ordered two sacred Vestal Virgins to be ritually executed after Hannibal won the battle of Cannae.I identify a specific sacred component from the heroic past that lay at the heart of all three stories: the Palladion, the cult statue of Athena from ancient Troy itself. I demonstrate, by a close examination of all available evidence from literature, art, and archaeology, that this cult statue was a significant symbolic element in the identity of each community. It provided a tangible, visible link to the Homeric world, and thus was a central component in the creation of three separate national identities.In the course of the dissertation, I also compare these ancient processes of identity creation with more modern examples, taken from Elizabethan England, Imperial France, and Stuart Britain. In each case there are remarkable parallels with the ancient cases I have examined, showing that this process of national identity creation is deeply rooted in human social and political behaviors.

Our modern attempts to understand the aristocratic values of the Roman Republic have long held that military achievement was the most important sources of political prestige. Based largely upon middle-republican evidence, surveys of the aristocratic ethos often focus upon military activity at every stage of the senatorial career: aristocrats were expected to serve for long periods in the army as youths and then, upon obtaining political office, distinguish themselves as commanders. In discussions of aristocratic values, therefore, non-martial pursuits are frequently relegated to secondary importance. This model, however, reconciles poorly with the evidence we have from the Republic’s best-attested period, the Late Republic. In the Republic’s final generation we see clearly a number of sure signs that the aristocracy was increasingly spurning military activity in favor of non-martial political action. To name a few prominent examples: youthful military service was in decline, praetors and consul rejected traditionally-coveted command positions, and the frequency of triumphs fell precipitously.These changes are part of a larger cultural renegotiation of the importance of military achievement that was taking place during the last decades of the Republic, and this dissertation aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the extent of this shift in aristocratic values and the implications it had for the period. The middle-republican evidence does seem to suggest an elite preoccupation with military service, but the influence of this evidence has clouded our view of the ideological changes of the first century BCE. Rather than a monolithic system of aristocratic values, what we see in the Late Republic is competition between different views on what kind of actions should form the basis of aristocratic legitimacy, and disagreement often centered upon the role of military achievement. This project approaches the topic in three different ways: Chapter 1 examines how common youthful military service was among the Roman elite. Chapter 2 takes a closer look at a problem we have some evidence for in the first century: inexperience among military commanders. And the final chapter provides a new, values-focused reading of the epistolary exchange between Cicero and Cato about Cicero’s pursuit of triumph. A better understanding of this cultural shift will also have some major implications for many of the main historical narratives regarding the Late Republic.

Il presente documento descrive lo sviluppo di “EpiLexo”, una piattaforma web per la creazione, l’aggiornamento e la revisione di lessici elettronici collegati a materiali testuali e bibliografici, nonché a risorse lessicografiche esterne. L'applicazione è stata sviluppata nel contesto del progetto ItAnt ovvero “Lingue e culture dell'Italia antica: linguistica storica e modelli digitali” (finanziato dal MUR - PRIN 2017 - 2017XJLE8J). L'obiettivo è quello di creare uno strumento che possa migliorare la modifica dei lessici e il collegamento tra questi ultimi e le risorse epigrafiche. Il rapporto definisce l'architettura funzionale generale della soluzione che viene implementata all'interno del progetto., finanziato dal MUR - PRIN 2017 - 2017XJLE8J, {"references":["M. Berti. \"Perseus 2009. Rappresentazione digitale dei testi frammentari\" and \"Le tecnologie digitali e l'epigrafia: esempi applicativi\": Antichità Classiche e Digital Humanities. Le discipline antichistiche nella rivoluzione digitale, Università di Roma Tor Vergata, October 20-26, 2009","Bellandi, A. LexO: an open-source system for managing OntoLex-Lemon resources. Lang Resources & Evaluation 55, 1093–1126 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-021-09546-4","G. Canfora, D. Di Fatta, Giovanni Pilato, Ontologie e Linguaggi Ontologici per il Web Semantico, Rapporto Tecnico N.6: RT-ICAR-PA-04-06, aprile 2004, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Calcolo e Reti ad Alte Prestazioni","Julia Bosque-Gil, Jorge Gracia, John McCrae, Philipp Cimiano, Sander Stolk, Fahad Khan, Katrien Depuydt, Jesse de Does, Francesca Frontini, Ilan Kernerman, The OntoLex Lemon Lexicography Module, 17 Settembre 2019, W3C Community Group, Final Report","Vannini, Lucia. \"Review of papyri.info.\" RIDE 9 (2018). doi: 10.18716/ride.a.9.4. Accessed: 11.03.2021.","Michael Zellmann-Rohrer, Review: Papyri.info: A Searchable Database of Papyri and Translations Online, Sep 24,2018","Prag, Jonathan R. W. and Chartrand, James. \"19 I. Sicily: Building a Digital Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient Sicily\". Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy, edited by Annamaria De Santis and Irene Rossi, Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter Open Poland, 2019, pp. 240-252. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110607208-020"]}

This dissertation examines the social functions of funerary papyri in Egypt in the 21st Dynasty (c. 1070-945 BCE), focusing on the construction and maintenance of the social identity of the Theban priesthood. The aim of this dissertation is to study funerary papyri not just as religious and ritual texts but as objects of use, display, competition, and ownership. These documents can be read as a reflection of the social self, with the identity of the deceased embedded in the illustrated content of each papyrus. To that end, there are four main research perspectives of this study that, while self-contained, are entangled and build upon one another in increasingly complexity to represent the deceased. The four research lenses are gender, temple titles, family relationships, and reuse. The first perspective – gender – analyses the usage of papyri among women associated with the Theban priesthood. Due to the political and economic crisis of the 21st Dynasty, burials became singular and discrete, allowing women equal access to funerary materiality as compared to their male counterparts for the first time in Egyptian history. With women’s papyri being a comparable dataset to men, this perspective explores the specific choices that women made regarding their funerary assemblages.Temple titles are the focus of the second research perspective. With the individuals owning the papyri all belonging to the Theban priestly class, the content of papyri is also a direct reflection of priestly status and rank. The exclusivity of certain texts and vignettes coupled with the specific titles for each person can illustrate their position and relative importance in society.Third, family relationships inform our knowledge of papyri production, acquisition, and usage. With references to family members preserved on many of the papyri, similarities and differences in the construction and composition of the documents reflect kin groups and close associations to other family members. These relationships, in turn, reveal much about social organization and hereditary temple titles in Thebes.The fourth research perspective focuses on the complicating issue of coffin reuse as it relates to funerary papyri. Because these reused coffins oftentimes did not reflect the social identity of their new owners – sometimes retaining old names, being of the wrong gender for the new owner, or clearly evoking an earlier funerary style – papyri were used in part to fill this void in representation. This last perspective explores the choices made by owners of reused coffin sets regarding the usage of their funerary papyri.Combining these perspectives, this dissertation aims to understand how material culture can reflect, shape, sustain, or change the social identity of both the individual and the group when faced with disruptive decentralization and social turmoil.

The human activity of making things has a long intellectual history, well predating the Industrial Revolution or even the term “technology” itself. This dissertation examines cuneiform sources written between the second and first millennium BCE in order to determine how technology interacted with and shaped scribal knowledge. With no clear boundary—between genuine and artificial, between the natural and human-made, between theory and practice, episteme and techne, knowing-that and knowing-how—with no term to distinguish between scribe and craftsman, cuneiform texts challenge how we think about both technology and knowledge. The case studies presented herein derive from cuneiform tablets written between the late second and mid first millennia BCE in what is today Iraq. These ancient clay tablets preserve technical recipes, explanatory lists of materials, and rituals bearing the hallmarks of scholarship. For the intellectual historian, they exemplify a discerning interest in the construction and proliferation of technical knowledge at an early stage of Middle Eastern textual history.The work argues that notions of technology constitute an essential element of cuneiform scribal knowledge. Ignoring the technological component of cuneiform scholarship renders an incomplete portrait of nēmequ—the Akkadian term we translate as “knowledge,” or “wisdom.” Neo-Assyrian glassmaking recipes can function as literary or ritual texts focused on purity, Middle Assyrian perfume recipes can be read as cultural windows into the roles of female experts during the rise of the Assyrian territorial state, and even a solitary tablet containing wool dyeing recipes can expand our knowledge of the cultural role of garments in first millennium Babylonia. Technical recipes, in sum, constitute textual sources that inform and interact with the construction of knowledge at the local level. This work offers close, contextualized readings of Akkadian technical recipes, and utilizes frameworks derived from the history and philosophy of science and technology, in order to generate new methods for investigating the relationship between technology and cuneiform scribal knowledge.

Starting in the mid-fifth century BCE, the Achaemenid Persian empire entered into a series of treaties with various Greek city-states. While treaties had often been used across the Ancient Near East prior to the Persian conquests, they did not play a role in the Achaemenids' imperial strategy; indeed, the Achaemenids did not sign any treaties with any non-Greek state. By examining Greco-Persian treaties, that is, by investigating what the Persians of old might have hoped to gain from treaties with Athens, Sparta, or any other Greek state, the present dissertation seeks to gain unique insight into the Achaemenid imperial strategy.I demonstrate that the Achaemenid conception of imperial rule may have been partially inherited from their Elamite and Neo-Assyrian forebears. I establish the continuities between Achaemenid rule and that of their Near Eastern predecessors, as well as what constitutes uniquely Achaemenid innovations. I give special attention to the Achaemenid endeavor to exert control over various subjects in their empire by dialoguing with, and even reproducing, indigenous manifestations of law and governance. However, scholarly models describing the use of local practices by the Achaemenids have been hitherto restricted to regions under direct Achaemenid rule. I argue, however, that the Greco-Persian treaties were most likely resulting from the Achaemenid desire to extend a proven strategy of governance, which aimed at engaging local traditions and practices, beyond their imperial borders. The exploitation of traditional Greek treaty customs allowed the Achaemenids to achieve the stability necessary for the achievement of imperial goals in the region, and befitted their overall political strategy.

The dissertation comprises three case studies on the history and prehistory of Homeric language, focusing on the ways in which archaic forms are preserved, and innovated forms created. In the first study I examine Homeric accentuation, together with related issues of morphology and morphophonology, in the u-stem adjectives. Beginning from the archaic oxytones θαμειαί ‘close-set’ and ταρφειαί ‘thick’, I outline the historical developments leading to the paradigmatic feminines in -εῖα, which are based on the masculine/neuter stems, and to the recessively accented adjectives θάλεια ‘abundant’, λάχεια ‘wooded’, λίγεια ‘sweetly sonorous’. I propose that the recessive accent results from the morphological isolation of these words (i.e. they lack a masculine/neuter base), coupled with a subsequent re-accentuation to the default, recessive accent of the language. Turning to Vedic, I will examine its cognate class of adjectives, whose accent is unequivocally oxytone; for instance svād-�v- ‘sweet’ is the masculine/neuter stem to svād-v-ī,́ the feminine. But the morphophonology of the u-stem adjectives requires further study, I argue, and must be set in the broader context of Vedic accentuation. Returning to Greek, I look into a few nouns arguably going back to substantivized adjectives, arguably reflecting zero-grade ablaut of the suffix. Such nouns would correspond precisely with Vedic, where zero-grade ablaut of the suffix is the rule (Ved. –vī)́ : ὄργυια ‘fathom, span of the arms’, ἄγυια ‘street’, and possibly a few others. Taken together, these accentual classes chronicle the history of u-stem morphophonology in Greek.In the next case study I treat how innovations and archaisms developed within one morphological category, the compound s-stem adjectives. In particular, I investigate anew questions of accents and of ablaut grades: which are archaisms, which innovations? To do so, I offer a revised philological account concerning the various accentual classes of s-stem adjectives, then argue that the recessively s-stem adjectives agree most closely with the largely overlooked Indo-Iranian evidence. Re-examining the evidence for Greek accentuation offers in turn an opportunity to look again at the evidence for archaisms and innovations in Greek ablaut. Greek evidence from zero-grade ablaut in the root of second compound members, such as αἰνοπαθής ‘terribly suffering’, sometimes understood to reflect ancient PIE derivational processes, reflects rather a highly significant innovation in Greek morphology: the class of s-stem adjectives transforms from a denominal to a deverbal class. I will demonstrate that the zero-grade ablaut in the second member reflects the verbal bases from which the adjective derives (in this case the aorist παθεῖν ‘to experience; suffer’). Why the aorist, opposed to the present or perfect stem, so often serves as the verbal basis in deverbal derivation will be a question I can pose, but cannot fully answer. Finally, I will work through the Indo-Iranian– effectively just Vedic– evidence for accent and ablaut in the cognate class of s-stem adjectives. I will establish first a philologically sound position for the varying accentual classes in Vedic, then will ask in what ways the Indo-Iranian evidence corresponds to the Greek. This re-examination of the combined evidence of Greek and of Vedic leads to a substantially revised picture of the derivational morphology of s-stem adjectives in the protolanguage.The last study casts a wider net, turning to issues in the transmission of Homeric poetry across Greek dialects and across generic boundaries. I focus the case study on one form found in one formula, φρασί ‘in mind’ in the hemistich φρασὶν ἄλλα μενοινῶν, incontestably the older form of the dative plural of φρήν (for Cl.Gk. φρεσί), but only contestably “Homeric”. The hemistich with φρασί is inscribed on a funerary monument in Attica, but paradoxically may not be evidence for the Attic dialect at all: φρασί with a-vocalism closes a Homeric verse-end formula (Hom. φρεσὶν ἄλλα μενοινῶν), but in Homer only φρεσί is ever found; and φρασί is unknown to all other Attic documents, while found abundantly– and more abundantly than the lexica and handbooks let on– in texts of the Doric West (Pindar, Stesichorus, and the Orphic leaves). In our study, complications of language and genre come to the fore: Why use a Doric form in an Attic epigram? Why use a Homeric formula in an elegiac couplet inscribed upon a funerary monument?

In this dissertation, I investigated the usage of subordinators in Ancient Greek dialectal inscriptions and their interactions with supradialectal formulas, i.e., relatively fixed expressions shared across dialectal borders. Subordinators are grammatical elements and therefore are expected to behave in a systematic manner; supradialectal formulas are expected to provide a “test tube”, revealing how different dialects express the same notion. As the first step, I compiled an up-to-date collection of known attestations of subordinators in the dialects of Mainland Greece. Using this collection, I investigated the interactions of local dialects and the standard language in the contexts of fixed expressions and creative composition. In some cases, the confinement of a subordinator into a fixed expression suggests its inactive status in the dialect, and in contrast, the active status of a subordinator is illustrated by its appearances in supradialectal formulas replacing non-local subordinators. Uses of non-local subordinators often result from the predominance of the standard language, but sometimes from the borrowing of phraseological units as a whole rather than the borrowing of the subordinator alone.

The patriarchal narratives in the book of Genesis feature unique language addressing the deity, comprised of invoking the “God of the Fathers” and related rhetoric. Beginning with Albrecht Alt in 1929, scholars have attempted to identify the “God of the Fathers” given the canonically enigmatic ways this invocation is expressed in the patriarchal narratives. This study reframes the question by asking why such language might be used to articulate one’s connection to the divine.Biblical scholarship has primarily employed comparative data from Northwest Semitic texts and inscriptions (to include the rather large corpus of texts from Ugarit) as a means of contextualizing the world of ancient Israel presented in the Hebrew Bible. However, the bulk of this data in conversation with the “God of the Fathers” in the Hebrew Bible is colored by contact with the Neo-Hittite Anatolian speaking communities dwelling in the same region. This Syro-Anatolian legacy comprises an under-researched approach to the Hebrew Bible. This study fortifies the use of comparative Northwest Semitic data by addressing the Anatolian (i.e., Hittite and Luwian) language traditions as dialogue partners with the distinctive features found in Northwest Semitic traditions.This investigation takes a two-pronged approach to reevaluating the topic of the “God of the Fathers” in the Hebrew Bible, by undertaking: 1) an examination of the biblical narrative in light of social memory, and 2) an assessment of the topic in light of cultural contact and convergence. Further approaches within the fields of biblical studies, Near Eastern archaeology, and Near Eastern religion are employed in this study to explore the topic to a greater degree today than in recent years. Additionally, the present investigation looks at the common language associated with the paternal relationship to the divine as a way of addressing the ensuing difficulties in translating such rhetoric means for dialoguing with the concept of the “God of the Fathers” in the Hebrew Bible. In their interpretation of such language in the ancient Near East, scholars have rendered translated various expressions concerning the “God of the Fathers” as both “Father Gods” and “Deified Fathers.” This work concludes that the rhetoric behind invoking the "God of the Fathers" forms an identity statement regarding the divine control of one’s being. This rhetoric became especially important during the period of Assyrian westerward expansion in the eighth century BCE and best fits within the context of Hezekiah’s reforms when divergent religious traditions populated Jerusalem. With such rhetoric, no paternal deity is immediately identifiable and when an identity for the god of one’s fathers can be proposed, such a deity is not always able to be identified beyond the person in question. Furthermore, worship of a specific, mythologized El as found at Ugarit regularly proposed by earlier studies is not supported for ancient Israel as a whole. Though the possibility of such worship with specific families may very well have been the case, not all theophoric uses of El names (or even theophory in general) refer to the specific mythologized El. Thus, the use of the rhetoric invoking the "God of the Fathers" is primarily an invocation of one's family deity, and secondarily equated with Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible in order to personalize the enforcement of the canonical Yahwism of Jerusalem.

This dissertation explores the meanings of pain in ancient Egypt by attending to various ways in which ancient Egyptian texts frame, articulate, problematize, and explain pain. This dissertation takes as its starting point the view that pain is a deeply cultural and historical phenomenon, and that a particular culture’s ideas and practices surrounding pain are intimately connected to that culture’s understanding of the human person (what man is, what man ought to be, what man’s place is in the world, etc.). As the most salient concepts or categories that are used to theorize about the human person in ancient Egypt are maat and the human heart, this study seeks to articulate Egyptian understanding of pain in these terms as well. More specifically, this study argues that the Egyptian notion of pain–which is far more expansive than English “pain” and encompasses the notions of illness, anguish, suffering and evil–can be best conceived of as a rupture in maat, and submits that for the Egyptians, it is the human heart that serves as the locus of the immanent reality of pain.The central argument is fleshed out by the means of a careful reading of the ancient Egyptian texts. After compiling the list of relevant vocabulary, I looked into the magico-medical texts, literary narrative texts and non-narrative literary texts. While sharing in broad orientation, these texts frame pain differently. Pain in magico-medical texts is understood as an object of empirical observation and performative action. In the literary narratives, pain serves to foreground the interpersonal relationships and elicits audience empathy. In the non-narrative literary texts, pain is an essential component of longing. In addition to providing a culturally nuanced account of Egyptian understanding of pain, my dissertation contributes to a new paradigm for approaching ancient texts that foregrounds the role of affect and empathy.

In this dissertation, I examine terms of address in Biblical Hebrew (BH) and Epigraphic Hebrew (EH). Every language has its own address system. These systems provide some of the best clues to societal relationships and social structure. For example, many European languages have a so-called T/V pronoun distinction to convey varying levels of intimacy, distance, age, politeness, and/or insult toward the addressee (e.g., tu and vous in French, du and Sie in German). Languages such as modern English have no such T/V distinction but employ functional equivalents to show these attitudes toward the addressee (e.g., by using first name or by honorific title sir or ma’am). BH and EH are similar to English in showing no pronominal T/V distinction. However, various terms of address are employed to index social relationships between speaker and addressee. This dissertation aims to answer four main questions: (1) What are the terms of address in BH and EH?; (2) What are the discernible distribution patterns in the BH and EH address system?; (3) How do noticeable variations in the use of terms of address contribute to our understanding of social factors, such as social status, age, gender, speaker’s attitude to addressee, or chronological periods?; (4) How are those variations exegetically significant? Previous studies on Hebrew terms of address are few in number and they do not treat the subject comprehensively. The definition and categories of terms of address developed in sociolinguistic studies have not been adequately applied to ancient Hebrew. A comprehensive sociolinguistic study that systematically presents the use of Hebrew terms of address in various social interactions is still lacking. This dissertation is designed to fill that gap.

Representations of Hades, the Underworld, and the afterlife in ancient Greek literature have traditionally been studied from a religious or mythological perspective. Scholars have often tried to extrapolate historical practices and eschatological beliefs about life after death from accounts of rituals and myths surrounding funerary practices, cult beliefs, necromantic encounters, and descents by heroes to the Underworld. As a result of this focus, scholars have generally overlooked the narrative function of Underworld scenes. In this project, I examine ancient Underworld scenes from Homer to Plato as a type of literary device containing unique rhetorical features and functions. I argue that Underworld scenes are embedded authorial commentaries, which allow communication between author and audience in an exercise of narrative self-reflection. Underworld scenes condense the actions and themes of the main story into an abbreviated space while also situating their parent narratives within a dynamic historical and literary tradition. Through these scenes, authors and artists create networks of texts by including allusions and story patterns, which can activate similar tales of ghostly encounter (nekuia), underworld journeys (katabaseis), punishment for sinners, and rewards for the “blessed.” Underworld scenes “open up” dialogues between texts and characters across time and space so they could engage with each other and their tradition. Thus, Homer could imagine Odysseus talking to the ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon in the Odyssey as a contemplation of heroism, and Plato could imagine Socrates anticipating afterlife conversations about justice with Homer, Ajax and Orpheus in the Apology.Chapter 1 presents the parameters of Underworld scenes and the methodologies that will be used in analyzing these scenes. Chapter 2 examines the structure of Underworld scenes in early Archaic poetry as well as the distinct language and image set which allowed communication between authors and audiences. Chapter 3 shows how Greek epinician and lyric poets used Underworld scenes to assimilate their patrons to heroes who achieved a “blessed” afterlife. Chapter 4 focuses on the use of Underworld scenes on the dramatic stage and in funerary contexts in Classical Athens to portray and offer solutions to contemporary political and social issues. Finally, Chapter 5 explores famous Underworld episodes in Plato’s dialogues and examines how Socrates uses Underworld scenes to overwrite traditional sources and redefine the afterlife as a stage of life, like childhood and old age.

The composition of Deut 27-28 is shaped by its ritual and performative function and by the narrative device of a script within a speech: the oral and ritual performance of the covenant ceremony by the Levites is framed within the speech-command of Moses. Studies of Deut 28 have largely focused on the textual tradition of this chapter and on its parallels with ancient near eastern treaties, and with the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon in particular. Many studies view Deut 28 as a collection of isolated units of curse lines disconnected from the ceremonial performance of the covenant ratification ceremony detailed in Deut 27. This is due in part to the commonly held view that chapter 27 is an interpolation and a later addition to the literary unit of 12-26 and 28. However, a re-examination of comparative ancient near eastern evidence and a fresh literary analysis of 27 suggests that chapters 27-28 form a unified whole. A text-centric approach to Deut 28 has left largely unexamined the oral and ritual performance described in Deut 27. Ratification of oaths and treaties in the ancient near east was performative and entailed speaking words of power and performing ritual acts such as the slaughter of an animal or the ceremonial breaking of weapons. Deut 27 also furnishes instructions for the erection of an altar, ritual sacrifices, and an oral recitation of “all the words of this torah” including the blessings and curses in chapter 28. This concept of oaths and treaties as scripts is explored using the Aramaic Sefire treaty as a test case. An analysis of the curse segment of the Sefire treaty shows syntactical features typical of spoken language, suggesting that the curse portion of the written treaty was shaped by oral recitation and/or an oral tradition of formulaic curse language. The text-centric approach to studies of Deut 28 has also hindered examination of parallels between treaties and ritual and performative texts, and especially incantations. A study of contiguities between Deut 27-28 and the Neo-Assyrian incantation series Maqlû and Šurpu reveals compelling thematic, linguistic, and formological parallels.

This study examines a well-established idea in normative Egyptological discourse, that there exists in the inventory of Egyptian symbolism a distinct and unique symbol called sed-em-ra (‘tail-in-mouthʼ) in Egyptian, though usually referred to today by the Greek term ouroboros (‘tail-devouringʼ), being the image of a serpent arranged in a circle with the tip of its tail in its mouth, and expressive of specific meanings such as “endless time” and “eternity,” among others. However, a close examination of relevant iconographic and textual sources reveals that this Egyptological ouroboros is largely an illusion, and one that distorts understanding of Egyptian material by importing into it ideas that properly belong to the history of the post-pharaonic reception of the ouroboros icon, such as the idea that the ouroboros was primarily a symbol of the recurrent solar year, which had its origin with Latin authors, or the idea that the ouroboros symbolizes time and eternity, which is a tradition no older than the Italian Renaissance. Yet it is this latter ouroboros of the Renaissance iconographers and emblem books, an unquestioned part of the intellectual environment in which the discipline of Egyptology historically emerged, that induced nineteenth and twentieth century Egyptologists to unhesitatingly single out the ouroboros for special notice as the “serpent of eternity,” an interpretation not supported by Egyptian sources. A fresh hermeneutical approach requires the abandonment of such preconceptions, starting with rejection of the idea that the Egyptian ouroboros is a distinct symbol with specific meanings attached. Once the term ‘ouroborosʼ is used only in a limited and purely descriptive sense, it becomes possible to understand what the icon may be intended to express within the larger conceptual and iconographic context in which occurrences are embedded. This approach makes it clear that the icon was never a discrete symbol in Egypt, but rather a possible variant amongst related iconography that might convey similar meanings. A detailed reassessment of relevant primary sources shows that the icon is primarily associated with the idea of protective enclosure, conceived of as a divine force functioning on multiple levels: cosmic, solar, funereal, and individual.

The present dissertation investigates the root zu "to know" in the Sumerian texts of early Mesopotamia, ca. 2800-1600 B.C., with the aim of identifying its grammatical, syntactic and semantic characteristics. The root is treated across the Sumerian sources, but ultimately considered within the bilingual (Sumerian-Akkadian) situation of southern Mesopotamia. The adjectival and nominal forms of the root are also discussed, as well as their Akkadian counterparts. The analysis of the lexemes over a period stretching from ca. 2600-1600 BC offers interesting results in several categories (grammatical, literary, semantic), and contributes to discussions of the epistemological and practical implications associated with the concept of "knowing" in the Mesopotamian texts. While research into systems and categories of knowledge has been carried out in the field, no systematic lexical discussion of the verbal root meaning "to know" exists. This dissertation seeks to fill that lacuna.The methods employed in the dissertation lie within the well-established principles of philological and lexicographical investigation. Chapter 1 introduces the subject and reviews previous studies. Chapter 2 treats the Sumerian root zu, elucidating its formal and literary (idiomatic) characteristics. Appendices A and B document the corpus of examples consulted. Chapter 3 then discusses the derived adjectives from the root zu, likewise noting formal and literary (idiomatic) characteristics. Appendices C, D, E and F document their respective examples. Chapter 4 turns to the Akkadian root idû "to know" in bilingual and monolingual texts, in order to investigate (idiomatic) Semitic influence. It further takes up the Akkadian adjectives corresponding to those in Sumerian discussed in the third chapter. Chapter 5 enumerates personal names in Sumerian and Akkadian that employ the root "to know." A concluding chapter sums up the evidence for the individual roots and lexemes and discusses their evolution, usage and correspondence within the scribal and linguistic settings of the different textual corpora and their historical period.

This dissertation examines the social functions of translation in Egypt from the Middle Kingdom through the Roman Period (ca. 2000 BCE-200 CE), focusing on the practice of translating texts from earlier into later phases of the Egyptian language. There are two main objectives for this study. First, I determine how translation developed, and second, I investigate how the practice of translation in Egyptian society changed over time. I accomplish this by situating the translations, which form the basis of my textual analysis, within their social contexts. This research establishes that translation was a part of a tradition of Egyptian interpretive processes, offers evidence for the continued social prestige of translation as an intellectual ability from the Pharaonic to Roman Periods, and contributes to the discussion of how broader linguistic developments affected the social use of language in Egypt.In order to prove that there was a progression from interpretation to translation, I begin by analyzing the earliest attestations of Egyptian textual commentary from the Middle Kingdom. Then I compare those techniques to the ones found in translated texts of the Third Intermediate Period and later. I illustrate how the increased specialization of the traditional Middle Egyptian language after the New Kingdom led to the adoption of translation as a means of textual interpretation.From the repeated attestations of interpreting in the biographies of high-ranking officials from Pharaonic Egypt, I conclude that Egyptians were interested in highlighting their intellectual aptitude as part of their elite identity. Educated scribes who were invested in transmitting and explaining complex texts thus valued translation as an scholarly pursuit, as it guaranteed that important ritual texts remained understandable to the general population over time. Following the spread of Greek-Egyptian multilingualism from the Late Period onward, I contend that translation became an important feature of daily life and its function expanded beyond interpretation. By comparing the bilingual Rhind papyri and the Ptolemaic trilingual decrees, I argue that Middle Egyptian and its associated scripts were adopted alongside contemporary Demotic to invoke the religious and political authority of traditional Egyptian culture during the Ptolemaic Period.