This volume provides novel social-scientific and historical approaches to religious identifications in late antique (3rd–12th century) Egyptian papyri, bridging the gap between two academic fields ...that have been infrequently in full conversation: papyrology and the study of religion. Through eleven in-depth case studies of Christian, Islamic, “pagan,” Jewish, Manichaean, and Hermetic texts and objects, this book offers new interpretations on markers of religious identity in papyrus documents written in Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. Using papyri as a window into the lives of ordinary believers, it explores their religious behavior and choices in everyday life. Three valuable perspectives are outlined and explored in these documents: a critical reflection on the concept of identity and the role of religious groups, a situational reading of religious repertoire and symbols, and a focus on speech acts as performative and efficacious utterances. Religious Identifications in Late Antique Papyri offers a wide scope and comparative approach to this topic, suitable for students and scholars of late antiquity and Egypt, as well as those interested in late antique religion. A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
In the villages of late antique and early Islamic Egypt local authorities, such as village officials or monastic leaders, could issue documents, which promised some sort of protection to the ...receiver. Until now, about 140 of these documents—generally referred to as “protection letters”—and documents related to them have been published. Fairly little attention has been paid to the procedure that led up to the production of a protection letter. The Coptic papyrological record preserves testimonies of this procedure, such as letters with requests for protection letters. Through the analysis of five such testimonies, I examine the different steps people could take to obtain a protection letter. These analyses will highlight the importance of relationships and intermediaries in the communities as well as the roles of written and oral communication as part of the procedure.
Introduction Hayes, Edmund; Scheerlinck, Eline
Annales islamologiques,
11/2021
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
This special issue focuses on varied mechanisms of social protection in the context of social and political networks in the early Islamic empire up to and following the collapse of the caliphate in ...the ʿAbbasid period. Under the broad concept of “protection” we have brought together diverse, but comparable relationships within which risk is managed and problems are solved at different levels of society, and in difficult cultural and geographical spheres. When considering how societies functio...
This volume in The Medieval Globe Books series surveys the distinctive but also shared rhetorical practices that characterize written requests for intercession, support, and patronage across many ...languages, cultures, and forms of interaction. Examples range from mundane requests to diplomatic negotiations, preserved in a variety of material media: potsherds, papyrus, paper, administrative handbooks, chronicles, and letter collections. Each contribution focuses on one textual sample or corpus of letters, providing new English translations as well as editions of the original texts in cases where no previous edition is available. Together, they represent the textual conventions and innovations of learned and vernacular epistolary traditions from many regions of North Africa and Eurasia, from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries CE.
Franz Cumont’s Syrian Tour. A Belgian Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire.
This paper highlights the Western scientific traveller as an intermediary between Orient and Occident around the turn of the ...nineteenth century by presenting a case study on the Belgian archaeologist and historian of religions, Franz Cumont (1868-1947), and the dossier of the journey he undertook in Northern Syria, May 1907. After a discussion of this classicist’s relation to the Orient, I give an account of Cumont’s Syrian tour, based on three different writing contexts : the academic output of the expedition in Northern Syria, Cumont’s private travel notes, and both his active and passive correspondence. Still focusing on the case of Franz Cumont and the dossier of his archaeological journey in 1907, in a third and fourth section I examine two ways in which the Orient was brought to the Occident by the scientific traveller. Firstly, by the acquisition and transfer of archaeological material from the Orient to the Occident, providing Western institutions with Eastern artefacts. Secondly, by the transfer of ideas and images : how did the Occidental scientific traveller, the archaeologist, convey his experiences with the “ real” Orient to the European readership ? I will disclose how Franz Cumont expressed his evaluation of the ancient Orient, which he studied, and the contemporary Orient, which he experienced during his travels.
Franz Cumonts Syrische reis. Een Belgisch archeoloog in het Ottomaanse rijk.
Dit artikel belicht de rol van de wetenschappelijk reiziger als een tussenpersoon tussen de Oriënt en de Occident in het begin van de 20e eeuw, en dit vanuit een studie over de Belgische archeoloog en godsdiensthistoricus Franz Cumont (1868-1947) en het dossier van zijn reis in Noord-Syrië, ondernomen in mei 1907. Na een discussie van de relatie van deze klassieke filoloog met de Oriënt, geef ik een verslag van Cumonts rondreis in Syrië, op basis van drie verschillende schrijfcontexten : de wetenschappelijke productie die uit de expeditie is gevolgd, Cumonts private reisdagboeken en zowel passieve als actieve correspondentie. Steeds vanuit deze casus, onderzoek ik in een derde en vierde sectie twee manieren waarop de Oriënt naar de Occident werd gebracht door de wetenschappelijk reiziger. Eerst bespreek ik de verwerving van oosters archeologisch materiaal en de overdracht hiervan naar westerse instituten. Vervolgens bekijk ik de overdracht van ideeën en beelden : hoe uitte de wetenschappelijk reiziger, de archeoloog, zijn ervaringen met de «echte » Orient tegenover zijn Europese lezerspubliek ? Ik zal nagaan hoe Franz Cumont zijn evaluatie van de antieke Oriënt, die hij bestudeerde, en van de moderne Oriënt, die hij tijdens zijn reis ervaarde, onder woorden heeft gebracht.
Race and Religious Transformations in Rome Scheerlinck, Eline; Praet, Danny; Rey, Sarah
Historia : Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte,
01/2016, Letnik:
65, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Contemporaries of Franz Cumont (1868-1947) often applied racial theories to the supposed cultural, spiritual and political decadence of Rome, holding Oriental immigrants and their religions ...responsible. In his Oriental Religions (1906) Cumont explicitly rejected Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Otto Seeck, arguing instead for spiritual progress in Late Antiquity, under Oriental influence. Our analysis shows certain ambiguities and stereotypes in Cumont’s publications on the Orient. We also present unpublished archive material from the Academia Belgica in Rome, showing Cumont accepted, in the 1920s, racial theories (Tenney Frank). He now explained the religious transformations in Rome by a change in the population.
Race and Religious Transformations in Rome Scheerlinck, Eline; Praet, Danny; Rey, Sarah
Historia : Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte,
2016, Letnik:
65, Številka:
2
Journal Article
As is the case for many of his colleagues within the humanities, it is hard to pin one label on Franz Cumont (1868-1947). His work moves at the crossroads of history of religions, classical ...philology, ancient history, archeology and Orientalism. However, Cumont employed this multidisciplinarity in such a way as to make him a pioneer within the developing field of history of religions at the turn of the nineteenth century. In what follows I will focus mainly on Cumont as a historian of religion and on the renewing role which he played in the development of the history of religions
This chapter examines four letters written in Egypt between the tenth and the twelfth century by Christian bishops reacting to crimes and misdemeanors in local Christian communities. The bishops all ...react with an accumulation of curses and threats of excommunication for the perpetrators. The analyses in this chapter adopt two perspectives. First, the letters are testimonies of the judicial and social role of Christian bishops in late antique and Islamic Egypt. The chapter challenges the view that the harsh language, with the accumulation of curses and threats of excommunication, reflects the bishops' waning judicial authority in Islamic Egypt and instead shows the extent to which the letters, including their language, are embedded in the Coptic documentary tradition. The second perspective is that of the particular situations in which the letters performed their function. This focus on the performative aspect of the letters leads to a discussion of their intended and unintended effects on their audiences.
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