Greek artefacts, craftsmen and artists had penetrated Rome since regal days; from the second century BC this trickle had become a continuing and influential flood, contributing together with Italic and Etruscan architecture and art, and the developing central Italian and Roman concrete architecture, to the rich tapestry of the art of the capital. Vespasian (69-79), founder of the Flavian dynasty, showed an astute pragmatism in his handling of architecture and art. In the provinces the architectural and art forms characteristic of the Flavian era continued to flourish. Dynamism returned to imperial commissions with the Romano-Spanish Trajan. The age of Hadrian (117-38) proved to be extraordinary, largely because of the extent to which he was able to impress upon it his own many-sided personality: ruler, philhellene, architect, dilettante, poet, traveller and romantic. The rich artistic harvest of the Flavian to the Antonine ages was not just an imperial, but a corporate achievement, one which offered a worthy inheritance to following generations.

Art and architecture

Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies

Recent decipherments of Classic Maya hieroglyphs (ca. a.d. 250 to 850) reveal phonological and morphological patterns that, through epigraphic and historical analyses, isolate a single, coherent prestige language with unique and widespread features in script. We term this language “Classic Ch’olti’an” and present the evidence for its explicable historical configuration and ancestral affiliation with Eastern Ch’olan languages (Ch’olti’ and its still‐viable descendant, Ch’orti’). We conclude by exploring the possibility that Ch’olti’an was a prestige language that was shared by elites, literati, and priests and had a profound effect on personal and group status in ancient Maya kingdoms.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/300142

The Language of Classic Maya Inscriptions1

This book provides a groundbreaking reassessment of the prehistory of Homeric epic. It argues that in the Early Iron Age bilingual poets transmitted to the Greeks a set of narrative traditions closely related to the one found at Bronze-Age Hattusa, the Hittite capital. Key drivers for Near Eastern influence on the developing Homeric tradition were the shared practices of supralocal festivals and venerating divinized ancestors, and a shared interest in creating narratives about a legendary past using a few specific storylines: theogonies, genealogies connecting local polities, long-distance travel, destruction of a famous city because it refuses to release captives, and trying to overcome death when confronted with the loss of a dear companion. Professor Bachvarova concludes by providing a fresh explanation of the origins and significance of the Greco-Anatolian legend of Troy, thereby offering a new solution to the long-debated question of the historicity of the Trojan War.

From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic

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Elementary education at Nippur. The lists of trees and wooden objects

In 1989 the University of Groningen celebrated its 375th anniversary. Near Eastern Studies, in one form or another, have been part of the Groningen curriculum almost from the beginning. For this reason the Department of Middle-Eastern Languages and Cultures decided to contribute to the anniversary celebrations by organizing an international Symposium and a Workshop on The Literary Debate in Semitic and Related Literatures. The topic of the Symposium and the Workshop was chosen and prepared by the members of the research programme "Disclosure of Semitic Texts". Since 1985 the literary debate in the Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic/Syriac and Arabic language and literature has been a central theme within this Groningen research programme. Because the research group sees as one of its tasks to place the study of the literary and cultural heritage of the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East also in the wider context of its connection with Classical Antiquity and the European Middle Ages, specialists in Byzantine and Mediaeval Studies were also invited to contribute to the Symposium and Workshop. The present volume contains the contributions presented during the Symposium and Workshop on The Literary Debate in the Semitic and Related Literatures. Some of the more important issues regarding matters of genesis, development and possible interdependence of the dispute poems, dialogues and related texts, which can all be subsumed under the general type of 'debate', are discussed in the introduction, which also reflects a number of points raised in the discussions during the Workshop itself.

Dispute poems and dialogues in the ancient and mediaeval Near East : forms and types of literary debates in Semitic and related literatures

Despite somne excellent treatments of the Old Babylonian Eduba in the last few years,' the question of how Sumerian was learned has been rather neglected. Few attempts at an answer have ever been made, and none go beyond speculation-indeed, the question itself was seldom raised.2 Yet it is surely an important one. We know that the literature used in the schools was almost exclusively Sumerian; that Sumerian also served as the vehicular language for other disciplines; that examinations were largely held in Sumerian-in short, that (upiarraiitu was in fact a specialized schooling in Sumerian as well as a comprehensive schooling through

How Did They Learn Sumerian

"Epics of Sumerian Kings" presents for the first time both the authoritative Sumerian text and an elegant English translation of four epics which are major works in the Sumerian literary canon and the earliest epics known in any language. The epics revolve around the conflict between the cities of Uruk (biblical Erech) in ancient Iraq and Aratta in neighboring Iran. The introduction discusses the intellectual and cultural context of the epics, their poetics and meaning, and the significance of the cycle as a whole. The volume will interest scholars and students of Assyriology and of the ancient Near East, biblical scholars, and general readers, and will be an invaluable resource for courses on ancient Near Eastern literature or history. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta

Mesopotamian Poetic Language: Sumerian and Akkadian

This text is a collection of studies on a defined problem in Mesopotamian literature. The broad topic of a possible oral or aural character of Akkadian and Sumerian epic poetry and its implications is treated in a number of ways, including a confrontation with traditional Oral-Formulaic Theory, an overview of Sumerian literary types which contrasts putative oral literature with historical literacy, a detailed analysis of the phonic features, and concentrations on specific structural features of Sumerian compositions in order to detect possible markers of either oral origins or aural performance and transmissions. Treating one of the very earliest literary systems mankind ever evolved, it should be of use to literary scholars and specialists in early literatures, as well as assyriologists. The essays originated in a workshop held at the University of Groningen in 1990.

H.L.J. Vanstiphout

Papers

Dispute poems and dialogues in the ancient and mediaeval Near East : forms and types of literary debates in Semitic and related literatures

How Did They Learn Sumerian

Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta

Mesopotamian Poetic Language: Sumerian and Akkadian

Mesopotamian Epic Literature: Oral or Aural?