Ethno-Art: Samtavisi Monastery in Georgia
The Samtavisi Monastery is located on the left bank of the Lekhuri River in the Municipality of Kaspi, Samtavisi.
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The Samtavisi Monastery is located on the left bank of the Lekhuri River in the Municipality of Kaspi, Samtavisi.
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Found tucked between the hills of central Dobrudja, a region in south-eastern Romania, the cave which once belonged to Saint Ioan Casian, a local saint being celebrated by the Orthodox Church, attracts annually a significant number of visitors and pilgrims who are willing to go on a very difficult trip that consists of walking on a very dangerous path making its way through the rocky slopes of the hills on which the monastery sits in order to reach the cave in which the hermit spent most of his time.
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This paper offers a novel interpretation of the luxury golden ring with a carnelian intaglio depicting a woman's profile and an engraved Greek inscription, ΒΑCIΛICCΑ ΟΥΛΠIAΝΑ(Ζ)IA (or AΣIA E.A.), found in cist grave 14, in Mtskheta, Georgia, dated to the Roman period, the 3rd century AD. In consideration of the then contemporary political situation in the Mediterranean and Roman East, through the putting and interpreting sources into broad historical context, the author identifies the female individual as the Roman Empress Ulpia Severina. The very inclusion of royal woman within public propaganda during this period signifies her prominence within, and significance outside of, the imperial metropolis. This deliberate inclusion proved to the public that this empress was not mere figurehead but could have been a very influential person in the Empire.
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The following analysis emerged as an attempt to explain and contextualize a very rich grave, already historiographically notorious, with analogies equally famous, traditionally dated around the middle of the 4th c. BC, discovered in 1970, at Peretu, Romania, 40 km north of the Danube. The main objective of the study was to explore how (and if) this ostentatious display of authority, consumed in the symbolic domain, was linked with other processes of rising collective identities in North Danube Thrace, as suggested to had taken place by a series of neighbouring fortified sites dated approximately in the same period with the grave. These sites stand out through their particular technique of building defences based on using burnt clays in the construction of their enclosure walls. The interpretations will be partially based on recent interdisciplinary investigations (geophysical & aerial) undertaken in several fortified sites of the Teleorman region. In the two-three decades before the Macedonian rule, these fortified sites were already focusing the attention of regional communities around a cultic component, several of them developing into residential central places, beginning with the last quarter of the 4th c. BC. In a broader framework, the study examines the processes of social growth, authority centralization and emergence of collective identities occurred during the early Hellenistic period in peripheral territories of the Macedonian rule. North Danube Thrace exhibited, after the wars of Philip II and especially during those of Alexander’s Successors, a particular vivid demographic development. It is stated that this development, including the wealth visible in several graves, was triggered by the Macedonian coin and political interests of the Diadochi that used North-Eastern Thrace as a secondary stage in their power competition through proxy.
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At Callatis were discovered, based on the information existent at present, several representations of goddess Aphrodite, among them three clay discs or pyxis lids, four protomes, six clay figurines in various states of fragmentation, three marble statues, and three moulds, of which two for producing protomes.Aphrodite had numerous attributions, including the assuring of cohesion between citizens of a polis, her cult being a guarantee of their unity. As patroness of the magistrates, she was responsible for the cordial relations between magistrates and demos, and also of the familial harmony. The most numerous media of representation of Aphrodite are the protomes, with a double signification, votive and funerary. The protomes with feminine representations are frequently found in graves belonging to women and young girls, starting with the middle of the 5th century, their use becoming generalised during the 4th century and being still present in the 3rd century BC.
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In this new article, we continue the publication of a number of amphora stamps found in Histria, during the excavations in the Basilica Pârvan sector and several other older sectors. The amphora stamps under discussion originate from Sinope, Rhodos, Tauric Chersonesos, Thasos, and Heraclea Pontica. Several novelties are briefly commented upon.
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In this article the author investigates the interpretation of the plot of Pilat’s trial in early Latin literature. The author presents new data from the historic works of St. Ambrose, St. Eusevus Ieronimus, Rufin Aquilean that remained untranslated before. The goal of the article is to investigate the attitude of early Christians towards the role of Pontius Pilatus in the trial of Christ. It aims to compare the interpretation of Pilate’s trial found in the Latin literature of the 1–5 centuries with that one in the writings of Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephraim the Syrian belonging to patristic literature. The author comes to conclusion that Pontius Pilate was not perceived by early Christians as a metaphor of the persecutor, in spite of all the persecutions executed by Romans at the dawn of Christianity. He almost was not blamed for the execution of Christ. Christians did not oppose themselves to the Roman authorities and did not accuse it of the crucifixion of Christ.
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In this study I have discussed the concept of Thracian-Phrygian contact zone from the perspective of the relationship to the Greek settlers and their mythographical accounts. The concept, which has been in use for some time in the Bulgarian historiography, has served as a means of understanding cross-cultural interactions, and I have proposed a specific approach of the significance of Northern Aegean mystery cults, such the adoration of the Great Mother, the Orphic cult or the cult of the Great Gods of Samothrace.I have presented some of the conclusions of Alexander Fol and Maya Vassileva and I have analysed whether they lead to a better understanding of the cultural engagement in ancient societies. In the first place, Greek settlers have come into contact with Phrygians in the Propontis region, regarding them as inhabitants of the shore lands. By extending their geographical consciousness, colonists have slowly accustomed themselves to cultural perspectives specific to the Thracian-Phrygian contact zone, such as the relation of the ruler to the Great Mother. This has led to the connection between religious development and political power. The Orphic cult, for instance, has been widely diffused in Greece in the time of the Odrysian kingdom, while the cult of the Great Gods has very much flourished under Hellenistic rule. I have therefore argued that the concept of Thracian-Phrygian contact zone proves to be a useful tool for analysing religious phenomena, particularly mystery cults, by drawing parallels between various local cults of the Northern Aegean space and the Propontis area.
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The author analyzes the connection between Hermadio, slave and actor of a private person, P. Turanius Dius, with a superior clerk of salt administration in Roman Dacia, P. Aelius Marius. The key of the answer is a wax tablet of Alburnus maior, in which we can better see the role of actores in transactioning their mesters’ affairs.
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The paper analyzes literary sources from the 7th and 8th centuries that shed light on the relations between different religious groups in some areas of the Byzantine East. These sources present particular problems due to the profound changes that occurred in those territories since the reign of Giustiniano. The 7th century, in fact, was a period of radical transformations – or from a certain point of view a real rift – for the Byzantine Empire, especially for the Middle Eastern regions, which were overwhelmed by the invasions of Persian soldiers and Arabs: a transformation that involved every aspect of social, economic, religious and cultural life. The sources reveal how, especially between the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th, forms of controversy intensified between Jews and Christians who, in some respects, also extended to Muslims. The Christian authors, for more than a century after the Arab conquests, however, did not directly address the question of the doctrines of Islam, but continued to turn their attention, even more than in the past, to the Jews.
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In this contribution, the Authoress examines the literary fortune of the tragedies of Seneca from the first century after Christ until the late Middle Ages. Through a careful analysis of the scarce surviving testimonies she hypothesizes that the first complete collection of all tragedies began to circulate only in the precarolingian age, whereas in previous centuries they have had an autonomous diffusion.
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The ancient geograph Strabo of Amaseia is the source off ‘Admiral’ Cristoforo Colombo when he describes how the Amazons warrior people of the ‘New World’ procreate and bring up their children.
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The authors analyse all the archaeological finds coming from ancient Greece on the territory of Kosovo, also presenting an overview on the commercial exchanges between the actual territory of Kosovo and Greece, with a particular interest on trade routes. The social differentiation in Dardania at the beginning of the Iron Age made possible the aristocracy’s interest for the luxury products from Greece. The commercial exchanges existed from the Bronze Age. The study also focuses on the influence of Greek products on the local production in Dardania.
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Both in scientific literature and popular mind the Romans are considered e the symbol of aggression, militarism and conquest, but the more thorough analysis shows that many of Roman wars were really defensive or at least began as a war of defence and Th. Mommsen’s idea of “defensive imperialism” has a good deal of sense. The fetial law with its concept of “bellum iustum” stands at the foundation of Roman idea of international relations and was (despite all possible speculations) an important step in the world of undeclared warfare of “civilized (Greeks, Carthaginians) or “uncivilized” (Gauls, Germans and others) nations. Most wars (about 60 of 100) of 5th-3rd centuries BC are depicted in Roman tradition as self-defence, while the period from the Samnite Wars till the time of Julius Caesar becomes the time of the defence of numerous Roman amici and socii. On these principles grows the global doctrine of the defence of “human civilization” against the “barbarian world” and the establishment of world order, based on law and justice. One may consider this picture as an instrument of propaganda, but many of these ideas and declarations were real truth.
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The civil settlements from Capidava emerged probably next to the camp which constituted the siege of many auxiliary units. The texts attest uexillationes of the legio V Macedonica, but the camp was mainly occupied by two cohorts: I Vbiorum and I Germanorum ciuium Romanorum. Next to the cap there were the canabae and another civil settlement. I shall analyse the population coming from the civil settlements from an epigraphic point of view. I shall also discuss the origin of the population in the rural milieu of Capidava and the reasons of the newcomers’ presence in this area.
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Although found more than 130 years ago and thought to be lost in the Bulgarian science, this votive monument from Nicopolis ad Nestum was “re-discovered” by the author in the exposition of the museum in Drama, Greece. The votive with the represented on it gods from the Graeco-Roman Pantheon is devoted to Pluto. The iconography of the monument is of the type Pluto on the throne. According to the inscription, Pluto is not only a chthonic deity of the Underworld, but also as “Πλούτος”–“Plutos” is the god of fertility, abundance and richness. Hermes is also depicted as “Ploutodotes“/“Κερδώος”, while Asclepius is represented as healer, giving strength and restoring, also of possibility of abundance and richness. The dedicators of the votive descent from a rich Thracian family and probably are part of the elite of Nicopolis ad Nestum. Their names reveal that these people have received Roman citizenship with the Constitutio Antoniniana after 212. The votive relief is made of a local marble, and is a work of the local masters, knowing well the iconography of the Graeco-Roman deities and the one of the imperial portraits of Julia Domna and Caracalla from the Severan dynasty.
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Discovered in a large number in the Balkan-Danubian provinces of the Roman Empire, the swastika-shaped fibulae with horse-head decorations are in most cases attributed to the military. The iconographic motive and form are the artistic expression of Thracian traditions specific in the Lower Danube regions. The precursors of this type of brooches are the silver brackets found in Thracians princely graves discovered in Romania and Bulgaria dated in the 4th century BC. Chronologically framed in the 2nd–4th centuries AD, the roman fibulae are discovered mainly in military environments. On the territory of Dobroudja (Moesia Inferior), four brooches of this type are known, one at Ulmetum and three in the civil settlement near the camp of Durostum, at Ostrov-Ferma 4.
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The commercial and cultural links between the West-Pontic region and the Aegean basin date well before the appearance of ESB tableware. In this article is analysed the presence of this type of pottery in the Western Black Sea. In the period between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, in this region was recorded 14 forms specific of workshops from Western Asia Minor. In archaeological sites from the Black Sea coast this type of ceramics is encountered in a larger proportion than in the inland settlements. Troesmis on the Danube line is a settlement where a significant amount of ESB has been discovered.
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Seals and clay sealings are the most valuable evidence for studying the economic, political and cultural structures of the different past societies. Due to the lack of resources to explain the various characteristics of Seleucid and Parthian material culture, studying the seals of these periods can reveal not only the artistic sides of glyptic material but to clarify the roles played by sealings in the social and economic contexts of the Seleucid and Parthian societies. Seven seals which are currently being preserved in the Semnan Museum are described and studied in the present paper. These seals have been discovered through illegal excavations. Their patterns and styles are usually influenced by Greek art elements, including animal motifs, the Greek goddess Athena and human illustrations in the majority, which is probably because of the greater attention to human and humanist perspectives among the Greek artists. The present study aims at analysing the motifs of the seals, as well as making comparisons to identify similarities with other cases found in different sites such as Tel Kedesh (Israel), Nisa (Turkmenistan) and Dura-Europos (Syria) in order to suggest a more precise dating for the mentioned seals.
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