Italy Archives - Page 39 of 41

Maps for the Ancient World

Routledge Wall Maps for the Ancient World, edited by Richard Talbert, is available as a set or individually.

Routledge Wall Maps for the Ancient World provide both students and scholars with detailed and exacting geographic information of the ancient world. Using the world renowned geographic data from the Ancient World Mapping Centre, the sweeping views of the ancient world allow students to understand important concepts such as trade, movement, spatial and cultural relations and to consider how the ancient terrain would have affected them. The maps provide a powerful tool for comprehending how the ancient world worked and also to help re-evaluate out-dated theories in light of precise geographic information.
Those students who are new to the discipline of ancient history will find them invaluable in orientating themselves within the world of the past. How far is Athens from Sparta, what type of terrain did Alexander have to cross on his journeys, how did the valley of the Nile look in 500 BC? Such questions and many more are answered by the maps within this series.

Egypt and the Near East 3000-1200 BCE
Wall Map: 978-0-415-58500-2: $64.95 [$21.80 at Amazon]

Egypt and the Near East 1200 – 500 BCE
Wall Map: 978-0-415-58499-9: $64.95 [$38.35 at Amazon]

Greece and the Aegean in the 5th Century BCE
Wall Map: 978-0-415-58441-8: $64.95 [57.94 at Amazon]

Greece and Persia in the Time of Alexander the Great
Wall Map: 978-0-415-58498-2: $64.95 [57.94 at Amazon]

Italy in the Mid First Century CE
Wall Map: 978-0-415-58440-1: $64.95 [57.94 at Amazon]

The Roman Empire around 200 CE
Wall Map: 978-0-415-58439-5: $64.95 [57.94 at Amazon]

The World of the New Testament and the Journeys of Paul
Wall Map: 978-0-415-58501-9: $64.95 [57.94 at Amazon]

Professors may request a complimentary examination copy via a link at the Routledge website. As I write, the publisher’s website is painfully slow, but the links to Amazon work quickly. In many cases, the maps are available from the Amazon Marketplace for even less than the prices listed above.

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Egypt, Greece, Italy, Resources

Weekend Roundup

Riccardo Lufrani counters the proposal of Amos Kloner that the tombs of St. Etienne were originally the resting places of the last kings of Judah. He essentially addresses the translation of Josephus’s “royal caverns.” He does not mention the fact of that these tombs are located in the midst of an Iron Age cemetery.

Zahi Hawass gives his side of the story and explains why he will not be going to jail. Hershel Shanks has a lengthy interview with Hawass to be published in the May/June issue of Biblical Archaeology Review and now online here. Shanks writes of his time with Hawass, “I found him confident, overbearing, domineering, brash and loud. But he was also sometimes reasonable and often even charming.”

A four-minute video gives some insight into the revived chariot races in Jerash (Gerasa), Jordan.

Italy has announced a major restoration of Pompeii, following the recent collapse of an ancient house.

Christians celebrated Palm Sunday in Jerusalem yesterday.

Bible Gateway has a complex graphic that illustrates the chronology and geography of events during the week leading to Jesus’ crucifixion. “Follow the lines in the chart to see at a glance what people were doing, where they were, and whom they were with at any point during the week.”

We wish a happy Passover to all of those celebrating this evening.

HT: Explorator, Jack Sasson, Carl Rasmussen

Tagged Egypt, Italy, Jerusalem, Jordan, Weekend Roundup

The Ides of March

Today is the “Ides of March,” the day that commemorates the death of Julius Caesar. In March, the “Ides” always falls on the 15th, but that’s not true of other months. William Browning explains:

The Roman calendar had weird ways to determine times of the month. The Ides of March doesn’t necessarily refer to a holiday or festival on the Roman calendar but instead talks about how the Romans told time in the year….
The calendar organized months around three days — Kalends, Nones and Ides. Kalends noted the first of the month, so in modern terms the Kalends of June would be June 1. Nones served as the seventh day in March, May, July and October; it was the fifth in every other month. Ides were the middle of the month — they were the 15th of March, May, July and October but the 13th in others.
Days were noted by counting backwards from the upcoming monthly marker. For instance, Oct. 10 would be designated the “V Ides” or five days before the Ides of October. This method of dating lasted well into Medieval times before it was replaced with the Gregorian calendar used today.

The plot against Caesar was a reaction to his efforts to increase his power and become “dictator for life.” According to National Geographic:

The Romans had no love for kings. According to legend, they expelled their last one in 509 B.C. While Caesar had made pointed and public displays of turning down offers of kingship, he showed no reluctance to accept the office of “dictator for life” in February 44 B.C. According to Osgood, this action may have sealed his fate in the minds of his enemies. “We can see [now] that that was enough to get him killed,” Osgood said.
Caesar had pushed the envelope for some time before his death. “Caesar was the first living Roman ever to appear on the coinage,” Osgood said. Normally, the honor was reserved for deities. He notes that some historians suspect that Caesar might have been attempting to establish a cult in his honor in a move towards deification.

Caesar’s assassination did little more than delay the process, for his heir Augustus became Rome’s first emperor fifteen years later.

HT: Explorator

Tagged Italy

Visit Ancient Rome with Google

How many times have you rushed through an ancient site, taking as many pictures as you could, but when it was all done you didn’t realize exactly what you saw? And when it comes time to label your photos or describe them to a friend, you’re at a loss? Google Street View could be a useful tool in your attempt to “remember” what you saw and where. The ambitious program is venturing not only into European cities, but their ancient ruins as well. Pompeii was put online last year and now work is underway for the ruins of ancient Rome. Once it is complete, you’ll be able to retrace the steps of your tour and make sure that you don’t confuse the Arch of Septimus Severus with the Arch of Constantine. BBC News has a 2-minute video describing the project.

Arch of Constantine, Rome

Tagged Italy, Technology

iPad May Revolutionize Archaeology

Archaeologists working at Pompeii are ecstatic about the value of iPads in the recording process, according to this article posted at apple.com.

For Dr. Steven Ellis, who directs the University of Cincinnati’s archaeological excavations at Pompeii, perhaps the most significant discovery at the site this year was iPad. Ellis credits the introduction of six iPad devices at Pompeii with helping his team solve one of the most difficult problems of archaeological fieldwork: how to efficiently and accurately record the complex information they encounter in the trenches. Most archaeological researchers today collect data from their sites as others have for the past 300 years. “It’s all pencil and paper,” says Ellis. “You have to draw things on paper, or in preprinted forms with boxes. That’s a problem because all these pages could be lost on an airplane, they could burn, they could get wet and damaged, or they could be written in unintelligible handwriting. And eventually they have to be digitized or entered into a computer anyway.” Although portable computers offer a paperless solution, field archaeologists rarely use them in the trenches because their size, input limitations, battery life, and sensitivity to dirt and heat make them impractical in the harsh conditions of a dig. […]

Photo from apple.com article

Ellis, who estimates that iPad has already saved him a year of data entry, plans to increase the number of iPad devices from one to two per trench. “The recovery of invaluable information from our Pompeian excavations is now incalculably faster, wonderfully easier, unimaginably more dynamic, precisely more accurate, and robustly secure,” he says. Beyond the scope of his project, Ellis sees iPad as revolutionizing the 300-year-old discipline of archaeological fieldwork. “A generation ago computers made it possible for scholars to move away from just looking at pretty pictures on walls and work with massive amounts of information and data. It was a huge leap forward. Using iPad to conduct our excavations is the next one. And I’m really proud to be a part of it.”

The article gives more details and includes a number of photos of the iPad in action.

Tagged Excavations, Italy, Technology

Weekend Roundup

The first excavation season at Tel Burna has concluded. They had a fantastic season, and they would be most grateful for some support. They’ll have aerial photos taken and posted on the blog next week.

Robert Cargill has written an insightful essay on the “Misuse of Archaeology for Evangelistic Purposes,” specifically with reference to the recent “discovery” of Noah’s Ark.

In his recent Asia Minor Report 9, Mark Wilson (Seven Churches Network) notes that the Black Sea Studies series has been made available online for free by the publisher. In particular, he points to volume 7 as providing useful background on the early Christian communities mentioned in 1 Peter 1:1.

Analysis of the Temple Scroll suggests that it was written at Qumran.

The Israeli army is keeping the ruins of the Samaritan temple closed to the public because they say it is too dangerous. The Samaritans are unhappy because of the entrance fees they could be charging.

The July/August issue of Biblical Archaeology Review is available, and the article on the destruction of Pompeii is online for free. I’m looking forward to reading the article on Jezreel.

The Magdala Center is the Catholic plan for a Galilee pilgrimage center, the “Notre Dame of the Galilee.” They plan to complete excavation of the on-site “synagogue” (see previous post) in one year and the rest of the city in three years.

If you’ve ever taken a series of photos with the intention of stitching them together to create a panorama, you might check out the free Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE).

Tagged Dead Sea, Galilee, Italy, Shephelah, Technology, Turkey, Weekend Roundup