Journal articles on the topic 'Second century BC Ptolemaic Egypt'

AbstractThe well-known ‘Berber Head’ in the British Museum, found at Kyrene in 1861, has long defied exact stylistic analysis. Its findspot provides no precise date, and ever since the excavators suggested that it was a piece from the fourth century BC, this dating has been sustained, generally through inertia. Yet recent scholars have become increasingly aware of the weakness of this date without offering specific alternatives other than a gradual down-dating. Its North African features indicate that it is a portrait of an indigenous ruler, and thus attribution must be based on the likelihood of such a person being honoured in Kyrene. It is herein suggested that it is a portrait of the Numidian prince Mastanabal, son of Massinissa, and that it dates to the time that Massinissa was a close associate of the king of Kyrene, the future Ptolemaios VIII of Egypt, or 163–148 BC. Mastanabal was a noted athlete and thus the piece may be a commemoration of one of his victories. Its commissioning would fit into his father's vigorous hellenization policy. Although the style remains difficult of analysis, certain features, especially the beard under the chin, support a second-century BC date.

AbstractThis article discusses the origin of the three dynastic settlements, which the Ptolemies (re) founded in Cyrenaica: Arsinoe-Taucheira, Ptolemais near Barca and Berenike near Euesperides. The evidence for the dating of the foundation of Ptolemais is re-examined and a papyrological text introduced, which has so far been ignored by previous scholars. This text unambiguously attests citizens of Ptolemais near Barca as early as 252 BC in Egypt. It refutes the commonly accepted argument that all three Ptolemaic cities were founded under Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 BC) and within the same framework of administrative-political concerns. It will be suggested that Ptolemy I Soter had the motifs, opportunity and resources to found Ptolemais as early as the end of the fourth century BC. Several papyri further emphasise that despite the almost simultaneous demise of Euesperides and rise of Berenike nearby, ethnic designations for these two cities were simultaneously in use throughout Ptolemaic Egypt until at least the end of the third century BC.

The role and status of the Egyptians in the army of Hellenistic Egypt (323–30b.c.) has been a debated question that goes back to the position within Late Period Egyptian society (664–332b.c.) of the Egyptian warriors described by Herodotus asmachimoi. Until a few decades ago, Ptolemaic military institutions were perceived as truly Greco-Macedonian and the presence of Egyptians in the army during the first century of Ptolemaic rule was contested. The Egyptians were thought of as being unfit to be good soldiers. Egyptians would have been hired only as late as 217b.c.to fight against the Seleucid king Antiochus III in Raphia. The Ptolemaic victory (in fact rather a status quo) was made possible thanks to the addition of twenty thousand Egyptians to reinforce the Greek army. For a long time the subsequent role of Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army in the second and first centuriesb.c.did not attract much attention. One usually assumed that they were ‘second-rate soldiers’ calledmachimoi. In recent decades, the scholarship on Ptolemaic Egypt, notably Demotic studies, reasserted the role of Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army from the late fourth century onwards.

Abstract This work proposes a new interpretation of the Chapter 10 of the so called Demotic Chronicle, an oracular text written in Egyptian Demotic and dated from the end of the IVth century BC. A gloss concerning the rule of Nektanebo I denounces the fiscal reforms of the Crown to finance the containment of the Achaemenid assaults against Egypt. This passage finds an echo with the reform of the Egyptian tax system undertaken by the Athenian Chabrias quoted by the Pseudo Aristotle. Both show that the necessity of the payment of a mercenary army drove to an improvement of taxation which prefigures the Ptolemaic reforms of the IIId century B.C.

This historian of science offers a few samples of the kinds of understandings his students will be subjected to. (a) In early times, Britons used careful observations of astronomical events to establish their calendar; (b) In the 4th century BC, Aristotle used the spheres of Eudoxus to establish his cosmological principles; (c) In the second century of our era, Ptolemy made astronomy scientific, partly for the sake of astrological predictions; (d) In the fifteenth century, Columbus used crude astronomical observations to find latitude, (e) In the sixteenth century, Copernicus revised Ptolemaic astronomy in order to improve its fit with Aristotelian cosmology, and in the process challenged that cosmology; (f) Kepler used Tycho’s more precise data to destroy heavenly circularity; (g) In the early seventeenth century, Galileo based his renovation of motion studies on the investigative style he learned from Ptolemy, coupled with mathematics learned from Euclid and Archimedes.

Before the new Greek cosmological system was developed, many ancient cultures had pictured the Milky Way as a vertical axis or tree, which was seen as a route leading into the heavens of a layered universe. This model began to change from about the sixth century BC, when the image of a spherical earth and geocentric universe became increasingly widespread among the educated people of Greece. The new model, standardised by Ptolemy during the second century AD, visualised a universe comprised of eight concentric crystalline spheres surrounding a fixed earth. By the Middle Ages, the Ptolemaic system had become the established picture of the cosmos in Europe and the Islamic world. Losing its old vertical image, the Milky Way was now pictured as a circular band surrounding the spherical earth. Now known as the Milky Circle, it kept something of its earlier religious significance in the pagan world. In Rome it was visualised as a post-mortem place of purification, located below the sphere of the moon. With the establishment of traditional Christianity, the Milky Way’s position became unclear. It had always been a scientific puzzle to thinkers trying to analyse its substance and define its place in the Ptolemaic universe, and its true nature remained unresolved. In one of its most intriguing identities, originated by the thirteenth century astrologer Michael Scot, it migrated to the sphere of the fixed stars where it became a mysterious, living constellation, known as the Daemon Meridianus.

Around the time the postcolonial paradigm was establishing in the Humanities, so too was the Ptolemaic period receiving growing attention. Scholars studying this chronology, during the second half of the twentieth century, however, understood Egypt’s society and culture as a set of impermeable communities/ traditions, only coexisting with one another. This interpretation caused a radical turn in the historiography of the topic. More significantly, though, it left material culture that did not belong exclusively to neither one of the cultural sets (Greek or Egyptian) largely overlooked, and, later on, underestimated in the debates on who influenced who. The author’s Master dissertation took as a case study the Greco-Egyptian stone sculpture in the round of the male Ptolemaic rulers, looking to further understand the epreviously underestimated objects. They were not underestimated, however, in the sense that their existence was not acknowledged or analysed, but in the sense that the explanation put forward was not complex enough. The authors formulated their interpretation mainly from the point of view of state and elites, disconsidering thus other possible realms of agency. This article presents a part of the investigation, namely the theoretical framework adopted to suggest another interpretation for the existence of the “mixed” statuary of Ptolemaic rulers. Although today Ptolemaic Egypt is not understood as a colonial case, postcolonial studies will contribute to this alternative line of interpretation by decentralizing analysis, from the state to other groups. Nevertheless, the major contribution will come from a theory of consumption, which in turn aims to decentralize studies, from issues of power to other realms.

The only example and reference of Ptolemaic Alexandrian tombs, with clear integrations of Egyptian-style scenes and decorations, is considered an endangered archaeological site due to different coastal environmental risks in Alexandria and the absence of maintenance. Anfushi’s Necropolis is located near the western harbour (Island of Pharos) and dates back to the 2nd century BC. Sea level rises, earthquakes, flooding, storminess, variations in temperature, rainfall, and wind are the factors that have the largest effect on the destruction and decay of Anfushi’s Necropolis building materials. This paper’s main objectives were to characterize this necropolis’s building materials and assess its durability problems and risks regarding the coastal environment. Additionally, the vector mapping of its architectural and structural elements was applied for documentation and recording purposes for the necropolis. To achieve these aims, field (recording and photographs), desk (engineering drawing and mapping), and laboratory works (X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, binocular microscopy, polarizing microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy) were carried out. The results confirmed the probabilistic risk of sea level rises and its impact on the submergence of Anfushi’s Necropolis. The structural deficiencies of the tombs were caused by the effect of earthquake tremors along with anthropogenic factors. In addition, chemical and microscopic investigations showed that salt weathering (halite and gypsum) induced the decay of the building materials.

In 1964 and 1985 in the south of Dagestan, two treasures were found, which included Hellenistic coins. The first consisted of several dozen Seleucid coins, of which only two bronze coins of Antiochus IV, the so-called “Egyptianizing” series, have survived. The second hoard included bronze Ptolemaic coins of the 6c and 6e series, issued in the first third of the 2nd century BC and related to the same type: Zeus-Ammon / two eagles perched side-by-side on two thunderbolts with a double cornucopiae in the left field. The most probable reason why Seleucid and Ptolemaic bronze coins ended up in Sharakun was the participation of their owners in trade along the Caspian waterway. Apparently, their masters arrived from Antioch on the Orontes and Alexandria to Sharakun, intending to follow the Caspian Sea and up the Oxus to Greco-Bactria. The bronze coins they had there would not only be absolutely useless, but also very burdensome. Therefore, merchants could either leave them with a reliable person in the Sharakun settlement, or bury them in a secluded place to pick them up on the way back. However, they, apparently, were not destined to return to Sharakun. After this became clear, the Ptolemaic coins, which were of interest to local residents only for their weight, turned out to be part of the foundry hoard. For us, both Sharakun treasures are the most valuable evidence, proving not only the very existence of the Caspian waterway, but also the implementation of trade contacts between Central Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean.

The final part of Joseph and Aseneth (chs. 23–29) tells a story that seems unconnected to the main part of the book. It recounts an attempt by Pharaoh's son to kill Joseph and Aseneth, his death and Joseph's 48-year rule over Egypt. Scholarly research barely relates to this story, probably since it inhabits the margins of the love story of Joseph and Aseneth. Neither does this story contribute any valuable commentary on the biblical Genesis narrative. It is suggested that this part of the book underscores the unbroken Jewish loyalty to the Ptolemaic-Egyptian regime in the unique circumstances of deep-rooted Jewish participation in that regime alongside adversarial elites, as well as the need to exhibit and emphasize Jewish loyalty while also depicting an internecine struggle within the royal family. The probable date of the book is therefore the last decade of the second century or the first two decades of the first century BCE.

The paper provides an updated and annotated list of Latin and bilingual Latin-Greek papyri from the first century bc to the early third century ad – including very recently published and still unpublished – that refer to the lives and businesses of Roman citizens in Egypt. It also covers documents connected with the Roman army, that is produced in military officia to be specifically used by soldiers (acknowledgments of debt, receipts of money etc.). They are connected not with the army life, but with the life outside the barracks, among tradesmen, merchants, and (from the second century ad onwards) in the milieu of veterans.

Summary This paper discusses how the notion of clock time was introduced in the Greek world. On the basis of an analysis of the earliest (potential) references to hours and clocks in texts from the late fifth to the early third century BC in their historical context, and with reference to the earliest archaeologically attested clocks, it proposes a scenario for the conception and development of this conventional system. It offers a new interpretation of the problematic passage Herodotus 2.109 and argues that an hour-like unit was developed by late fifth century astronomers, under Babylonian influence, to denote the time in which a celestial body moves through a section of its diurnal circle. When this astronomical concept moved to the civic sphere in the second half of the fourth century, it changed from a scientific unit of duration to a civic unit for measuring the time of day. This shift probably took place in Athens, where the first references to hours appear in this period together with multiple experiments in clock making, as well as humorous reactions to the newfound sense of temporal precision. The paper will also show, however, that these first clocks did not yet tell seasonal hours – the type of hours that would eventually define Greco-Roman clock time – and still measured the lapse of time rather than enabling the location of moments in time. Greco-Roman clock time was only fully formed when it incorporated Egyptian notions of the hour in the Ptolemaic kingdom of the early third century BC.

AbstractApollonia's East Fort, set on a promontory overlooking the sea east of the walled town, is part of a series of outlying fortresses guarding access to the port and Cyrene. Excavated by the University of Michigan in 1967, the fort is dated by coins and pottery to the second half of the fourth or first quarter of the third century BC. A striking design feature is its use of cut-down bedrock for the lower wall levels. The same technique is employed for Cyrene's Hellenistic defensive curtain north of the Caravanserai and later in the construction of Roman-period Gasr el-Haneia. It is furthermore utilised in a fairly broad range of tombs and cultic monuments throughout the province. Traceable as far back as the Neolithic period, rupestrian architecture first appears in Egypt by the Middle Kingdom. Between c. 1000 and 500 BC it spreads from thence to Syro-Palestine, western Asia Minor, Urartu and eventually as far east as India. Rather than owing its deployment in Cyrenaica to the building traditions of Egypt, it is more likely the result of the region's second wave of colonists arriving from Asia Minor c. 580 BC, given that Cyrene's Archaic rock-cut tombs bear comparison with the contemporary tomb architecture of SW Turkey.

В работе приводится обзор ключевых проблем царского женского портрета у Селевкидов. Несмотря на то, что женщины царских династий играли важную политическую роль в системе международных отношений эллинистических государств, их изображения немногочисленны. Исключение составляет династия Птолемеев, где женский портрет был устойчивой практикой, зародившейся еще в начале III в. до н.э. Напротив, у Селевкидов женские портреты появляются гораздо позже. Вопреки устоявшемуся в историографии мнению, самым ранним женским царским портретом у Селевкидов стоит считать изображение царицы Лаодики, жены царя Антиоха III, известное по оттиску печати из Селевкии на Тигре. Анализ иконографического материала показывает, что птолемеевский женский портрет представляет собой скорее особый случай, связанный с устойчивой догреческой иконографической традицией. В системе царской идеологии Селевкидов женский портрет как элемент парного портрета царя и царицы выступал инструментом легитимации власти нового правителя. В середине II в. до н.э., ввиду усиления политического влияния Египта, в державе Селевкидов появляется новый вариант царского женского портрета, выстроенного по египетским иконографическим канонам. The survey provides an overview of the main problems of the royal Seleukid female portraiture. Despite the fact that the women of the Hellenistic royal dynasties played an important political role in the system of international relations of the Hellenistic kingdoms, their images are rare. The exception is the Ptolemaic dynasty, where the female portrait was a long-live practice that originated at the beginning of the III century BC. On the other hand, Seleukid female portraits appear much later. Contrary to the well-established opinion in historiography, the earliest Seleukid female royal portrait should be considered the image of queen Laodice, the wife of king Antiochus III, known from the seal impression from Seleucia on the Tigris. The analysis of the iconography shows that the Ptolemaic female portrait is rather an extraordinary case associated with a stable pre-Greek iconographic tradition. In the system of the Seleukid royal ideology, a female portrait as an element of a jugate portrait of a king and a queen used as an instrument of legitimizing the power of the new ruler. In the middle of the II BC, while political influence of Egypt increases, a new version of the royal female portrait, based on Egyptian iconographic canons, appears in the Seleukid empire.

Abstract The article examines a blocked-out capital discovered in Berenike on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea. The artefact was reused in a Late Antique installation just outside the courtyard wall of the main city sanctuary, the Isis Temple. Its distinctive, highly simplified form is typical of Ptolemaic influence in the area. This article places the fragment in its archaeological context, accompanied by a detailed architectural description and analysis of the phenomena of blocked-out capitals. The authors demonstrate that the capital under discussion does not represent an unfinished stonework, but rather an intentional stylization. Its simplification is most likely inspired by the form of Corinthian capital that was common in Egypt between the second and third century AD. The discovery of this capital implies that there were buildings with classical architectural traits in Berenike, a theory that has previously not been supported by the excavated remains.

The article analyzes the ceramic imports found on the territory of the Meroitic Kingdom – the southern neighbour of Egypt, which existed on the territory of modern Sudan since the second half of the 6th century B.C. until the middle of the 4th century A.D. The imported pottery revealed in the process of archaeological excavations of necropoleis, residential and temple complexes are mainly of Mediterranean origin and are associated with the Hellenistic world that later became a part of the Roman Empire. The finds are mostly rare and are represented by fragments of amphorae from various regions of Italy, Aegean region, Asia Minor, the Levant, northern Africa, as well as the European provinces of the Roman Empire – Baetika and Gaul. The main consumer of foreign goods, in small numbers reaching the middle and upper reaches of the Nile, was probably the Meroitic elite. It is logical to assume that the penetration of Mediterranean ceramics into Meroe was facilitated by the trade ties of its northern neighbour – Egypt:trade with the Mediterranean took place through Egyptian river and caravan routes; although hypothetically, one cannot exclude the possibility of goods entering Meroe bypassing Egypt, through the Red Sea ports. Despite a small share of imported products in the Meroitic Kingdom and regardless of the ways of their movement, they had a significant influence on the local pottery manufacturing; a reflection of this process was the appearance in the African kingdom of Hellenistic forms of vessels (kraters, askoses, lekythoi, clepsydras, etc.) and vase painting in the Greek style. As a result, a very special synthesis of artistic ideas emerged, embodied in Meroitic ceramics. Along with the local Nubian features, Egyptian and Hellenistic themes, techniques and ceramic forms are recognized there, which are characteristic for the pottery of Late and Ptolemaic Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome and allows us to see the Kingdom of Meroe as the extreme southern outpost of the Hellenistic world.

Unfaithful Bride The Matrimonial Practice of the Hellenistic Judaism in the Light of Sources from the Jewish Politeuma in Herakleopolis (144/3 – 133/2 BC)SummaryThe author is dealing with a Greek papyrus from Herakleopolis in Egypt where a Jewish politeuma is attested in the second half of the 2nd century BC (P.Polit.Iud. 4, 12 January 134 BC). This is a complaint by one Philotas, son of Philotas, a member of the politeuma, against Lysimachos, who had given his daughter Nikaia to him as a wife. After there Lysimachos changed his mind and gave his daughter to another man without receiving from Philotas the “customary bill of divorce” (to eithismenon tou apostasiou bublion). This document contributes to the discussion on the attitude of Hillel the Elder (Tosefta Ketubbot 4,9, and parallels) and Philo of Alexandria (De spec. leg. 3,72) concerning the legal situation of the spouses during the period separating the two stages of Jewish marriage, qiddushin and nissui’in. In the time of Philo and Hillel, the pregnancy of Mary (Matt. 1,18-25), the mother of Jesus, falls, from a judicial perspective, into the same category. Thanks to the Herakleopolis papyrus, the texts of Philo, Hillel and Matthew receive corroborating testimony from a source of unquestionable plausibility.

One of the most intriguing motifs of Egyptian religious iconography is the representation of ‘pantheos’, a composite deity with additional animal heads and other animal attributes, as well as magical and religious symbols. This group is commonly described in Egyptology as pantheistic, although the new definition of ‘polymorphic’ has recently been proposed. This term does not lean towards any particular area of interpretation, but simply refers to a single visual aspect of the motif.The group of Late Egyptian, Ptolemaic and Roman objects with this type of representation consists of statuettes, magical stelae, amulets, illustrations on papyri and gems. The main feature of polymorphic deities is their additional animal elements, which are attached to the basic corpus. These elements are mostly heads, wings and other parts of the animal’s body, although polymorphic depictions also sometimes contain ithyphallic or androgynous elements. The most important element of polymorphic iconography and its interpretation is the multi-headed nature of the images. This suggests both that complicated thought processes created the composition of the depictions and that they had a close relationship to magic and religion. A polymorphic representation was not a simple visualisation of just one religious idea or god, but was testament to the diverse thinking behind popular and official beliefs in ancient Egypt in the second half of the 1st millennium BC and in later times. The debate on polymorphism centres either on the possible search for a personal, universal god with a solar, hidden aspect or focuses on the magical, practical dimension, which provided protection for the people from evil powers and dangers.

The debate over the dating of the Santorini (Thera) volcanic eruption has seen sustained efforts to criticize or challenge the radiocarbon dating of this time horizon. We consider some of the relevant areas of possible movement in the14C dating—and, in particular, any plausible mechanisms to support as late (most recent) a date as possible. First, we report and analyze data investigating the scale of apparent possible14C offsets (growing season related) in the Aegean-Anatolia-east Mediterranean region (excluding the southern Levant and especially pre-modern, pre-dam Egypt, which is a distinct case), and find no evidence for more than very small possible offsets from several cases. This topic is thus not an explanation for current differences in dating in the Aegean and at best provides only a few years of latitude. Second, we consider some aspects of the accuracy and precision of14C dating with respect to the Santorini case. While the existing data appear robust, we nonetheless speculate that examination of the frequency distribution of the14C data on short-lived samples from the volcanic destruction level at Akrotiri on Santorini (Thera) may indicate that the average value of the overall data sets is not necessarily the most appropriate14C age to use for dating this time horizon. We note the recent paper of Soter (2011), which suggests that in such a volcanic context some (small) age increment may be possible from diffuse CO2emissions (the effect is hypothetical at this stage and hasnotbeen observed in the field), and that "if short-lived samples from the same stratigraphic horizon yield a wide range of14C ages, the lower values may be the least altered by old CO2." In this context, it might be argued that a substantive “low” grouping of14C ages observable within the overall14C data sets on short-lived samples from the Thera volcanic destruction level centered about 3326–3328 BP is perhaps more representative of the contemporary atmospheric14C age (without any volcanic CO2contamination). This is a subjective argument (since, in statistical terms, the existing studies using the weighted average remain valid) that looks to support as late a date as reasonable from the14C data. The impact of employing this revised14C age is discussed. In general, a late 17th century BC date range is found (to remain) to be most likelyeven ifsuch a late-dating strategy is followed—a late 17th century BC date range is thus a robust finding from the14C evidence even allowing for various possible variation factors. However, the possibility of a mid-16th century BC date (within ∼1593–1530 cal BC) is increased when compared against previous analyses if the Santorini data are considered in isolation.

The article is based on the research conducted by the authors. The houses from the ancient town discovered in 1985 on the Mediterranean coast at the location of today’s Marina el-Alamein, are among the rare remains of Egyptian residential buildings from Hellenistic and Roman times. There are few remains of houses from this period in major cities, including the capital of Alexandria. The ancient town, which functioned under the influence of nearby Alexandria, developed from the second century BC to the sixth century AD. Various types of buildings, relatively well preserved here, provide information on a reduced scale about the architecture of Alexandria, as well as the lives of its inhabitants. This also applies in particular to residential houses, their décor and colours. The ancient town of Marina el-Alamein can be seen as demonstrating solutions that are more common. The present article aims to analyse the preserved remains of painting decoration in the main spaces of houses and attempts to reconstruct forms and the principles of their creation on the background of better-known solutions from other regions. Houses in Marina generally implemented layouts defined by flagstone-paved portico courtyards, sporadically taking the form of an incomplete peristyle, and reception halls oikos, which could be accompanied by smaller adjoining rooms. Both the columns and entablature with the cornices of the porticoes as well as the walls of the main rooms were painted. Wall decoration was organised by geometric partitions, filled in variously. The aedicula that served religious purposes, placed centrally in the rear walls of the main reception rooms, was also polychrome. The painted decoration can be reconstructed from the preserved remains, as rich and intensely colourful, similar to Hellenistic and Roman layouts from other regions, but differing in details.

This article addresses the problem of the cross-­cultural dialogue between Egypt and Rome on the example of the image of the Nile, visually embodied in the Nilotic scenes. The geographical scope of the research is limited to the territory of Italy, since this region most accurately reflected the Roman perception of Egyptian culture and was least dependent on the historical prejudices of inhabitants of other provinces of the Roman Empire. It is emphasized that the particularity of the Nilotic scenes is that they are based not on a set of predetermined illustrations of the daily life of the Egyptians, but on a stylistic image that unites the themes of the Nile Flood. Simultaneously, the Nilotic scenes under study have several common features. First, there always is an image of the water element, which in most cases is quite accurately identified as a river valley. Second, there is a typical Nilotic flora and fauna. Third, images of river vessels often occur: from single reed shuttles to ships with deck superstructures and a crew of several people. Fourth and finally, the inhabitants of the Nile Valley are represented as dwarfs. The conclusion is that the political component, which was supposed to remind of the events of the late first century BC, was embodied in special ways of artistic expression of Egyptian realities, particularly in the appearance of dwarfs in the Nilotic scenes. In certain cases, the political context could also be highlighted with colour, such as in the frescoes from the cubicula of the House of Livia on the Palatine Hill, where the yellow frame symbolizes the Golden Age and the glory of Augustus, recalling his victory over Egypt. Generally, the given research suggests that, from the reign of the Julio-­Claudians on, the image of the Nile gradually became involved in the process of transformation of the topoi of the Egyptian civilization into symbols of the new Roman imperial culture. Egypt became a part of the Roman world, and the empire accepted and accommodated cultural diversity of the new province.

The authors of this paper presented the key moments in the development of proctology, a medical discipline which is an integral part of surgery, whose development path was inseparable from the historical development of operational medicine. Even in the ancient Egypt, proctology was an important branch of medicine. Out of eight of so far known medical papyri in the history of proctology, the most important one is the Beatty`s (Chester Beatty) papyrus from the 13th century BC, which is actually a short monograph on diseases of the anus and their treatment. In the ancient period, operative proctology reached the highest level in the time of Hippocrates. In detail, and with special care, the operative procedures of the large intestine, primarily perianal fistula and hemorrhoids were described in the Hippocratic writings. One of the most famous Roman medical writers, Celsus (Cornelius Celsus Asullus) described the surgery of hemorrhoids by their ligature and the surgery of anorectal fistula in two ways: ligation of the fistula channel by string of raw flax and fistula incision through the probe placed through the fistula channel. Doctors of the 18th and the 19th century introduced into practice some more complicated surgical procedures in the treatment of anorectal diseases. The French surgeons were the leaders. In 1710, Littr? performed, for the first time, anus praeter naturalis and Jacques Lisfranc (1790-1847) pioneered the method of perineal resection of the rectum for cancer. The first rectoscope was constructed in 1895 and in 1903 it was introduced into practice by Kelly (Kelly Howard Atwood). A sudden progress in the diagnosis and treatment of anorectal diseases occurred after the Second World War and the trend has continued to this day.

Two Late Minoan IIIA1 cups were recently found in the excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel. They were part of a larger assemblage of local Late Bronze IIA (first half of the fourteenth century bc) drinking and eating vessels sealed under a destruction layer in one room of a large edifice, presumably a ‘palace’. A commemorative scarab bearing the name of Amenhotep III and related to the first Jubilee (Sed festival) in his thirtieth regnal year was found alongside the cups, providing further chronological evidence. This article examines the Late Minoan IIIA1 cups from Beth-Shemesh within their Aegean context and emphasises their close affinity with comparable cups from the palace of Knossos, catalogued and republished here. The Tel Beth-Shemesh cups are the second occurrence – after Sellopoulo Tomb 4 – of Knossian Late Minoan IIIA1 pottery found together with Amenhotep III's scarab. This new evidence strengthens the likelihood of some chronological overlap between Late Minoan IIIA1 and the reign of this Pharaoh. The article also considers the biography of the two Minoan cups, as social agents within the intricate network of the Late Bronze Age palatial gift exchange in the eastern Mediterranean. While it is possible that the cups came to Beth-Shemesh directly from Knossos, another viable option is that they arrived as a gift from the Egyptian court. The two rare Late Minoan IIIA1 Knossian cups could have reached Egypt on the occasion of Amenhotep III's much-discussed official embassy to the Aegean – including Knossos – and then been sent as royal gifts to the ruler of Beth-Shemesh.

The apocalyptic book of the prophet Daniel attracted the special attention of Christian scholars, both in the early centuries and in the Reformation era. The famous reformer Martin Luther wrote an introduction-commentary to this eschatological book. This article demonstrates Martin Luther's interpretation of the prophetic passage Dan 10-12. In order to better understand why there is such diversity in the interpretations of apocalyptic symbols in Dan 10-12, it is important to pay attention to the history of the interpretation of these chapters, in particular how they were interpreted by the Reformers. Despite the fact that there are many works dedicated to Martin Luther's eschatology and his interpretation of the apocalyptic books, there are still no studies that would deeply analyze the interpretation of Dan 10-12. Therefore, the purpose of this work is a comprehensive analysis of the reformer's interpretation of the apocalyptic passage Dan 10-12. It has been found that Luther used the historicist method in his interpretation of the book of Daniel, but in relation to Dan. 10-12 his approach is more in line with the futurist school of interpretation. It is investigated that Martin Luther considered Dan 8 and Dan 11 parallel sections that talk about the same events. Commenting on Chapter 11, Luther devotes a fairly extensive part of his interpretation to Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 BC), whom he considered a symbol of the papacy. The reformer wrote that the antichrist in Dan 11:36-45 is the papal system. The identification of the papacy as the antichrist was commonplace for many reformers in the context of interpreting apocalyptic symbols. It is found that the presence of Antiochus in the prophecy of Dan. 11, as presented by the theologian, does not find an exegetical basis. Arguments are shown that the prophet Daniel did not mean King Antiochus IV in Dan. 11: 21-45. It has been studied that Luther interpreted the king of the south as the kingdom of Egypt, where the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled, and the king of the north as the Syrian kingdom, where the Seleucid dynasty ruled. The Reformer used the books of the Maccabees in his interpretation. Martin Luther believed that he was living in the last days provided by the prophecies of the book of Daniel, when at the time of the Second Coming of Christ all the righteous will be saved. It was found that the theologian emphasized that the book of Daniel strengthens the faith of Christians and is important for spiritual growth.

Целью статьи является рассмотрение последовательно сменявших друг друга форм аскетического идеала в Египте, способствовавших переходу от античных социокультурных ориентиров к новой системе христианских общественно значимых ценностей и норм. Во II в. до н.э. парадоксы крайних воплощений религиозной аскезы, чуждые традиционной египетской ментальности, вызывали негативную реакцию со стороны приверженцев общепринятых мировоззренческих стереотипов, которая проявлялась в актах варварской агрессии. По мере смещения мировоззренческих парадигм к христианству смещался и вектор агрессии: в III–IV вв. ее объектами становились уже сторонники прежних стереотипов. Являясь, с одной стороны, выражением экзистенциального кризиса своего времени, египетские аскезы в то же время несли в себе мощный цивилизационный потенциал, включивший механизм перехода общественного сознания от Поздней Античности к Раннему Средневековью. Инверсия варварства и цивилизации в оценках этих исторических процессов современниками и последующими поколениями была неизбежна. В сплаве идей, представлений, общественных ориентиров и ценностей выкристаллизовывался вектор развития будущего христианского культурного сообщества, породившего в качестве своего стержня явление монашества с его социальной ролью «патрона», «заступника» и «посредника», характерной для позднеантичного сознания и перепереосмысленной в рамках новой системы ценностей. Однако без ранней формы аскезы катохов, воплотивших первоначальный аскетический идеал, эволюционный скачок в истории мировоззрений был бы невозможен. Ни в российской ни в зарубежной научной литературе не освещалась историческая роль катохов и не рассматривались египетские аскезы в аспекте их взаимосвязи. The purpose of the article is to consider the successive forms of the ascetic ideal in Egypt, which contributed to the transition from ancient socio-cultural guidelines to a new system of Christian socially significant values and norms. In the second century BC, the paradoxes of extreme embodiments of religious asceticism, alien to the traditional Egyptian mentality, caused a negative reaction from adherents of generally accepted ideological stereotypes, which was manifested in acts of barbaric aggression. As the worldview paradigms shifted to Christianity, the vector of aggression also shifted: in the III–IV centuries its objects were already supporters of the previous stereotypes. Being, on the one hand, an expression of the existential crisis of their time, Egyptian asceticism at the same time carried a powerful civilizational potential, which included a mechanism for the transition of public consciousness from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. The inversion of barbarism and civilization in the assessments of these historical processes by contemporaries and subsequent generations was inevitable. In the fusion of ideas, ideas, social guidelines and values, the vector of development of the future Christian cultural community was crystallized, which gave rise to the phenomenon of monasticism as its core, with its social role of “patron”, “intercessor” and “mediator”, characteristic of the late Antique consciousness and reinterpreted within the framework of a new system of values. However, without the early form of asceticism of the Catholics, who embodied the original ascetic ideal, an evolutionary leap in the history of worldviews would have been impossible. Neither Russian nor foreign scientific literature has covered the historical role of the Catholics and has not considered Egyptian asceticism in the aspect of their relationship.

Natural asphalt (or bitumen) deposits, oil seepage and liquid oil shows are widespread in the Middle East, especially in the Zagros mountains of Iran. Ancient people from northern Iraq, south–west Iran and the Dead Sea area extensively used this ubiquitous natural resource until the Neolithic period (7000 to 6000 BC). Evidence of earlier use has been recently documented in the Syrian desert near (Boëda et al. 1996) near El Kown, where bitumen–coated flint implements, dated to 40,000 BC (Mousterian period), have been unearthed. This discovery at least proves that bitumen was used by Neanderthal populations as hafting material to fix handles to their flint tools. Numerous testimonies, proving the importance of this petroleum–based material in Ancient civilizations, were brought to light by the excavations conducted in the Near East as of the beginning of the century. Bitumen remains show a wide range of uses that can be classified under several headings. First of all, bitumen was largely used in Mesopotamia and Elam as mortar in the construction of palaces (e.g. the Darius Palace in Susa), temples, ziggurats (e.g. the so–called ‘Tower of Babel’ in Babylon), terraces (e.g. the famous ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’) and exceptionally for roadway coating (e.g. the processional way of Babylon). Since the Neolithic, bitumen served to waterproof containers (baskets, earthenware jars, storage pits), wooden posts, palace grounds (e.g. in Mari and Haradum), reserves of lustral waters, bathrooms, palm roofs, etc. Mats, sarcophagi, coffins and jars, used for funeral practices, were often covered and sealed with bitumen. Reed and wood boats were also caulked with bitumen. Abundant lumps of bituminous mixtures used for that particular purpose have been found in storage rooms of houses at Ra's al–Junayz in Oman. Bitumen was also a widespread adhesive in antiquity and served to repair broken ceramics, fix eyes and horns on statues (e.g. at Tell al–Ubaid around 2500 BC). Beautiful decorations with stones, shells, mother of pearl, on palm trees, cups, ostrich eggs, musical instruments (e.g. the Queen's lyre) and other items, such as rings, jewellery and games, have been excavated from the Royal tombs in Ur. They are on view in the British Museum. With a special enigmatic material, commonly referred to as ‘bitumen mastic’, the inhabitants of Susa sculpted masterpieces of art which are today exhibited in the Louvre Museum in Paris. This unique collection is presented in a book by Connan and Deschesne (1996). Last, bitumen was also considered as a powerful remedy in medical practice, especially as a disinfectant and insecticide, and was used by the ancient Egyptians to prepare mixtures to embalm the corpses of their dead. Modern analytical techniques, currently applied in the field of petroleum geochemistry, have been adapted to the study of numerous archaeological bituminous mixtures found in excavations. More than 700 bituminous samples have been analysed during the last decade, using gas chromatography alone and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry and isotopic chemistry (carbon and hydrogen mainly). These powerful tools, focused on the detailed analysis of biomarkers in hydrocarbon fractions, were calibrated on various well–known natural sources of bitumen in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Bahrain and Kuwait. These reference studies have made it possible to establish the origins of bitumen from numerous archaeological sites and to document the bitumen trade routes in the Middle East and the Arabo–Persian Gulf. Using a well–documented case history, Tell el ‘Oueili (5800 to 3500 BC) in South Mesopotamia, we will illustrate in this paper how these new molecular and isotopic tools can help us to recognize different sources of bitumen and to trace the ancient trade routes through time. These import routes were found to vary with major cultural and political changes in the area under study. A second example, referring to the prehistoric period, describes bitumen traces on flint implements, dated from Mousterian times. This discovery, from the Umm El Tlel excavations near El Kown in Syria, was reported in 1996 in Boëda et al . At that time, the origin of the bitumen had not been elucidated due to contamination problems. Last year, a ball of natural oil–stained sands, unearthed from the same archaeological layer, allowed us to determine the source of the bitumen used. This source is regional and located in the Jebel Bichri, nearly 40 km from the archaeological site. The last case history was selected to illustrate another aspect of the investigations carried out. Recent geochemical studies on more than 20 balms from Egyptian mummies from the Intermediate, Ptolemaic and Roman periods have revealed that these balms are composed of various mixtures of bitumen, conifer resins, grease and beeswax. Bitumen occurs with the other ingredients and the balms studied show a great variety of molecular compositions. Bitumen from the Dead Sea area is the most common source but some other sources (Hit in Iraq?) are also revealed by different molecular patterns. The absolute amount of bitumen in balms varies from almost zero to 30% per weight.

For more than a quarter century, computed axial tomography (CT) has given Egyptologists an increasingly sophisticated, non-invasive means of examining the interior of mummified bodies. What has been lacking from mummy studies to date is a regional focus confining itself to a single, defined population which makes its comparisons within narrowly defined limits of time and space. A study of Akhmimic mummies, hundreds of which entered the museum collections of Europe, America and elsewhere late in the 19th century, promises to greatly benefit the study of Egyptian mummification generally while gathering specific data on Akhmim’s priestly population of the Ptolemaic period (332-30 BC). Recent CT examination of two female mummies from Akhmim has underscored the importance of considering features other than those on the traditional list of mummy contents. While amulets, visceral packets, and linen wadding have been noted for years, it is clear that they existed side by side with objects that, while difficult to classify, were equally deliberate and significant. The Akhmim Studies Consortium has been established to increase our knowledge of these poorly understood aspects of the embalming process as it existed at Akhmim and in surrounding locale

Topic: polymorphic iconography in Egyptian religious iconography - special and separate types of mixed, theriomorphic and combined images / icons / forms, always with animal heads, double pairs of wings, phallus, and other magical symbols. Archaeological evidence: images appear on small size flat amulets, papyri fragments (also serving as amulets), bronze statuettes and magical healing statues. Textual evidence: lack of distinctive proper names Place: Egypt, without special area of provenance Date: Late Period (7th – 4th centuries BC), Ptolemaic and Roman Periods (from 4th century BC) Important terms:Pantheistic as an idea of all-embracing god (Pantheos)ba as an emanation / form / manifestation of a god, significantly associated with the image of the god. The animals were ba of gods.bau - strength, power, good and bad at the same time, affecting the whole world, and humans in particular. With the help of magic bau can be manipulated, to ensure people health and success. DeitesBes – Egyptian god – demon, present in magical context, protector of maternity, life, music, safety, with strong solar interpretation, often depicted as a dwarfTutu (Tithoes) – popular especially as Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt deity; main role was to repel negative powers and to protect people in danger; depicted as sphinx with mixed animal and magical attributesLamashtu – female Mesopotamian goddess / demon, who preys on mothers and children, depicted in magical context with animal elementsPazuzu – male Babylonian and Assyrian demonic god with rather beneficent, magical role, depicted with animal elementsNine–Shaped (Enneamorfos) – figure present in written Greek Magical Papyri, defined as composed of nine forms, especially of animal origin with magic function and Egyptian genesis Key problem: distribution of polymorphic iconography in other cultures, parallels, influences on the visual level (codification of symbols) and also on the ideological level (magical activity hidden / symbolised in a representation) Question of the talk: to define potential influences in the Near Eastern perspective - is the polymorphic idea specific to one culture or common to all ancient religious thinking about deities?

AbstractHerod “the Great”, king of Judea in the second half of the first century BC, was known for his building projects, wealth, and political power. Two of his personal calcite-alabaster bathtubs, found in the Kypros fortress and the palace of Herodium, are among the very limited archaeological evidence of his private life. It seemed plausible that they were imported from Egypt, the main source of calcite-alabaster in ancient periods. Yet, the recent identification of a calcite quarry in the Te’omim cave, Israel, challenges this hypothesis. Here, we developed an approach for identification of the source of calcite-alabaster, by combination of four analytical methods: ICP, FTIR, ssNMR and isotope ratio. These methods were then applied to Herod’s bathtubs demonstrating that they were indeed quarried in Israel rather than in Egypt.

The people known as Etruscans is actually an important folk group formed by the mingling of Anatolian Trojans and Scythians of Turkish origin in Italy and transforming the existing village culture in Italy into urban culture. While Greeks called them Tyrsenes or Tyrhenes, Romans called this people Tuscanians or Etruscans. However, the Etruscans called themselves Rasenna. The Trojans who emerged as the representatives of the Eastern Block in the Trojan War, which is regarded as the first great struggle of the Eastern and Western worlds in human history, were defeated by the Achaeans representing the West at the end of a ten-years struggle. After a while, the Trojans, who had to participated in the Sea Peoples Migration, found themselves at the gates of Egypt. The Trojans, who participated in both the first and second stages of the Sea Peoples Migration, unfortunately lost their struggle against the Egyptian Pharaohs. Having to return to their homeland in Çanakkale region, the Trojans, seeing that their homeland had become uninhabitable, migrated to the İzmir region. However, because of the Achaean immigrants who migrated to this region from Greece, they left Anatolia completely at the beginning of the 10 th century BC and migrated to the Toscana region of Italy by sea. About two centuries after this event, we come across two Turkish tribes who entered Anatolia over the Caucasus. These are Scythian and Cimmerian tribes. The Cimmerians, who established hegemony over Anatolia for about 80 years, also abolished the Phrygian Kingdom in Central Anatolia. According to Herodotos, the Scythians, who entered Anatolia after the Cimmerians and ruled Eastern Anatolia for 28 years, invaded the Southern Russia lands emptied by the Cimmerians and established the Great Scythian Empire there. But, some groups of the Scythians continued their march in the west direction and reached the West Anatolia shores and immigrated to Italy from here by ships. This group of the Scythians and the Trojans, who had previously immigrated to Italy, mingled and merged and paved the way for the formation of a new community in Italy where the Turkishness features predominated, who are called the Etruscans or Tursacanians. In this study, we will try to reveal what role the Etruscans played in the formation of Roman civilization in the light of written and archaeological sources.

Editoriallist, Liszt, mist, quist (Dialect wood pigeon), wrist, grist, tryst, cyst, cist (box holding ritual objects), schist, whist, twist, xyst (long portico) (Fergusson 270)“Everyone uses lists,” Francis Spufford (2) tells us. Lists are all pervasive; they are part-and-parcel of how we experience and make sense of the world. According to Umberto Eco, the whole history of creative production can be seen as one that is characterised by an “infinity of lists” comprising, to name a few, visual lists (sixteenth century religious paintings, Dutch still life paintings), pragmatic or utilitarian lists (shopping lists, library catalogues, assets in a will), poetic or literary lists (such as in Joyce or Sebald, for instance), lists of places, lists of things (like the great list of ships in the Iliad), and so on, ad infinitum... In accordance with such variation in form comes great variation in purpose, with lists used to “enumerate, account, remind, memorialize, order,” and so on (Belknap 6). List making, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star point out, “has frequently been seen as one of the foundational activities of advanced human society” (137): to cite three examples, list making is argued to be crucial to our understanding of orality and the development of literacy (Goody 74-111), and to the connection between these and later forms and techniques of information management (Hobart and Schiffman), as well as to our appreciation of the functioning and value of narrativity (White). In this way, Robert Belknap perhaps has a point in proposing that, “The list form is the predominant mode of organizing data relevant to human functioning in the world” (8).Simply defined, a list is “a formally organized block of information that is composed of a set of members” (Belknap 15). What is significant about a list is that it is “simultaneously the sum of its parts and the individual parts themselves” (15). That is to say, like links in a chain, “the list joins and separates at the same time” (15). In addition to these features, Jack Goody also suggests that, across their various manifestations, lists have a number of basic characteristics or conventions concerning how they are constructed and read, which, appropriately, he lists as follows:The list relies on discontinuity rather than continuity; it depends on physical placement, on location; it can be read in different directions, both sideways and downwards, up and down, as well as left and right; it has a clear-cut beginning and a precise end, that is, a boundary, an edge, like a piece of cloth. Most importantly it encourages the ordering of the items, by number, by initial sound, by category, etc. And the existence of boundaries, external and internal, brings greater visibility to categories, at the same time as making them more abstract. (Goody 81)Just as boundaries are “an important attribute” (Goody 80) of the list and how each is compiled, so too are semantic boundary disputes for how we conceive of the list vis-à-vis other forms of enumeration. If one were to compose a list of lists, Belknap suggests, it “would include the catalogue, the inventory, the itinerary, and the lexicon” (2). This is, however, a problematic typology insofar as each item can be seen to hold subtle differences in form and purpose from the list, as Belknap is quick to point out: “The catalogue is more comprehensive, conveys more information, and is more amenable to digression than the list. In the inventory, words representing names or things are collected by a conceptual principle.” (2-3) In his discussion of lists in literature, Spufford extends the first of these distinctions by drawing a qualitative distinction between the list (“In a list, almost everything that makes writing interesting to read seems inevitably to be excluded,” 1) and the catalogue (“Rather richer, and a step closer to the complex intentions and complex effects of literature proper, are the catalogues of some sorts of collections,” 3). Elsewhere, the close associations, and difficulties in differentiating, between the list and the classification system has also been noted (Bowker and Star, 137-61). While we recognise these delicate, at times almost imperceptible but nonetheless significant differences in meaning, in this special issue we take an expansive and inclusive approach to the list form and the implications of lists and listing. One (deceptively simple) distinction that is productive in framing this themed issue and the essays included in it is that which Belknap (3-5) draws between literary lists, on the one hand, and pragmatic or utilitarian lists, on the other hand. According to Belknap, literary lists are “complex in precisely the way a pragmatic list must not be” (5). Belknap, like Spufford before him, takes up and explores these “complexities” of literary lists in great detail. Two contributions to this special issue engage with the intricacies of the literary list. In the first of these, Darren Tofts, in his evocatively titled piece “Why Writers Hate the Second Law of Thermodynamics; Lists, Entropy, and the Sense of Unending,” examines the list form as it is mobilised by a range of writers, from Beckett and Borges, to Joyce and Robbe-Grillet. Tofts explores the exhaustion and tilt towards entropy that “issues from the tireless pursuit of categorisation, classification, and the mania for ordered information” by each of these diverse writers, and the way that words themselves tend to resist entropy by taking on “a weird half-life of their own” and sustaining “an unlikely […] stoical sense of unending.” Quite a different treatment of literary lists is offered by Tom Lee in his essay “The Lists of W. G. Sebald.” Focusing on the novel The Rings of Saturn, Lee explores the way that Sebald mobilises literary lists as a crucial device in his exploration and interrogation of the question, in Lee’s words, of what “might lay ahead for books if the question of what writing can be is asked continually as part of a writer’s enterprise.” But to focus solely on literary lists is to obscure or ignore other vital dimensions of lists and listing, such as the way that pragmatic listing forms (not just their literary counterparts) can be put to powerful rhetorical use (Belknap 3). Bowker and Star capture this well in the following passage:The material culture of bureaucracy and empire is not found in pomp and circumstance, nor even in the first instance of the point of a gun, but rather at the point of a list. (Bowker and Star 137)This is something that has been evident to a number of writers and thinkers, not least Foucault, who, in his The Order of Things, for example, sought to delineate the rise of the great natural history taxonomies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in terms of their productive power as authoritative forms of classification. Foucault’s exploration of these connections can be said to have fed his subsequent theorisations of “governmentality”—which Judith Butler summarises as “a mode of power concerned with the maintenance and control of bodies and persons, the production and regulation of persons and populations” (52)—and of “biopolitics”—which Foucault defines as a “set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power” (Foucault, Security 1). It is within this tradition—that takes as one of its sources the work of Foucault and which runs in diverse tributaries of critical enquiry outwards in its exploration of the interconnections between lists (and other, related processes and techniques of classification) and power (see, for example, Poster)—that we can usefully situate two further essays in this issue, that by Katie Ellis and that by Suneel Jethani. Both of these essays take up lists in relation to quite distinct aspects of disabilities studies. In “Complicating a Rudimentary List of Characteristics: Communicating Disability with Down Syndrome Dolls,” Ellis brings “an interrogation of disability into dialogue with a critical analysis of the discursive function of lists” by interrogating “the use of lists in the way meanings about disability are communicated through the medical diagnostic list,” the production of Down Syndrome dolls for children, and unfavourable public reactions to these dolls. Ellis’s aim in exploring these concerns is to “complicate perceptions of disability beyond a rudimentary list of characteristics through a consideration of the negative public response to these dolls”—responses, she argues, that serve as a potent example of “the cultural subjugation of disability.” Meanwhile, in “Lists, Spatial Practice, and Assistive Technologies for the Blind,” Jethani explores the promise and perils of locative mobile media technologies designed to assist vision-impaired supermarket shoppers. Examining two prototypic applications, Shop Talk and Blind Shopping, Jethani argues that “the emancipatory potential” of these applications, “their efficacy in practical situations,” and their future commercial viability, is dependent upon commercial and institutional infrastructures and control, regulatory factors, and the extent to which they can successfully address “issues of interoperability and expanded access of spatial inventory databases and data.”The bureaucratic—or more specifically, the political economic—dimensions of pragmatic or utilitarian lists and their composition also forms the point of departure for two further essays in this issue. The first of these is Gerard Goggin’s “List Media: The Telephone Directory and the Arranging of Names.” In this feature article (one of two in this issue), Goggin examines the long history and fraught future of telephone directories and proprietary interests in them. The argument he develops is that, while telephone directories are a form of book (at least traditionally), they are in fact better thought of as a unique form of media—what he terms “list media.” Proprietary interests in lists are also the specific concern of Jean Burgess and Axel Bruns who, in their article “Twitter Archives and the Challenges of ‘Big Social Data’ for Media and Communication Research,” explore the “technical, political, and epistemological” issues that attend the corporate control of network, profit-driven database—“list”—infrastructure, such as Twitter. Notwithstanding the above considerations of power, inclusion and exclusion, ownership and control, there is one further, vital aspect of non-literary lists that warrants explicit mention here. This is the fact that pragmatic and utilitarian lists and our engagements with them are, for the most part, deeply embedded in everyday life and form part of all the routines, habits, and familiar patterns that characterise our “ordinary lives” (Highmore)—after all, to restate Spufford’s opening remark, this is the context in which “everyone uses lists” (2). The final two of the eight articles making up this themed issue examine everyday lists and the potential of lists as productive mechanisms for documenting and making sense of the ineffability of the everyday. The first of these, which also forms the first of the two feature articles, is Ben Highmore’s “Listlessness in the Archive.” This playful and poetic piece explores the challenges that a researcher faces when they attempt to tackle an archive that is the work of an army of “amateur anthropologist” volunteers who documented British lives in a project of Mass Observation. The centerpiece of the article is a series of lists compiled by the Mass-Observers of the objects on their own mantelpieces. Picking up on the theme of entropy (also explored by Tofts in this issue), Highmore describes the sense of listlessness that threatens to overwhelm his encounter with these lists. Lastly, in our article, “The Everyday Work of Lists,” we take a rather different approach to Highmore’s by exploring the work that lists do in “mediating the materiality and complexity of consumer-based everyday life.” Our guide is the French writer, Georges Perec, who, across a variety of projects and texts, deployed the list as a productive mechanism (an “invent-ory,” as we refer to it) and lever for prying open for inspection the seemingly inscrutable inner workings of everyday spaces, things, and memories. To conclude this editorial introduction, it seems only fitting that we end with a brief list of acknowledgments. We wish to thank:those at M/C Journal, Axel Bruns and Peta Mitchell, for supporting and assisting with this special issue;the authors who entrusted us with their articles, and tolerated with good humour and patience our various requests; and,the many referees for their vital contributions in reading and reviewing the articles gathered here;Simon Hayter and the Ancient Egypt website, for the banner image, a twelfth century BC papyrus list of Egyptian rulers; those authors whose insights, scholarly pursuit and use of lists inspired this issue: Robert Belknap, Jack Goody, Umberto Eco, Georges Perec…ReferencesBelknap, Robert E. The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004.Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.Butler, Judith. Precarious Life. London: Verso, 2004.Eco, Umberto. The Infinity of Lists. Trans. Alastair McEwen. 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