Mare Nostrum is a journal about the Ancient Mediterranean that has been published by the Laboratory of Studies on the Roman Empire and the Ancient Mediterranean (University of São Paulo) since 2010.
Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas
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Dying for a Drink on the Meroitic Frontier: Imported Objects in Funerary Assemblages at Faras, Sudanese Nubia
This paper examines the use of imported objects in funerary assemblages at the Meroitic cemetery of Faras in Sudanese Nubia (north Sudan). Excavated at the beginning of the 20th century by Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862-1934), Faras was situated on the frontier between the Kingdom of Meroë (c.300 BCE – 350 CE) and Ptolemaic-Roman Egypt. Its location granted it access to wide-ranging commercial networks and imported objects were frequently utilised as grave goods. Drawing upon the author’s PhD research, this paper offers a nuanced assessment of how imports were selected and used in funerary practice at Faras. It disputes the traditional idea that the Meroitic frontier functioned as an acculturated buffer of the classical world and demonstrates that, despite centuries of material contact with Egypt, the people of Faras maintained a distinctly Meroitic identity expressed through local mortuary tradition.
Copyright (c) 2022 Henry Cosmo Bishop-Wright https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Gift of the Nile? Climate change, the origins of the Egyptian civilization and Its interactions within Northeast Africa
Scholars today see the same basic landscape as Herodotus did before them in Egypt and northern Sudan, a narrow strip of green fed by the Nile and surrounded by an absolute desert. This distinctive ecology continues to play a central role in models for the origins of the ancient Egyptian state that downplay ancient Egypt’s broader African interconnections. From the 1930’s through the present day, however, a group of deep desert explorers and archaeologists have documented that during the Neolithic period much of the Sahara was a vast grassland with seasonal and perhaps permanent lakes. This paper discusses evidence from recent research, including data from the UCSB Dongola Reach Expedition and UCSB-ASU Fourth Cataract Project, that points to interlinkages between the cultures of the Upper Egyptian Nile, the Sahara and Sudanese Nubia, demonstrating how interaction combined with climate change in the form of a gradual desiccation of the Sahara contributed to the rapid emergence of the Egyptian state while maintaining robust connections across northeast Africa.
Copyright (c) 2022 Stuart Tyson Smith; Rennan Lemos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2022 Gustavo Junqueira Duarte Oliveira, Ana Paula Scarpa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Introdução ao Dossiê A Antiguidade do Nordeste Africano
Copyright (c) 2022 Fábio Frizzo, Maria Thereza David João, Rennan Lemos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Between Egypt and Azania: Afro-Asiatic Connection in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
The aim of this article is to analyse the processes of contact and integration between northeast Africa and different regions of Africa and Asia, focusing specifically on an anonymous text from the 1st century AD known as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. This document, generally read from a romanocentric perspective, will be interpreted with the analytical models of Global History. Hence, this analysis expects to show that the Egyptian ports of the Red Sea were part of an ancestral Afro-Asiatic connective system – of which the Roman Empire was not the creator, but a late participant.
Copyright (c) 2022 Otávio Luiz Vieira Pinto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Egypt, North-Eastern Africa and the Near East in the Early Bronze Age: Geopolitics and Exchanges
Egypt was part of dense network of exchanges that linked North-Eastern Africa with Eurasia and the northern Indian Ocean during the Early Bronze Age. The pharaonic monarchy has been traditionally considered the main promoter of such contacts because of the volume of its demand and its capacity to organize costly expeditions sent to neighbour territories in search of exotic and valuable goods. However, recent research also reveals the importance of modest items traded and the participation of private, non-institutional actors. This may explain why commercial activities not only did not decrease in the period that followed the crisis of the monarchy around 2160 BC but, on the contrary, flourish and boosted urban size increase and the intervention of foreign powers as allies and commercial partners.
Copyright (c) 2022 Juan Carlos Moreno García https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Diaspora after the Unesco Rescue Campaign: It's impact on displaced Nubian populations
This article swings between the analysis of UNESCO's action during the Rescue Salvage Campaign in Nubia, the management of cultural heritage (archaeological and monumental, and intangible), and the impact caused by the construction of the Aswan Dam and the forced evacuation of the Nubians populations settled in the region. The story of those displaced due to the built of the Aswan dam did not occupy as many pages of literature as did the rescue of the Sudanese and Egyptian cultural heritage (archaeological, historical, epigraphic, artistic, ethnographic, etc.). The contemporary populations that inhabited the flooded territory was soon forgotten despite they were direct inheritors to the peoples who had populated the region since prehistoric times. We deal this variety of issues in this brief contribution. Offering some reflections on the colonial past, interpretations with biases of superiority on the Nubian past, postcolonial archaeological theories, new indigenous, and collaborative archaeological practices plus the rescue anthropology.
Copyright (c) 2022 Salomé Zurinaga Fernández-Toribio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Beyond the Nile: Long term Patterns in Nomad-State Interactions across Northeast Africa
The fertility brought about by the Egyptian and Sudanese Nile Valley allowed for one of the densest urban populations in the African continent, creating a myriad of different dynasties, states, and cities that dominated trade and politics across Northeast Africa. Despite the Nile-centric axis of this world (and our study of it), almost every boundary of the Egyptian or Nubian states were bordered by desert and savannah ecologies, the abode of herders or more properly ‘pastoralist nomads’. From the Marmarica coastal steppe of the Mediterranean coast, to the Atbai Hills of the Red Sea, to the Sahel west of the Upper Nubian Nile in Kordofan, Northeast Africa was dominated by nomads. In this thinking, sedentary urban groups on the Nile are spatially the exception rather than the rule, with urban peoples occupying a thin ribbon of agricultural potential on the banks of the river and select oases. The rest of Northeast Africa was ‘nomad land’. The history of nomad-state interactions is one of constant transgression of each other’s realms, with nomadic peoples coming to the Nile for employment and grazing and Nile peoples journeying through the desert for resource exploitation and trade. This Nile-desert nexus is one of the longest documented case studies in nomad-urban interactions in world history.
Copyright (c) 2022 Julien Cooper https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Egypt and Egyptology in the pan-African discourse of Amy Jacques Garvey and Marcus Garvey
Amy Jacques Garvey and Marcus Garvey argued for the Africanity of ancient Nile Valley cultures, in direct opposition to some academics. In early 20th-century United States, incorrect narratives alleged that Africa had no history. The Garveys, and other Black intellectuals, looked to the Nile Valley to show the absurdity of that claim. The pan-Africanism of Garveyism instilled pride in African descended communities and united them against colonial structures. Pan-Africanism factored strongly in President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s conception of the modern nation-state of Egypt. Egyptian scholars from a variety of fields, including Nile Valley studies, continue to understand ancient Egypt as part of a network of African cultures. Keywords: Amy Jacques Garvey, Marcus Garvey, Gamal Abdel Nasser, pan-Africanism, Egyptology, Egypt
Copyright (c) 2022 Vanessa Davies https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Resenha de Overtoom, Nikolaus Leo. The Rise of the Parthian Empire in the Hellenistic Middle East, 2020, 396 p.
Copyright (c) 2022 Henrique Modanez de Sant’Anna https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Resenha de Burton, Paul J. Roman Imperialism, 2019, 120 p.
Copyright (c) 2022 Rafael Scopacasa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Writing, Sealing, and Managing. An approach to the documentary sources of the Third Dinasty of Ur from the Landscape Ephigraphy
In this article, we propose an approach to the administrative texts of the Third Dynasty of Ur in Mesopotamia (c. 2110-2003 BCE) – in particular, of the pisaĝ-dub-ba tablets – from a theoretical-methodological perspective that we will call Landscape Epigraphy. On the one hand, its importance lies in understanding documents in the same contexts of production, circulation, and storage, considering their semantic-internal and syntactic-structural components. On the other, it enables the understanding and recognition, based on a rigorous approach to administrative documentation, of (i) agents (human and non-human) along with their practices, (ii) objects/things (material culture), and (iii) places involved in shaping a social landscape. In the case of Lower Mesopotamia, the social landscape was composed of several provincial archives, which were subdivided into smaller and larger offices as regulators of different economic and political spheres of this period. Finally, the outlined theoretical-methodological perspective will contribute to the analysis of the Neo-Sumerian bureaucratic system, which would have been expressed through the messages contained in the documentary record and, in this way, it reinforced the legitimate voice of the center over local powers.
Copyright (c) 2022 Rodrigo Cabrera https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of A. Kouremenos & J. M. Gordon. Mediterranean Archaeologies of Insularity in an Age of Globalization. Oxford & Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2020, 284 p.
Copyright (c) 2021 Jesper Tae Jensen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Interview with Prof. Jonathan Pugh.
Copyright (c) 2021 Jonathan Pugh, Lilian de Angelo Laky, Erika Angliker https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Mare Nostrum Entrevista: Gilberto da Silva Francisco
Interview with Prof. Gilberto da Silva Francisco.
Copyright (c) 2021 Gilberto da Silva Francisco, Lilian de Angelo Laky, Erika Angliker https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Insularity and Imperial Politics: Hadrian on the Greek Islands
Since its conquest by Rome in the 2nd century BCE, Roman notables were a constant presence in Greece. While various sites on the mainland served as battlegrounds for Roman civil wars during the 1st century BCE (e.g., Pharsalus, Actium, Philippi), the early imperial period was characterized by the use of various Greek islands as places of – often self-imposed – exile and/or isolation for such notables as M. Vipsanius Agrippa (Lesbos) and Tiberius (Rhodes). Other imperial Romans sojourned in the Aegean islands for different reasons. Augustus spent a winter on Samos after his victory at Actium, using it as a temporary powerbase for the refinement of his imperial plans, and he visited it and other islands again as emperor. While the first two Julio-Claudian emperors maintained close contacts with the Greek world, in the 2nd century CE Hadrian took this connection a step further and promoted Hellenism as a major part of his imperial policy. Naturally, the Greek islands played an important role in imperial politics during his reign, but only as components of the wider Hellenic world and not as isolated entities. Hadrian visited Rhodes and Paros to restore and venerate older Hellenic monuments – the Colossus and the tomb of the poet Archilochus respectively – and possibly Samothrace in order to be initiated into the Mysteries of the Great Gods. He also visited other islands in Greece, but his exact travel itinerary can only be speculative given our fragmentary literary and epigraphic evidence. In this paper, I focus on Hadrian’s presence on the Aegean islands and argue that during his reign they served mainly as sites that allowed for the implementation of his imperial plans by virtue of their easy access from the mainland Greek and Asian provinces. Accordingly, by promoting certain aspects of older Hellenic culture on specific islands, Hadrian conferred renewed prestige to these islands in the Roman Empire.
Copyright (c) 2021 Anna Kouremenos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Stone Artifacts from Agathonisi, Dodecanese, Greece: Evidence of Insularity
The systematic excavation at Kastraki of Agathonisi island revealed the remnants of a fortified harbor, which developed commercial and political contacts with Miletos, the Ionic metropolis, and other cities of Asia Minor, as well as its neighboring or remote islands. These conclusions were provided by the well-studied findings of the excavation and can be also confirmed by the unpublished stone artifacts, such as vases, querns, and tools, which will be presented here. They were carved in local or imported rocks. The investigation of their origin elucidates the question of insularity, that is isolation and connectivity.
Copyright (c) 2021 Eirene Poupaki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Travelers in the Mediterranean: The Case for Ancient Parians
The island of Paros located in the centre of the Aegean Sea, emerged as an organized polis/state already in mid-8th century BC. Its geographical position favored early sea communications and foundation of colonies along the Mediterranean. In the article, I discuss the impressive phenomenon of itinerant Parians in the Mediterranean in relation to (a) the colonies founded by Paros in the Propontis, the North Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, (b) certain activities of travelling groups of artists in Greece proper and the periphery of the Greek world, and (c) two exceptional cases of itinerant Parians, Archilochos the poet (7th century BC) and Skopas the sculptor and architect (4th century BC). Finally, a short mention is made of another type of mobilization of fighters, under state control.
Copyright (c) 2021 Dora Katsonopoulou https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Insularity and the Unique Position of Aeolic Song in Archaic Greek Poetry
Archaic Greek poetry was a multiple phenomenon: different areas developed diverse, though interrelated genres. This article comments on the unique position Aeolic mélos had in the archaic Greek song tradition. Firstly, it points to Sappho and Alcaeus’ somewhat ambivalent reception by ancient authors. Secondly, it shows how different aspects of their corpus exhibit a pattern of communication with other Greek poetry, while maintaining its own particularities. This unique status is demonstrated by an analysis of Aeolic poetic formulae. Finally, the article proposes the insular geography of Lesbos as one of the reasons for the singularity of this poetry.
Copyright (c) 2021 Tadeu Andrade https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Island on a Pendulum: Naxos Between Isolation and Connectivity
Naxos, the largest island of the Cyclades, in the center of the Archipelago, swayed over time between the two ends of the pendulum of insularity, namely between isolation and connectivity, in almost every aspect of human life (society, politics, economy, art, worship etc.). The article examines the position and importance of the island in the Archipelago but also its interaction with the neighboring mainland. It seeks the identity of its inhabitants and whether it differed from that of neighboring islands. It is a diachronic study based on the methods of Historical Archaeology, extending from the Early Iron Age to the end of the Roman period. In this respect, the limitations imposed by the material remains of the past can be overcome by the exploitation of textual evidence in conjunction with evidence found in the landscape and the natural resources. The starting point is the image of Naxos in myth and literature as a place chosen for the upbringing of gods (i.e., Zeus’ and Dionysus’) or as a deserted landscape of abandonment and pain (in the case of Ariadne). The article specifies which of these traditions are of local origin and which are panhellenic. Subsequently, local history issues related to the aspect of insularity are examined, such as: the trade of Naxian goods, the spread of Naxian coins, the mobility of Naxians as individuals (artists, professionals, pilgrims, etc.), products imports, the participation in alliances (i.e. Delian League, Second Athenian League, Nesiotic League), issues of colonization and mobility of Naxians in general etc.
Copyright (c) 2021 Alexandra S. Sfyroera https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Iron Age Cyclades and Crete: Different Approaches to Connectivity Speculatively Related to Food Security
This paper offers a case study of some of the Cycladic Islands examining connectivity and insularity between 1000 – 500 BCE. In the Cyclades, evidence of interaction with areas outside of the archipelago and of intra-island connectivity is observable on many of the islands. It will be argued that environmental factors, predominantly low rainfall, may be at least part of the explanation for the adoption of a strategy of reaching out beyond an island’s shores. Cycladic islanders plausibly sought to develop strong networks of affiliation with trading partners from other regions perhaps to serve as buffer zones to rely on during periods of poor food productivity. Compared to Cycladic material, the archaeological evidence of Cretan items found outside Crete is not as robust. This paper speculatively suggests that Cretans, living in a more fertile environment, did not feel the same need as Cycladic islanders to establish networks of affiliation for purposes of food security.
Copyright (c) 2021 Doug Forsyth https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Field Notes from the Odyssey: The Fabulous Ethnography of Aiolie, Aiaie, and Ogygie
Odysseus’ ethnographic digressions in books 9-12 of the Odyssey—the so-called Apologue—have served as the premier paradigm for mythic and actual ethnography from Herodotus through Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, and more particularly, for the ‘I-witnessing approach’ of ethnography. Among the peoples and lands and styles of thinking he encountered (Odyssey 1.3), the hero also became acquainted with several islands. As microcosms of larger societies, islands furnish ‘master metaphors’ and models with which to think about culture. In this article I discuss three islands from the Apologue in the chronological order of Odysseus’ travels. They are inseparable from their geography and the personality and ‘life style’ of their inhabitants, as will be seen; these islands adumbrate the moral and gendered mythic cartography of Archaic Greece.
Copyright (c) 2021 Ioannis Petropoulos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2021 Lilian de Angelo Laky https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Mithridates, Helianax and Late Hellenistic Delos as Global City: Urban Insularity and Integration Fields
This paper discusses the theoretical problem of the mediation between macro and micro scales of analysis in Global History, centered on the analysis of the temple of Mithridates dedicated by a certain Helianax in 102/1 BC in the Samothrakeion of Delos. After describing the available archaeological and epigraphical evidence, the paper discusses the concepts of (urban) insularity, world/global city, and integration fields, in order to explore their explanatory power for the analysis of the integration fields and modes of integration visible in Helianax’s dedication.
Copyright (c) 2021 Fábio Augusto Morales https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Plutarch and the Lagids: Representation and Imperial Advertising
This article seeks to analyze the representations of the Lagids and the Orient forged by Plutarch in Parallel Lives. Speaking from the point of view of a citizen of a Greek polis (Queroneia), who lived under Roman rule, Plutarch reconfigures facts, data and history itself, with his biographical writing that is simultaneously strategically dramatic, theatrical, emotional and moralizing. This article intends to show that Plutarch, forging the representation of the Ptolemaic dynasty, does so from an imperialist and orientalist perspective, following Roman ideology. The main analytical categories used to produce this text are imperialism, orientalism, and representation/identity. The methodology used in the analysis is based on the traditional form of the historian's work, that is, the internal and external criticism of the sources, combined with content analysis. We see that Plutarch, based on stereotyped oppositional dichotomies supported by Hellenic precepts, subordinates the Lagids and the Orient in favor of a supposed superiority based on a cultural and moral hierarchy, like in the Roman propaganda.
Copyright (c) 2021 Felipe Aiala de Mello Mello https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Would It Be Lawfull to Take the Sword, When the Lord Proclaims Whoever Uses the Sword Will Perish for It? Tertullian and Military Service Controversy (3rd Century)
This article aims to analyze the thinking of the North African writer Tertullian regarding the controversy of Christian military service. For that, we selected two of his works, namely: De Idololatria and De Corona. The question raised by Tertullian in these treaties shows a Christianity concerned not only with maintaining the status quo of a Christian ethic, considering all the controversies surrounding military service itself (sacrifices to the gods and the emperor and the obligation to torture and murder enemies), but, above all, it exposes an urgent need for identity differentiation with its rival cult, Mithraism, which gathered a large part of its followers in the Roman military ranks.
Copyright (c) 2021 Ludimila Caliman Campos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of Brosius, M. A History of Ancient Persia: The Achaemenid Empire: Hoboken, Nwe Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021, 288 p.
Copyright (c) 2021 Matheus Treuk Medeiros de Araujo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Archaeology of an ancient procession: the practice of πομπή between Athens and Eleusis in the Roman Period (2nd - 3rd AD)
This article aims to identify the particularities of the procession celebrated between Athens and Eleusis during the Eleusinian Mysteries in the Roman Period (II - III AD) based on evidences found in sources of different natures (textual, topographic/architectural and epigraphic). It seeks to understand aspects related to the permanence of the Eleusinian ancestral tradition and to identify innovations typical of the Roman historical strata, whose evidence can be observed both in the organization of the procession and in the building interventions on sanctuaries (Eleusis and the City Eleusinion in Athens) and the Sacred Way (hierá hodós).
Copyright (c) 2021 Felipe Perissato https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2021 Ana Paula Scarpa, Pedro Luís de Toledo Piza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The informal colonialism of Egyptology: from the French expedition to the Security State
This contribution is a critical review of the colonial history of the academic discipline of Egyptology. It traces the development of the field from its early days under European colonialism and intra-European geopolitical competition to the advent of Egyptian control in recent times. A vehicle for western interests in Northeast Africa, the exploration of Egypt’s ancient past was framed as part of a civilizing mission where Europe would wrest Egypt from the claws of Ottoman domination and restore the land to its former greatness. Through the Christian Bible and the former Greek and Roman rule, Egypt was positioned as an early form of western civilization, therefore bolstering European claims over the area and enabling the appropriation of Egyptian history. European scholars, fostering the idea of ancient Egypt as a paternalist paradise lost, created a westernized and western-central framework for its study, which still inspires the standards of knowledge production today and shows in the geographic centers and primary languages of scholarly output. Egyptians, increasingly autonomous since the formal decolonization in the 1950s, subsequently adopted and retained the established practices when formal control over the Egyptian past went over to them. The colonial narratives of old were used to bolster tourism as a vital economy and went on to serve Egyptian nationalism and the legitimization of the existing power relations, framing Egyptian history as one of continuous strongman rule. The paper traces this transition from formal to informal colonialism while discussing it against decolonial concepts like the colonial matrix of power.
Copyright (c) 2021 Christian Langer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0