Six-Legged Livestock

2021 ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher

This chapter relates the history of the well-known Western honey bees Apis mellifera, just one of 20,000 species of bees. It relates how honey bees originated in Asia, where they nested in tree cavities, from which humans robbed honey. Beekeeping arose as a mutualistic relationship, providing shelter for bees in exchange for consistent access to their products and was prominent in ancient Egypt, from where the practice moved to Western Asia and Europe. Honey bees were taken to North America in 1622 by colonists needing pollinators of food crops. The chapter explains the major roles honey bees play as pollinators of crops, enabling a diversity of food in modern diets and providing billions of dollars in economic benefit. Uniting flowering plants with pollinators means we raise honey bees as six-legged livestock, manipulating and moving the bees to meet human needs. Honey bees face modern threats, and threats to bees are threats to our food supply.

Author(s):  
Carolyn Routledge

Since Flinders Petrie, the importance of Western Asia to the history and development of culture in ancient Egypt has been recognized by scholars and has also been a significant driver in shaping Egyptological methodology and theoretical approaches. The study of relations between Western Asia and Egypt encompasses a wide range of specialisms given the broad range of evidence, the geographical breadth, and the academic disciplines involved. This chapter reviews the history of the study of relations between Western Asia and Egypt pointing to a selection of challenges scholars face in undertaking their research, and examines two case studies: theories concerning the role of Western Asia in the rise of the state, and the assessment of Egypt’s New Kingdom Empire in Canaan to illustrate the ways in which scholarly challenges are met and the resulting historical conclusions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136-141
Author(s):  
VLADIMIR V. EMELIANOV ◽  

The article publishes two letters of the Russian philosopher and writer V.V. Rozanov to the master of general history B.A. Turaev. The letters were found in the archives of the State Hermitage Museum in a folder of documents from unidentified correspondents of Turaev. One letter has no date, the second one is dated October 13, 1898. The data from the letters found allow dating Rozanov and Turaev's acquaintance to no earlier than May 9, 1898, when the debate on Turaev's master's thesis “God Thoth” took place. In the first letter Rozanov introduces himself to Turaev and asks permission to call at him to discuss topics on the history of ancient Egypt, which Rozanov was interested in. In the second letter, Rozanov thanks Turaev for reprints of articles and expresses his views on a number of issues related to these papers. Both letters are viewed against the background of Rozanov's Egyptian myth and Rozanov's controversial attitude toward professional Egyptologists.


Author(s):  
Marilyn Booth

This chapter juxtaposes Fawwaz’s use of female biography with selected works by male contemporaries that include biographies or mention of famous women. These comprise a treatise on marriage by Hamza Fathallah; a translation of a French history of ancient Egypt focusing on women, authored by Georges Paturet and translated by ‘Ali Jalal; a history of pre-Islamic women by Habib al-Zayyat al-Dimashqi; and a marriage and conduct manual for young men, by Husayn Fawzi. They all differ markedly from Fawwaz’s dictionary, in emphasis and subject choice. It is fascinating that several Arab male intellectuals of the late 19th century wrote on the ancient history of women in the region, but what kinds of messages did their works yield?


Abusir ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslav Verner

This chapter focuses on Memphis, a metropolis of ancient Egypt, and the possibility that it was the site of the remains of monumental temples, royal residences, palaces, and many other urban features. Meni, the legendary unifier of Egypt and founder of the First Dynasty at the turn of the fourth to third millennium BC, is credited with the founding of Memphis. It is believed that, in addition to the stronghold, Meni also founded the Temple of Ptah, the chief god of the new royal seat. The chapter traces the history of Memphis and describes the district of the Temple of Ptah, along with the pyramids, royal tombs, and other structures located in the city. It also considers some of the deities who had their cult in Memphis, including Hathor. Finally, it looks at the pharaohs who built their tombs in Memphis.


2021 ◽  
pp. 73-110
Author(s):  
Gojko Barjamovic

The history of empire begins in Western Asia. This chapter tracks developments in the second and first millennia BCE as imperial control in the region became increasingly common and progressively more pervasive. Oscillations between political fragmentation and imperial unification swung gradually toward the latter, from just a few documented examples in the third millennium BCE to the more-or-less permanent partition of Western Asia into successive imperial states from the seventh century BCE until the end of World War I. The chapter covers about a dozen empires and empire-like states, tracing developments of territoriality and notions of imperial universality using Assyria ca. 2004–605 BCE as a case study for how large and loose hegemonies became the normative political formation in the region.


Author(s):  
José G. Vargas-Hernández

This chapter aims to critically analyze both the world economy and the deglobalization processes under the assumption that they are the result of a dialectical evolution of economic, financial, political, and sanitary crises. This dialectical movement of the history of the globalization and deglobalization processes is always a very complex phenomena of interactions between the economic agents and political actors, leading to both progressive and regressive events of economic growth, social development, and environmental sustainability. After a period of intensive economic, trade, and financial integration in the creation of a world economy system, suddenly the economic, financial, and sanitary dysfunctionalities emerged at the interior and created a reactive deglobalization process. However, what has been at the center are the international cooperation and trade relations determined by the need to expand the possibilities of satisfying human needs, including culture.


2021 ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher

This chapter relates the history of sugar, a thread that links the Silk Roads, Portuguese sailors, Atlantic islands, endangered seals, the African slave trade, and yellow fever, all because of our physiological need for glucose, which we satisfy with sugar. The chapter tells how from its origin in Southeast Asia, sugarcane, later called “Creole cane” and processing technology moved along the Silk Roads to Western Asia, then to Mediterranean islands. To begin with, Portuguese colonists transformed the Atlantic island of Madeira into a large sugar producer using slave labor until ecological and economic collapse forced production to move to São Tomé, using Angolan slave labor. After Portugal discovered Brazil, colonists took sugarcane with them, creating large plantations and initiating the enslavement and trans-Atlantic movement of millions of Africans. As the chapter shows, sugar production moved into the Caribbean and Central America, and African slave ships inadvertently carried yellow fever and yellow fever mosquito to the Americas.


Author(s):  
David Abulafia

An important feature of the Fifth Mediterranean was the discovery of the First Mediterranean, and the rediscovery of the Second. The Greek world came to encompass Bronze Age heroes riding the chariots described by Homer, and the Roman world was found to have deep roots among the little-known Etruscans. Thus, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries entirely new perspectives on the history of the Mediterranean were opened up. An early lead was given by the growth of interest in ancient Egypt, discussed in the previous chapter, though that was closely linked to traditional biblical studies as well. In the eighteenth century, the Grand Tour introduced well-heeled travellers from northern Europe to classical remains in Rome and Sicily, and Englishmen saw it as an attractive alternative to time spent at Oxford or Cambridge, where those who paid any attention to their studies were more likely to be immersed in ancient texts than in ancient objects. On the other hand, aesthetic appreciation of ancient works of art was renewed in the late eighteenth century, as the German art historian Winckelmann began to impart a love for the forms of Greek art, arguing that the Greeks dedicated themselves to the representation of beauty (as the Romans failed to do). His History of Art in Antiquity was published in German in 1764 and in French very soon afterwards, and was enormously influential. In the next few decades, discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, in which Nelson’s cuckolded host, Sir William Hamilton, was closely involved, and then in Etruria, further enlarged northern European interest in ancient art, providing interior designers with rich patterns, and collectors with vast amounts of loot – ‘Etruscan vases’, nearly all in reality Greek, were shipped out of Italy as the Etruscan tombs began to be opened up. In Greece, it was necessary to purchase the consent of Ottoman officials before excavating and exporting what was found; the most famous case, that of the Parthenon marbles at the start of the nineteenth century, was succeeded by other acquisitions for northern museums: the Pergamon altar was sent to Berlin, the facings of the Treasury of Atreus from Mycenae were sent to the British Museum, and so on.


Author(s):  
David Abulafia

Recovery from the disasters of the twelfth century was slow. It is unclear how deep the recession in the Aegean lands was, but much was lost: the art of writing disappeared, except among the Greek refugees in Cyprus; the distinctive swirling styles of Minoan and Mycenaean pottery vanished, except, again, in Cyprus; trade withered; the palaces decayed. The Dark Age was not simply an Aegean phenomenon. There are signs of disorder as far west as the Lipari islands, for in Sicily the old order came to an end in the thirteenth century amid a wave of destruction, and the inhabitants of Lipari were able to preserve some measure of prosperity only by building strong defences. The power of the Pharaohs weakened; what saved the land of the Nile from further destruction was the falling away of raids from outside, as the raiders settled in new lands, rather than any internal strength. By the eighth century new networks of trade emerged, bringing the culture of the East to lands as far west as Etruria and southern Spain. What is astonishing about these new networks is that they were created not by a grand process of imperial expansion (as was happening in western Asia, under the formidable leadership of the Assyrians), but by communities of merchants: Greeks heading towards Sicily and Italy, consciously or unconsciously following in the wake of their Mycenaean predecessors; Etruscan pirates and traders, emerging from a land where cities were only now appearing for the first time; and, most precociously, the Canaanite merchants of Lebanon, known to the Greeks as Phoinikes, ‘Phoenicians’, and resented by Homer for their love of business and profit. So begins the long history of contempt for those engaged in ‘trade’. They took their name from the purple dye extracted from the murex shellfish, which was the most prized product of the Canaanite shores. Yet the Greeks also recognized the Phoenicians as the source of the alphabet which became the basis of their new writing system; and Phoenicia was the source of artistic models which transformed the art of archaic Greece and Italy in an age of great creative ferment.


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