Crowther offers a fascinating look at the role of sport as practiced in several important civilizations in the ancient world. He not only probes the games themselves, but explores the ways in which athletics figured into cultural arenas that extended beyond physical prowess to military associations, rituals, status, and politics. Sport in Ancient Times has four distinct parts: the Prehistoric Age, historic Greece, ancient Italy, and the Byzantine Empire. Beginning with the earliest civilizations, Crowther examines the military and recreational aspects of sports in prehistoric Egypt, with brief references to other river-valley cultures in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. He looks at the rituals of Cretan bull-leaping and boxing in the Bronze Age, the high status of sports in Mycenaean Greece, and the funeral games in the Trojan War as described by the epic poet Homer. In what he terms the historic period, Crowther examines the significance of the ancient Olympic Games, the events of Greek athletics, and the attitude of other civilizations (notably Rome) towards them. He attempts to discover to what extent the Romans believed in the famous ideal of Juvenal, a sound mind in a sound body, and discusses the significance of the famous Baths not only for sport, but also for culture and society. He likewise explores the Roman emphasis on spectator sports and the use of gladiatorial contests and chariot racing for political purposes (the concept of bread and games). The section on the Byzantine Empire focuses, notably, on chariot racing and the riots at sporting contests—riots reminiscent of crowd violence in modern sports such as soccer. Crowther closes with perspectives that bring to life some of the issues revealed in previous chapters. These include a comparison of the social status and significance of a famous Olympic athlete (Milo), a Roman gladiator (Hermes), and a Byzantine chariot racer (Porphyrius). He also addresses the changing role of women in sports in antiquity. Women were prominent in sport in Egypt, for example, but almost entirely absent from the ancient Olympic Games. The final chapter discusses team sports and ball games. Although these were comparatively rare in the ancient world, one may see in those that did exist the forerunners of modern football and hockey.

Sport in the Ancient World from A to Z covers an extraordinarily wide range of Greek and Roman sporting activities. Arranged in an easy-to-use dictionary format, this volume includes more than 700 entries discussing ancient athletes, festivals, important sites, equipment and concepts. The approach throughout is comprehensive yet succinct, with key topics, such as athletic festivals, chariot racing, prizes and the role of women receiving more detailed discussion. Each entry concludes with pointers to the most important sources of information, both ancient and modern. The places mentioned in the text are picked out on a useful map, and a timeline of significant developments and events is also included. Reliable, enjoyable, and up-to-date, this handy work of reference will suit readers from student level upwards.

The Ancient Greeks - who believed that war is the most important thing humans do--bequeathed to the West an incomparable military legacy that still influences the structure of armies and doctrine. Understand the reasons why their unique approach to fighting was so successful and so relentless, its role at the heart of classical culture, the rise of the city state, agrarian duels, the emergence of Athenian and Spartan power, the development of war as a specialized science, and the collapse of Greek warfare after Alexander the Great.

John Hobson challenges the ethnocentric bias of mainstream accounts of the "Rise of the West" that assume that Europeans have pioneered their own development, and that the East has been a passive by-stander. Describing the rise of what he calls the "Oriental West", Hobson argues that Europe first assimilated many Eastern inventions, and then appropriated Eastern resources through imperialism. Hobson's book thus propels the hitherto marginalized Eastern peoples to the forefront of the story of progressive world history.

In the last thirty years, there have been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West became so powerful. The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century. Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development, Morris's index breaks social development into four traits--energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity--and he uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for 90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200 years--from about 550 to 1750 CE--when an East Asian region was more advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West leap ahead. Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history, The Measure of Civilization puts forth innovative tools for determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.

Complex and unstable, in 922 BC the kingdom of Ancient Israel was divided into Judah, in the South, and Israel, in the North. For the next 200 years, there was almost constant warring between these kingdoms and their neighbors. These bitter feuds eventually led to the collapse of Israel, leaving Judah as a surviving nation until the emergence of the Babylonian Empire, the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, and the exile of the Jewish people. Using ancient Jewish, Biblical, and other contemporary sources, this title examines the politics, fighting, and consequences of Israel's battles during this period. Focusing on the turbulent relationship between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, this book explains Israel's complex, often bloody, foreign policy, and provides a definitive history of these ancient conflicts.

This book examines the doctrine of transgenerational punishment found in the Decalogue-that is, the idea that God punishes sinners vicariously and extends the punishment due them to three or four generations of their progeny. Though it was "God-given" law, the unfairness of punishing innocent people merely for being the children or grandchildren of wrongdoers was clearly recognized in ancient Israel. A series of inner-biblical and post-biblical responses to the rule demonstrates that later writers were able to criticize, reject, and replace this problematic doctrine with the alternative notion of individual retribution. From this perspective, the formative canon is the source of its own renewal: it fosters critical reflection upon the textual tradition and sponsors intellectual freedom. To support further study, this book includes a valuable bibliographical essay on the distinctive approach of inner-biblical exegesis showing the contributions of European, Israeli, and North American scholars. An earlier version of the volume appeared in French as L′Herméneutique de l′innovation: Canon et exégèse dans l′Israël biblique. This new Cambridge release represents a major revision and expansion of the French edition, nearly doubling its length with extensive new content. Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel opens new perspectives on current debates within the humanities about canonicity, textual authority, and authorship. Bernard M. Levinson holds the Berman Family Chair of Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on biblical and cuneiform law, textual reinterpretation in the Second Temple period, and the relation of the Bible to Western intellectual history. His book Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (1997) won the 1999 Salo W. Baron Award for Best First Book in Literature and Thought from the American Academy for Jewish Research. He is also the author of "The Right Chorale" : Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation (2008), and editor or coeditor of four volumes, most recently, The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance (2007). The interdisciplinary significance of his work has been recognized with appointments to the Institute for Advanced Study (1997); the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin/Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (2007); and, most recently, the National Humanities Center, where he will serve as the Henry Luce Senior Fellow in Religious Studies for the 2010-2011 academic year.

A specialist in Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Asian religions and philosophical traditions, Lochtefeld (religion, Carthage Coll.) offers a two-volume reference on every aspect of Hinduism and related areas of Indian culture and history. Written in a clear, straightforward style, the more than 2500 alphabetically arranged entries address readers not wholly familiar with Hindu belief and practice. The entries cover a wide range of subject areas, including beliefs, rituals, art, celebrations, sacred places, history, religious organizations, biographies (of holy persons, theoreticians, and religious leaders), and much more. They are typically about 200 words long, though some are as long as 1000 words. In a valuable cross-referencing system, boldface terms in the text of every entry refer readers to related entries. There are convenient subject-category listings in the introductory material, an exhaustive index in the back, and black-and-white pictures throughout. Also included are charts of relationships among deities, maps of sacred sites, tabulations, a pronunciation key for Hindi and Sanskrit terms, and useful diagrams to help systematize information. Finally, Lochtefeld also provides a select bibliography, comprising about 200 important works, almost all of which were published after 1950. Some scholarly multivolume encyclopedias are available on this topic, but most are not very recent. Lochtefeld's is both accessible and substantial enough to serve the needs of students, scholars, and casual readers alike. A major achievement of scholarly research, organization, and analysis, this book is recommended for both public and academic reference collections.

Valerius Maximus was an indefatigable collector of historical anecdotes illustrating vice and virtue. His Memorable Deeds and Sayings are unparalleled as a source for the opinions of Romans in the early empire on a vast range of subjects. Mueller focuses on what Valerius can tell us about contemporary Roman attitudes to religion, attacking several orthodoxies along the way. He argues that Roman religion could be deeply emotional. That it was possible to believe passionately in the divinity of the emperor - even when, like Tiberius, he was still alive - and that Rome's gods and religious rituals had an important role in fostering conventional morality. The study further explores elements of ancient rhetoric, Roman historiography, and Tiberian Rome. The fact that Valerius was a contemporary of Jesus means his work is also valuable in reflecting the attitudes and beliefs of the ruling class to which Christ and his followers were politically subject, and which formed the background to the growth and persecution of Christianity.

Comprehensive and detailed, this is the first ever study of ancient beer and its distilling, consumption and characteristics Examining evidence from Greek and Latin authors from 700 BC to AD 900, the book demonstrates the important technological as well as ideological contributions the Europeans made to beer throughout the ages. The study is supported by textual and archaeological evidence and gives a fresh and fascinating insight into an aspect of ancient life that has fed through to modern society and which stands today as one of the world’s most popular beverages. Students of ancient history, classical studies and the history of food and drink will find this an useful and enjoyable read.

This text by Tim Newark explores some of the fascinating peoples who comprised the ancient armies of the Middle East: the Sumerians, who were the first to introduce the use of bronze into warfare, and were centuries ahead of the Egyptians in the use of the wheel - The Akkadians, whose citizen army was composed almost entirely of light troops - The Babylonians, whose people were granted land in return for army service - the horned warriors of the Elamites - the Egyptians, with thier heavy spearmen and archers - the tribal and warlike Libyans - Nubians and Ethiopians - Hyksos - the armies of the Hittite Empire - the Sea People and others.

No general book on Egyptian magic can be written without drawing on the specialised knowledge of many scholars, and most particularly on the work of Professor J. F. Borghouts and his pupils at Leiden. The recent translations of the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri by a group of scholars including H. D. Betz and J. H. Johnson are essential reading for anyone interested in Egyptian magic. I gratefully acknowledge the inspiration provided by a seminar series on Egyptian magic held at Cambridge University in 1991; especially the contributions of John Baines, Janine Bourriau, Mark Collier and John Ray. I am grateful to Dr Stephen Quirke of the Egyptian Antiquities Department of the British Museum for his assistance with the illustrations to this book and for his helpful comments on the manuscript. I would also like to thank Celia Clear and Carolyn Jones of British Museum Press for their work on the book. I am grateful to the Cambridge University Press and to Graham Fowden and Brian Copenhaver for allowing me to use quotations from their books.