The Museum holds the world's largest collection of Christian inscriptions from Nubia south of the modern frontier with Egypt, about half of the which are in Coptic. The Greek texts are cataloged in a companion volume. The 128 inscriptions here are only monumental, the object of traditional epigraphy, and do not include the related dipinti accompanying wall paintings and graffiti on pottery. Almost all of them are funerary. Even the smallest fragments are included, because the knowledge of Medieval Nubia is quite meager and anything may prove useful. The copious notes and comments pay much attention to questions of archaeological context, language variation, and literary culture. The pieces are illustrated with monochrome photographs. Distributed by The David Brown Book Company. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

It shall also be of interest among scholars researching Oriental Christianity and Greek epigraphy."--BOOK JACKET.

Collected Studies CS1070 The present book collects 31 articles that Jacques van der Vliet, a leading scholar in the field of Coptic Studies (Leiden University / Radboud University, Nijmegen), has published since 1999 on Christian inscriptions from Egypt and Nubia. These inscriptions are dated between the third/fourth and the fourteenth centuries, and are often written in Coptic and/or Greek, once in Latin, and sometimes (partly) in Arabic, Syriac or Old Nubian. They include inscriptions on tomb stones, walls of religious buildings, tools, vessels, furniture, amulets and even texts on luxury garments. Whereas earlier scholars in the field of Coptic Studies often focused on either Coptic or Greek, Van der Vliet argues that inscriptions in different languages that appear in the same space or on the same kind of objects should be examined together. In addition, he aims to combine the information from documentary texts, archaeological remains and inscriptions, in order to reconstruct the economic, social and religious life of monastic or civil communities. He practiced this methodology in his studies on the Fayum, Wadi al-Natrun, Sohag, Western Thebes and the region of Aswan and Northern Nubia, which are all included in this book.

The congresses organised every four years under the auspices of the International Association for Coptic Studies (IACS) are the main forum for scholars of Egyptian Christian life and culture through the ages. The proceedings of the seventh congress, which was held in Leiden in 2000, comprise ninety-nine papers, reflecting the growth and diversification of Coptic studies worldwide. They include valuable and sometimes groundbreaking essays in topics of, for example, Coptic language, literature, monasticism and archaeology. A particularly noteworthy and important feature of the present proceedings are the state-of-the-art reviews of current trends and achievements in the main fields of the discipline, written by invited experts and accompanied by extensive bibliographies. These review articles cover aspects of Coptic studies as diverse as papyrology, gnosticism, liturgy, Copto-Arabic and art history. They turn these two volumes into real reference books, indispensable for every scholar of early Church history, late antiquity and Near Eastern Christianity.

The late antique and early medieval Mediterranean was characterized by wide-ranging cultural and linguistic diversity. Yet, under the influence of Christianity, communities in the Mediterranean world were bound together by common concepts of good rulership, which were also shaped by Greco-Roman, Persian, Caucasian, and other traditions. This collection of essays examines ideas of good Christian rulership and the debates surrounding them in diverse cultures and linguistic communities. It grants special attention to communities on the periphery, such as the Caucasus and Nubia, and some essays examine non-Christian concepts of good rulership to offer a comparative perspective. As a whole, the studies in this volume reveal not only the entanglement and affinity of communities around the Mediterranean but also areas of conflict among Christians and between Christians and other cultural traditions. By gathering various specialized studies on the overarching question of good rulership, this volume highlights the possibilities of placing research on classical antiquity and early medieval Europe into conversation with the study of eastern Christianity.

These volumes comprise a collection of papers by Michael E. Stone, written over a period of 35 years. Stone is a leading scholar in two different fields of research, the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Armenian Studies. So this collection includes essays relating to the origins and nature of the Apocryphal literature and its relationship with the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as more specific studies devoted to themes that have interested Stone throughout his career, including Messianism, 4 Ezra, Adam and Eve, and Aramaic Levi Document. His Armenian interests have embraced the Armenian Biblical text, Armenian pilgrimage to and presence in the Holy Land and Armenian paleography and epigraphy. Papers included in the volumes, some of which were originally published in obscure venues, touch on all these themes. A number of previously unpublished papers are included.

The volume offers the acts of a meeting held at the University of Turin on the foundations of power and the conflicts of authority as documented by the monastic sources of East and West in Late Antiquity, with special reference to Max Weber's analysis of these notions. The issue is here examined from a variety of perspectives: the different meanings of power and authority in ancient monastic sources; the criteria by which authority is established within the monastic organizations; the kind of power and authority exercised towards outsiders; the relationship between monks and other authorities, especially the Church; the monks and their economic activity; the strategies for the solution of conflicts. The wide range of historical and cultural problems raised by these questions is what the present volume tries to illuminate through individual studies of a number of specific phenomena, events, and figures (from Shenute to John Cassian, from Abraham of Kashkar to Maxim the Confessor), paying particular attention to monasticism in Egypt, Palestine, Africa, and Persia.