This book is a re-edition and detailed study of a parchment codex from Egypt of the fourth century CE with Greek and Coptic recipes for healing through magic and pharmacology (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Library Ms. 136). A text and annotated translation were published in a brief journal article by William H. Worrell in 1935, but the codex has been understudied since then. This new edition offers advances in readings and interpretation, a thorough philological commentary, and accompanying studies on the ritual and medical traditions to which the codex belongs and its position in the linguistic landscape of Egypt. The recipes comprise magical rituals for healing and broader personal advancement, pharmacological and related medical recipes, and advice for the management of a household. Traditional Egyptian religion and ritual are illustrated in interaction with medical practices of Hellenic culture more recently introduced to Egypt, and the archaic, even poetic language of some of the Coptic invocations featuring the Egyptian gods Amun and Thoth share pages with an incantation constructed from the verses of Homer.

In this volume of conference papers originally presented at the University of Oklahoma, a distinguished group of scholars examines episodes in the transmission of premodern science and provides new insights into its cultural, philosophical and historical significance.

Ordet tradition kan tillægges mange betydninger, og som begreb har det en lang historie bag sig i den vestlige kultur. Selve ordet stammer fra det latinske tradere, at overlevere, og er et vigtigt begreb, når man forsøger at tolke det antikke menneskes sociale relationer ud fra arkæologiske fund. Forandring kan ikke forklares uden man kender til og er bevidst om den materielle kultur set over en længere tidsperiode. Derfor søger arkæologer ved hjælp af longue durée-perspektivet at spore vedvarende forandringer i det arkæologiske materiale. Dette rigt illustrerede værk fører læseren fra det forhistoriske Santorini til senantikkens Rom, fra detaljerede tekstilbeskrivelser til prædikantlister hugget i sten, for at undersøge, hvordan tradition har spillet en rolle i overleveringen af kultur. Hver af bogens bidragydere undersøger et specifikt aspekt af traditionens afgørende rolle i forståelsen af, hvordan identitet skabes og bevares i antikkens verden. Kultiske ritualer, brugen af magiske objekter og symboler, offerfund i græske helligdomme, begravelsesportrætter og jernalderens keramik er blandt de mange elementer, der bliver beskrevet. Tradition viser, hvordan kultur er iboende i os alle, og hvordan handlinger og objekter spiller en afgørende rolle i kulturel kontinuitet og forandring. Med sin grundige tværfaglige tilgang til emnet tilfører Tradition ny viden til forståelsen af den klassiske og antikke verden. Bidragydere: Niels Bargfeldt/Cecilie Brøns/Jane Fejfer/Solvejg Hansen/Signe Isager/Ifke van Kam-pen/Arja Karivieri/Jens Krasilnikoff/Eva Mortensen/Christian Mühlenbock/Marjatta Nielsen/Nora Petersen/Rubina Raja/Sine Grove Saxkjær & Jan Kindberg Jacobsen/Stine Schierup/Lone Wriedt Sørensen/Christina Videbech/Kristina Winther-Jacobsen. Jane Fejfer er lektor i klassisk arkæologi på Københavns Universitet Mette Moltesen er tidligere museumsinspektør ved Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Annette Rathje er lektor emerita i klassisk arkæologi ved Københavns Universitet. Tradition – from the Latin tradere, literally to hand over or hand down – has many meanings and as a concept has a long history in Western culture. When using archaeological remains to interpret the social relations of people of Antiquity, tradition becomes an important concept. We cannot explain change without knowing and being conscious of la longue durée of material culture. Thus, over a long-term perspective archaeologists seek to trace a record of continual change. This lavishly illustrated book takes readers from prehistoric Santorini to Late Antique Rome and discusses the role of tradition in the transmission of culture and the creation, maintenance and negotiation of identity in the ancient world. Covering a wide array of subjects, including cultic rituals and the use of magical objects and symbols, votive traditions in Greek sanctuaries, funerary portraits, and Iron Age pottery, Tradition reveals how culture inheres in each and how actions and objects alike play a role in the continuation and change of culture. With its thoroughly interdisciplinary approach, Tradition breaks new ground in the studies of the classical and ancient world. Contributors: Niels Bargfeldt/Cecilie Brøns/Jane Fejfer/Solvejg Hansen/Signe Isager/Ifke van Kampen/Arja Karivieri/Jens Krasilnikoff/Eva Morten-sen/Christian Mühlenbock/Marjatta Nielsen/Nora Petersen/Rubina Raja/Sine Grove Saxkjær & Jan Kindberg Jacobsen/Stine Schierup/Lone Wriedt Sørensen/Christina Videbech/Kristina Winther-Jacobsen. Jane Fejfer is associate professor of classical archaeology at the University of Copenhagen. Mette Moltesen is former curator of Ancient Sculp-ture at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. Annette Rathje is associate professor emerita of classical archaeology at the University of Copenhagen.

How and why people develop, maintain, and change cultural boundaries through time are central issues in the social and behavioral sciences in generaland anthropological archaeology in particular. What factors influence people to imitate or deviate from the behaviors of other group members? How are social group boundaries produced, perpetuated, and altered by the cumulative outcomeof these decisions? Answering these questions is fundamental to understanding cultural persistence and change. The chapters included in this stimulating, multifaceted book address these questions. Working in several subdisciplines, contributors report on research in the areas of cultural boundaries, cultural transmission, and the socially organized nature of learning. Boundaries are found not only within and between the societies in these studies but also within and between the communities of scholars who study them. To break down these boundaries, this volume includes scholars who use multiple theoretical perspectives, including practice theory and evolutionary traditions, which are sometimes complementary and occasionally clashing. Geographic coverage ranges from the indigenous Americas to Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, and the time frame extends from the prehistoric or precontact to colonial periods and up to the ethnographic present. Contributors include leading scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Together, they employ archaeological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological,experimental, and simulation data to link micro-scale processes of cultural transmission to macro-scale processes of social group boundary formation, continuity, and change.

Tantric traditions in both Buddhism and Hinduism are thriving throughout Asia and in Asian diasporic communities around the world, yet they have been largely ignored by Western scholars until now. This collection of original essays fills this gap by examining the ways in which Tantric Buddhist traditions have changed over time and distance as they have spread across cultural boundaries in Asia. The book is divided into three sections dedicated to South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia. The essays cover such topics as the changing ideal of masculinity in Buddhist literature, the controversy triggered by the transmission of the Indian Buddhist deity Heruka to Tibet in the 10th century, and the evolution of a Chinese Buddhist Tantric tradition in the form of the True Buddha School. The book as a whole addresses complex and contested categories in the field of religious studies, including the concept of syncretism and the various ways that the change and transformation of religious traditions can be described and articulated. The authors, leading scholars in Tantric studies, draw on a wide array of methodologies from the fields of history, anthropology, art history, and sociology. Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation is groundbreaking in its attempt to look past religious, linguistic, and cultural boundaries.

Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture provides a richly textured picture of cultural transmission in the Qing and early Republican eras. Drum ballad texts (guci) evoke one of the most popular performance traditions of their day, a practice that flourished in North China. Study of these narratives opens up surprising new perspectives on vital topics in Chinese literature and history: the creation of regional cultural identities and their relation to a central “Chinese culture”; the relationship between oral and written cultures; the transmission of legal knowledge and popular ideals of justice; and the impact of the changing technology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the reproduction and dissemination of popular texts. Margaret B. Wan maps the dissemination over time and space of two legends of wise judges; their journey through oral, written, and visual media reveals a fascinating but overlooked world of “popular” literature. While drum ballads form a distinctively regional literature, lithography in early twentieth-century Shanghai drew them into national markets. The new paradigm this book offers will interest scholars of cultural history, literature, book culture, legal history, and popular culture.

The question of constructing tradition, concepts of origin, and memory as well as techniques and practices of knowledge transmission, are central for cultures in general. In esotericism, however, such questions and techniques play an outstanding role and are widely reflected upon, in its literature. Esoteric paradigms not only understand themselves in elaborated mytho-poetical narratives as bearers of “older”, “hidden”, “higher” knowledge. They also claim their knowledge to be of a particular origin. And they claim this knowledge has been transmitted by particular (esoteric) means, media and groups. Consequently, esotericism not only involves the construction of its own tradition; it can even be understood as a specific form of tradition and transmission. The various studies of the present voume, which contains the papers of a conference held in Tübingen in July 2007, provide an overview of the most important concepts and ways of constructing tradition in esotericism.