You have no items in your shopping cart.
Close
Search
Filters

The Ceramic Oil Lamp as an Indicator of Cultural Change within Nabataean Society in Petra and its En

How did the Nabataeans view their world at the time of the Roman annexation in CE 106? If it is possible to detect an altered perception after their monarchy was dissolved at that time, how can we be sure it was authentic and not a veneer, masking the identity of a disaffected people? One approach is to consider religious practice as a diagnostic for identity within Nabataean society. Religious practice is examined through the ceramic oil lamp, a ubiquitous vessel that can portray socio-political and religious symbolism and cultural hybridization.
Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-59333-628-8
  • *
Publication Status: In Print
Publication Date: Dec 16,2008
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Page Count: 204
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-59333-628-8
$134.00
Ship to
*
*
Shipping Method
Name
Estimated Delivery
Price
No shipping options

How did the Nabataeans view their world at the time of the Roman annexation in CE 106? If it is possible to detect an altered perception after their monarchy was dissolved at that time, how can we be sure it was authentic and not a veneer, masking the identity of a disaffected people? One approach is to consider religious practice as a diagnostic for identity within Nabataean society, because religion is interwoven with a community’s worldview, thus shaping and reflecting its values.

Three ancient Nabataean sites have been investigated by the author: the Great Temple, a ceremonial site in Petra, Jordan; the North Ridge tombs, a funerary site, also in Petra; and the sanctuary at Khirbet et-Tannur, some 70 km north of Petra. Their diversity in sacred use is examined via the ceramic oil lamp, a vessel that can portray socio-political and religious symbolism, and whose ubiquitous presence at the sites provides the researcher with a wealth of material.

Through the analysis of the oil lamp fragments found at the sites, two major discoveries have been made. The first is the evidence for hybridization: an adaptation to the Roman presence at the time of the annexation. The second is the specific manufacture and use of lamps strictly for religious purposes.

Deirdre G. Barrett is the Lamp curator at the Semitic Museum, Harvard University, and is currently cataloguing ancient oil lamps from Khirbet et-Tannur, Jordan, and the Cesnola Collection from Cyprus. From 1995-2006 she worked as both excavator and cataloguer at the Great Temple, Petra, Jordan, under the auspices of its Director, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, Professor Emerita of the Department of Anthropology and Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. She received a PhD in Anthropology from that institution in 2005.

How did the Nabataeans view their world at the time of the Roman annexation in CE 106? If it is possible to detect an altered perception after their monarchy was dissolved at that time, how can we be sure it was authentic and not a veneer, masking the identity of a disaffected people? One approach is to consider religious practice as a diagnostic for identity within Nabataean society, because religion is interwoven with a community’s worldview, thus shaping and reflecting its values.

Three ancient Nabataean sites have been investigated by the author: the Great Temple, a ceremonial site in Petra, Jordan; the North Ridge tombs, a funerary site, also in Petra; and the sanctuary at Khirbet et-Tannur, some 70 km north of Petra. Their diversity in sacred use is examined via the ceramic oil lamp, a vessel that can portray socio-political and religious symbolism, and whose ubiquitous presence at the sites provides the researcher with a wealth of material.

Through the analysis of the oil lamp fragments found at the sites, two major discoveries have been made. The first is the evidence for hybridization: an adaptation to the Roman presence at the time of the annexation. The second is the specific manufacture and use of lamps strictly for religious purposes.

Deirdre G. Barrett is the Lamp curator at the Semitic Museum, Harvard University, and is currently cataloguing ancient oil lamps from Khirbet et-Tannur, Jordan, and the Cesnola Collection from Cyprus. From 1995-2006 she worked as both excavator and cataloguer at the Great Temple, Petra, Jordan, under the auspices of its Director, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, Professor Emerita of the Department of Anthropology and Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. She received a PhD in Anthropology from that institution in 2005.

Write your own review
  • Only registered users can write reviews
*
*
Bad
Excellent
*
*
*
*
ContributorBiography

Deirdre Barrett

Deirdre G. Barrett is the Lamp curator at the Semitic Museum, Harvard University, and is currently cataloguing ancient oil lamps from Khirbet et-Tannur, Jordan, and the Cesnola Collection from Cyprus. From 1995-2006 she worked as both excavator and cataloguer at the Great Temple, Petra, Jordan, under the auspices of its Director, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, Professor Emerita of the Department of Anthropology and Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. She received a PhD in Anthropology from that institution in 2005.

Customers who bought this item also bought
ImageFromGFF

Myth, Text, and History at Sparta

Three studies that offer close readings concerning the interaction of the source material on Spartan history with the unfolding of actual historical events. These contributions take the position that not only political, but also social, policies at Sparta, as well as the historical actors giving them shape, were intensely─and to an unusual degree─influenced by myth, tradition, and popular memory about the Laconian past.
$170.00
ImageFromGFF

Jacob of Sarug's Homilies on Praise at Table

Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains his homilies on Praise at Table. These homilies offer a glimpse into the efforts of one late antique author to construct distinctly Christian meaning from the experience of communal meal-sharing. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s The Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons. Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive.
$47.00 $32.90
ImageFromGFF

Apophatic Anthropology

An English translation of André Scrima's 1952 work on Apophatic Anthropology. Pascalian in essence, the approach departs from the Augustinian roots of Western Christian theology and develops a Christian anthropology based on Eastern Orthodoxy. The endeavor of a human being to understand oneself does not lead, as in the case of Pascal, to identification with Jesus Christ’s suffering, but further, to an attempt of deification, theosis, in which the main concept is Incarnation. This attempt opens to man the possibility to conceive himself as interior to God. Man becomes therefore the physical and metaphysical bridge between creation and the uncreated, the only creature that bears the image of God.
$147.00
ImageFromGFF

Love, Marriage and Family in Eastern Orthodox Perspective

This volume offers an array of theological and sociological studies on Family, Love, and Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. As new ways of understanding these institutions and concepts emerge in a modern society, this compilation sponsored by the Sophia Institute of Eastern Orthodox Studies incorporates a revisiting of biblical and Patristic understandings as they are received in the wider Orthodox Christian perspective.
$167.00 $116.90