


Том 84, № 3 (2024)
Articles
Shalmaneser I in Šināmu: on two aspects of a new Middle Assyrian royal inscription from Üçtepe
Аннотация
The article analyzes the historical context of the inscription of Shalmaneser I from Üçtepe published in 2022. At the end of Adad-nērārī I’s reign (1295–1264) and in the early years of Shalmaneser I (1263–1234), the city of Šināmu, now identified with Üçtepe, was controlled by the kingdom of Hanigalbat, as it is shown by the letter IBoT 1.34 from the Boǧazköy archives. According to IBoT 1.34, a certain ruler of Hanigalbat resided in Šināmu not long before the time when this text was composed. A presence in person of the king of Hanigalbat in Šināmu, a city on the Upper Tigris, far from the major centers of his land in the Habur triangle and in a close proximity to the Hittite border, reflects a tense situation on the eve of the Assyrian attack, when Hanigalbat was balancing between two powerful neighbors. A possible mention of the conquest of Carchemish by Assyria needs to be confronted with the evidence provided by KBo 18.25+ and KBo 18.28+, two other letters from the Boǧazköy archives. This evidence provided by the Üçtepe inscription supports previously advanced hypotheses about a major Hittite-Assyrian military clash during the reign of Shalmaneser I.



The mysterious fate of the Egyptian stele Rio de Janeiro 658 [2446]
Аннотация
The article provides an attribution of a stele from the Twentieth dynasty, auctioned at Osenat – Paris Fontainebleau in 2014. The owner of the stele held the name wsj and was serving as a ‘listener to the call of the (department) of the treasury’. Thanks to this evidence, it is established that the stele originally belonged to the collection of the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. Since the museum was destroyed in a fire in 2018, tracing the stele’s fate from the museum to the auction through the private collection of the Gantner Museum is nowadays impossible.



Hypothebai of the Iliad as an evidence of the beginning of the formation of the Theban polis
Аннотация
The article discusses the mention in the Iliad (Hom. Il . II. 505) of the ‘well-built’ city of Hypothebai (Ὑποθῆβαι), the identification of which continues to be a subject of discussion among the researchers: historians, philologists, archaeologists, paleotopographers – classicists of all kinds. The understanding of the beginning of the formation of Theban polis, the time of the creation of an organized settlement in Thebes in the eighth century BC depends on the interpretation of this literary evidence. Based on a complex approach, using both literary evidence and linguistic analysis of the text, as well as the latest archaeological and the paleotopographic data regarding Thebes, from the twelfth to the eighth century BC, the article presents an interpretation according to which the Iliad’s Hypothebai is a unique hapax introduced into the poem and reflecting the creation of a new, in relation to the Mycenaean Kadmeia (Thebes), organized settlement. These new Thebes included both the acropolis of Thebes (the Kadmeia), and the new sectors of Greater Thebes beneath the Kadmeia, which was typical for the time of the creation of early Greek poleis in the eighth century BC. It is also not impossible that, in addition to this, the insertion to the text of the Iliad of Hypothebai emphasizes that the population of Potniai, situated around two kilometers from Kadmeia, also belonged to the territory controlled by the early Theban polis.



Rare fifth-century BC bronze vessels and instruments, associated with wine drinking, from the Volna 1 necropolis on the Taman Peninsula
Аннотация
During the excavations of the Greek urban necropolis Volna 1 on the Taman Peninsula several bronze vessels and tools of very rare shapes were found in the burials of the fifth century BC. The objects under discussion are represented by forms that are rare not only for the North Pontic region. There is every reason to assume the Apulian origin of the patera from the burial no. 44, which so far have been represented by seven specimens from the Rutigliano necropolis in Apulia and one – from Macedonia. No less rare is a bronze instrument for sampling wine, a clepsydra, now often called water / wine thief or Weinheber , originating from the same burial (13 such objects are known together with the find under discussion, including two of the unknown origin), represented by the finds both from Central (Lazio) and South (Campania, Calabria and Basilicata) Italy, Illyria (Apollonia) and Central Greece (Boeotia, Phocis) (all made of bronze), a silver piece from an aristocratic Thracian burial in the Plovdiv region and a fragmented bronze one – from the Ulyap kurgan necropolis in the Trans-Kuban region. Like the clepsydra, the bronze cheese grater from the burial no. 140-2 is an element of the Italic and Greek elite wine drinking culture, which confirms the high status of both burials in which they were found and the necropolis as a whole. There is every reason to believe that the use of instruments under discussion, associated with the Greek culture of wine drinking, penetrated deep into the barbarian hinterland through the Greek centres of the Taman Peninsula, reaching the Trans-Kuban region.



Multiplicity of souls in the poetic antiquarian tradition of Ancient Rome
Аннотация
The paper investigates how the Romans imagined human soul in the Republican and early Imperial times. It is based on the comparative historical study of Ennius’ poetical narrative compared to the works of antiquarian poets Virgil and Ovid. The second important source shedding light on the fragmentary evidence includes material of comparative religious studies. Relying on the diachronic analysis the author argues that initially the Romans ascribed to any human being multiple souls. After the funeral one of them was believed to remain in the grave with the earthly remains. The other one moved on to the Afterlife and was deified as di manes. Obviously, the Romans distinguished other kinds of souls as well, but their nature and number are not completely clear due to the lack of sources dating to the pre-Republican period.



The size of the Praetorian cohorts in the first and second centuries CE
Аннотация
The paper is devoted to the problem of determining the size of praetorian cohorts in the first and second centuries CE. Contrary to the ancient narrative tradition, which reports that the staff of each cohort of the Imperial Guard consisted of 1000 people, French historian M. Durry offered a number of arguments in favour of the view that their size was half as large. His hypothesis has been widely accepted in scholarship, but also had its critics who defend the reliability of ancient authors and point out the ambiguity of the conclusions that are obtained from the analysis of archaeological data and statistical calculations based on the material of the praetorian laterculi. Despite the possibility of ambiguous interpretations, the easiest way to account for the testimony of available sources is to accept the miliary status of the praetorian cohorts. The only existing obstacle is that the structure of the praetorian cohort was typical for quingenary units, but this feature is the result of the creation of the corps of imperial bodyguards from legionary soldiers in the period of the Second Triumvirate.



A lost source on the Persian campaign of Julian the Apostate
Аннотация
The article covers the problem of sources of the so-called Syriac Julian Romance. It deals with a few previously overlooked testimonies which suggest that at least some of the information presented in the Romance is derived from a work written by a well-informed author of the fourth century, who was probably a contemporary and eyewitness of the reign of Julian and a veteran of the Persian campaign of 363.



Dracontius on Homer and Virgil in the prologue to the Abduction of Helen
Аннотация
The paper deals with the problem of the late Roman poet Dracontius’ assessment of his literary predecessors, Homer and Virgil. Although their influence on this author is indisputable, there are very few direct indications of his personal attitude to the masters of the epic genre. In fact, the only such example is found in the prologue to the poem The Abduction of Helen. The small discourse, which fits into 20 lines, is usually interpreted by researchers as a praise of, or at least as a tribute to the poets of the past. At the same time, a closer analysis of some of its stylistic features and imagery used by Dracontius gives grounds for seeing irony behind the panegyric.



Publications
Three new funerary inscriptions from Tenedos
Аннотация
This paper introduces three previously unpublished grave inscriptions from Tenedos, two of which belong to the Hellenistic period. Recent surveys on the island led to the discovery of inscriptions no. 2 and 3, while inscription no. 1 was found during rescue excavations carried out in 2002. It is worth noting that inscription no. 1 is a cenotaph of a foreigner from Byzantion, which sets it apart from the other two. Based on its stylistic features, the stele with the inscription no. 2 ought to be of Mysian origin. Furthermore, two of the inscriptions (1 and 2) are of particular interest for featuring traits of the Lesbian dialect.



A stone block from Old Smyrna: Pente Grammai? Abacus?
Аннотация
The study examines, a stone block of unknown provenance preserved in a warehouse in Old Smyrna. On the flat surface of the stone, there are five parallel lines with round holes at the ends of each line, and a half-arc-shaped line on the top of one of the straight lines. The suggestions that stone blocks with different versions of this pattern, including five, seven, and eleven lines, were used for different purposes are controversial. While such stone blocks have been found in sanctuaries and settlements in the Greek mainland and on the islands, this specific Old Smyrna find provides an important contribution to Anatolian history. First researchers who worked on the subject defined these stones as a board for the Pente Grammai game, one of the lesser-known ancient games; later researchers described stone blocks with letters as abaci. In recent studies, it has been suggested on the basis of archaeological evidence that such stones functioned as a means of teaching mathematics in Greek educational system. The Old Smyrna find with its simple design is interpreted by us to be both a game board (Pente Grammai) and a simple calculating tool (abacus). The closest parallels to the design of the Old Smyrna example can be found at Stagira and at Eretria.



In world museums
Erotica. towards the problem of provenance and use of the so-called phallic terracotta figurines in Graeco-Roman Egypt (from the collection of the Pushkin state museum of fine arts, Moscow)
Аннотация
The paper presents the publication (mainly for the first time) of 12 terracotta objects, with the so-called ‘erotic’ or ‘phallic’ depictions. These are grotesque attendants of phallophori, and a pygmy attacked by a cockerel, fragments of Greek vessels with erotic scenes, the statuettes of phalli, and two unique plaques with the depiction of symplegma. Thematically and functionally close to these items are pottery oil lamps in the shape of a man with an enormous phalli. Moreover, as a precursor to the Graeco-Roman terracotta there is a complex of faience and limestone ‘phallic’ figurines from the Late and Graeco-Roman periods (including so called Naukratic figures ). The origins of such phallic statuettes, as shown in the paper, can be traced back to the Late Egyptian tradition and even earlier. The ‘erotic’ depictions were widespread in different regions of Egypt. This paper makes one of the first steps in the research into the previously ‘obscene’ or ‘prohibited’/’restricted’ theme of Ancient Egyptian erotic depictions from the collection of the Pushkin Museum. To understand these objects as a specific phenomenon of Egyptian culture, one is looking for their provenance, which, as is often the case, is missing. We can only speculate about the initial context of such items, being in greater part the ‘ex-votos’ or apotropaic objects kept in houses and serving as amulets for male potency and female fertility.



Critical and bibliographical surveys
L. PRANDI. Bisanzio prima di Bisanzio: Una città greca fra due continenti. (Centro ricerche e documentazione sull’antichità classica: Monografie, 50). Roma–Bristol: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2020. VI + 201 p. ISBN: 978-88-913-2087-2



E.H. SHAW. Sallust and the Fall of the Republic. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2021. XII + 506 р. ISBN: 978-9-00-450171-3



News and events
XXII Сергеевские чтения на кафедре истории древнего мира исторического факультета МГУ имени М.В. Ломоносова



Всероссийская научная конференция «Советская древность – IX»



Personalia
The Anniversary of Inna Andreevna Gvozdeva



To the 70th Anniversary of Prof. S.K. Sizov



Supplement
The Apocr yphal ‘Testament of Job’


