Pasts Imperfect (3.24.22)
Incantation Bowls, Aiding Refugees, and More
This week, Simcha Gross and Avigail Manekin-Bamberger discuss their new article on incantation bowls. Then, Anna Arays provides resources for helping scholars and refugees from Ukraine, the latest release from Zotero, understanding Blackness in antiquity, a newly launched interactive map of the premodern world, and much more.
New Understandings of Incantation Bowls (Simcha Gross and Avigail Manekin-Bamberger)
The Aramaic incantation bowls are a fascinating collection of over 2500 artifacts dating from roughly the sixth-seventh century and mainly from central Iraq, that are increasingly the subject of new scholarship. The bowls contain incantations of varying sizes, composed in a number of different Eastern Aramaic dialects, such as Syriac and Mandaic, but the majority are in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. They were intended to protect one’s household from demons, witchcraft, and mishaps by inscribing certain formulae on the surface of a bowl that was then buried.
Since their discovery, the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic bowls have largely been relegated to the domain of “popular culture” or “popular religion,” a realm in which syncretism was rampant and myths and superstitions were pervasive, and a world thought to contrast strongly with that of the high scholastic rabbinic elites. To these scholars, the bowls and the Babylonian Talmud emerged from two different worlds, such that, in the words of James Montgomery in the first scientific collection of bowls, “the magic of our bowls is so eclectic that even a ‘Jewish’-Aramaic text does not imply a Jewish exorcist, nor Jewish clients. We have to think of a clientele partly Jewish, partly non-Jewish, to which the religious affinities of the magic were indifferent.”
With the continued publication of the bowls and the increased study of the relationship between rabbis and magic, however, the dichotomy between the world of the learned elites and those allegedly responsible for producing and consuming the bowls has become increasingly difficult to maintain. On the one hand, assumptions about rabbinic intolerance of magic and magicians have given way to the recognition of the extent to which rabbis were familiar with magic and incorporated it in their own work. The Babylonian Talmud includes incantations parallel to those in the incantation bowls, and Babylonian rabbinic stories portray certain rabbis as displaying expertise over the proper incantations for particular occasions.
On the other hand, a growing number of bowls reflect detailed knowledge of Jewish texts and traditions, including those often associated with the rabbis. Bowls invoke liturgy, Jewish legal formulae, mystical traditions parallel to those found in the rabbinized mystical hekhalot literature, rabbinic figures, rabbinic texts, and more. The discovery of a number of bowls produced for a rabbinic client is yet further proof that at least some rabbis purchased bowls and sought relief through them. And still, the existence of these traditions and of rabbinic clients has not occasioned a synthetic reexamination of the bowls and their significance for understanding Babylonian Jewish society, including the place of the rabbis within it. Despite the bowls’ manifest diversity, they are often still—tacitly if not explicitly— treated as a single corpus reflecting popular religious practice and traditions.
Our recent article, “Babylonian Jewish Society: The Evidence of the Incantation Bowls” offers an initial attempt to synthesize the data offered by the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantations bowls on Babylonian Jewish society and the rabbis. We demonstrate that in a number of previously unpublished bowls, bowl scribes invoke not only rabbis of the distant past but also local rabbis, the rabbinic class, contemporary rabbis found in the latest strata of the Babylonian Talmud, and even rabbinic academy heads. This indicates that some bowl scribes and/or clients had greater social proximity to the rabbis than heretofore recognized.
Ultimately, it is clear that among the bowl scribes, some had access to a rich collection of Jewish texts and traditions and appear to have been intellectually and socially proximate to rabbinic circles. By contrast, other bowls contain only non-Jewishly-marked themes and motifs, and do not display knowledge of specific Jewish traditions, for instance one (in)famous bowl written in Jewish script but which invokes Jesus and the Trinity. Our results suggest that the bowls were produced by different Jewish scribes, with different proximity to and affinity for the rabbis and their teachings. The evidence thus complicates the simplistic binaries between rabbinic literature and incantations, and consequently between elite and popular productions, making them an indispensable (and underexploited) source for better understanding Babylonian Jewish society of the time, as well as the place of the rabbis within it.
Simcha Gross and Avigail Manekin-Bamberger, “Babylonian Jewish Society: The Evidence of the Incantation Bowls,” Jewish Quarterly Review 112 (2022), 1-30, available here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/849193/summary.
And if you want to incorporate incantation bowls into your teaching, check out Krista Dalton’s hands-on pedagogy exercise at Ancient Jew Review.
Public Scholarship on the Web
Yale librarian Anna Arays provides a helpful list of resources for helping scholars at risk in Ukraine. First, at the PoSoCoMeS (the working group on post-socialist and comparative memory studies within the Memory Studies Association) site, they have a centralized guide to helping scholars in danger [access it here]. Additionally, ASEEES has put together a good one (also referenced above) here. Although most crowdsourced info appears to be organized by country, Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute is compiling some eyewitness comments on their resource guide here.
Coverage of the war has also revealed that academics have been a visible part of the struggle, both in terms of resistance in Russia and within Ukraine. A recent piece in The New York Times addressed dissident Russians, including Boris Nikolsky, a Classics Professor at the Moscow School of Higher Economics, who fled to Armenia. Additionally a Facebook post notes that Ukrainian historian Nataliia Yakovenko has been translating Livy in the midst of the conflict.
A few other links:
Council for At Risk Academics
Scholars at Risk
Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online
Science for Ukraine
What can fashion tell us about political ideology and tradition? Over at JSTOR Daily, Nabanjan Maitra addresses “Why Narendra Modi Presents Himself as a Guru” in the newest edition of the Pasts Present column. As he notes, Modi’s styling of himself as an ascetic guru might be a recruiting tool or may harken back to a history of “sovereign and independent” medieval monastic leaders:
Since coming to power in 2014, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or Indian People’s Party, has sought to show that India’s path to prosperity and power, at home and abroad, lies in embracing its authentic and grand Hindu past, the legacy of which has been suppressed by imperialism and, in turn, secularism. What this path to power looks like is difficult to articulate, even for the BJP—save, that is, for launching a public relations campaign. With all the clarity and gravity that such campaigns entail, the BJP sought to promote India as a vishwaguru, a guru or teacher to the world.
At Aeon, Sarah Derbew discusses Blackness in antiquity and notes that “[t]o truly see black people in ancient art we need to look beyond the historically recent trope of ‘Blackness = inferiority.”
The interactive website of Fra Mauro's World Map (ca. 1450 CE) was created by the Galileo Museum in collaboration with the Marciana National Library in Venice. It is a part of the larger project Scienza, storia, società in Italia. Da Leonardo e Galileo alle “case” dell’innovazione, funded by MIUR from the resources of the Special Integrative Fund for Research (FISR). Check it out here.
Conferences, Events, and Lectures
Penn State’s Center for Black Digital Research is celebrating the release of Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels, and Labours of Mrs. Elaw. Join them on March 25, 2022 to celebrate Kimberly Blockett’s new scholarly edition. Dr. Blockett will be in conversation with Nyasha Junior, Judith Weisenfeld, and Denise Burgher. Register here: bit.ly/blockettbookparty
Want to know more about the ancient Egyptian bread yeasts used to bake bread? Serena Love is giving a public lecture, “From Tomb to Table: The Ancient Egyptian Yeast Project,” for the Monash Centre for Ancient Cultures, which is co-hosted with the Egyptology Society of Victoria on March 30, 2022 at 7 pm Melbourne time.
Call for Proposals: The Digital Classicist London seminar invites proposals for the Summer 2022 series. We are looking for seminars on any aspect of the ancient or pre-colonial worlds, that address innovative digital approaches to research, teaching, dissemination or engagement. Seminars that speak to the ancient world beyond Greco-Roman antiquity are especially welcome.
Seminars will be held fortnightly through June and July in the Institute of Classical Studies, Senate House, London, with the possibility for audience and speakers to be present or remote (although we hope most speakers will be physically present in London, circumstances allowing). We have a small budget to support travel for speakers within the UK.
Please send an abstract of 300–500 words to <gabriel.bodard@sas.ac.uk> (clearly marked Digital Classicist London) by Sunday April 10, 2022.
New Online Journal Issues @YaleClassicsLib
Ágora Vol. 24 (2022)
Méthexis Vol. 34, No. 1 (2022)
Arheologia = Археологія No. 1 (2022)
Neotestamentica Vol. 55, No. 2 (2021)
Gallia 78 (2021)NB: Andreas G. Heiss, et al. “Contribution à l’histoire de la boulangerie romaine”
Semitica et Classica Vol. 14 (2021)
Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Sacris Erudiri Vol. 60 (2021)
Analecta Bollandiana Vol. 139, No. 2 (2021)
Chronique d'Egypte Vol. 96, No. 191 (2021)
Novum Testamentum Vol. 64, No. 2 (2022)
American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 126, No. 2 (2022) NB: Antonis Kotsonas, “Early Greek Alphabetic Writing: Text, Context, Material Properties, and Socialization.”
International Journal of Cultural Property Vol. 28, No. 4 (2021)
Atlantís - review Vol. 44 (2022) #openaccess
Journal of Late Antiquity Vol. 15, No. 1 (2022)
Augustinian Studies Vol. 53, No. 2 (2022)
Greek & Roman Musical Studies Vol.10 No. 1 (2022) Tribute to Andrew Barker (1943–2021)
Helios Vol.48, No. 2 (Fall 2021)
Ancient Society Vol. 51 (2021) NB: Nico Dogaer “Beer for the Gods and Coin for the Priests Temple Involvement in the Beer Industry in Hellenistic Egypt”
Mnemosyne Vol. 75, No. 2 (2022) NB: N. Bryant Kirkland, “‘One Harmonious Body’ Dionysius, Herodotus, and the Rhetoric of Empire.”
Gnosis Vol. 6, No. 2 (2021) Comparing Foucault: Cultivations of Gnosis and Technologies of the Self
The Classical Review Vol. 72, No.1 (2022)
Also noted: Zotero 6 A major new release of everyone’s favorite open-source citation manager, now including a PDF-reader and annotator.
Pitches
The Public Books section "Antiquities" continues to take pitches for articles to be published in 2022. You can pitch to our “Pasts Imperfect” column at the LA Review of Books using this form and to the new JSTOR column here. Thanks for reading!
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