Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

On July 22nd, ISAW Associate Director for Exhibitions and Gallery Curator Clare Fitzgerald gave a Virtual Tour of our recent exhibition, Hymn to Apollo: The Ancient World and the Ballet Russes. This online presentation was given in collaboration with NYU's Alumni office, and we are pleased to be able to provide our community with the full recording.

Published 01/22/2021 — filed under: exhibition-event, video, hymn-to-apollo Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2019-2020

On December 16th, ISAW Associate Director for Exhibitions and Gallery Curator Clare Fitzgerald gave a Virtual Tour of our recent exhibition, Devotion and Decadence: The Berthouville Treasure and Roman Luxury. This online presentation was given in collaboration with NYU's Alumni office, and we are pleased to be able to provide our community with the full recording.

Published 01/22/2021 — filed under: exhibition-event, video, devotionanddecadence Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2019-2020

Were people 6,000 years ago “just like us”? A sneak peek at the Masters of Fire exhibition, with ISAW's Jennifer Chi.

Published 02/22/2014 — filed under: video Located in Exhibitions Masters of Fire: Copper Age Art from Israel

This lecture considers one type of Roman sundial represented in the exhibition that has not been sufficiently appreciated from geographical, cultural, and social perspectives. These are the miniature bronze instruments fitted with adjustable rings to accommodate the changes of latitude liable to occur during long journeys. This lecture will explore the possibility that often they were valued not so much for practical use, but rather as prestige objects.

Published 09/22/2016 — filed under: exhibition-event, video Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2016-2017

This lecture will consist of a brief introduction to the historical development and the main characteristics of Greco-Roman astrology, to be followed by a survey of the theoretical and practical importance of accurate time-measurement in the practice of horoscopy and other astrological applications.

Published 09/22/2016 — filed under: exhibition-event, video Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2016-2017

Since the emergence of Greek medicine as an independent field of study in the time of Hippocrates, there has been debate about its status vis-à-vis the humanities. In the second century A.D., the physician Galen took considerable pains to identify medicine as a foundational liberal art rather than as a manual or menial trade. The subsequent fate of his vast corpus—what was read when, how, and by whom—is illustrative of the push and pull of ancient medicine between science and the humanities up to the present day. Unlike the writing of his more literary contemporaries, Galen's corpus had an extensive, pragmatic role in professional training. He formed the cornerstone of medical education until the 17th century and his role there persisted even into the 19th century. It was only as his medical popularity waned that study of him among philologists began to gain momentum. This talk will investigate the issues at stake in Galen's time and then follow the fate of his influence through the ages into the modern debate on the role of humanities in medical education.

Published 12/08/2016 — filed under: video Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2016-2017

The Mediterranean’s Iron Age – roughly 1200-600 BCE – may be regarded as one of its most dynamic periods of history. Although it is not its first era in which people across the sea exchanged goods, ideas, values, customs, practices, and technologies, the difference is the scale to which this occurred. The interactions that resurged from the tenth century onwards eclipsed their Bronze Age antecedents in geographical, material and ideological scope. The period is characterized perhaps most of all by the movement of peoples from their homeland to areas far away on an unprecedented scale, notably the settlement of Greeks and Phoenicians in the central and western Mediterranean, which began in the ninth and eighth centuries.

Published 12/08/2016 — filed under: video Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2016-2017

The recent findings and the information from Kültepe over the last decade will be presented in this talk. Kültepe or the capital city of the ancient Kanesh Kingdom consists of a 21-meter high mound, mostly occupied by official and religious monumental buildings including palaces and temples, and a lower town settlement known as the “karum of Kaneš”. The mound exhibits a long cultural sequence of 18 building levels from the Early Bronze Age until the late Roman period, whereas the lower town contains four well-defined levels.

Published 12/08/2016 — filed under: video Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2016-2017

The intellectual exercise of textual criticism is far from a modern invention. Without the regularity provided by printing, there were constantly different texts in circulation, and it was up to learned individuals to figure out how to make sense of them. While no manual on the assembly and editing of ancient manuscripts existed in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China, scribes diligently worked through copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Sumerian Incantations, or Buddhist manuscripts, and noted variants as they went along. It is the intention of this conference to draw out the details concerning how those scribes produced a text tradition, added commentary to new editions or marginalia to old ones, and what these practices might say about the culture in which the scribes were working. Please note that separate registration is required for DAY ONE (9/21/17), KEYNOTE LECTURE (9/21/17), and DAY TWO (9/22/17).

Published 06/16/2017 — filed under: video Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2017-2018

The intellectual exercise of textual criticism is far from a modern invention. Without the regularity provided by printing, there were constantly different texts in circulation, and it was up to learned individuals to figure out how to make sense of them. While no manual on the assembly and editing of ancient manuscripts existed in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China, scribes diligently worked through copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Sumerian Incantations, or Buddhist manuscripts, and noted variants as they went along. It is the intention of this conference to draw out the details concerning how those scribes produced a text tradition, added commentary to new editions or marginalia to old ones, and what these practices might say about the culture in which the scribes were working. Please note that separate registration is required for DAY ONE (9/21/17), KEYNOTE LECTURE (9/21/17), and DAY TWO (9/22/17).

Published 06/16/2017 — filed under: video Located in Events Events Archive Academic Year 2017-2018

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