Literacy and Poer in the Ancient World [Paperback]

This collection attempts to set the study of literacy in the ancient world in the wider contexts of the debates among anthropologists over the impact of writing on society.Was writing a revolutionary innovation, prompting or participating in social change, or a fundamentally repressive and disciplinary technology? The book consists of a series of studies ranging over the whole of the Mediterranean world and much of northern Europe during a period of more than a millennium (c. 600 BCAD 800).Was writing a revolutionary innovation, prompting or participating in social change, or a fundamentally repressive and disciplinary technology? The book consists of a series of studies ranging over the whole of the Mediterranean world and much of northern Europe during a period of more than a millennium (c. 600 BCAD 800).This book consists of a series of studies, each by a specialist in a different period or area of the ancient history of the Mediterranean world and northern Europe, examining the relationship between power and the use of writing in ancient society. The studies range in date from c. 600 B.C. to A.D. 800. It is intended not to provide a complete coverage of the ancient world but to use particular case studies to examine ways in which the relationship between literacy and power can be analyzed.1. Literacy and power in the ancient world Alan K. Bowman and Greg Woolf; 2. The Persepolis Tablets: speech, seal and script D. M. Lewis; 3. Literacy and the city-state in archaic and classical Greece Rosalind Thomas; 4. Literacy and language in Egypt in the Late and Persian Periods John Ray; 5. Literacy and power in Ptolemaic Egypt Dorothy J. Thompson; 6. Power and the spread of writing in the West Greg Woolf; 7. Texts, scribes and power in Roman Judaea M. D. Goodman; 8. The Roman imperial army: letters and literacy on the northern frontier Alan K. Bowman; 9. Literacy and power in early Christianity Robin Lane Fox; 10. Greek and Syriac in Late Antique Syria S. P. Brock; 11.lS7