Published by De Gruyter

Münchner Vorlesungen zu Antiken Welten

ISSN: 2198-9664

Overview
Volumes

The "Münchner Zentrum für Antike Welten" is a joint research center at the LMU in Munich with a permanent visiting professorship. Each year an internationally renowned scholar of Ancient Studies is invited to hold a lecture series on significant interdisciplinary topics. Furthermore, the MZAW organizes congresses and conferences. The series presents these lectures to an audience interested in the history and culture of the ancient world.

Topics

Book Open Access 2021

Bronze Age Lives

Anthony Harding

Volume 6 in this series

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The Bronze Age of Europe is a crucial formative period that underlay the civilisations of Greece and Rome, fundamental to our own modern civilisation. A systematic description of it appeared in 2013, but this work offers a series of personal studies of aspects of the period by one of its best known practitioners.

The book is based on the idea that different aspects of the Bronze Age can be studied as a series of “lives”: the life of people and peoples, of objects, of places, and of societies. Each of these is taken in turn and a range of aspects presented that offer interesting insights into the period. These are based on recent research (for instance on the genetic history of the Old World) as well as on fundamental earlier studies. In addition, there is a consideration of the history of Bronze Age studies, the “life of the Bronze Age”.

The book provides a novel approach to the Bronze Age based on the personal interests of a well-known Bronze Age scholar. It offers insights into a period that students of other aspects of the ancient world, as well as Bronze Age specialists and general readers, will find interesting and stimulating.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110705805
ISBN:: 9783110705805
ISBN:: 9783110705706
ISBN:: 9783110705867
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Pre-History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2019

Die feinen Unterschiede

Kultur, Kunst und Konsum im antiken Rom

Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp

Volume 5 in this series

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In studies of the Roman elite, scholars have focused on their intensive and restricted commitment to political and military achievement. This book critically considers the lasting exclusivity of this way of life, widening the scope of inquiry to demonstrate how the aristocratic environment also integrated literary pursuits, artistic production and pervasive luxury consumption.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110614909
ISBN:: 9783110614909
ISBN:: 9783110614084
ISBN:: 9783110615722
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2019

Krieg und Kunst im antiken Griechenland und Rom

Heldentum, Identität, Herrschaft, Ideologie

Tonio Hölscher

Volume 4 in this series

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Images of war in Greek and Roman art reveal much more than the mere veneration of victory and glory. This book examines ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and memorials to reveal the ambivalent motivating forces that underlie the violence of war to this day: individual heroism, political identity, universal rule, and imperial ideology.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110549683
ISBN:: 9783110549683
ISBN:: 9783110558012
ISBN:: 9783110549508
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Classical Archaeology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2018

Sprachen, Völker und Phantome

Sprach- und kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zur Ethnizität

Peter-Arnold Mumm

Volume 3 in this series

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Academics have long stopped speaking of “peoples” and “their” languages and cultures. Yet languages and cultures are still taken as evidence of quasi-ethnic community and “identity.” Nine papers by scholars in Egyptology, general linguists, archeology, German-Romance onomastics, Hittite studies, and Turkish studies reveal the incongruities between linguistic community, ethnicity, and culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110601268
ISBN:: 9783110601268
ISBN:: 9783110601251
ISBN:: 9783110601275
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies, other
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2014

Geschichte als Element antiker Kultur

Die Griechen und ihre Geschichte(n)

Hans-Joachim Gehrke

Volume 2 in this series

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The relationship between conceptions of history and forms of political organization has been almost completely neglected in the study of ancient Greek Culture so far. This book shows that an important element of social self-affirmation lays in this very relationship, facilitating a proper assessment of the importance of Greek historiography, and thus casting an entirely new light on a key phenomenon of ancient culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110350999
ISBN:: 978-3-11-035050-0
ISBN:: 978-3-11-035099-9
ISBN:: 9783110377781
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2014

Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World

Jan N. Bremmer

Volume 1 in this series

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The ancient Mysteries have long attracted the interest of scholars, an interest that goes back at least to the time of the Reformation. After a period of interest around the turn of the twentieth century, recent decades have seen an important study of Walter Burkert (1987). Yet his thematic approach makes it hard to see how the actual initiation into the Mysteries took place. To do precisely that is the aim of this book.

It gives a ‘thick description’ of the major Mysteries, not only of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries, but also those located at the interface of Greece and Anatolia: the Mysteries of Samothrace, Imbros and Lemnos as well as those of the Corybants. It then proceeds to look at the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries, which have become increasingly better understood due to the many discoveries of new texts in the recent times. Having looked at classical Greece we move on to the Roman Empire, where we study not only the lesser Mysteries, which we know especially from Pausanias, but also the new ones of Isis and Mithras. We conclude our book with a discussion of the possible influence of the Mysteries on emerging Christianity.

Its detailed references and up-to-date bibliography will make this book indispensable for any scholar interested in the Mysteries and ancient religion, but also for those scholars who work on initiation or esoteric rituals, which were often inspired by the ancient Mysteries.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110299557
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029929-8
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029955-7
ISBN:: 9783110376999
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Ancient Religion
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Religious Studies
Subject:: Ancient Religions
Publisher:: De Gruyter