Mercury's Wings

Mercury's Wings: Exploring Modes of Communication in the Ancient World is the first-ever volume of essays devoted to ancient communications. Comparable previous work has been mainly confined to articles on aspects of communication in the Roman empire. This set of 18 essays with an introduction by the co-editors marks a milestone, therefore, that demonstrates the importance and rich further potential of the topic. The authors, who include art historians, Assyriologists, Classicists and Egyptologists, take the broad view of communications as a vehicle not just for the transmission of information, but also for the conduct of religion, commerce, and culture. Encompassed within this scope are varied purposes of communication such as propaganda and celebration, as well as profit and administration. Each essay deals with a communications network, or with a means or type of communication, or with the special features of religious communication or communication in and among large empires. The spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries of the volume take in the Near East as well as Greece and Rome, and cover a period of some 2,000 years beginning in the second millennium BCE and ending with the spread of Christianity during the last centuries of the Roman Empire in the West. In all, about one quarter of the essays deal with the Near East, one quarter with Greece, one quarter with Greece and Rome together, and one quarter with the Roman empire and its Persian and Indian rivals. Some essays concern topics in cultural history, such as Greek music and Roman art; some concern economic history in both Mesopotamia and Rome; and some concern traditional historical topics such as diplomacy and war in the Mediterranean world. Each essay draws on recent work in the theory of communications.

F. S. Naiden is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Richard J. A. Talbert is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

ContentsFigures, Maps, and Tables Abbreviations ContributorsIntroduction, by F. S. Naiden and Richard Talbert
Part I Networks1 Environmental Perspectives on Ancient Communication, by Grant Parker2 Libraries and Communication in the Ancient World, by Matthew Nicholls3 Communication and Roman Long-distance Trade, by Taco Terpstra4 Military Communication: The Example of the Classical Battlefield, by F. S. Naiden
Part II Modes5 Monuments of the Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, by James F. Osborne6 Communicating with Images in the Roman Empire, by Jennifer Trimble7 Musical Persuasion in Early Greece, by Timothy Power8 Gesture in the Ancient Mediterranean World, by Gregory S. Aldrete9 Exercising Sympathy in Mesopotamian Letters, by Seth Richardson
Part III Divinities10 Messages and the Mesopotamian Gods: Signals and Systematics, by Seth Richardson11 Pilgrimage and Communication, by Ian Rutherford12 The Inspired Voice: Enigmatic Oracular Communication, by Julia Kindt13 Christianity, by Michael Kulikowski
Part IV Engagements14 Cross-cultural Communication in the Hellenistic Mediterranean and Western and South Asia, by Matthew Canepa15 Cross-cultural Communication in Egypt, by J. G. Manning16 Diplomatic Communication in the Ancient Mediterranean, by Sheila L. Ager17 Coinage and the Roman Economy, by Kenneth W. Harl18 Communicating through Maps: The Roman Case, by Richard Talbert
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