Petra Papyri
   HOME
*



picture info

Petra Papyri
The Petra papyri, also known as the Petra archive, is a corpus of papyrus documents written in Ancient Greek and dating to the 6th century AD that were discovered in the Byzantine Church at Petra in 1993. At some 140 papyrus rolls, the collection constitutes the largest corpus of ancient documents ever found in Jordan and stand as one of the most important papyrological finds outside of the massive yields taken from the sands of Egypt. Like the Herculaneum papyri, another major non-Egyptian find, the Petra rolls were preserved by virtue of their being carbonized in a fire, but most of the papyri were damaged beyond decipherment and only a few dozen preserve substantial, interpretable texts. The corpus is an "archive" in that it contains the private papers of a single family. The man at the center of this seemingly well-to-do household was one Theodoros who served as deacon at the Petra church, but his relation to many of the other people named in the papyri is often unclear. The ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mosaic Of A Woman, Petra Church
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly popular in the Ancient Roman world. Mosaic today includes not just murals and pavements, but also artwork, hobby crafts, and industrial and construction forms. Mosaics have a long history, starting in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC. Pebble mosaics were made in Tiryns in Mycenean Greece; mosaics with patterns and pictures became widespread in classical times, both in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Early Christian basilicas from the 4th century onwards were decorated with wall and ceiling mosaics. Mosaic art flourished in the Byzantine Empire from the 6th to the 15th centuries; that tradition was adopted by the Norman Kingdom of Sicily in the 12th century, by the eastern-influenced Republic of Venice, and among the Rus. Mosaic fell ou ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Papyrus
Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book. Papyrus is first known to have been used in Egypt (at least as far back as the First Dynasty), as the papyrus plant was once abundant across the Nile Delta. It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region. Apart from a writing material, ancient Egyptians employed papyrus in the construction of other artifacts, such as reed boats, mats, rope, sandals, and baskets. History Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE.H. Idris Bell and T.C. Skeat, 1935"Papyrus and its uses"(British Museum pamphlet). The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic period (), and the Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, although its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek, of which Attic Greek developed into Koine. Dia ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Byzantine Church (Petra)
The Byzantine Church at Petra (also known as The Petra Church) is a prime example of monumental architecture in Byzantine Petra. It sits on elevated ground in the city center, north of the so-called Colonnaded Street. It is one of three Byzantine churches on the hillside, the others two being the Ridge Church (or Red Church) and the Blue Chapel, the 5th - 6th century chapel north of the main church, so called because it was fashioned with blue Egyptian granite. The Byzantine Church is notable for its lavish and well-preserved mosaic decoration. The Byzantine Church is the find spot of 140 papyri that have provided scholars with valuable information about life in both Byzantine Petra and in its rural surroundings. These are referred to by scholars as the Petra papyri. The church was excavated by the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) between 1992 and 2002. According to Dr. Barbara A. Porter, Director of ACOR 2006-2020, while many elements of Petra's Byzantine history ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Petra
Petra ( ar, ٱلْبَتْرَاء, Al-Batrāʾ; grc, Πέτρα, "Rock", Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: ), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is an historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to the mountain of Jebel al-Madhbah, Jabal Al-Madbah, in a Depression (geology), basin surrounded by mountains forming the eastern flank of the Arabah valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. The area around Petra has been inhabited from as early as 7000 BC, and the Nabataeans might have settled in what would become the capital city of Nabataean Kingdom, their kingdom as early as the 4th century BC. Archaeological work has only discovered evidence of Nabataean presence dating back to the second century BC, by which time Petra had become their capital. The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who invested in Petra's proximity to the incense trade routes by establishing it as a major regional trading hub. The trading business gained ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Papyrology
Papyrology is the study of manuscripts of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., preserved on portable media from antiquity, the most common form of which is papyrus, the principal writing material in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Papyrology includes both the translation and interpretation of ancient documents in a variety of languages as well as the care and conservation of rare papyrus originals. Papyrology as a systematic discipline dates from the 1880s and 1890s, when large caches of well-preserved papyri were discovered by archaeologists in several locations in Egypt, such as Arsinoe (Faiyum) and Oxyrhynchus. Leading centres of papyrology include Oxford University, Heidelberg University, the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussamlung at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Leiden University, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, University of California, Berkeley The University of C ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt, while Alexandria, the second-largest city, is an important industrial and tourist hub at the Mediterranean coast. At approximately 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the 14th-most populated country in the world. Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, ur ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Herculaneum Papyri
The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyri found in the Herculaneum Villa of the Papyri, in the 18th century, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The papyri, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, come from the only surviving library from antiquity that exists in its entirety.Interview with Daniel Delattre: the Herculaneum scrolls given to Consul Bonaparte (2010), Napoleon.org
As many as 44 of the works discovered were written by the philosopher and poet Philodemus
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Deacon
A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Scandinavian Lutheran Churches, the Methodist Churches, the Anglican Communion, and the Free Church of England, view the diaconate as an order of ministry. Origin and development The word ''deacon'' is derived from the Greek word (), which is a standard ancient Greek word meaning "servant", "waiting-man", "minister", or "messenger". It is generally assumed that the office of deacon originated in the selection of seven men by the apostles, among them Stephen, to assist with the charitable work of the early church as recorded in Acts of the Apostles chapter 6. The title ''deaconess'' ( grc, διακόνισσα, diakónissa, label=none) is not found in the Bible. Ho ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Gessius Of Petra
Gessius of Petra (Greek: Γέσιος, ''Gesios'')''Suda Online''Γ 486/ref> was a physician, iatrosophist and pagan philosopher active in Alexandria in the late 5th and early 6th century.Edward J. Watts"The Enduring Legacy of the Iatrosophist Gessius" ''Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies'' 49.1 (2009), pp. 113–133. Gessius was a native of the region of Petra. According to Damascius, who is the main source for Gessius' biography in the ''Suda'', he was from Petra itself. Stephanus of Byzantium, on the other hand, writes that he came from the agricultural region of el-Ji (today Wadi Musa) not far from Petra. His father's name is unknown.Robert C. Caldwell and Traianos Gagos, "Beyond the Rock: Petra in the Sixth Century CE in the Light of the Papyri", Thomas Evan Levy, P. M. Michele Daviau and Randall W. Younker (eds.), ''Crossing Jordan: North American Contributions to the Archaeology of Jordan'' (Equinox, 2007), pp. 417–434. He may have been descended from the Gessius who was a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Wadi Araba
The Arabah, Araba or Aravah ( he, הָעֲרָבָה, ''hāʿĂrāḇā''; ar, وادي عربة, ''Wādī ʿAraba''; lit. "desolate and dry area") is a loosely defined geographic area south of the Dead Sea basin, which forms part of the border between Israel to the west and Jordan to the east. The old meaning, which was in use up to the early 20th century, covered almost the entire length of what today is called the Jordan Rift Valley, running in a north–south orientation between the southern end of the Sea of Galilee and the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba of the Red Sea at Aqaba–Eilat. This included the Jordan River Valley between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea itself, and what today is commonly called the Arava Valley. The contemporary use of the term is restricted to this southern section alone. Geography The Arabah is in length, from the Gulf of Aqaba to the southern shore of the Dead Sea. Topographically, the region is divided into three se ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Gaza City
Gaza (;''The New Oxford Dictionary of English'' (1998), , p. 761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory in Palestine, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza...". ar, غَزَّة ', ), also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of 590,481 (in 2017), making it the largest city in the State of Palestine. Inhabited since at least the 15th century BCE, Gaza has been dominated by several different peoples and empires throughout its history. The Philistines made it a part of their pentapolis after the Ancient Egyptians had ruled it for nearly 350 years. Under the Roman Empire Gaza experienced relative peace and its port flourished. In 635 CE, it became the first city in Palestine to be conquered by the Muslim Rashidun army and quickly developed into a center of Islamic law. However, by the time the Crusaders invaded the country starting in 1099, Gaza was in ruins. In later centuries, Gaza experienced several ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]