Chronoi

Entangled temporalities in Mari raises the question of the close interweaving between field research and the construction of a historical object, one of the most famous city-states of the sumero-akkadian world. Working on this site, which has been severely damaged by the Syrian conflict, means unravelling the threads of a complex weave of field situations that turn the site into a veritable palimpsest. On a tell of more than 140 ha, the remains of three superimposed cities, as well as cemeteries, are intertwined. They have been partially cleared and left to erode, occasionally restored, then subjected to one of the most intense looting operations of the Syrian conflict. Untangling these threads means conducting an investigation that leads from the current situation in the field to a dual archaeology: that of the archives of the archaeological mission and its history, and that of a city  conceived as an object of history, progressively constructed along the lines of stereotypes typical of archaeological Orientalism. After reconstructing this framework, we propose a dynamic vision of the evolution of a site and then of its monumental center, through a re-evaluation of the documentation as a whole.

What does it mean to see time passing? This volume argues that the perception of time is inseparable from acts of seeing and the cultural frameworks that direct the gaze. While much has been written on Islamic notions of time or vision separately, their intersection has rarely been explored. Bringing together case studies from Qurʾānic studies, law, theology, poetry, architecture, and museology, the volume opens a new field of inquiry into the visual construction of temporality in Islamic thought and expression. It traces how sight shapes and is shaped by the experience of time—from the observation of celestial motion in early law (Hentschel) and Ibn Qutayba’s epistemology (Lahav), to dreams that collapse temporal boundaries (Amir) and the Qurʾān’s creation of memory through vision (Koloska). Further chapters explore poetic duration (Aweida), architectural means to engage cyclical time and reflect eternity (Kol), and the museum as a modern temporal agent (Tütüncü Çağlar). A concluding philosophical dialogue (Shardlow) activates Islamic and Western perspectives together, opening a new field for studying how vision makes time are deeply related. The volume addresses scholars of Islamic studies, philosophy, art history, and theology interested in perception, temporality, and comparative thought.

Jewish authoritative writings of the Second temple Period had to adopt to total different religious as well as political circumstances their adressees had to face. Inspired by the idea of Paul Kosmin, that the imposture of a total new imperial time regime by the Seleucid rulers provoked autochthonous reorientations in means of time and space, the contributions of this volume examine if this holds true to the writings that circulated during the contemporary Second Temple Period. The methodological approach for the examination is the concept of space-time, or chronotope, already developed by Michail Bakthin for 20^th century literature. Focusing on Judaism of the Second Temple turned out to be very fruitful, as we can distinguish between distinct religious-sociologically formed Jewish groups under different spatial conditions (for example “diaspora” vs. core land). They all produced literature in order to cope with the traumatizing experiences of the loss of sacred spaces as well as the transformation processes that, due to the loss of “Jerusalem” as the spatial anchor point, endangered their religious and national identity. Documents of so-called Hellenistic Judaism in the form of the Septuagint as well as of Palestinian Judaism, which becomes tangible in the texts of Qumran, or in the texts of Elephantine all show signs of increased interest in temporal and spatial orientation, remembering or adopting the already known, as well as inventing new anchor points as their special “chronotope”. In sum, by establishing their own chronotopes, Judaism in Persian and Hellenistic-Roman times gained resilience and developed strategies to redefine its own identity. 

Apocalyptic narratives construct histories of the future which pertain either to this-worldly political events or otherworldly post-mortem conditions. While visions of the afterlife generally describe a world in atemporal stagnation, political prophecies anticipate prospective events that are structured by chronological progression, temporal anomalies, and typological designs. Despite the wide range of prospective outlooks, Byzantine apocalypses convey a coherent vision of temporal processes and qualities in anticipation of the Last Judgment. This book examines the notion of eschatological time as portrayed in Medieval Greek apocalyptic text from the Byzantine millennium (c. 500 to 1500 CE). It is divided into three parts and explores the interrelated aspects of eschatological chronology, velocity, and typology. Methodologically, Byzantine apocalypses are read not merely as historical sources but as literary artefacts that employ specific compositional techniques (narratological, phenomenological, typological) in order to construct a variegated yet coherent meta-history of the end times.

Ancient physicians and philosophers explored how different temporal patterns interacted and overlapped. They were deeply concerned with the meaning of simultaneous events—those moments when natural, bodily, or social processes coincided in ways they considered significant. While Greek and Latin authors had no direct equivalents for what we now call “synchronicity” or “synchronization”, both ideas permeate their reflections on health and the cosmos. This volume adopts these modern terms as a framework for examining how Greco-Roman thinkers conceptualized meaningful coincidence and the effort to align temporal cycles—between body and environment, illness and therapy, or individual and world. Spanning medicine, philosophy, astrology, and meteorology from the fifth century BCE to the sixth CE, the chapters reveal how ancient conceptions of bodily time and cosmic rhythm shaped understandings of health, gender, and disease. By tracing these interconnections, the volume opens new perspectives for scholars of ancient science, philosophy, and culture about the roles of synchrony and asynchrony in understanding and intervening in bodily processes.

This collection of articles investigates notions of time in ancient Jewish and Christian Bible interpretation, a genre which is not intrinsically connected with the calculation of time, but enters the debates about time as part of a broader negotiation of religious boundaries. An international team of researchers uncovers the dynamics of competing notions of time and the cultural embeddedness of each.

The following debates about diverging notions of time are discussed as test cases of constructing religious and exegetical boundaries: eternity of time as wholly other, conceived by Plato and reinterpreted by the Jewish exegete Philo; day one of the creation between ideal and measurable time, interpreted differently by Philo and Philoponus, a Christian exegete; cyclical time in the world conflagration as debated among pagan philosophers, Hellenistic and rabbinic Jews as well as Christian exegetes; the contrast between God’s timelessness and human embeddedness in measurable time as seen by Platonic and Christian authors; and finally, the conflict between messianic and historical time, which prompted lively encounters not only between Jews and Christians, but also among the various members of each group. 

The discovery of the 'Code of Hammurapi' in 1902 sparked widespread discussion in Imperial Germany and attracted considerable attention beyond the academic sphere. For conservative Christian and Jewish theologians, the discovery of the Old Babylonian law appeared to challenge the authenticity of biblical law. Other scholars were enthusiastic: historians identified allegedly striking similarities between the Old Babylonian king from the eighteenth century BC and highly esteemed German rulers such as Frederick II of Prussia and Kaiser Frederick William I. Legal scholars praised the supposed rule of law in ancient Babylonia, thereby drawing a direct line to the modern German “Rechtsstaat.” Such comparisons did not arise from a lack of historical reflection; contemporaries were, of course, aware of the historical, social, and cultural differences. However, as this book argues, the temporal entanglement between ancient Babylonia and modern Germany was prompted by specific political, legal, and religious issues that seemed to be similar in both worlds. This was one of the reasons why Hammurapi became a historical reference figure in various ideological branches in Imperial Germany, including nationalism, racism, and antisemitism. 

The Middle Ages witnessed a shift in thinking about the way God is related to time. For most of the earlier Middle Ages, scholars had followed an earlier patristic tradition of describing God as eternal and thus as timeless or outside of time. In the early thirteenth century, however, members of the Franciscan order, who played a significant role in the development of the recently-founded universities, re-defined God’s relationship to time in terms of his everlastingness. On their account, God is infinite in temporal duration, rather than simply ’timeless’, since he has no beginning and no end. So construed, God encompasses and is able to relate to every moment in time in a way that the Franciscans believed was not possible on the eternalist account. This book will discuss some of the factors that contributed to their shift in thinking about God as everlasting instead of eternal. Among these, the book will identity a transition in defining the basic nature of God as either simple (for proponents of eternity) or infinite (for proponents of everlastingness) as well as the Franciscan adoption of the metaphysics of the eleventh-century Islamic philosopher, Avicenna.

What did ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman scholars know about the cyclicity of astronomical phenomena, how did they conceptualize cyclicity, and which other phenomena did they consider to be cyclical? This study explores astronomical, astrological, and other scholarly sources, including previously ignored ones, in order to answer these questions. Particular attention is paid to the role of planetary cycles and questions of cross-cultural knowledge transfer. A new account is given of how knowledge of cyclicity, its conceptualization, and its use in predictive practices developed in Babylonia and the Greco-Roman world from the first millennium BCE until Late Antiquity. It is argued that the predictive turn in Babylonian astronomy and astrology led to a new understanding of how astronomical and earthly phenomena are interconnected through time and space. The emergence of horoscopic astrology led to the question of whether human existence is determined by cycles. Even the universe as a whole is governed by cycles according to Plato and later Greco-Roman scholars.

This book offers the first comprehensive presentation and analysis of the innovative theory of time advanced by early modern French scholar, Denis Pétau.
Denis Pétau (1583–1652) was the model of an early modern erudite. Proudly Catholic, the Jesuit scholar was a keen participant in the scientific and religious debates of his time. In the 1620s and 30s, he made major contributions to the burgeoning literature on scientific chronology respond-ing especially to the work of Joseph Scaliger. As part of this effort, Pétau developed a fascinating theory of time and history. Societies inevitably exist in a temporal frame and therefore develop communal practices of timekeeping. For this, they adapt cosmic time to the needs and purposes of human societies. They create calendars and arrange their historical records in chronological form. This is a scientific task but, since time is ultimately sacred reality, its study has always been assigned to priests. Pétau therefore sees science and religion as intimately connected, progress-ing jointly through history and culminating in his own time.
The book will be of interest to philosophers of time, and historians of early modern science, reli-gion, and theology.

Where does historiography come from? This study examines the beginnings of Hittite historiography and analyzes how memories become cultural memory. It focuses on early narratives about Ḫattušili I and Ḫuzziya, and the Zapla text. Jörg Klinger thereby provides an in-depth analysis of the emergence of historiographical traditions in the Hittite context.

Textiles accompany us throughout our lives, au fil du temps, from the cradle to the grave. Aspects of time, seasons and chronology play an important role when exploring textiles and clothes in antiquity. The time of textiles appears highly gendered, embodied, tangible, and concrete.  Textiles follow their own timeframes and paces, and they connect us to the past in an intimate and diachronic way because we still wear woven fabrics, as people did in antiquity.

Textiles themselves are ephemeral and rarely survive in archaeological contexts. But when they do, they can show evidence of a long life.

This book is about the time of textiles in ancient Greece: how time was articulated and conceived via clothing and textile production and how clothes conveyed time, seasons, ages, lifetimes and chronological periods. Textiles moreover symbolized eternity and destiny, as the spinning goddesses of fate called Moirai by the ancient Greeks. These goddesses spin, measure and cut the thread of a person's life.

The book invites university students in history, archaeology and classics, as well as interested readers, craft communities and Humanities scholars to reflect on diverse dimensions of time in ancient Greece through the study of textiles and clothes.

This book aims to study the perception of crises in Hittite Anatolia (1650–1180 BCE) from different perspectives: the one of the Hittites, the one of the neighboring polities, and ours as historians. Two concepts will be discussed in the introduction of the book: crisis and (a)synchronicity. The book has the goal to show – considering the written sources available from the Hittite kingdom – that in some cases, the perception of a crisis is asynchronic even in the same temporal frame. Regarding our perspective as historian, asynchronicity is at work since the temporal frame are far apart, yet if we rely on and correctly interpret the sources available to us, it becomes clear that we might perceive a crisis in Hittite Anatolia more synchronically than expected. Finally, even the perception of the Hittites can be both asynchronic and synchronic, since it is possible that they misinterpreted the signs of an actual crisis and perceived it only after the crisis took place or even after it ended. The book will consider four case-studies that are considered key moments in Hittite history. The final goal is to re-define crises in Hittite Anatolia considering the multi-temporality of the (a)synchronic perception of crises.

This collective volume explores societal crises in Hellenistic Egypt, focussing regionally on the Thebaid, from small-scale insurgencies to full-fledged secession. As a result of an international conference held at the Freie Universität Berlin (May 2-4, 2019), the presented case studies ask how actors – and modern scholars – of Ptolemaic Egypt shape and frame times of crisis and what traces remain thereof in the record.

As decisive moments in time, crises reveal fundamental features of societies and structure the flow of events into historically meaningful, yet potentially teleological, trajectories. In Ptolemaic historiography, from Polybius till today, the Great Theban Revolt (206–186 BCE) served as such a turning point, demarcating rise and decline. By confronting the historiographic record with independent – and yet partially unexploited – sources, such as temple epigraphy, Demotic (literary) texts, archaeological, numismatic and private documentation, the reunited studies aim at diversifying the perspectives on and in societal conflicts in Ptolemaic Egypt, in order to gain a fuller and more nuanced picture of how various actors, kings, queens, officials, and priests coped with times of crisis.

This volume shows why it is misleading to view time as an object, exploring the insights that can be gained from analogies between sequences and by comparing event timings. Incorporating extensive references to music and, more broadly, to the act of listening provides illuminating glimpses into these fundamental structural properties of reality.

The book presents a newly discovered Vision of Daniel manuscript at the National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg. Probably composed in northern Syria or southeastern Anatolia in the 9th century CE, the text reflects an intersection of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thought in an era of theological exchange and political conflict between the Abbasid Caliphate and Byzantium.

The Vision of Daniel is a Hebrew apocalyptic work rooted in biblical, midrashic, and eschatological traditions, yet deeply engaged with surrounding Christian and Muslim apocalyptic imagery. It interprets persecution and crisis as elements of a divine plan leading to inevitable redemption—granted through loyalty to tradition rather than repentance. Its detailed list of caliphs reveals the author’s familiarity with Muslim history and Syriac sources. Composed amid messianic ferment, the work portrays two Anti-Messiahs—hybrid figures merging Jewish, Christian, and Islamic motifs—who pervert the image of the redeemer. The Vision thus serves as a unique witness to interreligious apocalyptic imagination in the medieval Middle East.

The edition includes facsimiles, a full Hebrew transcription, English translation, and a comparative study enabling reconstruction of missing parts based on another vision: the Judeo-Persian Qiṣṣa-ye Dāniyāl, which is copied, translated, annotated, and introduced by Dan Shapira and integrated into this volume.

How can time become festive? How do festivals manage to make time ‘special’, to mark out a certain day or days, to distinguish them from ‘normal’, everyday time, and to fill them with meaning? And how can we reconstruct what festive time looked like in the past and what people thought about it?

While a lot of research has been done on festivals from the point of view of several scholarly disciplines, the specific temporality of festivals has not yet attracted sufficient attention. In this volume, scholars from different fields provide answers to the questions raised above, based on a fresh analysis of astronomical documents, calendars, and literary texts. Cultures as diverse as ancient Babylon, Greece and Rome, and medieval China all share a sense of calendrically recurring festive time as something special that needs to be carefully mapped out and preserved, often with great sophistication, and that gives us precious insights into the broader religious, political, and social dimensions of time within past cultures.

To mark the sixtieth birthday of Christoph Markschies, three conversations about time took place at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in October 2022, shedding light on historical concepts of time, neurological and physical notions of time, and the role played by time in scholarship. The three conversations in this volume are concluded with an extensive epilogue by Christoph Markschies.

How could ancient astronomers accurately calculate celestial phenomena on the scale of several centuries? The Table of Kings is a simple list of rulers with the duration of their reigns, which allowed Ptolemy, an Alexandrian astronomer, to have a count of the years that had passed since the Babylonian king Nabonassar (8th century BC). Initially used for astronomy, this table captivated historians and chronology specialists from Antiquity. Rediscovered in Europe in the modern era, it is a crucial source for establishing a chronology of the Ancient Near East. The Table of Kings has always been a living text, modified by generations of scribes, completed over the centuries, sometimes up to the fall of Constantinople. This document with multiple lives is often quoted but has been little studied for its own sake. Historians of the Near East and specialists in the history of texts and sciences will find in this volume the first critical edition of Ptolemy's Table of Kings based on all known manuscript witnesses, accompanied by an investigation of the history of this document from its elaboration by Ptolemy to its use by modern historians.

Comment les astronomes de l’Antiquité pouvaient-ils calculer avec précision des phénomènes célestes à l’échelle de plusieurs siècles? La Table des rois est une simple liste de souverains avec la durée de leurs règnes, qui permettait à Ptolémée, astronome alexandrin, de disposer d’un comput des années écoulées depuis le roi babylonien Nabonassar (VIII^e siècle av. J.-C.). D’abord mise au service de l’astronomie, cette table a captivé historiens et spécialistes de chronologie dès l’Antiquité. Redécouverte en Europe à l’Époque moderne, elle est une source cruciale pour l’établissement d’une chronologie du Proche-Orient ancien. La Table des rois a toujours été un texte vivant, modifié par des générations de copistes, complété au cours des siècles parfois jusqu’à la chute de Constantinople. Ce document aux multiples vies est souvent cité mais a été peu étudié pour lui-même. Historiens du Proche-Orient et spécialistes de l’histoire des textes et des sciences trouveront dans ce volume la première édition critique de la Table des rois réalisée sur la base de tous les témoins manuscrits connus, accompagnée d’une enquête sur l’histoire de ce document depuis son élaboration par Ptolémée jusqu’à son utilisation par les historiens modernes.

La Table des rois de Ptolémée, astronome alexandrin du II^e siècle, présente une liste continue de souverains depuis l’Empire néo-assyrien jusqu’à l’Empire romain. Elle est une source cruciale pour notre approche chronologique du Proche-Orient ancien et du monde méditerranéen. Cette étude présente une description des témoins manuscrits grecs de la Table des rois, une nouvelle édition critique et une histoire du texte jusqu’à l’époque moderne.

The late Platonist philosopher Damascius both reassumed and rejuvenated the rich and long-established Greek thinking about time. In distinguishing between different perceptions of time, by Plato, Aristotle and his Neoplatonist predecessors, Damascius offered novel perspectives, which can be seen as anticipating modern and contemporary theories of time, such as McTaggart’s series and presentism. The greatest merit of his philosophy of time, however, is his deep reflection on what it is for a living being to have its being in becoming – as it happens with us human beings – and how this relates to stillness, temporality and temporalization. Time is interpreted by Damascius not merely as a concomitant of the celestial motions, nor as an abstract entity existing in the human soul, but as a power of ordering, which is active at different levels. Damascius’ time comprises the biological and the historical time but is also the time that pertains to the essence and the activity of heaven, in which there is neither past nor future. The present book explores the richness of Damascius’ thought by going into the fundamental concepts of his philosophy of time: the indivisible now and the present time, the flowing now and the non-flowing now, the flowing time and the whole of time, in which past, present and future coincide. Damascius fully developed his thoughts about time in his treatise On Time, which is lost. The preserved fragments of this treatise are translated and annotated in an Appendix.

Can time exist independently of consciousness? In antiquity this question was often framed as an enquiry into the relationship of time and soul. Aristotle cautiously suggested that time could not exist without a soul that is counting it. This proposal was controversially debated among his commentators. The present book offers an account of this debate beginning from Aristotle’s own statement of the problem in Book IV of the Physics. Subsequent chapters discuss Aristotle’s Peripatetic followers, Boethus of Sidon and Alexander of Aphrodisias; his Neoplatonic readers, Plotinus and Simplicius; and early Christian authors, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine. At the centre of the debate stood the relation between the subjective time in the soul and the objective time of the cosmos. Both could be seen as united in the world soul as the seat of subjective time on a cosmic scale. But no solution to the problem was final. No theory gained general acceptance. The book shows the fascinating variety and plurality of ideas about time and soul throughout antiquity. Throughout antiquity, the problem of time and soul remained as intriguing as it proved intractable.

A thematic exploration of different concepts of time is a significant yet overlooked aspect of apocalyptic literature. The purpose of this collection of essays is to demonstrate the varied ways in which time is portrayed in Rabbinic and Christian texts pertaining to the end of the world. The essays in this volume, which are based on the proceedings of a workshop held in May 2021 at the Einstein Center Chronoi in Berlin, provide individual studies centered on lesser-known texts such as the rabbinic Midrash on the Song of Songs, the apocryphal apocalypses of Thomas and of John the Theologian, as well as political-historical apocalyptic texts composed as a reaction to the emergence of Islam. Furthermore, the volume provides systematic overviews on theological responses to political eschatology and the history of research on apocalyptic time. Scholars and students of the history of religions will discover valuable insights in this volume, shedding light on a crucial feature of apocalyptic imagination.

In Europe, the bible was long used to determine the age of human civilization, supplemented by accounts written by the historians of classical antiquity. The early modern development of the natural sciences called supposed certainties into question. The classical disciplines were assigned a decisive role in this conflict. This volume presents these developments, some of them unexpected.

The book presents the author's latest research on ancient perceptions of time; it centres on medical discussions, especially of the doctor-philosopher Galen, while also contextualizing his work within Graeco-Roman evidence and discussions – archaeological, medical, technological, philosophical, literary – more broadly. The focus is on questions of medical or experiential significance: life cycles, disease cycles, daily regimes for mind and body, clinical assessment, including the vital area of diagnosis through the pulse, technologies of time measurement. But the philosophical background is also examined: questions of the nature and definition of time and its relationship to space and motion. Galen offers original contributions in all these areas, at the same time as shedding important light on both contemporary attitudes and previous discussions.

The book thus offers an accessible and vivid overview of key issues in ancient time perception and awareness, while also offering the first in-depth exploration of the insights that the Galenic texts add to this picture.

Five thematic chapters – Time Measurement, Year and Life Cycles, Biography, Medical Cycles – consider a wide range of evidence and of recent scholarship, while highlighting the contribution of medical texts.

This essay examines the differentiation between subjective and objective time in Aristotle and in modern theories of time. It aims to show that (i) Aristotle does make this distinction but regards subjective and objective time as compatible, whereas (ii) modern theories of time have sharpened this distinction into a strict duality, but (iii) a sharp division of this kind is theoretically untenable.