The Washington, D.C.-area Biblical Archaeology Society of Northern Virginia (BASONOVA) and Biblical Archaeology Forum (BAF) will be hosting the lectures “Roman Baths Here, There, and Everywhere” (May 17, 2015) and “Royal Assassinations in the Ancient Near East” (May 20, 2015) this month. Not in the D.C. area? The Biblical Archaeology Society offers a wide range of travel/study programs in the United States and across the globe.
On Sunday, May 17, at 3 pm, University of Maryland Assistant Professor of Roman Art and Archaeology Dr. Maryl Gensheimer will deliver the lecture “Roman Baths Here, There, and Everywhere.”
Throughout the Roman Empire, bathing was a highlight of the day and a major social event, highly popular across a diverse audience: elite and subaltern, male and female, free and enslaved. Ubiquitous literary and epigraphical evidence conveys the significance of bathing facilities to people’s daily routines and relationships. Imperial patrons used the endowment of public baths as a means of simultaneously consolidating and upsetting the social hierarchies that were rigidly maintained elsewhere in the Roman public sphere. Roman baths were as much a means of entertaining the populace as an unprecedented tool with which to highlight imperial power and privilege. There are thousands of examples of public baths in cities across the Empire. These buildings are all the more important for being among the most ambitious and sophisticated examples of large-scale architectural patronage in Classical antiquity.
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The free eBook Life in the Ancient World guides you through craft centers in ancient Jerusalem, family structure across Israel and ancient practices—from dining to makeup—throughout the Mediterranean world.
On Wednesday, May 20, at 8 pm, George Washington University Associate Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures Dr. Christopher Rollston will deliver the lecture “Royal Assassinations in the Ancient Near East.”
During the long history of the ancient Near East, the assassination of kings, queens, princes and princesses happened. During some periods it was rare, and during other periods it was very common. This lecture will focus on some of the most interesting and important royal assassinations in the ancient world, including those in ancient Israel and Judah.
Click here for more information.
Not in the D.C. area? The Biblical Archaeology Society offers a wide range of travel/study programs in the United States and across the globe.
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Charlemagne had visitors share a good hot tub. This way he got to know them. Conditioned religious prudery and Victorian tradition make many today fear nudity, making us the only species of mammal not to be permitted to grow up seeing fellows in a natural condition and causing stresses and unnatural conditions resulting in the current statistics of so many elders prosecuted as molesters and imprisoned. As people get older the thin veneer of socialization wears even thinner.
Churches and business corporations benefit from the stresses of enforced chastity which manifest as psychoneurotic reactive stimulation toward the organization’s goals.
I feel that all adults need a certain amount of nudity to maintain a proper balance between our modern overcivilized, oversocialized society and our mammalian background. For example, artists have their models and God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world. Guess the Romans had better sense!
What Freudian Theory explains the practice of the cultures using Bath chambers to Fraternize and stratify societal classes? This would be great research.