Tyche

The word tyche (plural tychai) denotes an ancient Greek concept encompassing many aspects of fortune – chance, fate, luck, occurrence, even achievement, success, and wealth – both good and bad. As a personification of that concept, the goddess Tyche came to symbolize the fate and fortune of rulers and through them their cities; she thus emerged as the preeminent city goddess throughout the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Her name is etymologically related to the verb tynchanein (“to hit, meet with, be favored with, happen accidentally”). The connection between the noun and verb is so close that it is difficult to distinguish in Greek literature between the deity and the abstraction.

'They Shall Speak the Arabic Language and Take Pride in it': reconsidering the fate of Coptic after the Arab Conquest

The complaints on the adoption of Arabic by the Copts that are voiced by the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Samuel have often been quoted as the expiring words of the dying Coptic language. This article seeks to show that they are not to be taken so literally, and that they should rather be inserted in the context of a rift within the medieval Coptic church over the question of language choice, and beyond this, over that of accommodation with the Muslims. The use of Arabic by the episcopal church of Miṣr and by some prominent figures around it, which was linked to their proximity to the Fatimid court, was resented and denounced by more traditional circles, centred on the Patriarchate and on some important monasteries such as the one at Qalamūn where the Apocalypse was written. The suggestion is also made that the text is contemporary with the beginning of Coptic literary production in Arabic and with the introduction of Egyptian Christians at the caliphal court, namely in the last quarter of the tenth century, at the time of Severus ibn al-Muqqafa‘.

The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander

The Egyptians mesmerized the ancient Greeks for scores of years. The Greek literature and art of the classical period are especially thick with representations of Egypt and Egyptians. Yet despite numerous firsthand contacts with Egypt, Greek writers constructed their own Egypt, one that differed in significant ways from actual Egyptian history, society, and culture. Informed by recent work on orientalism and colonialism, this book unravels the significance of these misrepresentations of Egypt in the Greek cultural imagination in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. Looking in particular at issues of identity, otherness, and cultural anxiety, Phiroze Vasunia shows how Greek authors constructed an image of Egypt that reflected their own attitudes and prejudices about Greece itself. He focuses his discussion on Aeschylus Suppliants; Book 2 of Herodotus; Euripides' Helen; Plato's Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Critias; and Isocrates' Busiris. Reconstructing the history of the bias that informed these writings, Vasunia shows that Egypt in these works was shaped in relation to Greek institutions, values, and ideas on such subjects as gender and sexuality, death, writing, and political and ethnic identity. This study traces the tendentiousness of Greek representations by introducing comparative Egyptian material, thus interrogating the Greek texts and authors from a cross-cultural perspective. A final chapter also considers the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great and shows how he exploited and revised the discursive tradition in his conquest of the country. Firmly and knowledgeably rooted in classical studies and the ancient sources, this study takes a broad look at the issue of cross-cultural exchange in antiquity by framing it within the perspective of contemporary cultural studies. In addition, this provocative and original work shows how Greek writers made possible literary Europe's most persistent and adaptable obsession: the barbarian.

Observations of the eruption of the Sarychev volcano and simulations using the HadGEM2 climate model

In June 2009 the Sarychev volcano located in the Kuril Islands to the northeast of Japan erupted explosively, injecting ash and an estimated 1.2 ± 0.2 Tg of sulfur dioxide into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, making it arguably one of the 10 largest stratospheric injections in the last 50 years. During the period immediately after the eruption, we show that the sulfur dioxide (SO2) cloud was clearly detected by retrievals developed for the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) satellite instrument and that the resultant stratospheric sulfate aerosol was detected by the Optical Spectrograph and Infrared Imaging System (OSIRIS) limb sounder and CALIPSO lidar. Additional surface‐based instrumentation allows assessment of the impact of the eruption on the stratospheric aerosol optical depth. We use a nudged version of the HadGEM2 climate model to investigate how well this state‐of‐the‐science climate model can replicate the distributions of SO2 and sulfate aerosol. The model simulations and OSIRIS measurements suggest that in the Northern Hemisphere the stratospheric aerosol optical depth was enhanced by around a factor of 3 (0.01 at 550 nm), with resultant impacts upon the radiation budget. The simulations indicate that, in the Northern Hemisphere for July 2009, the magnitude of the mean radiative impact from the volcanic aerosols is more than 60% of the direct radiative forcing of all anthropogenic aerosols put together. While the cooling induced by the eruption will likely not be detectable in the observational record, the combination of modeling and measurements would provide an ideal framework for simulating future larger volcanic eruptions.

SPARC Data Initiative: A comparison of ozone climatologies from international satellite limb sounders

A comprehensive quality assessment of the ozone products from 18 limb-viewing satellite instruments is provided by means of a detailed intercomparison. The ozone climatologies in form of monthly zonal mean time series covering the upper troposphere to lower mesosphere are obtained from LIMS, SAGE I/II/III, UARS-MLS, HALOE, POAM II/III, SMR, OSIRIS, MIPAS, GOMOS, SCIAMACHY, ACE-FTS, ACE-MAESTRO, Aura-MLS, HIRDLS, and SMILES within 1978–2010. The intercomparisons focus on mean biases of annual zonal mean fields, interannual variability, and seasonal cycles. Additionally, the physical consistency of the data is tested through diagnostics of the quasi-biennial oscillation and Antarctic ozone hole. The comprehensive evaluations reveal that the uncertainty in our knowledge of the atmospheric ozone mean state is smallest in the tropical and midlatitude middle stratosphere with a 1σ multi-instrument spread of less than ±5%. While the overall agreement among the climatological data sets is very good for large parts of the stratosphere, individual discrepancies have been identified, including unrealistic month-to-month fluctuations, large biases in particular atmospheric regions, or inconsistencies in the seasonal cycle. Notable differences between the data sets exist in the tropical lower stratosphere (with a spread of ±30%) and at high latitudes (±15%). In particular, large relative differences are identified in the Antarctic during the time of the ozone hole, with a spread between the monthly zonal mean fields of ±50%. The evaluations provide guidance on what data sets are the most reliable for applications such as studies of ozone variability, model-measurement comparisons, detection of long-term trends, and data-merging activities.

Terahertz pulse imaging in archaeology

The work presented in this article was performed at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, on objects from their permanent collection: an ancient Egyptian bird mummy and three ancient Sumerian corroded copper-alloy objects. We used a portable, fiber-coupled terahertz time-domain spectroscopic imaging system, which allowed us to measure specimens in both transmission and reflection geometry, and present time- and frequency-based image modes. The results confirm earlier evidence that terahertz imaging can provide complementary information to that obtainable from x-ray CT scans of mummies, giving better visualisation of low density regions. In addition, we demonstrate that terahertz imaging can distinguish mineralized layers in metal artifacts.

Harnessing the ancestors: mutuality, uncertainty and ritual practice in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

In the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, chronic economic uncertainty has seen social relations stretched to breaking point. Informants speak of a 'war between men and women'. While grinding poverty, death in the shape of the 'axe' (HIV/AIDS) and suspicion stalk the land, and the project of building the umzi (homestead) falters, hope for the future and with it, trust between people, leaches away. One response to such uncertainty is a turn to ritual. Through a nearly relentless schedule of ritual activity which invokes the ancestors and the Christian deity in various forms, Xhosa people attempt to dam up trust, secure ongoing investment in the rural homestead and sustain ties of reciprocity both among rural people and between them and their urban kin. It is also through the staging of these rituals that women, acting together and in support of each other, are increasingly assertive – often in the face of a violent, rearguard opposition from men - in their efforts to exercise agency over the differentiated, fragmented and fragile social and economic relationships within their homesteads and across their villages.

Dating the Thera (Santorin) eruption: evidence versus poor scholarship, and the end of the low chronology

The date of the Late Bronze Age Minoan eruption of the Thera volcano has provoked much debate among archaeologists, not least in a recent issue of Antiquity (‘Bronze Age catastrophe and modern controversy: dating the Santorini eruption’, March 2014). Here, the authors respond to those recent contributions, citing evidence that closes the gap between the conclusions offered by previous typological, stratigraphic and radiometric dating techniques. They reject the need to choose between alternative approaches to the problem and make a case for the synchronisation of eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian chronologies with agreement on a ‘high’ date in the late seventeenth century BC for the Thera eruption.

No asylum for “Infiltrators”: the legal predicament of Eritrean and Sudanese nationals in Israel

This article explores the precarious status of Eritrean and Sudanese nationals in Israel. Having crossed the Israeli-Egyptian border without authorisation and not through an official border crossing, Israeli law defines such individuals as ‘infiltrators’, a charged term which dates back to border-crossings into Israel by Palestinian Fedayeen in the 1950s. Eritreans and Sudanese nationals constitute over 90 percent of ‘infiltrators’ in Israel. Their livelihood is curtailed through hostility, sanctions, and detention, while (at the time of writing) Israel refrains from deporting them to their respective countries of origin, recognising that such forced removal could expose them to risks to their lives and/or freedom. Israel was the 10th state to ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention, and has acceded to its 1967 Protocol which removed the 1951 Convention’s temporal and geographic restrictions, yet it has not incorporated these treaties into its domestic law not has it enacted primary legislation that sets eligibility criteria for ‘refugee’ status and regulates the treatment of asylum-seekers. Israeli law also fails to accord subsidiary protection status to persons that the state considers to be non-removable, whether or not they satisfy the definition of a ‘refugee’ under the 1951 Convention. Absent legal recognition of ‘refugee’, ‘asylum-seeker’, and ‘beneficiary of subsidiary protection’ statuses, Eritreans and Sudanese nationals are left in legal limbo for an indefinite period qua irregular non-removable persons. This article takes stock of their legal predicament.

'Salve, magna parens': Virgil’s 'laudes Italiae' in Renaissance Italy and beyond

This article traces three major strands in the reception of the address to Italy at the end of Virgil’s laudes Italiae in Book II of the Georgics. The first is the adoption of phrasing from these lines as the basis for expressions of devotion to the writer’s country (and for panegyric of contemporary rulers), or in inverted form to lament the present state of the author’s homeland; the second is the appropriation of Virgil’s hymnic apostrophe to his patria in poems on religious themes, where language from this passage is harnessed to invoke the supreme deity or the Virgin Mary, another magna parens; and the third is the use of Virgilian terminology to celebrate Virgil himself as the mighty parent of poetry and poets, whose words (including those of the lines under discussion) have inspired the literary endeavours of his successors across Europe and beyond throughout subsequent centuries.

'The house of books': libraries and archives in Ancient Egypt

In 1957, John Sperry Jr. published an article in Libri entitled “Egyptian libraries: a survey of the evidence.” Some 55 years on, this article revisits the subject, taking into account research undertaken in the field of Egyptology over the last half a century. Based on an extended essay written for the online Certificate in Egyptology course at the University of Manchester, this article considers the evidence for the existence of “institutional” (that is, created for the use and functioning of the state) libraries and archives in Ancient Egypt throughout the dynastic period (c.3500−30 B.C.); their history, purpose and, to some extent, their administration. It also considers an aspect not explored in Sperry’s article, that of “private” libraries in Ancient Egypt (texts collected by an individual for their own personal use). Whilst estimated literacy levels within the general population precluded the widespread collection of texts for personal edification, there is evidence to suggest that private libraries were present in Ancient Egypt. The article concludes with a brief assessment of the legacy of these ancient libraries and their influence on the creation of the Library of Alexandria, in both its ancient and modern manifestations.

Verbal short‐term memory performance in pupils with Down Syndrome

Research has shown that verbal short‐term memory span is shorter in individuals with Down syndrome than in typically developing individuals of equivalent mental age, but little attention has been given to variations within or across groups. Differences in the environment and in particular educational experiences may play a part in the relative ease or difficulty with which children remember verbal material. This article explores the performance of 26 Egyptian pupils with Down syndrome and 26 Egyptian typically developing children on two verbal short‐term memory tests: digit recall and non‐word repetition tasks. The findings of the study revealed that typically developing children showed superior performance on these tasks to that of pupils with Down syndrome, whose performance was both lower and revealed a narrower range of attainment. Comparisons with the performance of children with Down syndrome in this study suggested that not only did the children with Down syndrome perform more poorly than the typically developing children, their profile also appeared worse than the results of studies of children with a similar mental age with Down syndrome carried out in western countries. The results from this study suggested that, while deficits in verbal short‐term memory in Down syndrome may well be universal, it is important to recognise that performances may vary as a consequence of culture and educational experiences. The significance of these findings is explored with reference to approaches to education and how these are conceptualised in relation to children with disabilities.

Segmentation-level fusion for iris recognition

This paper investigates the potential of fusion at normalisation/segmentation level prior to feature extraction. While there are several biometric fusion methods at data/feature level, score level and rank/decision level combining raw biometric signals, scores, or ranks/decisions, this type of fusion is still in its infancy. However, the increasing demand to allow for more relaxed and less invasive recording conditions, especially for on-the-move iris recognition, suggests to further investigate fusion at this very low level. This paper focuses on the approach of multi-segmentation fusion for iris biometric systems investigating the benefit of combining the segmentation result of multiple normalisation algorithms, using four methods from two different public iris toolkits (USIT, OSIRIS) on the public CASIA and IITD iris datasets. Evaluations based on recognition accuracy and ground truth segmentation data indicate high sensitivity with regards to the type of errors made by segmentation algorithms.

The Coronation mantle and the Westminster sanctuary pavement

The Great Sanctuary pavement at Westminster Abbey, on which the kings of England were crowned, features a design of rotated squares, around a central roundel of unusual Egyptian alabaster, set within a circle of bright blue glass. The roundel’s visual resemblance to the world and the firmament is underlined by a surrounding inscription, identifying it as the world, the macrocosm. This paper proposes that the design and meaning of the Great Sanctuary pavement reflect the square macrocosmic mantle in which the English king was wrapped during the coronation ceremony. This paper underlines the special nature of the English coronation mantle within the context of other royal and imperial cosmic mantles. Its square form was unique, and it featured in the English coronation liturgies in a way that European mantles did not. The English liturgies stressed its role as a representation of the world or macrocosm