Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World

AFRICA BY LEAH A. J. COHEN In very early times all human groups in Africa lived primar- ily by hunting, gathering, or fi shing o ...

Kush as well as Meroë and Axum. Th ere is evidence that iron- working was present in the Nok civilization by 1200 b.c.e. Many sc ...

Women were unable to hold bureaucratic positions except in private houses, and titles such as steward of the storehouse, steward ...

In addition to the lists of professions, which were kept in scholarly libraries, a no less important source of informa- tion is ...

of specialists. Certain occupations were common almost ev- erywhere in ancient India. Carpenters practiced religious rit- uals, ...

carpenters used saws to cut planks from the tree. From these they built furniture, beams for buildings, or coffi ns. Most people ...

varied throughout Europe, with small tribes operating in Scandinavia and larger tribal confederations being formed in Gaul and B ...

Th e world depicted in Homer’s Odyssey gives us insights into the development of occupations. Th ere the oikos, or household, is ...

learning allowed teachers and rhetoricians of all stripes to fl ourish there throughout antiquity. Athletic trainers were also s ...

women. Hairdressers worked with oils and perfumes to cre- ate the latest in hairstyle fashions. A visit to a hairdresser was a w ...

and evidence of extensive trade routes indicates the existence of local and long-distance merchants. Preclassic Period (ca. 1500 ...

819  ▶ pandemics and epidemics introduction Archaeologists and historians of medicine face diffi culties in studying ancient pa ...

AFRICA BY JULIAN M. MURCHISON Th e long history of human evolution in Africa carries with it a long history of pathogens (diseas ...

Malaria has caused suff ering and death on the African continent for a long time. Transmitted by a certain type of mosquito, mal ...

Another epidemic disease, malaria, must have existed in ancient Egypt, when conditions for the mosquito carrier were probably mo ...

Th e next epistolary archive containing references to epi- demics is from Amarna in Eg y pt, though the letters were sent to Egy ...

but the worst strains killed thousands. Chinese physicians ap- parently deduced that infl uenza could be transmitted through the ...

of degenerative conditions or to be killed in accidents or vio- lence than to succumb to epidemic diseases. When humans embraced ...

Th ebes (in Boeotia, central Greece), a pestilence aff ects the city at the beginning of the play Oedipus tyrannos (Oedipus the ...

tween individual and general disease, including a notion of cause and, as a consequence, of treatment. Th ese physicians conclud ...