Articles/Book Chapters by Mark H Munn
Epigraphica Anatolica, 2022
A legible portion of the short Greek inscription accompanying a longer Old Phrygian inscription o... more A legible portion of the short Greek inscription accompanying a longer Old Phrygian inscription on the Vezirhan stele has been regarded as incomprehensible in Greek. It can be read and understood in a manner of Koine Greek to refer to the recipient of the stele as an unnamed goddess who is a partner in a marriage (γάμος expressed in the participle γήμας) represented on the stele. The ἀπόρρησις regarding the name of this deity can be compared to the ἀπόρρησις regarding the name of Aphrodite in her union with Anchises as described in Homeric Hymn 5.
Hesperia, 2021
Six inscriptions of the 4th and 3rd centuries b.c. recovered during surface survey and excavation... more Six inscriptions of the 4th and 3rd centuries b.c. recovered during surface survey and excavation at Panakton (the paleokastro above Prasino/Kavasala) are published here in full, four of them for the first time. The earliest, an arsenal inventory, preserves an archon date of 343/2 b.c.; three are ephebic texts of the Lykourgan era; one is a dedication by soldiers of the garrison in the second half of the 3rd century; one is a fragmentary heading. These inscriptions, the first found on this site, prove beyond doubt that this was the Athenian fortress of Panakton, and they provide new evidence for armaments, the ephebeia, and the history of Panakton among Attic garrison forts.
Attika: Archaeologie einer "zentralen" Kulturlandschaft, edited by Hans Lohmann and Torsten Mattern, 2010
By examining the historical testimony for the fortress of Panakton and the adjacent region called... more By examining the historical testimony for the fortress of Panakton and the adjacent region called Drymos on the northern frontier of Attica, this paper argues that such a remote fortress served primarily to secure the agricultural exploitation of the region against competing interests, and did not play a significant role in securing Attica against a general invasion.
Ancient Historiography on War and Empire, 2017
What prompted Herodotus and Thucydides to write? History as a genre did not yet exist, but speci... more What prompted Herodotus and Thucydides to write? History as a genre did not yet exist, but specialist treatises were a growing phenomenon. In asking why their works took the form they did, this paper argues that they were intended to provide substantive counterbalance to the influence of oracle mongers and other interpreters of traditions and signs who had the ear of the public whenever weighty decisions had to be made and the meaning of past experience was under consideration.
Macedonian Legacies: Studies in Macedonian History and Culture in Honor of Eugene N. Borza, edited by Timothy Howe and Jeanne Reames, 2008
Alexander's interest in the Gordian knot reflects the underlying historical and cultural relation... more Alexander's interest in the Gordian knot reflects the underlying historical and cultural relationship between Phrygia and Macedonia.
Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and their Neighbors, 2008
The paper argues that the name of the deity known in Greek as Kybele (Latin Cybele) was derived f... more The paper argues that the name of the deity known in Greek as Kybele (Latin Cybele) was derived from the name of the Syro-Anatolian goddess Kubaba and not from an unattested Phyrgian word for "mountain". Attributive in origin, the name Kybele originally designated places associated with Kubaba, many of them natural features including mountains. Eventually this attribute came to be used as a personal name of the deity also known as Matar, the Mother, or to the Greeks as Mother of the Gods.
Among maternal deities of the Greek pantheon, the Mother of the Gods was a paradox. She is variou... more Among maternal deities of the Greek pantheon, the Mother of the Gods was a paradox. She is variously described as a devoted mother, a chaste wife, an impassioned lover, and a virgin daughter; she is said to be both foreign and familiar to the Greeks. In this erudite and absorbing study, Mark Munn examines how the cult of Mother of the Gods came from Phrygia and Lydia, where she was the mother of tyrants, to Athens, where she protected the laws of the Athenian democracy. Analyzing the divergence of Greek and Asiatic culture at the beginning of the classical era, Munn describes how Kybebe, the Lydian goddess who signified fertility and sovereignty, assumed a different aspect to the Greeks when Lydia became part of the Persian empire. Conflict and resolution were played out symbolically, he shows, and the goddess of Lydian tyranny was eventually accepted by the Athenians as the Mother of the Gods, and as a symbol of their own sovereignty.
The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing and Hygeine from Antiquity through the Renaissance, 2009
The symbols of submission demanded by Darius and Xerxes of the Greeks, earth and water, were borr... more The symbols of submission demanded by Darius and Xerxes of the Greeks, earth and water, were borrowed by the Persians from the ideology of kingship and its relation to divinity specifically in Lydia and Phrygia, where the Mother of the Gods, or Kybele, was an expression of the life-giving powers of the earth and as the genetrix of kingship, recognized also by the Achaemenid Persian as Anahita, and by the Greeks as Artemis or Aphrodite Anaitis.
Ten Years of the Agnes Kirsopp Lake Michels Lectures at Bryn Mawr College, edited by Suzanne Faris and Lesley Lundeen , 2006
Confronting the composition question, this paper argues that Thucydides gathered notes and transc... more Confronting the composition question, this paper argues that Thucydides gathered notes and transcripts of speeches throughout the war for rhetorical purposes, but selected and compiled them into his history of the war at the time when events threatened to occur again in much the same way, in 396 BCE on the eve of the outbreak of the Corinthian War.
OIKISTES: Studies in Constitutions, Colonies, and Military Power in the Ancient World, Offered in Honor of A.J. Graham, 2002
The events that marked the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, as described by Thucydides, are mo... more The events that marked the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, as described by Thucydides, are modulated by an unspoken idea of the boundaries of Attica, most extensively conceived as embracing Megara and Plataea, but constrained by the outcome of the war to exclude those territories.
Classical Antiquity, 1987
... Page 12. MUNN: Agesilaos' Boiotian Campaigns 117 ... some twenty years after the event an... more ... Page 12. MUNN: Agesilaos' Boiotian Campaigns 117 ... some twenty years after the event and soon after Chabrias' death, reminded the Athenians of Chabrias' accomplishments on the battlefield, beginning with this encounter: "How skillfully, as your commander, he drew up your ...
Abstract Attica contains the remains of numerous walls, forts, and towers which are explained as ... more Abstract Attica contains the remains of numerous walls, forts, and towers which are explained as works connected with the territorial defenses of fourth-century Athens. The most singular of these is the Dema wall, a barrier wall spanning the Aigaleos-Parnes pass ...
Papers by Mark H Munn
The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates Mark H. Munn History, political philosophy, ... more The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates Mark H. Munn History, political philosophy, and constitutional law were born in Athens in the space of a single generation-the generation that lived through the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.e.). This remarkable age produced such luminaries as Socrates, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the sophists, and set the stage for the education and early careers of Plato and Xenophon, among others. The School of History provides the fullest and most detailed intellectual and political history available of Athens during the late fifth century b.c.e., as it examines the background, the context, and the decisive events shaping this society in the throes of war. This expansive, readable narrative ultimately leads to a new understanding of Athenian democratic culture, showing why and how it yielded such extraordinary intellectual productivity.
The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance, 2009
Earth and water are vital to life. As a simple observation, this fact is so self-evident as to re... more Earth and water are vital to life. As a simple observation, this fact is so self-evident as to require no comment. On the other hand, when a fact of obvious signifi cance is used as a political emblem, it assumes a new level of meaning. When Herodotus names earth and water as tokens of submission demanded by the Persians from their intended subjects, 1 these elements invite analysis from the perspective of their historical context. They appear to signify human life, especially the life and livelihood of orderly human communities dependent on agriculture, an order that the Greeks called the oikoumenē, 'the settled [world]'. 2 In this historical context, these tokens are linked to a notion of sovereignty as it was claimed by Persian kings. Outside of the pages of Herodotus, however, scholars have not been able to discover a tradition, Iranian or otherwise, that explicitly identifi es earth and water as tokens of submission to sovereign authority. 3 Here I propose to explore the background to this political emblem, and to suggest that in demanding earth and water from the Greeks and from other peoples on the western fringe of their empire, the Persians were drawing upon traditions developed especially in Anatolia, the western bastion of their empire, where lifegiving water and the nurturing earth had long been associated with the ideals of sovereignty. These Anatolian traditions were associated with deities and refl ected in the cult and myth. As an emblem of submission, 'earth and water' is devoid of any explicit association with deities or
Physis and Nomos: Power, Justice and the Agonistical Ideal of Life in High Classicism, edited by Apostolos Pierris, 2007
Ionian cosmology had its origins in the union between the ideology of sovereignty and solar obser... more Ionian cosmology had its origins in the union between the ideology of sovereignty and solar observations in the kingdom of Lydia, whose symbolism was later adopted at Athens even while it was subject to philosophical skepticism and popular satire. This paper expands upon themes developed in Munn 2006, The Mother of the God, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion.
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Articles/Book Chapters by Mark H Munn
Papers by Mark H Munn