Le discipline orientalistiche
come scienze storiche

Atti del 1º Incontro «Orientalisti»
(Roma, 6-7 Dicembre 2001)

a cura di Giuseppe Regalzi
prefazione di Chiara Peri

Il 1º Incontro «Orientalisti», organizzato da Chiara Peri, si è tenuto giovedì 6 e venerdì 7 Dicembre 2001 a Roma, nella Sala delle Conferenze della Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea di Palazzo Caetani.

Atti

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Recensioni e segnalazioni

Marco Grusovin, Gli ebraisti cattolici a Gorizia nell’Ottocento. Esegesi, linguistica e teologia (Fonti e studi di storia sociale e religiosa, 15), Gorizia, Istituto di Storia Sociale e Religiosa, 2001 [2002], p. 22:

Va ancora ricordato che lo stesso orientalismo, in quanto fenomeno scientifico sviluppatosi in Europa, e pertanto rappresentativo di un punto di vista occidentale sul mondo orientale, è stato aspramente criticato, talvolta anche a torto, perché inficiato ab origine da specifici elementi ideologici. Rimane tuttavia la necessità, anche accademica, di rivalutare complessivamente il significato e la portata dei risultati raggiunti da questi studiosi, cosa che finalmente, dopo una lunga censura e poche lodevoli eccezioni, si è tentato di fare nel corso di un recente convegno svoltosi a Roma su iniziativa di Chiara Peri, Giuseppe Regalzi ed altri giovani ricercatori.

Marco Grusovin, «Gli studi ebraici al Seminario Centrale di Gorizia nell’800», in L’Arcidiocesi di Gorizia. Dall’istituzione alla fine dell’Impero Asburgico (1751-1918), a cura di J. Vetrih, Gorizia, Forum, 2001 [2002], pp. 287-95, a p. 288:

Che il tema, nonostante la larga censura, si riaffacci all’orizzonte della riflessione accademica, è dimostrato dal convegno organizzato a Roma tra il 6 e il 7 dicembre 2001 per iniziativa di Chiara Peri e intitolato ‘Le discipline orientalistiche come scienze storiche’. Durante il convegno, oltre ad un nuovo approccio teso a valutare il contributo dell’orientalistica in termini di ‘scienza storica’, si è anche tentato di assegnarle un suo nuovo ruolo nell’attuale panorama dell’università e della ricerca scientifica.

Luigi M. Reale, E-book Italia Dossier. Il libro elettronico e l’editoria digitale umanistica, versione 2.0, 28 luglio 2002.

Indice degli Atti

Prefazione
Chiara Peri

Prefazione del curatore
Giuseppe Regalzi

La ceramica come strumento di indagine di una società preistorica: la produzione della Dark-Faced Burnished Ware nel Neolitico medio in Cilicia e Siria settentrionale
Francesca Balossi

The aim of this paper is to discuss the different use and multiple reading that can be done of prehistoric, non-literate societies through the study of their material culture. It is believed that a single class of material culture is able to give important information on the social organisation of the group producing it. Most important is the acknowledgement of the fact that the study of a corpus of materials is, and should always be, problem oriented and that the composition of the different approaches is that which can help understand cultural processes in their complexity.

Specific cases from the analysis of a particular pottery production of Cilicia and Northern Syria, from the middle Neolithic (VII and VI millennia BCE), are given in order to explain the potentials of such a study.

The pottery production of essentially three sites, Judaidah in the Amuq, Mersin in Cilicia and Ain el Kerkh in Syria, is compared. Through a macroscopic typological analysis of techniques of manufacture and morphology of such pottery, strong indications of specialised production, of social and probably economic interaction, but also of cultural distinctions between these three sites are evidenced. Through these it becomes clear that the three sites have different relations with each other, Mersin probably socially and culturally more distant, whilst the other two are surely part of the same regional culture; even so they illustrate some desire of cultural distinction.

Lo studio delle cretule nella preistoria e protostoria vicino orientale: dalla contestualizzazione all’interpretazione
Alessandra Mezzasalma

The use and function of clay-sealings in the Prehistory and Protohistory of the ancient Near East should be reconsidered after the recent discovery of clay-sealings in Neolithic contexts. From the origin of state organisation, at the end of IV millennium BCE, sealings indicate a centralisation of goods and work controlled by a bureaucratic class, which also administered their redistribution. Probably other forms of control should be supposed for Neolithic, when a high degree of social and economical differentiation is not attested. Hundreds of clay-sealings discovered in a collective store-building at Sabi Abyad may indicate an egalitarian administration of common goods.

Aspetti morfologici, tipologici e culturali della ceramica del BA IV B di Ebla: studio preliminare
Cristiana Pezzetta

The subject of this paper is cultural and historical transformation at the end of the EB IV, focusing on EB IV b.

The focus of the study is the manufacture of the pottery, drawing conclusions as to political, historical and cultural changes and their roots within the dialectic relationship between material aspects of life and ideology. The paper draws on morphological and typological analysis of pottery to hypothesize the origin of EB IV b phase as the container of two different ways of organizing the social life of people.

Rapporto tra spazio pubblico e spazio privato nelle città del Sud della Mesopotamia tra il IV ed il I mill. a.C.: la ricerca di un metodo
Simona Bracci

This short paper marks the starting point of a wider PhD research whose subject is the topography of ancient Mesopotamian towns.

The town is here studied through the observation of the relation between Public and Private Space and its changes during the different historical ?page_id=271ods.

The first step of this research aims at the creation of a useful method to analyse the topography of the ancient sites through the knowledge of the previous works about ancient Near Eastern and classical towns. Notwithstanding the great interest aroused by Torelli and Zanker with their studies about Rome and Pompei, it seems that the method developed for the study of the Hellenistic and Roman world doesn’t fit the Mesopotamian one. In Near Eastern towns the idea of regular space, which is typical of the classical world, seems to be lacking.

This observation leads to think that a more successful approach to the subject must be a more complex one: not only the study of the relationship created on the ground by the different buildings, but the use of the textual sources which can help understand the idea of the town and the messages connected with the architecture itself.

La stele di confine: un approccio storico-religioso
Marta Rivaroli

The following study is about boundary stones in mythical heritage.

A boundary stone consists in anything that shows the separation between different worlds either in space or in time, and, above all, the definition of their own sphere of action.

Within the mythical heritage study appears obvious that boundaries should not be used only as political, cultural and ideological borders. The purpose of this study is to investigate, understand and show any other meaning of a boundary.

L’alfabeto nordarabico antico e i suoi rapporti con il semitico nordoccidentale
Fiorella Scagliarini

The aim of this paper is to investigate the subsequent steps in the formation of the South Semitic alphabetic script, making a comparison with the Northwest Semitic writing tradition. Among meaningful texts for the history of the alphabetic writing, the ABCs hold a main role: they allow a detailed analysis in the relationships and differences between the Phoenician and the South Semitic alphabetic orderings. This paper considers the first texts in the South Semitic alphabetic ordering, comparing them with the ABCs in different South Arabian scripts, that have been discovered and deciphered in the last decades in various places of the Arabian Peninsula, and with a few North Arabian ABCs.

La tomba come «casa dell’eternità» a Palmira
Danila Piacentini

In the oasis of Palmyra there are different ways to bury the dead. The “tower tombs”, five-storey buildings on the Umm Belq?s hillside; the tombs built in the shape of a temple or a house (rare examples are visible, largely reconstructed); the hypogeous tombs, not visible on the surface, but widely extended and richly decorated, even with frescoes.

The inscriptions found in the palmyrene tombs belong to three typologies. They tell us about their foundation – construction or digging – with informations about the builder. There are deeds of transfer, because each tomb is too large to serve a single family only (it’s been counted up to 300 burial niches in the tower tombs and in the hypogeous tombs). Finally every dead body is identified by a funerary inscription.

The majority of the tombs in Palmyra are defined as “house of eternity”.

La Bibbia ebraica come fonte storico-religiosa
Chiara Peri

Was Hebrew religion monotheistic from its origins? Those who believe in the complete reliability of the Biblical text – or rather of one of its authoritative interpretations – would answer “yes” to this question, thus leaving ancient Israel out of history, in a merely theological dimension. Who is interested in studying Hebrew religion in its historical development has to read the Biblical sources critically, trying to understand when and where they were written, in order to find useful data in spite of the deforming action of ideological and theological patterns.

L’edizione critica della Bibbia ebraica: Giona come esempio
Giuseppe Regalzi

Scholars and common readers need a true critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, with a full apparatus and a text based upon different witnesses, not upon one single manuscript. This paper examines the main criteria to choose between readings: an example is drawn from Jonah 3:4, where the Septuagint reads “Three more days, and Nineveh will be destroyed”, while all the other witnesses have “Forty more days”. The stemmatic method – borrowed from the field of Classical Philology – can help increase the reliability of our conclusions: a provisional genealogical chart is sketched of the extant witnesses of the Book of Jonah. An apologia for conjectural emendation is finally made, and the necessity emphasized to collect as much evidence as we can, such as independent marks of textual corruption (as shown by the strange case of the qiqayon and the booth, Jonah 4:5–6, both claimed to provide shadow to the prophet). Emendation is a difficult task, but historical exegesis can only be conducted on the original text, or on that close approximation to the original text, which textual criticism provides us with.

La comunità giudaica di Puglia tra XIII e XIV secolo
Michele Loconsole

Ebrei in Polesine nel XV secolo: una presenza complessa
Elisabetta Traniello

The first written evidences of Jewish presence in “Polesine di Rovigo” date back to the last ten years of the thirteenth century. The history of Jews from Rovigo, Lendinara and Badia Polesine is based on notarial acts, a source rarely used for this area.

The most certificate job of Jews (here like elsewhere) is moneylending: the banks of Rovigo and Lendinara were managed first by the moneylending company of the Finzies and of the heirs of Musetto di Aleuccio from Perugia, then only by the Finzies that held the moneylending monopoly in the two towns in the middle of the fifteenth century.

In a different way, a Jewish family living in Ferrara operated in Badia, where around 1430 an Ashkenazi party settled.

In Polesine Jews were moneylenders as well as merchants, drapers, goldsmiths.

According to recent studies, also in Polesine the Jewish social situation was problematic and conflictual, but stable and constant.

La forma epistolare in ambito ebraico: una fonte storica
Natascia Danieli

This article examines the form of letter as a historical source. In this way I describe different kinds of letters, as travel letters, formularies and family letters, which are fundamental historical documents in order to analyse the social and religious background of Jewish communities through the ages. As I explain at the beginning of my article, the study of Hebrew epistolography takes its first steps thanks to Bonfil and Boksenboim’s researches, so this is only the starting point of a possible new way of interpreting the sources of Hebrew correspondence.