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New issue of After Constantine released

The second issue of After Constantine: Stories from the Late Antique and Early Byzantine Era has been released, giving readers access to three new articles.

Here are details and abstracts for the three articles:

Coptic Ostraca Mentioning Money, by Sohair Ahmed

This paper presents five Coptic ostraca (potsherds) mentioning money. The transcription (with/without translation) of two ostraca here has been made by Wintermute (Duke University) a long time ago, however he did not publish them and agreed to be republished by me. Also, the Museum agreed to send me both photos (of ostraca) and his notes. The third-fifth ostraca are kept in RBML and are described with a suggested summary on the international website “Papyri Info”; then it was registered under my study in 2019 and 2021. 

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Teaching Geography: A Never-Ending Dialogue between Late Antique and Renaissance Europe, by David Salomoni

The purpose of this article is to show how the dialogue between Antique and Renaissance geography did not happen only through the rediscovery and critical study of ancient sources by Italian and European humanists. Such a reading would leave out the contribution of the Late Antique period, namely early Christianity. It is not possible to dismiss the incorporation of theological elements in geographical disciplines as a simple anti-scientific fact. The great cartographers of the Renaissance, including Abraham Ortelius and Gerard Mercator, just to name the most famous, considered the religious dimension an essential component of geography. In this article I would like to hint at the importance of this red thread between different epochs, underlining the importance of how the Christian thought of the first centuries must be taken into account as much as the technical mathematical element of classicism in the emergence of modern geography between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 

Memory, Society and Art in the Church of Saint Sophia, Mytikas, Arkanania: The Funerary Chambers and the Tomb in the North Aisle, by Yannis Varalis, Georgia Koletsiou and Goulielmos Orestidis

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The church at Saint Sophia, Mytikas (anc. Alyzia), is a three-aisled basilica dated to the later part of the fifth or the early sixth century. Excavated in the ‘70s and ‘80s of the previous century, the church is not yet published. This study focuses on the funerary use of the annexes flanking the north side and on the monumental tomb erected in the north aisle. Τhe character of the burial chambers and the tomb are revealing the collective memory of the late antique community of Alyzians who wanted to preserve both the family ties and the spiritual ties with the deceased. Art, and especially architecture, sculpture, and poetry are the means for organizing and unifying the two sides of a wall.

You can download the entire issue or the individual articles by clicking here.

After Constantine is a peer-reviewed and open-access academic journal that aims to bring Late Antiquity to the spotlight by hosting papers that underline its importance to classic and Byzantine studies. Please visit their website for more details.

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