1,722,806 research outputs found
When It Standeth Beside a Man, Yet None Can See it…When It Entereth a House Its Appreance in the Unknown Introducing Plague in Antiquity
No full textThis volume came about based on the recognition that the rise and spread of Covid-19 has lead contemporary scholarship to consider the possibility that there will be an increasing acceleration of new and highly transmissible plagues, viruses and other diseases linked to the mass travel and trade that characterizes hyper-globalisation. As historians and archaeologists studying the civilisations of the most distant past, we felt that we had something to contribute to this conversation through providing a historical perspective, with the twin goals of relieving the social anxiety caused by pandemics and taking advantage of our present experiences to see how we might view our own research in a fresh, new light. Archaeologists and scholars of ancient history know that epidemic plagues and other environmental catastrophes are nothing new: disease and illness are clearly represented in the archaeological and historical record. In a study published before Covid-19, titled ‘Beyond Amarna: The “Hand of Nergal” and the Plague in the Levant’, Graciela Gestoso Singer, noted plagues ‘have been documented all over the world throughout the ages: the Philistine plague during the thirteenth to twelfth century BCE; the Athenian plague in fifth century BCE Greece; the Cypriot plague in the Roman Empire during the third century AD; the epidemic that afflicted the eastern Mediterranean during the reign of Justinian in the sixth century AD; and the infamous Black Death that killed more than one-fourth of Europe’s population during the Middle Ages.
- …
