Bulletin of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan
Online ISSN : 1884-1406
Print ISSN : 0030-5219
ISSN-L : 0030-5219
Volume 15, Issue 2
Displaying 1-6 of 6 articles from this issue
  • Concerning mainly with the Book of Psalms
    Naomichi Jin
    1972 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 1-26,141
    Published: 1972
    Released on J-STAGE: March 12, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In reading poems as “poetry” in the Old Testament, we notice that the problem of rhythm and rhyme is one of the difficulties. The theories of them among European scholors are indeed reasonable to the reffering texts, but are very troublesome to apply them to other parts. It seems to me that there are some reasons method on the basis of European prosody or indefinite concepts of rhythm and rhyme. The present paper attempts to approach it from the philological and climatological point of view, apart from theories ever discussed.
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  • Jiro Sugiyama
    1972 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 27-40,142
    Published: 1972
    Released on J-STAGE: March 12, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Parthian kings issued many silver and copper coins which showed their own portraits. We can see various kinds of patterns and styles of their crowns. The crowns which have short flame-shaped ornaments or crouching deer on them are especially noteworthy. A remarkable example is the coin issued by Phraates III. The main subject of this article is the idea which motivated people to decorate the crowns with animal figures, and its iconological apprehension (this iconology refers to the concept E. Panofsky).
    On this occasion, We would like to explain iconology shown by deer motifs, compared with some other crowns decorated with animal-shaped designs which are distributed between Eurasian Continent and Japan. (For example, the crown decorated with horse-shaped ornaments found in Tamatsukuri Tomb of Ibaraki Prefecture). The interesting point is that we do not find an actual example of crown surmounted by deer figure, but that we can see some crowns with many animal decorations along the sides or upper edges.
    I will examine the significance of the crouching deer decorations on the Parthian crowns, introducing some other deer-shaped animal figures distributed widely in Eurasia, from the viewpoint of their meaning as totemic animal of the deer or associated with deer-bone divination, and also from the viewpoint as symbols of immortality or happiness.
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  • Yoshitaka Kobayashi
    1972 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 41-53,143
    Published: 1972
    Released on J-STAGE: March 12, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In IEJ (6-9) are found the preliminary reports about the excavations at Hazor (1955-1958) by Y. Yadin, in which are some fragmentary reports about Hazor Hebrew inscriptions. These reports do not cover the whole inscriptions found at Hazor. Complete archaeological reports are found in “HAZOR I-IV, ” in which all the Hebrew inscriptions are printed in photographs or in their restored pictures. J. C. L. Gibson has inserted three Hazor inscriptions in “Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions” (1971) out of the whole eighteen Hazor inscriptions. Neither Yadin's reports nor Gibson's comments are complete about the Hazor inscriptions. Comprehensive deeper study is necessary.
    All of the inscriptions are engraved on the outside of store jars and bowls except the one written by a brush and ink. Originally these were inscribed on the perfect store jars and bowls. But when they were found most of the inscriptions were incomplete except a few.
    This paper covers the study of the restoration of their original forms and their interpretations and comments of the eighteen entire Hazor Hebrew inscriptions. In these inscriptions Hebrew personal names, place names (such as Samaria, the capital of the Israelite kingdom), the word qdš which may indicate “holy, holiness, ” and others are included.
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  • Masanori Aoyagi
    1972 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 55-86_2,144
    Published: 1972
    Released on J-STAGE: March 12, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    It has passed almost twenty years since Buchthal published “The Foundations for a chronology of Gandhara Sculpture” in which he tried to set the Eros-with-Garland motif of Gandhara sculpture in the second century A. D. It is clear that with this study he intended to support the romano-buddhistic theory. One of the facts in favor of his arguments is that the garland of the present motif in Gandhara sculpture has always a bunch of grapes hanging down from the lowest part of a garland, and the same type of this motif can be found in the garland-sarcophagi sculptured in Asia-Minor and Alexandria in the second century A. D.
    Schlumberger, like some other scholars, noted in his recent article that Buchthal wasn't so prudent for publishing his theory, specially for collecting the materials, and as one of the example against the Buchthal's view he cited the reliefs of St. Remy dated about the first half of the first century A. D.
    The present author classified in the first chapter the greek Eros in three types as the classification of Seltman, and he makes it clear that the second type of Aphrodite, became to be treated like usual boys, not in single but in plural, in the Hellenistic Period. In this type of Eros we can find the so-called “prototype” of Eros of the Eros-with-Garland as in Pergamon ceramics and the silver Kantharos from Tarant. In the following chapter, the relation between the “prototype” and the first complete examples of the Eros-with-Garland is studied, for setting up a chronology of this motif. The most flourish period for the Eros-with-Garland motif is in the Roman Empire, because it was used as the one of the chief motif of the sarcophagus decorations. He classifies many variations of this motif into seven types, which brings to light the way of the development of this motif from the Hellenistic period to the Roman period.
    The present author ended this article with which the hellenistic character of this motif played a big role to develop and spread not only in the classical world but also in the eastern world like Gandhara, which will be treated in another article.
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  • Katsumi Tanabe
    1972 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 87-121_4,146
    Published: 1972
    Released on J-STAGE: March 12, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Most of the scholars of the so-called Graeco-Buddhist Art of Gandhara have regarded the Buddhist sculptures excavated at Kâpisa and exclusively made of schist, as typically reflecting its final stage or decadance, and therefore postulated them to the 3rd and 4th centuries when the Classical tradition had fallen into decay.
    We have discerned two different periods of artistic activity among the schist sculptures hitherto excavated archaeologically, i. e., the first one was to copy consciously the so-called Graeco-Buddhist Art of Gandhara proper, and the second to assimilate it into a racial aesthetic system, rather deliberately discarding some Classical ideas.
    The latter phase is so intimately connected with the Second Kushan Dynastic Arts found at Surkh Kotal and Mathurâ that we might attribute the artistic innovation to the Kushans who established their summer-capital at Kâpisî-Begrâm, rather than to the indigenous Buddhists.
    When we compare the sculptures of the second period with those of Western Asia (mainly Parthian), we cannot but acknowledge certain common peculiarities such as the principle of rigid frontality characterizing the Buddhist-donor representation.
    Their stylistic identity together with other iconographic conventions leads us to the supposition that the schist sculptures of Kapisa are nearly contemporary with other Kushan sculptures of Surkh Kotal and Mathurâ, and also with the Parthian Art from the first to the third centuries.
    On the other hand, the artistic trends at Mathurâ under the Third Kushan Dynasty (3-4th centuries, and containing Kâpisa) have nothing in particular and common to do with those of Kâpisa, although the former shares with Gandhara proper some distinguished motives.
    This fact seems to imply that in the Third Kushan Dynastic period the sculpturing activity in stone almost ceased to flourish at Kâpisa, but stone-sculpturing of Gandhara proper further survived to be gradually replaced by modelling in stucco.
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  • Akiko Okada
    1972 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 123-127
    Published: 1972
    Released on J-STAGE: March 12, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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