Department of History, UC Santa Barbara

Marriage and Ritual Performance among the Servants of the Babylonian Gods
2017-04-18 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | HSSB 4041, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, United States
Talk by Bastian Still, Leiden University
With more than 50,000 legal-administrative cuneiform tablets, the so-called Neo-
Babylonian Period (c. 625-484 BCE) is one of the best-documented periods in the
history of Mesopotamia, the region between Tigris and Euphrates. Unfortunately,
this invaluable and very rich material rarely finds use in wider social-historical
discourses, as cuneiform specialists still engage predominantly in conventional
investigations of philological, juridical and economic nature. Attempts to further the
field of Assyriology by providing much needed social perspectives are still strikingly
missing with the result that the complex fabric of this ancient society as a whole
remains a poorly understood subject of research – this is particularly obvious in the
study of Babylonian marriage.
This talk presents a novel approach to marriage in Babylonian society of the
mid-first millennium BCE, based on a combination of social network analysis,
sociological theory and anthropological studies. Focusing on priests in the city of Borsippa,
the talk reveals how marriage practices helped shape not only the social order of the community but also the daily cult activities of the temple of Borsippa.

Let us go upon the Acropolis: John Wesley Gilbert in Greece, September 1890-April 1891
2017-04-19 16:00 - 17:30 | UCSB Library Instruction & Training Room 1312 (First Floor, Mountain Side), Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106
Talk by John W.I. Lee, UCSB History Department

John Wesley Gilbert (ca. 1863-1923) was born in Hephzibah, Georgia. He attended Paine College (Augusta, Georgia), then received his BA from Brown University in 1888. He was the third African American to graduate from Brown. As a Brown MA student in 1890-1891, Gilbert became the first African American to attend the fledgling American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). The ASCSA was founded in 1881 by a group of scholars from Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and other American colleges as a research and teaching center for Greek archaeology, literature, and history.
Drawing on Gilbert’s own writings and other contemporary documents, this talk examines the historical significance of Gilbert’s time in Greece. During his year as a student at the American School, Gilbert traveled throughout Greece, wrote a thesis on the demes (political subdivisions) of ancient Athens, and took part in the ASCSA’s excavations at the ancient city of Eretria.
After studying in Greece, Gilbert returned to the U.S. to teach at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. He was a leader in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church) and was an important voice for African American education and for racial equality and harmony in the U.S.
This talk is part of the ‘Black Classicism’ lecture series presented in conjunction with the “14 Black Classicists” exhibition hosted by the AD&A Museum and the UCSB Library. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Argyropoulos Endowment in Hellenic Studies, and the departments of Classics and Black Studies.
