Prof. Rachel[Rachel] Zelnick-Abramo

Studies:

PHD 1996 Tel-Aviv University

My main research interests are ancient Greek society, especially the non-citizens (free and slaves), their status and relations with citizens and the state. I also explore Greek historiography, comedy and rhetoric. Recently I am working on two new projects: One, a research on the development of the concept of state by looking at the shifting lines between the public and the private spheres, and another one of the meaning and function of verbs of telling in the works of Greek historians.

Publications

Books:

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, Not Wholly Free: The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World, Brill Academic Publishers, Mnemosyne-Supplementa 266, Leiden, 2005a.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, Taxing Freedom in Thessalian Manumission Inscriptions, Mnemosyne HACA 361, Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2013.

Books (edited):

• Price Jonathan and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz (eds.), Text and Intertext in Greek Epic and Drama. London and New York: Routledge, 2020.
• Filonik Jakub, Plastow Christine, and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz (eds.), Citizenship in Antiquity. Civic Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean, Routledge, 2023.
• Margalit Finkelberg, Donna Shalev and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, Patterns of Textualization in the Ancient World, Brill (under review).
• Toledano Ehud, Rotman Youval, and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz (eds.), Comparative and Global Framing of Enslavement De Gruyter, 2023.

Refereed Articles in Journals:

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Request and Supplication: Application by foreigners to the Athenian Polis’, Mnemosyne 51 (1998), 554-573.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘The Xenodokoi of Thessaly’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigarphik 130 (2000a), 109-120.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Did Patronage Exist in Classical Athens?’, L’Antiquité Classique 69 (2000b), 65-80.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Ploutos, the God of the Oligarchs’, Scripta Classica Israelica 21 (2002), 27-44.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Settlers and Dispossessed in the Athenian Empire’, Mnemosyne 57 (2004a), 325-45.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘The Proxenoi of Western Greece’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 147 (2004b), 93–106.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘The Phrase xenikēi lysei in Manumission Inscriptions’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 153 (2005b), 108-112.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Freed Slaves, the State and Social Control in Ancient Greece’, European Review of History: Revue europeen d’histoire 16.3 (2009), 303-318.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Whose Grave Is This? The status of Grave Plots in Ancient Greece’, Dike 18 (2016), 51-95.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, 'Kabeiroi, Manumitted Slaves and Xenoi: The Manumission Inscriptions from Lemnos', Dike 21 (2018), 87-115.
• Rachel Zelnick-SAbramovitz, ‘Half Slave, Half Free: Partial Manumission in the Ancient Near East and Beyond, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 110 (2019), 1-57.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, 'The Verb katalegein in Herodotus. Homeric Influence and the Writing of History', Classical Philology 117 (2022), 1-23.
• Rachel Zelnick-SAbramovitz, ‘An Epic Formula in Herodotus', Scripta Classica Israelica 41 (2022), 5-29.

Refereed Articles and Chapters in Books:

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Lies Resembling Truth: On the Beginnings of Greek Historiography’, in: G. Herman and I. Shatzman (eds.), Greeks Between East and West. Essays in Memory of D. Asheri, The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem 2007, 45-74.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘The Guardian of the Land: The Areopagos Council as a Symbol of Stability’, in: Gabriel Herman (ed.), Stability and Crisis in the Athenian Democracy, Historia Einzelschrift 220, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011, 103-126.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Slaves and Role Reversal in Ancient Greek Cults’. Chapter 3 in S. Hodkinson and D. Geary (eds.), Slaves and Religions in Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Modern Brazil, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2012, 96-132.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Look and Listen: History Performed and Inscribed’, in R. Scodel (ed.), Between Orality and Literacy: Communication and Adaptation in Antiquity, Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World vol. 10, Leiden and Boston: Brill 2014, 175-196.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Greek and Roman terminologies of slavery’, chapter 23 in S. Hodkinson, M. Kleijwegt and K. Vlassopoulos (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Slaveries, Oxford University Press. Oxford Handbooks on Line (online publication date: January 2018).
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Public Registers of Land Sales in Ancient Greece’, in E. Yakab (ed.), Sale and Community. Documents from the Ancient World. Individuals’ Autonomy and State Interference in the Ancient World. Proceedings of a Colloquium Supported by the University of Szeged, Budapest 5-8.10.2012, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2015, 41-65.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Mapping Inequality in Ancient Greece’, in O. Cerasuolo (ed.), The Archaeology of Inequality. Tracing the Archaeological Record, Albany, NY: State of New York University Press, 2021, 235-247.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘The Status of Slaves Manumitted Under paramonē: A Reappraisal’, in Gerhard Thür, Uri Yiftach and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz (eds.), Symposion 2017, Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte, Wien: Österreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 2018, 377-401.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘The Delphic Paramonē Clauses: Response to Lene Rubinstein’, in Kaja Harter-Uibopuu and Werner Riess (eds.), Symposion 2019, Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte, Wien: Österreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 2021, 481-487.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, 'The Slave Who Made It: Narratives of Manumitted Slaves in the Greek World’. In Naming, Defining, Phrasing Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies, Edited by Jeannine Bischoff and Stephan Conermann. De Gruyter 2023
  https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111210544-007

Reviews:

• On Leonard Schumacher, Stellung des sklaven im Sakralrecht (Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei, Beiheft 3, VI; Corpus d. röm. Rechtsq. Teil VI), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006, in: Scripta Classica Israelica XXVII (2008), 133-135.
• On D. Brendan Nagle, The Household as the Foundation of Aristotle’s Polis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, in: The Classical Bulletin 84.1 (2009), 132-134.
• ‘The Polis’, on M.H. Hansen, The Return of the Polis: the Use and Meanings of the Word Polis in Archaic and Classical Sources. (Historia Einzelschriften 198.) Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007, in: The Classical Review Vol. 59, no. 1 (2009), 179-81.
• On Sara Forsdyke, Slaves Tell Tales and Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture in Ancient Greece, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011. In: Ancient History Bulletin, Vol. 3 (2013), 4-6.
• On Deborah Kamen, Status in Classical Athens, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013. In: Scripta Classica Israelica, Vol. 33 (2014), 328-330.
• Review of Sarah F. Derbew, Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge
  University Press, 2022. In: Journal of Global Slavery 8 (2023), 355-360.
• Review of C.L. de Wet, M. Kahlos, V. Vuolanto (eds.), Slavery in the Late Antique World, 150–700 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, in: The Classical Review. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X23002378

Articles in Encyclopedias and Bibliographies:

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Xendokoi’, in: The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Wiley-Blackwell Publishers. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah13263/full

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Prostates’, in: The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah13210/full

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Manumission, Greek and Roman’, in: The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah13180/full

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Xenoi’, in: The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Wiley-Blackwell Publishers. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah04328/full

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz. “Greek Slavery.” In Oxford Bibliographies Online: Classics. Ed. Dee Clayman. New York: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0041.xml?rskey=HuWIZi&result=86&q=

Hebrew Publications:

Books:

• Benjamin Shimron and Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, Herodotus’ Histories. Translated from the Greek with an Introduction and Comments, Tel-Aviv: Dyonon-Papyrus, 1998. Reprinted: Jerusalem: Carmel, 2013.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, The Athenian Democracy, Ra’anana: The Open University of Israel, 2004.

Refereed Articles (Refereed):

• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Patrios Politeia – Image and Reality in Classical Athens’, in: R. Cohen and J. Mali (eds.), Literature and History, Jerusalem, The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1999, 63-75.
• Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, ‘Yelid Bayit and Miknat Kessef: Categories of Slaves in the Bible and in Greek and Roman Texts’, Textus: Studies of the Hebrew University Bible Project XXV (2010), 123-39.

Review Articles:

• ‘Poetry Shattered’, on A. Shabthai’s Hebrew translation of Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, in: Katharsis 1 (2004), 87-114.
• ‘Democracy Now!’, on E. David, Classical Democracy: Emergence, Principles and Pitfalls in Athens, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2003, in: Katharsis 2 (2004), 18-30.

Textbooks:

• (With B. Shimron) ‘Herodotus and the Persian Wars’, Unit 3, Classical Greece, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 1979.
• ‘The Rise of Rome to Hegemony in the Mediterranean’, Unit 1, Judea and Rome, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 1981.
• (With B. Shimron) ‘Alexander and the Conquest of the East’, Unit 3, The History of the Hellenistic Period, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 1989.
• (With B. Shimron) ‘The Diadochs’, Unit 4, The History of the Hellenistic Period, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 1989.
• (With B. Shimron) ‘The Hellenistic Kingdoms: Political History’, Unit 5, The History of the Hellenistic Period, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 1990.
• ‘The Roman Conquest of Greece and the East’, Unit 12, The History of the Hellenistic Period, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 1992.
• ‘The Punic Wars and the Conquest of the Western Mediterranean’, Unit 2, Rome: Imperialism and Empire, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 2002.
• ‘Rome and the Hellenistic East’, Unit 3, Rome: Imperialism and Empire, The Tel-Aviv: Open University, 2002.
• ‘The Roman Politics in the Second Century’, Unit 5, Rome: Imperialism and Empire, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 2002.
• ‘The Roman Revolution I: From the Gracchi to Sulla’, Unit 6, Rome: Imperialism and Empire, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 2002.
• ‘The Roman Revolution II: Pompey and Caesar’, Unit 7, Rome: Imperialism and Empire, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 2002.
• ‘The Fall of the Republic’, Unit 8, Rome: Imperialism and Empire, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 2003.
• ‘Augustus and the Principate’, Unit 9, Rome: Imperialism and Empire, Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 2003.

Scientific Editing:

• Aristotle, Politics Books I - III, translate from the Greek by Nurit Karshon, scientific editor: Rachel Zelnick-A bramovitz, Tel-Aviv: Resling 2009.