Terres cuites et culte domestique


Book Description

In Terracotta and domestic worship. Bestiary of the Graeco-Roman Egypt, Celine Boutantin proposes a new approach of terracotta produced in Egypt in the Greco-Roman period. A study taking into account the archaeological contexts allows to propose a synthesis of production workshops and to show, in some cases, an adaptation of the production of local cults. An inventory of figurines found in homes, temples and tombs allow to study the functions of these objects. Through the study of a particular theme, animal terracottas, the author raises questions about beliefs and personal or private practices. Dans Terres cuites et culte domestique. Bestiaire de l’Égypte gréco-romaine, Céline Boutantin propose une nouvelle approche des figurines en terre cuite produites en Égypte à l’époque gréco-romaine. Une étude prenant en compte les contextes archéologiques permet de dresser un bilan des ateliers de production et de montrer, dans certains cas, une adaptation de la production à des cultes locaux. Elle permet aussi de dresser un inventaire des figurines trouvées dans les maisons, les sanctuaires et les tombes et de proposer une synthèse sur les fonctions de ces objets. A travers l’étude d’un thème particulier, les représentations animales, l’auteur aborde sous un angle nouveau la question des croyances et des pratiques personnelles ou privées.




Christianizing Egypt


Book Description

How does a culture become Christian, especially one that is heir to such ancient traditions and spectacular monuments as Egypt? This book offers a new model for envisioning the process of Christianization by looking at the construction of Christianity in the various social and creative worlds active in Egyptian culture during late antiquity. As David Frankfurter shows, members of these different social and creative worlds came to create different forms of Christianity according to their specific interests, their traditional idioms, and their sense of what the religion could offer. Reintroducing the term “syncretism” for the inevitable and continuous process by which a religion is acculturated, the book addresses the various formations of Egyptian Christianity that developed in the domestic sphere, the worlds of holy men and saints’ shrines, the work of craftsmen and artisans, the culture of monastic scribes, and the reimagination of the landscape itself, through processions, architecture, and the potent remains of the past. Drawing on sermons and magical texts, saints’ lives and figurines, letters and amulets, and comparisons with Christianization elsewhere in the Roman empire and beyond, Christianizing Egypt reconceives religious change—from the “conversion” of hearts and minds to the selective incorporation and application of strategies for protection, authority, and efficacy, and for imagining the environment.




The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion


Book Description

This handbook offers both students and teachers of ancient Greek religion a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship in the subject, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. It not only presents key information, but also explores the ways in which such information is gathered and the different approaches that have shaped the area. In doing so, the volume provides a crucial research and orientation tool for students of the ancient world, and also makes a vital contribution to the key debates surrounding the conceptualization of ancient Greek religion. The handbook's initial chapters lay out the key dimensions of ancient Greek religion, approaches to evidence, and the representations of myths. The following chapters discuss the continuities and differences between religious practices in different cultures, including Egypt, the Near East, the Black Sea, and Bactria and India. The range of contributions emphasizes the diversity of relationships between mortals and the supernatural - in all their manifestations, across, between, and beyond ancient Greek cultures - and draws attention to religious activities as dynamic, highlighting how they changed over time, place, and context.




Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas


Book Description

Edited by G. Papantoniou, D. Michaelides and M. Dikomitou-Eliadou, Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas is a collection of 29 chapters with an introduction presenting diverse and innovative approaches (archaeological, stylistic, iconographic, functional, contextual, digital, and physicochemical) in the study of ancient terracottas across the Mediterranean and the Near East, from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. The 34 authors advocate collectively the significance of a holistic approach to the study of coroplastic art, which considers terracottas not simply as works of art but, most importantly, as integral components of ancient material culture. The volume will prove to be an invaluable companion to all those interested in ancient terracottas and their associated iconography and technology, as well as in ancient artefacts and classical archaeology in general.




Current Research in Egyptology 2022


Book Description

The present volume collects thirty-two papers on various topics from the history of Egyptology to archaeology and material culture, from the Predynastic to the Roman period, through history and epigraphy, as well as new technologies.




Iron Age Terracotta Figurines from the Southern Levant in Context


Book Description

This interdisciplinary volume is a ‘one-stop location’ for the most up-to-date scholarship on Southern Levantine figurines in the Iron Age. The essays address terracotta figurines attested in the Southern Levant from the Iron Age through the Persian Period (1200–333 BCE). The volume deals with the iconography, typology, and find context of female, male, animal, and furniture figurines and discusses their production, appearance, and provenance, including their identification and religious functions. While giving priority to figurines originating from Phoenicia, Philistia, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine, the volume explores the influences of Egyptian, Anatolian, Mesopotamian, and Mediterranean (particularly Cypriot) iconography on Levantine pictorial material.




Excavations at Maresha Subterranean Complex 169


Book Description

Tel Maresha is located in the foothills of Israel's Judaean Mountains. It was established in the Iron Age II (circa 700 BCE) and is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Josh 15:44; I Chron. 2:42). But it was mainly a Hellenistic-period town - a major Idumean political and administrative center. One of the unique and fascinating aspects of Maresha is its subterranean city - hundreds of underground galleries and chambers filled to the gills with artifacts. This volume is a report of the excavations of one of these rich subterranean complexes - SC 169 - which contained a full corpus of Hellenistic pottery forms - both local and exotic altars, figurines, amulets, seals and seal impressions, hundreds of inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic, coins, jewelry and much more. These finds tell the story of an affluent cosmopolitan society comprised of Idumeans, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Jews, who lived together in a vibrant urban setting until the city was destroyed, probably by the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom in 104 BCE.




Households in Context


Book Description

Households in Context shifts the focus from monumental temples, tombs, and elite material and visual culture to households and domestic life to provide a crucial new perspective on everyday dwelling practices and the interactions of families and individuals with larger social and cultural structures. A focus on households reveals the power of the everyday: the critical role of quotidian experiences, objects, and images in creating the worlds of the people who live with them. The contributors to this book share contemporary research on houses and households in both Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to reshape the ways we think about ancient people's lived experiences of family, community, and society. Households in Context places the archaeology and history of Greco-Roman Egypt in dialogue with research on dwelling, daily practice, and materiality to reveal how ancient households functioned as laboratories for social, political, economic, and religious change. Contributors: Youssri Abdelwahed, Richard Alston, Anna Lucille Boozer, Paola Davoli, David Frankfurter, Jennifer Gates-Foster, Melanie Godsey, Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Sabine R. Huebner, Gregory Marouard, Miriam Müller, Lisa Nevett, Bérangère Redon, Bethany Simpson, Ross I. Thomas, Dorothy J. Thompson




Current Research in Egyptology 2021


Book Description

15 Egyptological and Papyrological papers investigate a great variety of issues, including social and religious aspects of life in ancient Egypt, ritual and magic, language and literature, ideology of death, demonology, the iconographical tradition, and intercultural relations, ranging chronologically from the Prehistoric to the Coptic period.




Animals in Greek and Roman Religion and Myth


Book Description

This volume brings together a variety of approaches to the different ways in which the role of animals was understood in ancient Greco-Roman myth and religion, across a period of several centuries, from Preclassical Greece to Late Antique Rome. Animals in Greco-Roman antiquity were thought to be intermediaries between men and gods, and they played a pivotal role in sacrificial rituals and divination, the foundations of pagan religion. The studies in the first part of the volume examine the role of the animals in sacrifice and divination. The second part explores the similarities between animals, on the one hand, and men and gods, on the other. Indeed, in antiquity, the behaviour of several animals was perceived to mirror human behaviour, while the selection of the various animals as sacrificial victims to specific deities often was determined on account of some peculiar habit that echoed a special attribute of the particular deity. The last part of this volume is devoted to the study of animal metamorphosis, and to this end a number of myths that associate various animals with transformation are examined from a variety of perspectives.