Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas

Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas
Author: Laurent Bricault
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2019-11-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004413901

In Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas, Laurent Bricault, one of the principal scholars of the cults of Isis, presents a new interpretation of the multiple sources that present Isis as a goddess of the seas. Bricault discusses a wealth of relatively unknown archaeological and textual data, drawing on a profound knowledge of their historical context. After decades of scholarly study, Bricault offers an important contribution and a new phase in the debate on understanding the “diffusion” as well as the “reception” of the cults of Isis in the Graeco-Roman world. This book, the first English-language monograph by the leading French scholar in the field, underlines the importance of Isis Studies for broader debates in the study of ancient religion.

Worlds Full of Signs

Worlds Full of Signs
Author: Kim Beerden
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-08-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900425630X

Worlds Full of Signs compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome. It argues that the character of Greek divination differed fundamentally from that of the two comparanda. Ample attention is given to background and method at first. Subsequent chapters discuss the divinatory elements – sign, homo divinans, and text, relating divination to time and uncertainty. This book brings together sources originating from various times and places, questioning these to consider both generalities of ancient divination and specifics of Greek divination. Greek divination was inherently flexible on many levels: these findings should be connected to Greek views on time and the future as well as the relatively low level of divinatory institutionalization.

Laws of Ritual Purity

Laws of Ritual Purity
Author: Mahnaz Moazami
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2020-11-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004433953

In Laws of Ritual Purity: Zand ī Fragard ī Jud-Dēw-Dād (A Commentary on the Chapters of the Widēwdād), the redactors present a comprehensive attempt to develop, systematize, scrutinize, and augment the Avestan and post-Avestan inheritance. By delving into numerous legal details, they provide illuminating insights into the everyday activities, encounters, and practices that are defined and governed by observance of ritual purity.

Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World

Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World
Author: Jorge Tomás García
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2022-04-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000574180

The book examines the process of symbolic and material alteration of religious images in antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period. The process by which the form and meaning of images are modified and adapted for a new context is defined by a large number of spiritual, religious, artistic, geographical or historical circumstances. This book provides a defined theoretical framework for these symbolic and material alterations based on the concept of iconotropy; that is, the way in which images change and/or alter their meaning. Iconotropy is a key concept in religious history, particularly for periods in which religious changes, often turbulent, took place. In addition, the iconotropic process of appropriating cult images brought with it changes in the materiality of those images. Numerous accounts from antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period detail how cult images were involved in such processes of misinterpretation, both symbolically and materially. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture and religious history.

Notions of Time in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

Notions of Time in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature
Author: Stefan Beyerle
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 706
Release: 2021-12-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110705478

A comprehensive investigation of notions of "time" in deuterocanonical and cognate literature, from the ancient Jewish up to the early Christian eras, requires further scholarship. The aim of this collection of articles is to contribute to a better understanding of "time" in deuterocanonical literature and pseudepigrapha, especially in Second Temple Judaism, and to provide criteria for concepts of time in wisdom literature, apocalypticism, Jewish and early Christian historiography and in Rabbinic religiosity. Essays in this volume, representing the proceedings of a conference of the "International Society for the Study of Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature" in July 2019 at Greifswald, discuss concepts and terminologies of "time", stemming from novellas like the book of Tobit, from exhortations for the wise like Ben Sira, from an apocalyptic time table in 4 Ezra, the book of Giants or Daniel, and early Christian and Rabbinic compositions. The volume consists of four chapters that represent different approaches or hermeneutics of "time:" I. Axial Ages: The Construction of Time as "History", II. The Construction of Time: Particular Reifications, III. Terms of Time and Space, IV. The Construction of Apocalyptic Time. Scholars and students of ancient Jewish and Christian religious history will find in this volume orientation with regard to an important but multifaceted and sometimes disparate topic.

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination

The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination
Author: Adeline Grand-Clément
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350169749

This volume tackles the role of smell, under-explored in relation to the other senses, in the modern rejection, reappraisal and idealisation of antiquity. Among the senses olfaction in particular has often been overlooked in classical reception studies due to its evanescent nature, which makes this sense difficult to apprehend in its past instantiations. And yet, the smells associated with a given figure or social group convey a rich imagery which in turn connotes specific values: perfumes, scents and foul odours both reflect and mould the ways in which a society thinks or acts. Smells also help to distinguish between male and female, citizens and strangers, and play an important role during rituals. The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination focuses on the representation of ancient smells - both enticing and repugnant - in the visual and performative arts from the late 18th century up to the 21st century. The individual contributions explore painting, sculpture, literature and film, but also theatrical performance, museum exhibitions, advertising, television series, historical reenactment and graphic novels, which have all played a part in reshaping modern audiences' perceptions and experiences of the antique.

Connecting the Isiac Cults

Connecting the Isiac Cults
Author: Tomáš Glomb
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2022-11-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1350210714

Why did Egyptian cults, especially those dedicated to the goddess Isis and god Sarapis, spread so successfully across the ancient Mediterranean after the death of Alexander the Great? How are we limited by the established methodological apparatus of historiography and which innovative methods from other disciplines can overcome these limits? In this book, Tomáš Glomb shows that while the interplay of different factors such as the economy, climate, and politics created favorable conditions for the early spread of the Isiac cults, the use of innovative quantitative methods can shed new light and help disentangle the complex interplay of individual factors. Using a combination of geospatial modeling, mathematical modeling, and network analysis, Glomb determines that, at least in the regions of the Hellenistic Aegean and western Asia Minor, the political channels created by the Ptolemaic dynasty were a dominant force in the local spread of the Isiac cults. An important contribution to the historiography of the ancient Mediterranean, this book answers the specific question of “how it happened” as well as, “how can we answer it beyond the limits of the established methodological apparatus in historiography.”

The Religious Life of Nabataea

The Religious Life of Nabataea
Author: Peter Alpass
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-06-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004216235

Flourishing in the centuries around the birth of Christ, the Nabataean kingdom covered a large swathe of the north-western Arabian Peninsula and was shaped by cultural influences from the Mediterranean, Arabian and wider Semitic worlds. The Religious Life of Nabataea examines the inscriptions, sculptures and architectural remains left by worshippers in every corner of the kingdom, from the spectacular remains of the desert city of Petra to the fertile plains of southern Syria. While previous scholarly approaches have minimised the diversity of cultic practices and traditions found in Nabataea, this study reveals a vibrant religious landscape dominated by a variety of local traditions.