Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice
Synopsis
Conversations about materiality have helped forge a common meeting ground for scholars seeking to integrate images, sites, texts, and implements in their approach to religion in the ancient Mediterranean. The fourteen chapters in this volume explore the productivity of these approaches, with case studies from Israel, Athens, Rome, Sicily, and North Africa . The results foreground the capacity of material approaches to cast lighton the cultural creation of the sacred through the integration of rhetorical,material, and iconographic means. They open more nuanced pathways to theuses of text in the study of material evidence. They highlight the poten tialf or material objects to bring political and ethnic boundaries into the sacredrealm. And they emphasize the role of ongoing interpretation, debate, andmult iple readings in the creation of the sacred, in both ancient contexts and scholarly discussion.
Chapters
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Table of Contents
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Object, Image, and Text: Materiality and Ritual Practice in the Ancient Mediterranean
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Divine Twins or Saintly Twins: The Dioscuri in an Early Christian Context
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Altars, Astragaloi, Achilles: Picturing Divination on Athenian Vases
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Incarnating the Aurea AetasTheomorphic Rhetoric and the Portraits of Nero
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No More Than One Candle, Torch, or WreathPrivate Citizens and the Commemoration of L. Caesar at Pisa
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The Cadence of the Language of Magic in Greek Curse Tablets and First Corinthians
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Sacred Objects, Material Value, and Invective in Cicero’s Verrines II 4
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Local Production and Domestic Ritual Use of Small Rectangular Incense AltarsA Petrographic Provenience Analysis and Examination of Craftsmanship of the Tell Halif Incense Altars
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Judaean Pillar Figurines and the Making of Female Piety in Ancient Israelite Religion
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Priestesses in ActionRitual Instruments Employed by Roman Women
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Rhetoric, Repetition, and Identity in the Frieze of Sacred Objects on the Temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus
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Channeling IdentityThe Fountain of Glauke in Corinth and Jacob’s Well in John 4
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“In This Holy Place”Incubation at Hot Springs in Roman and Late Antique Palestine
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Gods, Graves, and Extratextual Rituals in Archaic Colonial Sicily
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Indexes
