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The following paper explains the underlying religious context of the use of katadesmoi (binding tablets) from Classical Greek society. Elements of examination include oath ceremonies, literary sources for binding, the development and role of Hermes, beliefs concerning souls of the dead, and lastly an explanation of how katadesmoi relate to these elements. Using historical analysis supported by Classical texts, such as Homer's Odyssey and Aeschylus' Choephoria, this paper establishes that katadesmoi reflect classical Greek religious beliefs. The religious context of these tablets is important to this field of study because it is an under-researched connection between these two topics.
The sanctuary of Dodona, the oldest of the Greek world, is located a few miles away from the present city of Ioannina. The close proximity of the site to my birthplace, made me wish to study further the history and the cult of Dodona. The oracle had a long lasting history, with the early finds dating back to the 13th century BC, with a course of distinct presence until the 4th century AD, when the pagan cult was replaced by the Christian religion. From the 8th century onwards, Dodona had a certain Greek cult activity, with interesting and rich dedications: bronze statuettes, statues, ex-voto, vessels, and valuable offerings. However, the earlier finds (weapons, ceremonial axes, miniature clay vessels) signify a primitive cult activity. This thesis aims to present an overview of the offerings, interpret their significance, and reveal the character of the oracle through the finds. For the first time, a combined catalogue of more than 600 offerings, presents as a whole the variety of the finds. Moreover, I tried to explore the factors that affected the identity of the oracle and highlight the connection of Dodona with other areas or individuals. The decline of the sanctuary came with the Roman Invasion in 167 BC. Therefore, I had to stop at that point, when the evidence was limited and vague.
2013
This paper is devoted to the ancient structure known as the Plutonium that can be seen in Hierapolis, Turkey. It is is an attempt at organising the existing knowledge about the Plutonium of Hierapolis by providing the analysis of the written sources and then putting them in the wider cultural and religious context. The latest archaeological discoveries are discussed and the possible interpretation of their results is provided.
2019, Journal Of Hellenic Religion (JfHR) éditée et distribuée par Éditions Méduse d’Or ISSN 1748-7811, eISSN 1748-782X
Abstract: The paper argues that the sanctuary in Dodona emerged approximately in the Early Bronze Age (late third millennium BC) as a typical Indo-European place of worship of the Storm-god: it was originally focused on the Storm-god’s sacred tree – his “wise” oak and was attended by a special group of primitive priests ‘able’ to hear and to understand the oak. Such a cult-place was probably founded in Dodona by some Indo-European Northern-Balkan pastoral tribe that especially worshiped the Storm-god as a god of thunder – *Do(n)don. In the Late Helladic III period, when Mycenaean colonists settled in Dodona, the local cult was modified in accordance with the Minoan-Mycenaean religious concepts, which placed in the centre of the belief system the Great Goddess, or the Earth-Mother, worshiped in various orgiastic cults. A group of divinities of the Great Goddess’ / Earth-Mother’s circle – an orgiastic male Mycenaean deity of fertilizing moisture – her partner-impregnator and the rain-nymphs took over the control of the storm-activity. Greek Zeus became the “lord” (according to Homer, the “ruler”) of the territory of Dodona and the god of its sacred prophetic oak by the end of the Mycenaean period. In late prehistoric time, oracular responses were most probably given in the old way through the sacred oak, but there could have been a separate oracle of the Earth-Mother in prehistoric Dodona as well. In early historic time, as result of movements of various North-Western Greek tribes through Epirus, the cult of the goddess Diona was brought in Dodona; initially, her position in the sanctuary would have been as that of a minor goddess. Radical changes took place in the Dodonaean cult in the Late Archaic period when Zeus, as everywhere in Greece, monopolized the functions of a storm-deity and became the main Greek god of storm. Perhaps, during the Archaic period, Zeus was identified with the original local god-partner of the Earth-Mother-goddess – her impregnator. During Classical time, Diona became the principal female deity of the sanctuary and Zeus’ official associate. However, elements of the orgiastic cults of the Great Goddess persisted in the Dodonaean sanctuary up to Hellenistic time. http://www.journalofhellenicreligion.meduse-d-or.fr/volumes/the-sanctuary-of-zeus-in-dodona-evolution-of-the-religious-concept
2019, "Tracking Hermes, Pursuing Mercury", edited by John F. Miller and Jenny Strauss Clay, Oxford: Oxford University Press
The article explores the reasons to rethink Hermes’ position in a more complex (and problematic) religious frame, deeply rooted in the Greek concept of cosmic destiny (Moira), and connected to foundation myths in which instances such as measure, order, and justice played a primary role. In a cosmological system based on the succession of cosmic cycles producing new orders and in a cultural environment where chance is the way to reveal the gods’ will, Hermes acts as the (re)founder of a new balance, through new proportional distributions of parts (timai), to both gods and men.
2008, F. Hölscher - T. Hölscher (eds), Religion und Raum, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 10, 45-76
This is a thematic issue of the journal Religion 47 (3) entitled Exploring Aniconism. It contains elleven research articles on the use of aniconism in different religious traditions. Table of Content 1. Aniconism: definitions, examples and comparative perspectives (Milette Gaifman, concluding section by Mikael Aktor and Milette Gaifman); 2. Aniconism and the origins of palaeoart (Robert G. Bednarik); 3. The real presence of Osiris: iconic, semi-iconic and aniconic ritual representations of an Egyptian god (Jørgen Podemann Sørensen); 4. The great Iranian divide: between aniconic West and anthropomorphic East (Michael Shenkar); 5. Aniconic propaganda in the Hebrew Bible, or: the possible birth of religious seriousness (Hans J. L. Jensen); 6. Aniconism in the first centuries of Christianity (Robin M. Jensen); 7. The royal veil: early Islamic figural art and the Bilderverbot reconsidered (Nadia Ali); 8. Stone-agency: sense, sight and magical efficacy in traditions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Jay Johnston); 9. Śiva’s multiplicity of presence in aniconic and iconic form (Richard H. Davis); 10. Drawing out the iconic in the aniconic: worship of neem trees and Govardhan stones in Northern India (David L. Haberman); 11. The Hindu pañcāyatanapūjā in the aniconism spectrum (Mikael Aktor).
Among the districts of ancient Epirus, Thesprotia is the most suitable for studying the religious life of the Epirotes at the scale of the ethnos. Indeed, Thesprotia seems to feature a peculiar identity both in the field of the cults and in that of the formal layout of the sacred spaces. This paper proposes a reassessment of our knowledge of Thesprotian cultic antiquities comparing different kind of sources, from the literary and numismatic ones to the archaeological evidence, also unpublished, relating both votive offerings and the architectural features of the sanctuaries. The topic of the development of a mythical complex concerning the underworld in the lower part of the region, adopted by the Thesprotians as a symbol of their religious identity, will be particularly investigated. Can we regard the oracle of the dead at the Acheron river as a federal sanctuary of the Thesprotian tribes? Does the literary tradition related to the underworld correspond to a real cultic landscape detectable through the archaeological record? Although it is difficult to answer these questions due to the ambiguous nature of our sources, some hypotheses will be proposed on the basis of the available data.
2006
This paper places the Sacred Spring at Corinth within its urban landscape. Set within the Peirene valley, it adjoins the race track and is close to the city's agora. In some ways the setting is evocative of the Platanistas in Sparta and the theatral space is appropriate for dance, song and performance by pre-marital women. I suggest that the spring may have been sacred to Artemis.
2009, Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome
This study presents two deposits of bronze statuettes discovered in the Athenian Agora. Both groups were found with material associated with the Herulian sack of AD 267/8. The author proposes that these statuettes were used in the service of domestic cults. The Greek, Roman, and Egyptian deities represented illustrate the diversity of domestic cult activities current in Athens during the mid-3rd century AD. While the deposits provide some evidence for Roman domestic cult practices in Athens, it is clear that Greek cult practices remained the dominant tradition.
Since the twentieth century, exile, displacement and diaspora has developed into a prominent field of study in historical discourse. The totalitarian regimes, fascism and world wars sparked an increase in studying human displacement. However, these themes had long since been circulating in ancient Greek literature. From Homer's Epics and the poetry of Theognis, to the histories of Herodotus, Thucydides and Plutarch, the rhetoric of exile was of significant concern. By the end of the sixth century BCE, the corpus of ancient text reveal perceptions and experiences of difficulty, discomfort, worry and unease. Expanding from here, this paper will argue that in the Archaic period, leaving home provoked an inner conflict. This anxiety crisis was founded upon fear of the unknown and dangers of on-route travel-ing. In an effort to overcome this, a traveler recalled his polis-oriented identity through religious behavior. The entirety of Greek travel was intrinsically linked to religion and identity in a profound and meaningful way. Therefore, by extension, a study on the mobile manifestation of religion on the road and how it involved an individual's self identity and ties to family, community and polis, is a useful way to understand localism in ancient Greece. The problems surrounding identity crisis, anxiety and danger were genuine and well-founded concerns that plagued ancient travelers. From their initial motivation to embark on a voyage, to behaviors on the road, an individual's self-understanding changed when leaving the homeland.
1998, Kernos
The article discusses the rock topoi of faith as places for profession of a mysterial faith and ritualism, which should not be ethnically defined, because in its core lies the honoring of the stone/rock as a location for divine advent. Initial observations of natural and rockcut topoi of faith in a mountain environment have been done in the Eastern Mediterranean as early as the second half of the XIX c., however it is only recently that their culturalhistorical role and their regional interactions began to be researched without the ritual faith and the cults professed in them to be charged with ethnic definitions. There are a series of examples from the Southeastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor where the stone/rock is identified as a sacred symbol, a place of divine advent and of getting in touch with the divine inception. In the Mediterranean world and in Southeastern Europe in particular, the aniconic period of the thought images - uncultivated or fairly uncultivated stones - is v...
2009, Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, ed., An Archaeology of Representations: Ancient Greek Vase-Painting and Contemporary Methodologies (Institut du Livre, Athens)
2002, Kernos Revue Internationale Et Pluridisciplinaire De Religion Grecque Antique
Simple Twists of Faith. Changing Beliefs, Changing Faiths: People and Places, Ed. by S. Marchesini and J.N. Novoa
This paper aims to show the kind of changes which the sanctuary of Dodona experienced over the centuries. Changes in the cults, in the people involved there and in the form of the sacred space. This can be seen in its cults, the people that have worked there and its development as a sacred space. Dodona is a good example of a multifunctional place; over time the site has not only been used for cultic practices, but politics and sports. In this respect, also economic aspects must be considered. An interdisciplinary approach, considering literature, epigraphy and archaeology (including landscape archaeology) is used to track these changes.
Although found more than 130 years ago and thought to be lost in the Bulgarian science, this votive monument from Nicopolis ad Nestum was “re-discovered” by the author in the exposition of the museum in Drama, Greece. The votive with the represented on it gods from the Graeco-Roman Pantheon is devoted to Pluto. The iconography of the monument is of the type Pluto on the throne. According to the inscription, Pluto is not only a chthonic deity of the Underworld, but also as “Πλούτος”–“Plutos” is the god of fertility, abundance and richness. Hermes is also depicted as “Ploutodotes“/“Κερδώος”, while Asclepius is represented as healer, giving strength and restoring, also of possibility of abundance and richness. The dedicators of the votive descent from a rich Thracian family and probably are part of the elite of Nicopolis ad Nestum. Their names reveal that these people have received Roman citizenship with the Constitutio Antoniniana after 212. The votive relief is made of a local marble, and is a work of the local masters, knowing well the iconography of the Graeco-Roman deities and the one of the imperial portraits of Julia Domna and Caracalla from the Severan dynasty.
2010, Divine images and human imaginations in ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Joannis Mylonopoulos.
2018, Eugesta
The famous dedication by Xenokrateia to the river god Kephisos and other divinities not far from the city of Athens in c. 400 BC (NM 2756; IG I3 987; IG II2 4547) is a rare example of a sizeable, public ego-document by a citizen woman. Close reading of the iconography of the votive relief, of the dedicatory epigram and the inscribed offering list, and comparison with other private foundations allow reconstructing Xenokrateia’s sense of her identity and the religious, intellectual and economic competences she must have had to bring this dedication about. As a literate, self-confident and pious Athenian citizen, mother, widow and heiress, she spent on estimation several hundred drachmas on her dedication, pace the law quoted at Is. 10.10. The plot of land involved was either her own property or a place already sacred to Kephisos and the Nymphs, to which she added her own dedication. For the latter possibility, a double relief dedicated by Kephisodotos to the hero Echelos and other deities (NM 1783) provides additional evidence. Xenokrateia’s dedication is exceptional for the detailed, qualitative analysis it allows, but it is not exceptional in quantitative terms: numerous dedications by women show them using similar competences. This approach to the evidence, initiated in recent scholarship, may open new windows on women’s agency in classical Athens. Mots-clés : Xenokrateia – private foundation – citizenship – identity – competence – literacy – numeracy – votive relief – dedication – women’s agency – Is. 10.10 – classical Athens