Male Nudity in the Greek Iron Age

Representation and Ritual Context in Aegean Societies

Sarah C. Murray

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781316510933
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009041461
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Why did the male nude come to occupy such an important place in ancient Greek culture? Despite extended debate, the answer to this question remains obscure. In this book, Sarah Murray demonstrates that evidence from the Early Iron Age Aegean has much to add to the discussion. Her research shows that aesthetics and practices involving male nudity in the Aegean had a complicated origin in prehistory. Murray offers a close analysis of the earliest male nudes from the late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, which mostly take the form of small bronze votive figurines deposited in rural sanctuaries. Datable to the end of the second millennium BCE, these figurines, she argues, enlighten the ritual and material contexts in which nude athletics originated, complicating the rationalizing accounts present in the earliest textual evidence for such practices. Murray's book breaks new ground by reconstructing a scenario for the ritual and ideological origins of nudity in Greek art and culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One Introduction
• Chapter Two Naked Male Figurines in the EIA Aegean
• Chapter Three Iconographic and Regional Patterns in EIA Naked Male Figurines and the History of Ritual Action
• Chapter Four The Lost Wax Method of Production of EIA Bronze Figurines
• Chapter Five Bronze Figurines, Transformative Processes, and Ritual Power
• Chapter Six EIA Nudity and Ritual in Historical Perspective
• Chapter Seven Method and Approach in the Archaeology of the EIA Aegean
• Appendix A Γυμνός and Nudity in Homer and Hesiod
• Appendix B Catalogue of Bronze Figurines Discussed in the Text
• Appendix C Sample of Vase Painting Images
• Bibliography
• Index