Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean

Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation

Angelos Chaniotis

• Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783515133104
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume assembles approaches to rituals in several cultures of the Ancient Mediterranean (Egyptian, Punic, Greek, Italian, Roman) from the second millennium BCE to Late Antiquity. 'Ritual dynamics' is the common theme of the fourteen chapters. Rituals are understood as complex socio-cultural constructs that are connected with tensions: tensions within the cult community; tensions between norm and performance, expectation and reality, traditional significance and re-interpretation, stereotype and variability. Exploiting a variety of sources (literary sources, inscriptions, iconography), the authors approach the questions of how such tensions influence the performance and impact of rituals, how they generate change, how ritual agency is connected with gender and social standing, how rituals trigger particular emotions and create emotional communities, and how the literary and visual representations of rituals reflect their cultural relevance.

Table of contents

• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• Introduction (ANGELOS CHANIOTIS)
• Engendered actions: agency and ritual in pre-Roman Veneto (ELISA PEREGO)
• Where are the priests? Ritual mastery in Punic shrines (MIREIA LÓPEZ-BERTRAN)
• Priests and priestly roles in the Isiac cults: the case of Roman Athens (PARASKEVI MARTZAVOU)
• ‘Promises of continuity’: The role of tradition in the forming of rituals in ancient Greece (EFTYCHIA STAVRIANOPOULOU)
• Ritual restoration and innovation in the Greek cities of the Roman Imperium (FRITZ GRAF)
• Changes and arrangement in the Eleusinian Ritual (IOANNA PATERA)
• Continuity and change without individual agency: The Attic ritual theatre and the ‘socially unquestionable’ in the tragic genre (SYNNØVE DES BOUVRIE)
• Construction of consensus: rules and change in Greek funeral rituals (FLAVIA FRISONE)
• Representations and the ‘meaning’ of ritual change: The case of Hadrumetum (MATTHEW M. MCCARTY)
• The correlation of rituals, emotions, and literature in ancient Egypt (ALEXANDRA VERBOVSEK)
• Emotional community through ritual: initiates, citizens, and pilgrims as emotional communities in the Greek world (ANGELOS CHANIOTIS)
• Speech and gesture in rituals: the rituals of supplication and prayer in Homer (FRANÇOISE LETOUBLON)
• Ritual movement in sacred space: towards an archaeology of performance (JOAN CONNELLY)
• Elevating the unworthy emperor: Ritual failure in Roman historiography (MARTIJN ICKS)
• INDEX
• CONTRIBUTORS