Memory and Urban Religion in the Ancient World brings together scholars and researchers working on memory and religion in ancient urban environments. Chapters explore topics relating to religious traditions and memory, and the multifunctional roles of architectural and geographical sites, mythical figures and events, literary works and artefacts. Pagan religions were often less static and more open to new influences than previously understood. One of the factors that shape religion is how fundamental elements are remembered as valuable and therefore preservable for future generations. Memory, therefore, plays a pivotal role when - as seen in ancient Rome during late antiquity - a shift of religions takes place within communities. The significance of memory in ancient societies and how it was promoted, prompted, contested and even destroyed is discussed in detail. This volume, the first of its kind, not only addresses the main cultures of the ancient world - Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome - but also looks at urban religious culture and funerary belief, and how concepts of ethnic religion were adapted in new religious environments.
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Preface: Memory, History, Forgetting - SmithIntroduction: Sites of Memory and the Emergence of Urban Religion - Bommas1. Marduk's Return: Assyrian Imperial Propaganda, Babylonian Cultural Memory and the akItu Festival of 668 BC - Nielsen2. The Cult of the Pharaoh in New Kingdom Egypt: Cultural Memory or State Ideology? - Heffernan3. Saints in the Caesareum: Remembering Temple Conversion in Late Antique Egypt - Westerfeld4. Sacred Memory in Republican Rome - Miano5. Keeping the Memory Alive: The Physical Continuity of the Ficus Ruminalis - Hunt6. Memory Shift: Reinventing the Mythology, 100 BC - AD 100 - Dowden7. Nights of Egeria: Juvenal's De Memoria Deorum - Larmour8. The Iseum Campense as a Memory Site - Bommas9. Isis in the Greco-Roman World: Cultural Memory and Imagination - Harrisson10. Cultural Memory and Roman Identity in the Hymns of Prudentius - KuhlmannAfterword - Harrisson and RoyIndex
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The role of memory in shaping religion in the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome.
The first volume to examine memory and religion in the cities of the ancient world.
Spanning Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome this major series contributes to our understanding of how ancient societies remembered and commemorated the past. Memory has become a central concept in Historical Studies in recent years but this is the first series to focus specifically on the ancient world. Broadly interdisciplinary, the series will be relevant for scholars working in Ancient History, Classics, Historical Studies, Literary Studies and Cultural Theory.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781472530530
Publisert
2014-03-27
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Academic
Vekt
454 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
U, P, 05, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
320
Biographical note
Martin Bommas is senior lecturer in Egyptology at the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, UK. He was a research associate of Professor Jan Assmann at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, until 2000, and has published five monographs on ancient Egyptian rituals, religious texts, and memory.
Juliette Harrisson is an external lecturer at the University of Birmingham, UK and an associate lecturer with the Open University, UK. Her chief research interest lies in ancient myth and religion in the Roman Empire, studied through the theoretical framework of cultural memory.