Housing the Chosen
The Architectural Context of Mystery Groups and Religious Associations in the Ancient World
By (author) Inge Nielsen
The architecture of ancient religious spaces has the potential to offer a deeper understanding of the religious groups who used the spaces and the activities they performed there. However, the large corpus of recent scholarship has for the most part overlooked architecture. This book investigates the spatial and architectural setting
The architecture of ancient religious spaces has the potential to offer a deeper understanding of the religious groups who used the spaces and the activities they performed there. However, the large corpus of recent scholarship has for the most part overlooked architecture. This book investigates the spatial and architectural settings of mystery cults and religious assemblies from the eighth century bc to the fourth century ad and shows how architecture can illuminate the contents and societal functions of ancient religions. It examines deities whose cults included mysteries and/or were served by religious associations in the ancient world. Chapters treat the old Greek mystery cults of Demeter in Eleusis and the Great Gods in Samothrace as well as those of Dionysos, and the ‘foreign’ deities Isis/Serapis, Cybele/Attis, and Mithras. The book also treats religions and cults that did not include mysteries but were served by special religious groups, such as those belonging to the Syrio-Phoenician gods, the Jewish god in the diaspora, and the Christian god. The last section of the book combines the typological results from the first section on architecture with the presentation of the cultic functions of religious groups in the second section. This comparative analysis seeks to understand the social and spatial context for the activities of cults with a main focus on the Hellenistic and Roman periods, in particular through distinguishing the differences and similarities in the use of specific room-types.
Illustrations Preface - Introduction Part I: The Architecture A. The Pre-Hellenistic Periods Chapter 1. External Parallels: The Near East and Egypt 1.1. The Near East 1.2. Egypt Chapter 2. The Greek Area and Italy 2.1. Rooms for Mysteries and Initiations in the Sanctuaries of Eleusis, Samothrace, Lemnos, and Thebes 2.2. Rooms for Early Greek and Roman Religious Associations B. The Hellenistic and Roman Periods Chapter 3. Rooms for Religious Assemblies inside the Sanctuaries 3.1. Rooms for Mysteries, Initiations, and Assemblies in the Sanctuaries of Eleusis, Samothrace, Lemnos, Thebes, and other Greek and Roman Sanctuaries 3.2. Rooms for Religious Groups in the Sanctuaries of Dionysos: The Dionysian Technitai 3.3. Rooms for Mysteries, Initiations, and Religious Assemblies in the Sanctuaries of Isis and Sarapis 3.4. Rooms for Mysteries and Religious Assemblies in the Sanctuaries of Cybele and Attis 3.5. Rooms for Religious Assemblies in Sanctuaries of the Syrian and Phoenician Gods Chapter 4. Rooms for Religious Assemblies outside the Sanctuaries 4.1. Rooms for Mystery Groups and Religious Associations of Greek and Roman Deities with Public Cults (Excluding Dionysos) 4.2. Rooms for Mystery Groups and Other ReligiousAssociations of Dionysos 4.3. Rooms for Mystery Groups and Other Religious Associations of Isis and Sarapis 4.4. Rooms for Mystery Groups and Other Religious Associations of Cybele and Attis 4.5. Rooms for the Religious Associations of the Phoenician and Syrian Gods 4.6. Rooms for the Mystery Groups Associated with Mithras 4.7. Rooms for the Jewish Groups in the Diaspora 4.8. The Early Christian Church-Houses Part II: The Cultic Functions of Religious Groups Chapter 5. The Initiation Rites and the Celebration of Mysteries 5.1. The Collective Mysteries 5.2. The Individual Mysteries Chapter 6. Religious Assemblies and Communal Banquets Part III: Considerations of Typology The Temple-Type (Main Room and Holy of Holies) The Cave/Grotto-Type The Banqueting/House-Type Plates - Bibliography Index Locorum 1: Ancient Authors Index Locorum 2: Inscriptions, Ostraca, Papyri, Clay Tablets Index of Subjects and Persons Geographical Index
- By (author) Inge Nielsen
Other Titles in this Series
Terrakotten aus Beit Nattif
Eine Untersuchung zur religiosen Alltagspraxis im spatantiken Judaa
Volume 7
Expressions of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Greco-Roman Period
Manifestations in Text and Material Culture
Volume 6
Contextualizing the Sacred in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East
Religious Identities in Local, Regional, and Imperial Settings
Volume 8
Redefining the Sacred
Religious Architecture and Text in the Near East and Egypt, 1000 BC - AD 300
Volume 1
Magnification and Miniaturization in Religious Communication in Antiquity and Modernity
Materialities and Meanings
Volume 12
Similar Books
Caesar’s Visions and Impact on the Roman Empire
Revisiting the Archaeological and Historical Record of the 40s BC
Volume 2
Construction Processes in Historical Western Societies (5th c. BC – 10th c. AD)
Case Studies on Techniques, Models, and Costs
Etruscan and Roman Hellenistic Anatomical ex votos
Reassessing Popular Religious Expressions in Central Italy
Volume 8
Invisible Labour in Antiquity
Visualizing Obscure Work in the Ancient Mediterannean and West Asia
Volume 1
Late Antique villae in the Balkans (3rd–7th c. AD): Current Research Questions and Perspectives
HAEMUS Companion to the Late Antique Balkans 1
Volume 4
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Roman Copies, Collecting, and Culture in the Bay of Naples and Beyond
Papers in Honor of Eugene J. Dwyer
Small Worlds and Relational Agencies: Local Societies in Early Medieval Iberia
Pequeños mundos y Agencias relacionales: Sociedades locales altomedievales en la Península Ibérica
SOMA 2023: Proceedings of the 24th Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology
Ideas that Travelled by the Sea, Udine, 2-4 February, 2023
The Iron Age Pottery from Tell Atchana / Ancient Alalakh
A Typological and Functional Analysis
Volume 8
Writing in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
Inscription and Graffiti in a Multilingual and Multigraphic Perspective
Volume 45
Zooarchaeology of Ancient Greek Sanctuaries in Southwestern Sicily
Faunal Analysis from Selinus and Akragas as Evidence of Differences in the Treatment of Animals for Ritual Purposes
Alabaster
An Interdisciplinary Study of the Sources and Uses of Calcite Alabaster in Antiquity
Volume 5
Echoes from the Past: Traditional Cypriot Pottery
An Exhibition at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute in October 1995