Download or read book The Mother of the Gods Athens and the Tyranny of Asia written by Mark H. Munn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-07-11 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among maternal deities of the Greek pantheon, the Mother of the Gods was a paradox. She is variously described as a devoted mother, a chaste wife, an impassioned lover, and a virgin daughter; she is said to be both foreign and familiar to the Greeks. In this erudite and absorbing study, Mark Munn examines how the cult of Mother of the Gods came from Phrygia and Lydia, where she was the mother of tyrants, to Athens, where she protected the laws of the Athenian democracy. Analyzing the divergence of Greek and Asiatic culture at the beginning of the classical era, Munn describes how Kybebe, the Lydian goddess who signified fertility and sovereignty, assumed a different aspect to the Greeks when Lydia became part of the Persian empire. Conflict and resolution were played out symbolically, he shows, and the goddess of Lydian tyranny was eventually accepted by the Athenians as the Mother of the Gods, and as a symbol of their own sovereignty. This book elegantly illustrates how ancient divinities were not static types, but rather expressions of cultural systems that responded to historical change. Presenting a new perspective on the context in which the Homeric and Hesiodic epics were composed, Munn traces the transformation of the Asiatic deity who was the goddess of Sacred Marriage among the Assyrians and Babylonians, equivalent to Ishtar. Among the Lydians, she was the bride to tyrants and the mother of tyrants. To the Greeks, she was Aphrodite. An original and compelling consideration of the relations between the Greeks and the dominant powers of western Asia, The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia is the first thorough examination of the way that religious cult practice and thought influenced political activities during and after the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.
Download or read book Goddess Mystery Cults and the Miracle of Minyan Prehistoric Greece written by Dionysious Psilopoulos and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As this book demonstrates, the cradle of the Mystery Cults of the Goddess and of Western civilization is the Aegean region, an area extending from the Balkans to Crete and from the Ionian Sea to Asia Minor. The Eleusinian Mysteries do not originate from Old Europe or Egypt, but from the worship of the Pelasgian goddess Daeira, Mother Earth, who preceded Demeter and whose cult was indigenous to Eleusis. As shown here, in the Mysteries of the Goddess, the initiates descend into the depths of their psyche, perceive the midnight sun, transcend duality, and achieve cosmic consciousness symbolized by the unity and harmony of the Great Goddess. The Pelasgians, Minyans, and Minoans, the Aegean region’s prehistoric tribes and ancestors of the Mycenaeans and modern Greeks, share the same cultural heritage, continuity, and autochthony with the region’s Proto-Greek, pre-Deukalion-Flood inhabitants. The book also argues that religious and scientific traces of pre-Flood knowledge can be discerned in the Mysteries and the technical achievements of prehistoric Minyan and Minoan Greeks. Even from the third millennium, the Minyans and Minoans, with their advanced nautical, geographic, and astronomical knowledge, sailed not only the Mediterranean, but using the Atlantic currents had reached the copper mines of northern Europe and America.
Download or read book Romanising Oriental Gods written by Jaime Alvar Ezquerra and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional grand narrative correlating the decline of Graeco-Roman religion with the rise of Christianity has been under pressure for three decades. This book argues that the alternative accounts now emerging significantly underestimate the role of three major cults, of Cybele and Attis, Isis and Serapis, and Mithras. Although their differences are plain, these cults present sufficient common features to justify their being taken typologically as a group. All were selective adaptations of much older cults of the Fertile Crescent. It was their relative sophistication, their combination of the imaginative power of unfamiliar myth with distinctive ritual performance and ethical seriousness, that enabled them both to focus and to articulate a sense of the autonomy of religion from the socio-political order, a sense they shared with Early Christianity. The notion of 'mystery' was central to their ability to navigate the Weberian shift from ritualist to ethical salvation.
Download or read book The Battle of Marathon written by Peter Krentz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the city-state of Athens defeat the invaders from Persia, the first world empire, on the plain of Marathon in 490 BCE? Clever scholars skeptical of our earliest surviving source, Herodotus, have produced one ingenious theory after another. In this stimulating new book, bound to provoke controversy, Peter Krentz argues that Herodotus was right after all. Beginning his analysis with the Athenians’ first formal contact with the Persians in 507 BCE, Krentz weaves together ancient evidence with travelers’ descriptions, archaeological discoveries, geological surveys, and the experiences of modern reenactors and soldiers to tell his story. Krentz argues that before Marathon the Athenian army fought in a much less organized way than the standard view of the hoplite phalanx suggests: as an irregularly armed mob rather than a disciplined formation of identically equipped infantry. At Marathon the Athenians equipped all their fighters, including archers and horsemen, as hoplites for the first time. Because their equipment weighed only half as much as is usually thought, the Athenians and their Plataean allies could charge almost a mile at a run, as Herodotus says they did. Krentz improves on this account in Herodotus by showing why the Athenians wanted to do such a risky thing.
Download or read book Cellini s Perseus and Medusa and the Loggia dei Lanzi written by Christine Corretti and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa and the Loggia dei Lanzi: Configurations of the Body of State explores the role that maternal influence played in the formation of Cosimo I de’ Medici’s absolutist state.
Download or read book Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions written by Eric Orlin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 1091 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions is the first comprehensive single-volume reference work offering authoritative coverage of ancient religions in the Mediterranean world. Chronologically, the volume’s scope extends from pre-historical antiquity in the third millennium B.C.E. through the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. An interdisciplinary approach draws out the common issues and elements between and among religious traditions in the Mediterranean basin. Key features of the volume include: Detailed maps of the Mediterranean World, ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and the Hellenistic World A comprehensive timeline of major events, innovations, and individuals, divided by region to provide both a diachronic and pan-Mediterranean, synchronic view A broad geographical range including western Asia, northern Africa, and southern Europe This encyclopedia will serve as a key point of reference for all students and scholars interested in ancient Mediterranean culture and society.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines written by Patricia Monaghan, PhD and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More Than 1,000 Goddesses & Heroines from around the World Groundbreaking scholar Patricia Monaghan spent her life researching, writing about, and documenting goddesses and heroines from all religions and all corners of the globe. Her work demonstrated that from the beginning of recorded history, goddesses reigned alongside their male counterparts as figures of inspiration and awe. Drawing on anthropology, folklore, literature, and psychology, Monaghan’s vibrant and accessible encyclopedia covers female deities from Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, Asia and Oceania, Europe, and the Americas, as well as every major religious tradition.
Download or read book Political Religions in the Greco Roman World written by Charlotte Dunn and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the 1980s, historical treatments of ancient religion focused mainly on myth, cult and ritual as a way to interpret the mental structures or primary emotions of ancient peoples, but, in the last few decades, a “political turn” in the study of religion has taken hold. This volume serves to diversify our understanding of the political conceptualizations and implementations of religious practice in the ancient Mediterranean region from the 7th Century BCE to the 4th Century CE, in both Greek and Roman contexts. The underlying question taken up here is: in what situations was Greco-Roman religious practice articulated, communicated, and perceived in political contexts, both real and imagined? Written by experts in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, art history, historiography, political science and religion, the chapters of this volume engage the plurality and the diversity of the Greco-Roman religious experience as it receives and negotiates power relations.
Download or read book Divine Currency written by Devin Singh and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how early economic ideas structured Christian thought and society, giving crucial insight into why money holds such power in the West. Examining the religious and theological sources of money's power, it shows how early Christian thinkers borrowed ancient notions of money and economic exchange from the Roman Empire as a basis for their new theological arguments. Monetary metaphors and images, including the minting of coins and debt slavery, provided frameworks for theologians to explain what happens in salvation. God became an economic administrator, for instance, and Christ functioned as a currency to purchase humanity's freedom. Such ideas, in turn, provided models for pastors and Christian emperors as they oversaw both resources and people, which led to new economic conceptions of state administration of populations and conferred a godly aura on the use of money. Divine Currency argues that this longstanding association of money with divine activity has contributed over the centuries to money's ever increasing significance, justifying various forms of politics that manage citizens along the way. Devin Singh's account sheds unexpected light on why we live in a world where nothing seems immune from the price mechanism.
Download or read book Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture written by Georgia Petridou and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient Greece, epiphanies were embedded in cultural production, and employed by the socio-political elite in both perpetuating pre-existing power-structures and constructing new ones. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of the history of divine epiphany as presented in the literary and epigraphic narratives of the Greek-speaking world. It demonstrates that divine epiphanies not only reveal what the Greeks thought about their gods; they tell us just as much about the preoccupations, the preconceptions, and the assumptions of ancient Greek religion and culture. In doing so, it explores the deities who were prone to epiphany and the contexts in which they manifested themselves, as well as the functions (narratives and situational) they served, addressing the cultural specificity of divine morphology and mortal-immortal interaction. Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture re-establishes epiphany as a crucial mode in Greek religious thought and practice, underlines its centrality in Greek cultural production, and foregrounds its impact on both the political and the societal organization of the ancient Greeks.
Download or read book Mythology Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide written by Oxford University Press and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of the ancient world find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In classics, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is just one of many articles from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Classics, a continuously updated and growing online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through the scholarship and other materials relevant to the study of classics. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.
Download or read book Soldier Priest and God written by F. S. Naiden and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first life of Alexander the Great to explore his religious experience, to put his experience in Egypt and Asia on a par with his Macedonian upbringing and Greek education, and to explain how the European conqueror became a Moslem saint"--
Download or read book Greek Sport and Social Status written by Mark Golden and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient Olympic games to the World Series and the World Cup, athletic achievement has always conferred social status. In this collection of essays, a noted authority on ancient sport discusses how Greek sport has been used to claim and enhance social status, both in antiquity and in modern times. Mark Golden explores a variety of ways in which sport provided a route to social status. In the first essay, he explains how elite horsemen and athletes tried to ignore the important roles that jockeys, drivers, and trainers played in their victories, as well as how female owners tried to rank their equestrian achievements above those of men and other women. In the next essay, Golden looks at the varied contributions that slaves made to sport, despite its use as a marker of free, Greek status. In the third essay, he evaluates the claims made by gladiators in the Greek east that they be regarded as high-status athletes and asserts that gladiatorial spectacle is much more like Greek sport than scholars today usually admit. In the final essay, Golden critiques the accepted accounts of ancient and modern Olympic history, arguing that attempts to raise the status of the modern games by stressing their links to the ancient ones are misleading. He concludes that the contemporary movement to call a truce in world conflicts during the Olympics is likewise based on misunderstandings of ancient Greek traditions.
Download or read book Woman Preach God s Calling and Paul s Admonition to the Church written by Barbara J. Brooks and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even as the twenty-first century rapidly progresses, misunderstanding of a single point in Scripture continues to lock women out of pulpits, despite their unmistakable call from God to preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Woman, Preach! clearly and succinctly explains Apostle Paul's first-century admonition. Everyone in church leadership - male or female, as well as anyone who might believe that this is simply a social or political issue - should read this book.
Download or read book Tombs of the Gods written by Kyle Weyburne and published by Kyle Weyburne. This book was released on 2023-07-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’ve completely misunderstood the purpose of the pyramids. They weren’t built primarily as tombs, instead they were intended to be used by Pharaoh while he was still alive. In very ancient times, the king was only allowed to rule for 30 years––then he’d be ritually killed! They didn’t want an old man in charge. One day, a Pharaoh was nearing his 30th year and decided he didn’t want to die, so came up with a set of rituals that would enable him to live on. It was called ‘Heb Sed’. This sacred ceremony was more than just a life-saver though, it also enabled the king to merge with the Sun-god. After death, Egyptian kings were believed to board the Sun-boat where they would shine down on their subjects for all eternity. However, many things could go awry in this process, particularly under the eyes of a successor. What if they bungled the funeral? What if they were a rival? Heb Sed enabled all this to occur while the king was still alive so that he could preside over proceedings, ensuring its success. And the bonus of being able to do this while alive is that some part of the Pharaoh would board the Sun-boat and in doing so, the king would become a divinity––the Pharaoh became a living God-king! But all this could only happen if they built a strange, pyramid-shaped structure to enable this potent magic to take place. So they built pyramids. And they got bigger and more magnificent with the passing of each King. This madness came to a head with Pharaoh Snefru who built two massive pyramids; the two biggest man-made structures in the World! How do you outdo this? While his son ‘Khufu’ only managed to build one pyramid, it was the most impressive structure ever built by humans. Still is, in my book. And yes, it might have functioned as his tomb, although Strabo and Diodorus swear black and blue that it wasn’t, however, it was entirely geared to the Sun-god, as you will find out... it was entirely geared for the King's Heb Sed. This book is the sequel to Architecture of Ra, but can be read independently of it. It also delves into the myths of Egypt as well as those of other cultures (Jason & the Argonauts, Icarus, Jonah, Thor, Hercules…). I don’t like calling these stories 'myths' because they actually belonged to living religions and to make that grade, the stories had to include information seminal to that culture. And if the texts contain this knowledge, then so did their religious buildings. The knowledge encoded in Egyptian legends is also encoded in their pyramids!
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology written by Theresa Bane and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-09-18 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairies have been revered and feared, sometimes simultaneously, throughout recorded history. This encyclopedia of concise entries, from the A-senee-ki-waku of northeastern North America to the Zips of Central America and Mexico, includes more than 2,500 individual beings and species of fairy and nature spirits from a wide range of mythologies and religions from all over the globe.
Download or read book Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens written by Alexander Rubel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war was the arena for a dramatic battle between politics and religion in the hearts and minds of the people. Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens, originally published in German but now available for the first time in an expanded and revised English edition, sheds new light on this dramatic period of history and offers a new approach to the study of Greek religion. The book explores an extraordinary range of events and topics, and will be an indispensable study for students and scholars studying Athenian religion and politics.
