ancient religions
Editorial Board
tzvi abusch
Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies
Brandeis University
jan assmann
Egyptology Institute
University of Heidelberg
harold w. attridge
Divinity School
Yale University
mary beard
Faculty of Classics and Newnham College
University of Cambridge
john j. collins
Divinity School
Yale University
fritz graf
Department of Greek and Latin
The Ohio State University
bruce lincoln
Divinity School
University of Chicago
david p. wright
Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies
Brandeis University
Ancient
Religions
Sarah Iles Johnston
general editor
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
2007
Copyright © 2004, 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ancient religions / Sarah Iles Johnston, general editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02548-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Religions. 2. Civilization, Ancient. I. Johnston, Sara Iles, 1957–
BL96.A53 2007
200.93—dc22 2007016512
Contents
Introduction • Sarah Iles Johnston vii
Note on Translation and Transliteration xiii
Abbreviations xv
Maps xvi
encountering ancient religions
What Is Ancient Mediterranean Religion? • Fritz Graf 3
Monotheism and Polytheism • Jan Assmann 17
Ritual • Jan Bremmer 32
Myth • Fritz Graf 45
Cosmology: Time and History • John J. Collins 59
Pollution, Sin, Atonement, Salvation • Harold W. Attridge 71
Law and Ethics • Eckart Otto 84
Mysteries • Sarah Iles Johnston 98
Religions in Contact • John Scheid 112
Writing and Religion • Mary Beard 127
Magic • Sarah Iles Johnston 139
histories
Egypt • Jan Assmann and David Frankfurter 155
Mesopotamia • Paul-Alain Beaulieu 165
Syria and Canaan • David P. Wright 173
Israel • John J. Collins 181
Anatolia: Hittites • David P. Wright 189
Iran • William Malandra and Michael Stausberg 197
Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations • Nanno Marinatos 206
Greece • Jon Mikalson 210
Etruria • Olivier de Cazanove 220
Rome • John North 225
Early Christianity • Harold W. Attridge 233
Epilogue • Bruce Lincoln 241
Contributors 253
Index 255
contents vi
Introduction
Sarah Iles Johnston
When Croesus, the king of Lydia, was debating about whether to
attack the Persian Empire, he decided to seek advice from the gods. Being a
cautious man, however, he decided first to determine which source of divine
advice was the most reliable. He sent envoys to each of the famous oracles in
the ancient world (which happened to be in Greece and Libya) and instructed
them to ask the gods what he was doing in faraway Lydia one hundred days after
the envoys had left his court. He then devised an activity that he was confident
no one could guess: he boiled the meat of a tortoise and the flesh of a
rabbit together in a bronze cauldron, covered by a bronze lid. When the envoys
returned with written records of what each oracle’s god had said, Croesus discovered
that only two of them—Delphic Apollo and Amphiaraus—had correctly
described his strange culinary experiment. He proceeded to make enormously
rich offerings to Apollo (and lesser offerings to Amphiaraus, whose
oracle was not as prestigious) and then asked Apollo’s advice. Upon receiving
it, Croesus attacked Persia (Herodotus 1.46ff).
Croesus’s experiment serves as an apt parable for this volume because it is
one of the earliest examples of what might be called religious comparison
shopping: rather than simply asking his own experts to obtain the gods’ advice,
Croesus checked out all the divine resources within his reach and staked his future
on the one that looked best. The general concept should be familiar
enough to readers who live in America or western Europe, where religious plurality
offers a spectrum of deities, practices, and beliefs to which one might
pledge allegiance. Our immediate environments (in sad contrast to more distant
parts of our world, including some where Croesus once walked) offer us
easy access to numerous variations of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism,
and Buddhism, as well as a plethora of newer religions such as Wicca and Scientology.
Some of these are imports from other cultures; others are combinations
of previously existing religions.
Only relatively recently, however, have scholars recognized the extent to
which ancient peoples, as well, were exposed to a diversity of religions, both
indigenous and imported—or even, indeed, acknowledged that ancient peoples
were exposed to a diversity of cultural influences of any kind. The historical
reasons for this failure are political and ideological, as well as intellectual,
among which three are especially interesting, as Walter Burkert and other
scholars have shown (see esp. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution). First, in
the late 18th and early 19th centuries, following a long period during which
scholars of the Bible and of classical antiquity had taken cultural interaction
in the ancient Mediterranean for granted, the boundaries between academic
fields were redrawn in universities, and what we now call classics and theology
strove to assert themselves as independent entities. As they did so, each
one naturally stressed the grandeur and achievements of the cultures it represented—respectively,
ancient Greece and Rome, and the ancient Near East.
Second, at about the same time, Romantic nationalism developed. In their desire
to show that particular myths, literatures, and forms of religion could be
tied to particular ancient cultures that served as models for contemporary nation-states,
Romantic nationalists not only discouraged any assumption of
cross-cultural influences within the ancient Mediterranean, but also brought
new energy to the old quest of tracking the specific, discrete origins of each culture’s
practices and ideas. Finally, and also at about the same time, notions
about a lost “pre-language,” shared by the Greeks, Romans, Germans, and
other “Aryan” peoples—but not by the Semites—crystallized into the proposal
for the language we now call “Indo-European.” Linguistics provided another
reason for separating the (Indo-European) western Mediterranean from the
(non–Indo-European) eastern regions.
One might have expected the scholarly barrier between east and west to
erode during the later 19th and early 20th centuries, which brought such advancements
as the deciphering of hieroglyphs and cuneiform writing and of the
Hittite language (an Indo-European language attached to an “oriental” culture),
along with the discovery of Mycenaean civilizations and of orientalizing
elements in Greek art. Some erosion did in fact begin to occur, especially in
the fields of art history, ancient history, and the study of ancient magic (a field
that was itself only in its infancy). Yet during the period between World War I
and World War II, scholars, particularly in Germany, once again sought to assert
the unique character of each Mediterranean culture. In 1946, publication
of the Hittite creation myth, which offered significant thematic parallels to
Hesiod’s Theogony, reopened consideration of the question of cultural exchange
in the ancient world. Slowly but surely, a new consensus emerged: the
Mediterranean Sea had been not a barrier between disparate cultures after all,
but rather a conduit, through which both material goods and ideas were easily
transported. No ancient culture was left untouched by its neighbors. In the
mid-1960s, scholarly publications based on this now widely accepted understanding
began to appear, and have continued ever since.
Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of human life in
introduction viii
antiquity, were inevitably transmitted throughout the Mediterranean along
with everything else: itinerant charismatic practitioners journeyed from place
to place, selling their skills as healers, purifiers, cursers, and initiators; vessels
decorated with illustrations of myths traveled along with the goods they contained;
new gods were encountered in foreign lands by merchants and conquerors
and, when useful, were taken home to be adapted and adopted.
The essays in this volume are drawn from Religions of the Ancient World, a
larger reference work that both collected information about religions in the ancient
world and organized it in such a way as to encourage readers to investigate
those religions within the comparative framework that is now considered
essential for their comprehension. By presenting material from the ten cultures
and traditions that it investigated side-by-side, Religions of the Ancient World
strove to inform its readers and generate comparative thought in complementary
ways.
The first part of that work reprinted here, “Encountering Ancient Religions,”
consists of eleven essays whose topics cut across cultural boundaries,
such as Cosmology, Myth, and Law and Ethics. The authors of these essays
were charged with stepping back from the particular cultures on which their
own scholarship usually focuses and taking a broader look at the given phenomena
as they were found throughout the Mediterranean: What remains consistent
as we cross from one culture or tradition to another? What changes,
and why? What, if anything, can we say about the core functions and expressive
modes that the phenomena manifest across several millennia of ancient
Mediterranean history? The authors also were asked to consider what essential
theoretical or methodological problems confront us as we approach these topics:
How can we define “magic” in contrast to “religion,” for example—or
should we even try to do so? How does the transition from an orally based religious
culture to one that is scripturally based affect not only the practices and
beliefs themselves, but also our approach to the evidence for them? The first essay
in this part asks a question that stands behind all the others: What counts
as “Mediterranean religion” anyway? Or to put it otherwise: In spite of the
long history of Mediterranean cultural interaction that scholars now accept,
what aspects of the disparate religions most closely coalesced to form a sort of
koinÁ, or common language, that could have been understood by anyone traveling
through the ancient landscape?
The second part, “Histories,” includes essays that trace the histories of religions
in each of the cultures and traditions between about the 3rd millennium
bce and the 5th century ce, offering accounts of how each of the cultures
and its political, social, artistic, and religious institutions changed over time.
Here readers will find, for example, a description of the Greek polis system and
its effect on civic religion, a discussion of the centrality of maÚat (justice, order)
within Egyptian thought, a description of how Zoroastrianism developed
within earlier Iranian religions, and a discussion of literary sources for Ugaritic
religion. The Epilogue is an important complement to the entire volume. It
poses and begins to answer questions that earlier essays, which focused on disix
introduction
crete topics, were unable to tackle. By asking what the phrase “ancient world”
signifies, for example, the Epilogue compels us to recognize another aspect of
the concern with definitions that first was broached in “What Is Ancient Mediterranean
Religion?”: once we have arrived at a working definition of Mediterranean
religions and have investigated them as fully as possible, what can we
then say about the way they differed from religions of later periods? Are the
common assumptions that we make about ancient religions serviceable or misleading
in understanding the transition? And was there a definitive transition
at all—can we even identify behaviors that are more characteristic of ancient
religions than post-ancient?
Some hundred and forty scholars contributed to Religions of the Ancient
World, nineteen of whom are represented in this volume. Each brought his or
her own methodology, style, and interests to the topics assigned. Rather than
attempt to impose an artificial consistency on their contributions, the book’s
editors left them alone as much as possible. Thus, some essays concentrate primarily
on conveying facts, whereas others produce a synoptic view of the topic
at hand, adducing facts only as necessary.
To some degree, these variations reflect differences in the state of research
among the fields: most of the texts and many of the archeological remains of
Greece and Rome have been available for two millennia; the texts of biblical
religion have been around for about the same length of time, while its monuments
have come to light more slowly; both the texts and the monuments of
other Near Eastern cultures were almost completely hidden until recently.
Egypt stands somewhere in the middle: its monuments have always loomed on
the landscape, but the languages of Pharaonic Egypt were unreadable until
about two hundred years ago. Fashions in scholarship and ideological agendas
also helped to condemn some cultures and their religions to near-obscurity for
most of the modern era. Some fields have been more eager than others, too, to
embrace new theoretical methods of study—to their benefit or sometimes their
detriment. Although the editors have worked to ensure that each essay presents
the basic facts that are salient to its topic, we have left the overall design and
approach of discussions to individual authors. We have even allowed occasional
disagreements between authors to stand, as indications of ongoing debate
within the larger scholarly community.
When Croesus asked Apollo whether he should attack Persia, the god answered
that if he did, “a great empire would fall.” Assuming this meant the
Persian Empire, Croesus attacked. But Apollo really meant the Lydian Empire,
and so Croesus eventually found himself standing on a pyre in front of Cyrus,
the Persian king, condemned to be burned alive.
Interpreting what someone else says is always a risky business, even if the
speaker is not a god famous for enigmatic pronouncements. Comparative work
introduction x
is particularly fraught with risks because, try as we might, those of us who are
not trained in the languages and history of a given culture can never quite understand
its complexities or catch its nuances. We are apt to make innocent but
grievous errors, assuming, for instance, that the sacrificial act in Egypt had the
same resonance as it did in Greece, or that the professional priesthoods found
in many ancient Mediterranean cultures had correlates in the rest. To carry off
a project such as this volume requires a team of people who are not only excellent
scholars but also excellent communicators.
Throughout Religions of the Ancient World’s development, the exchange of
ideas was vital, and I could not have asked for better colleagues in this respect
than the members of the Editorial Board. Members of the Board of Advisors—Elizabeth
Clark, David Frankfurter, Albert Henrichs, Gregory Nagy,
John Scheid, and Claus Wilcke—were crucial to this process as well; all of
them have contributed their expertise to the project and some of them were
called on frequently. The contributors, some of whom wrote more than one essay,
are to be thanked both for their scholarly efforts and for their patience.
I cannot leave Croesus on his pyre. Just as the flames were licking at its edges,
Cyrus engaged Croesus in a debate about the meaning of happiness. Impressed
with his captive’s answer—Croesus held to a dictum he had learned from the
Greek statesman Solon, according to which no human life could be counted as
happy until one saw how it ended—Cyrus ordered that the pyre be extinguished.
It was too late, however, for human intervention to quench the flames;
only through Croesus’s earnest prayers to Apollo did help arrive, in the form of
a sudden rain shower. Stepping down from the pyre, Croesus went on to become
Cyrus’s staunch friend and advisor. And so ended Croesus’s experiment
in religious comparison shopping. Led astray through his misinterpretation of
a Greek god’s advice, saved when he adduced the words of a Greek sage and
prayed once again to the Greek god, Croesus the Lydian finished out his life
helping Cyrus (who was himself half Mede and half Persian) carry Persian rule
throughout much of the ancient world: Croesus became a true Mediterranean
cosmopolite. May the present experiment in religious comparison prove to be
just as inclusive in its embrace and just as fortunate in its fate.
xi introduction
Note on Translation
and Transliteration
Personal, divine, and geographical names are given throughout in familiar or
simplified forms, using no diacritical marks or special characters (Astarte,
Nike, Zarathustra). Transliteration of special terms follows standard scholarly
practice for the discipline involved (nawrÄz, eschatiÁ, pesaÉ).
Greek names are given in their Latinate form, except for those that are best
known in their Greek forms (such as Knossos) and cultic terms or epithets
(such as Hekatombaia and Zeus Ktesios).
Quotations from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament follow the Revised
Standard Version.
Translations of passages from other works, unless credited to a published
source, may be assumed to be by the article’s author.
Abbreviations
ANET J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament (3rd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)
CAT M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín, The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts
from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Other Places (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag,
1995) (= second edition of KTU)
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
CTH Emmanuel Laroche, Catalogue des textes hittites (Études et commentaires
75; Paris: Klincksieck, 1971)
FGrH F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden: Brill,
1923–)
IG Inscriptiones Graecae
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae
KAI H. Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaänaische und aramäische Inschriften (3rd
ed.; 3 vols.; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971–1976)
KAR Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts
KBo Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi (1916–)
KTU M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín, Die keilsalphabetischen Texte aus
Ugarit (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 24.1; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker/
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1976)
KUB Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi (1921–)
PDM Papyri Demoticae Magicae
PGM K. Preisendanz (ed.), Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen
Zauberpapyri (Berlin, 1928); 2nd ed., 2 vols., ed. A. Henrichs (Berlin,
1973–1974)
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum
encountering
ancient
religions
What Is Ancient
Mediterranean Religion?
Fritz Graf
In the darkest hour of his life, Lucius, the human-turned-donkey in
Apuleius’s novel The Golden Ass, is sleeping in the sand of a Mediterranean
beach. He has barely escaped from yet another humiliation, public copulation
with a woman in Corinth’s circus, and he is at the very end of his considerable
wits. He awakens to a brilliant full moon rising over the dark waters of the
Corinthian Gulf. He addresses a prayer to the moon and its goddess. And lo
and behold! a beautiful woman rises out of the silvery path on the water; she
consoles Lucius and introduces her astonishingly multiple personality: “The
Phrygians, earliest of humans, call me the Pessinuntian Mother of the Gods;
the Athenians, sprung from their own soil, call me Cecropian Minerva; the seatossed
Cyprians call me Venus of Paphus, the arrow-bearing Cretans Dictynna,
the trilingual Sicilians Ortygian Proserpina; to the Eleusinians I am the ancient
goddess Ceres, to others Juno, to yet others Bellona, Hecate, or the
Rhamnusian Goddess; and the Ethiopians who are illuminated by the first rays
of the sun, the Africans, and the Egyptians full of ancient lore and wisdom
honor me with the true rites and call me with the true name: Isis” (Golden Ass
11.1–5). When making these claims in Apuleius’s novel, Isis is well aware of
the discordant unity of Mediterranean religions. She identifies herself with
most of the great goddesses of pagan antiquity, from Rome and Sicily to Cyprus
and Phrygia: despite different local names and different local rituals, all
people worship the same divinity. Soon enough, the Virgin Mary would top—
and topple—them all.
When Apuleius wrote these lines in the latter part of the 2nd century ce,
most of the geographical area we assign to the religions of the ancient Mediterranean
was united as part of the Imperium Romanum that stretched from
the Rhine to the Euphrates and from Britain to Libya and Upper Egypt; the
lands east of the Euphrates—Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia—belonged to the
Parthians, who alternated between war and diplomacy with Rome. Many inhabitants
of the empire were aware of its diverse and rich religious traditions,
and an exchange among these traditions had been going on for some time already.
Although mountains and deserts divided the land around the Mediterranean
Sea into many small and distinct units (which accounted for the astounding
variety of local cultures), the sea connected rather than separated the
cultures along its shore; each river valley was a unit that was open to the sea as
a common interface (see Horden and Purcell 2000).
The imperial capital itself attracted not only countless immigrants, but also
their gods. Roman colonists in their turn carried Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva far
east—Gaza in the corner between Palestine and Egypt even celebrated the
Consualia, with its horse races in honor of the old and shadowy Roman god
Consus (Jerome, Life of Hilarion 11). The Celtic goddess of horses, Epona,
spread as far south as African Mauretania and as far east as Greek Corinth
(Apuleius, Golden Ass 3.27); the Egyptian Isis had sanctuaries in Italy, Gaul,
and Britain; and a recently invented mystery cult that borrowed elements from
the myth and cult of Persian Mitra/Varuna spread all over the empire. More
was to come. A small Jewish messianic sect that claimed one Christus as its
founder was slowly conquering the empire, to be seriously challenged only
by the followers of an Arabian merchant-turned-prophet from Mecca. If this
cross-fertilization of religious traditions in the ancient Mediterranean is so
highly visible in this period, how much further does it reach into the past?
The kaleidoscope of power
History helps to understand the area’s character. The Mediterranean was not
the only connecting factor: empire building had been going on for a long
time already, and empires, even unloved ones, facilitate communication. Going
backward in time, the Roman and Parthian empires appear as the heirs to the
Hellenistic kingdoms that were carved out of Alexander’s conquest—the kingdoms
of the Ptolemies, the Seleucids, the Attalids of Pergamum—and that allowed
Macedonian troops and Greek artists to dominate almost the entire region
associated with the religions discussed in this volume. Before Alexander,
the vast eastern regions, from Anatolia to Iran, Afghanistan, and Egypt, had
been part of the Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great. Cyrus had
wrested it away from the Assyrians, whose empire had risen in the 9th and
early 8th centuries, to embrace the entire region between Persia and the Mediterranean
and even, for some time, Egypt. In the centuries immediately preceding
the rise of the Assyrians—the “Dark Age” that separated the Bronze Age
from the Iron Age—this space had been fragmented, with the sole exception
of Egypt: at the very end of the Bronze Age, natural catastrophes and invaders
(the somewhat enigmatic Sea Peoples) had destroyed the seemingly stable
power structure of the Late Bronze Age. The city-states of Mesopotamia and
the Levantine coast—not the least those of Phoenicia, the Neo-Hittite kingencountering
ancient religions 4
doms along the modern border between Syria and Turkey, the small towns of
mainland Greece, and the kingdoms of Phrygia and Urartu in central and eastern
Anatolia—all led a more-or-less independent existence during these centuries.
The 2nd millennium, “centuries of unity” in Braudel’s words, owed its
unity and stability to a few large powers. Earlier in the millennium, the Babylonians
had ruled in Mesopotamia and the adjacent areas, the Hittites in central
Anatolia, while Egypt kept inside the Nile Valley; after about 1400 bce, the
Hittites pushed south toward Syria and Palestine and the Egyptians came north
to meet them in the Battle of Carchemish, which settled the balance of power
for a while. Smaller western Asiatic states such as Ugarit flourished, owing
changing allegiances to the current dominant power, and the Minoan and
Mycenaean kinglets in Greece kept their political independence at the margins
of the larger powers, all the while eagerly absorbing their dazzling cultural
achievements. Only Persia—the Empire of Elam in the hills east of the Tigris—
was relatively isolated; its time would come later. The picture is somewhat hazier
before that; the 3rd millennium was dominated by the splendor of Egypt’s
Old Kingdom and the many thriving and rival cities of the Sumerians and
Akkadians between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The one and the many
Political geography is not irrelevant for the history of religion. The existence of
large, more-or-less unified regions, which characterized the eastern Mediterranean
from the late 3rd millennium onward, made inland communication relatively
easy long before the Persians used the famous Royal Road that led from
the western shore of Turkey well beyond Mesopotamia. The coasts had always
been in easy communication with each other: the Mediterranean encouraged
travel and contact, either along the shore or, hopping from island to island,
over vaster bodies of water, even from the south coast of Crete to the Nile
Delta or from Sicily and Sardinia to Spain. The epochs during which communication
was slow in the eastern Mediterranean were short and transitory, and
relatively intensive communication must be at least as old as the 7th and 6th
millennia, when agriculture and urban structures rapidly spread throughout
the entire Fertile Crescent. This argues for a relative homogeneity—or at least
an osmotic similarity—of cultural space, which has an important consequence
for historical methodology: whenever we spot parallels and agreements in ritual
and mythology, diffusion, however complex, is as likely an explanation as
is parallel origin.
The means of transmission, however, are numerous and not always clear.
Commerce, diplomacy, and exile led individuals to travel or live abroad. “Send
this boy to Yamhad or to Qatna, as you see fit,” ordered Hammurabi, according
to a letter from Mari; and the Egyptian Sinuhe was living quite comfortably
as a local dignitary among the Asians before the pharaoh recalled him; we are
not told whether he took a god back with him. Sometimes, however, even gods
5 what is ancient mediterranean religion?
paid diplomatic visits, as did Shaushka “of Nineveh, mistress of all land,” who
visited Amunhotep IV after 1350 bce. Foreign wives were another matter. Dynastic
marriages were common among the elite of the ancient Near East, as not
only the Amarna Letters demonstrate. “The Lord was angry with Solomon”
because he not only married many foreign wives (bad in itself) but because he
followed their gods—“Ashtoreth [Astarte] the goddess of the Sidonians, . . .
Milcom the loathsome god of the Ammonites, . . . Chemosh the loathsome
god of Moab”—and even built shrines for them (1 Kings 11.5–9). Much later,
the empress Julia Domna still favored her local Syrian gods while in Rome.
There is no way of telling how transitory an influence the gods and cults had
that these wives brought with them; the Syrian gods, however, backed by an
immigrant community, did last some time. Conquerors brought gods with
them, as did merchant communities and colonists. In the 2nd century ce,
someone in Lydian Sardis renewed a sacred law written under the occupation
of Artaxerxes II that regulated a Persian cult. The Thracian goddess Bendis, the
Egyptian Isis, and the Sidonian Astarte arrived in Athens with the community
of foreign traders that established itself in Piraeus.
The ease of communication had, from early on, worked to smooth over
differences inside the wider region; and common socioeconomic conditions
helped. All of the major players, even when speaking very different languages,
were inhabitants of city-states, sharing a rather similar outlook on the world
and comparable ideals and lifestyles. Whether ruled by a priest, a king, a group
of aristocrats, or the city council and the citizens’ assembly—all were living in
urban centers that usually were walled, had a main temple and (when ruled by
kings) a palace, with a high degree of commercial exchange and a rural hinterland
controlled by the city; further outside were the nomadic pastoralists in the
deserts of Syria and Judea or the mountains of Anatolia and Persia. The cities
in turn had grown on the foundation of agriculture that defined the region
since the Neolithic revolution and set it against the nomadic pastoralists. The
city-states might be united under a powerful ruler, as they were under Egypt’s
god-king or the Hittite or Iranian conquering warrior caste; they might be conquered
and sometimes destroyed by a powerful neighbor; or they might flourish
by establishing changing coalitions: this only marginally affected their function
as unities that were more-or-less self-sufficient. In religious terms, this
meant that each city had its own pantheon, its own calendar of festivals, and
its own mythology; alliances or political dependence on another power could
express themselves in additional cultic elements that did not fundamentally alter
the overall appearance of the cults.
The relative homogeneity is mirrored in the history of the writing systems.
Egypt invented its own complex system and stuck to it for almost three millennia;
knowledge of hieroglyphic writing petered out only during Roman imperial
times, at about the time when the Copts began to develop their own
alphabetic system. Throughout the Bronze Age, the rest of the region almost
universally used the cuneiform system invented in Mesopotamia and now
proving adaptable to all sorts of languages, including, albeit somewhat clumencountering
ancient religions 6
sily, Indo-European Hittite. Only the marginal Minoans had their own syllabic
system for internal use, which they handed over to the Mycenaeans for use in
yet a different language, Greek. The collapse of the Late Bronze Age empires
destroyed this unity, but also opened the chance for the spread of a vastly improved
system; whereas Cyprus adapted the Mycenaean syllabic systems and
the late Hittite kingdoms developed their own hieroglyphs, the West Semites
invented a much better alphabetic script. It adapted itself to every language, its
twenty-odd signs were easily mastered, and so it spread rapidly to Greece,
Anatolia, and Italy, in local variations whose vestiges are still with us today.
The persistence of these variations—including Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic
in the east—should warn us against overrating the cultural and religious
homogeneity and neglecting the force of local identities even in the 1st millennium
of the Iron Age: it is a homogeneity of broad outlines, not of details.
Musical divinities
The give and take among religious traditions easily reaches back to even before
the Mediterranean Bronze Age. This at least is what an emblematic case,
the cult of the goddess Cybele, the “Great Mother” (Magna Mater) of Greeks
and Romans, suggests (Borgeaud 1996; Roller 1999). Ancient worshipers and
modern scholars alike agree that the goddess as we know her was Phrygian in
origin. Her city, Pessinus, remained a theocracy under the archpriest of the
Great Mother well into Roman times; her priests were eunuchs who had initiated
themselves into the cult through self-castration. In early Iron Age Phrygia,
the goddess was omnipresent. Inscriptions called her Matar (Mother), sometimes
adding the epithet kubileya, which ancient Greek authors derived from
the Phrygian word for “mountain.”
The goddess arrived in Greece in the 8th or 7th century bce, first on the eastern
islands, but very soon as far west as southern Italy. The Greeks called her
“Mountain Mother” (Meter Oreia), in a close translation of her Phrygian
name, but also turned her epithet into the proper noun Cybele—and identified
her with Rhea, the mother of Zeus, thus turning the foreigner into a native of
venerable antiquity. In Phrygia and in Greece, she had cults on mountains,
where her images or altars were directly sculpted from living rock. Such images
in Phrygia, carved into mountain cliffs, represent her frontally and standing;
the Greeks partly adopted this, but soon abandoned it in favor of showing her
on a throne between two standing felines (lionesses or panthers). This image
appears so often in archaic eastern Greece that it must cover a variety of local
goddesses, all perceived by their worshipers as being akin to the Phrygian goddess.
Eastern Greeks also called her Kybebe: as such, she had a cult in Lydian
Sardis and in many cities further east. Kybebe is the Hellenization of another
Anatolian divine name, Kubaba, the main goddess of Carchemish, an ageold
city-state in northern Syria and the main link between Mesopotamia and
Anatolia, an influential power after 1000 bce. Kubaba’s animal was the lion;
7 what is ancient mediterranean religion?
her cult in Sardis was ecstatic, like the cult of Cybele, but it lacked the eunuchs
and castration that were typical of the cult of the Phrygian Lady. Although
Greeks and Romans identified Cybele and Kybebe, the eastern Greeks sometimes
perceived a difference and Hellenized Kybebe/Kubaba as Artemis or
Aphrodite, the former identification stressing her nature as mistress of wild animals,
the latter her erotic power.
Cybele’s mythology was very rich. In the Pessinuntian myth that was given a
Greek form in the late 4th century bce (Arnobius, Against the Pagans 5.5–7),
Cybele’s companion is Agdistis, a goddess born from Zeus’s intercourse with a
rock—a story that is very close to the Hittite myth of Ullikummi from the Cycle
of Kumarbi: the diorite monster Ullikummi is born from Kumarbi’s intercourse
with a rock and is as destructive as Agdistis. More common is the story
of Cybele’s love affair with the prince and shepherd Attis, which resulted in
Attis’s self-castration and death. Many stories narrated the terrible fate that befell
a lover of the Great Goddess, beginning with the Sumerian poem of Inanna
and Dumuzi and ending with the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Inanna too,
like Kybebe, was understood to be identical to Aphrodite). Gilgamesh was able
to recite a long leporello of Ishtar’s damaged lovers, in an episode that resonates
in Diomedes’ attack on Aphrodite in book 5 of Homer’s Iliad. The stories
thus lead back toward the Anatolian and Mesopotamian Bronze Age.
In archeology and cult, however, the Great Mother is difficult to grasp during
the Bronze Age—but her iconography is already attested in late Neolithic
Anatolia: a mother-goddess is highly visible in Neolithic Çatal Höyük in central
Anatolia (ca. 6200–5400 bce), represented in a statuette of an enthroned
and naked motherly goddess with felines at her side, which looks tantalizingly
close to the iconography of the Great Mother from early Iron Age Greece. In
the same Neolithic settlement, a mother-goddess is closely associated with
bulls—a symbolism that has been connected with the agricultural revolution of
the region and its concomitant “revolution of symbols” (Cauvin) and that resonates,
millennia later, especially in Minoan religious iconography.
This situation is complex, but typical. A neat unilinear derivation, dear to
scholars, is impossible: Greek Cybele/Kybebe looks back to Pessinus and to
Carchemish, and it is highly probable that the cult entered the Greek world
from Anatolia from at least two sanctuaries: a sanctuary near Colophon in
Ionia and another one in Cyzicus on the Hellespont are likely candidates. During
the Bronze Age, the cult never really surfaces for us. This must have to do
with the nature of our tradition, which is concentrated on the Hittite capital
and the ritual world of the court: Kubaba, “Queen of Carchemish,” becomes
highly visible as soon as the Hittite power collapses. But there were stories, traditions
both in Anatolia and in Mesopotamia, that were close to her. And she
made her first appearance, quite impressively, in late Neolithic times: one suspects
that this, too, is connected with the nature and social function of her cult
in these very first urban agricultural settlements. There must have been religious
traditions as old as the Neolithic Age, tenaciously preserved and distributed
throughout much of western Asia, whose visibility for us depends fundaencountering
ancient religions 8
mentally on the nature of the sources that are, before the epigraphic and
textual explosion of the Iron Age, very narrow windows on the past indeed.
The Phrygian Matar Kubileya is not the only migrating divinity, although
her story might be more complex than many, and such migration is not confined
to the 1st millennium when, among others, the Etruscans and Romans
adopted Greek gods such as Apollo or Asclepius. In the late Bronze Age, some
Babylonian divinities such as Ea also gained a place in the pantheon of the Hittites,
at the side of original Hittite and immigrant Hurrian divinities. Anat, the
female companion of Baal in Ugarit, became popular in Egypt, especially during
the 19th and 20th Dynasties; her consort Baal is present from the 18th Dynasty
onward. Among the casualties of war were many divine images—the
Hittites, we hear, abducted the image of Shimigi from Qatna in Syria (El
Amarna no. 55), and the Persian conquerors took the statues of the gods together
with all kinds of cult equipment and sacred writing from Egyptian
shrines. While it is not clear whether this happened for religious reasons or because
those statues were made of precious materials, at least the Romans had a
habit of transferring the cults of conquered neighboring cities to their own.
One consequence of this general awareness, at least among Greeks and
Romans, was what scholars call, with a term borrowed from Tacitus,
interpretatio—to treat the divine names of other religious systems as translations
of one’s own: a divine name, in this reading, is nothing more than a linguistic
marker, different in each individual culture, for a divine entity whose
existence transcends those cultures. When informing his readers about the
gods of other peoples, Herodotus consistently uses the Greek names, as when
he talks about the Scythians: “They adore only the following gods: mostly
Hestia, then Zeus and Gaea (they have the tradition that Gaea is Zeus’s wife),
after them Apollo, Aphrodite Urania, Heracles, and Ares” (Histories 4.59).
Later historians repeat the procedure: “Among the gods, they adore especially
Mercurius . . . , after him Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva,” Caesar writes
about the Gauls (Gallic Wars 6.17). This reflects the attitude of worshipers as
well, from Lydians and Lycians of Herodotus’s time to the inhabitants of imperial
Syria or Gaul. Votive inscriptions and sacred laws use the divine name
in the language they are written in, and even theophoric names are translated:
the same person who is Dionysicles in a Greek document turns into Bakivalis
in a Lydian one. The list of the homologues of Isis in Apuleius follows this
tradition. The habit of interpretation, however, is much older: in Hesiod’s
Theogony, Uranus (Sky) corresponds to Akkadian Anu (Sky); Cronus to
Hurrian Kumarbi, Sumerian Ea, and Akkadian Enki in the Babylonian succession
myth. Whoever brought those stories to Greece translated the names. And
he must simply have repeated what his bilingual Near Eastern informers, long
accustomed to this, told him; the translating habit goes far back. The Sumerian-Akkadian
bilingual lists of divine names must be the result of bureaucratic
interest in a Mesopotamia where, in the 3rd millennium, the two languages coexisted.
Again, it is Egypt that seems to remain somewhat isolated during the
Bronze Age and gives the impression of being different even later. It is not by
9 what is ancient mediterranean religion?
chance that Herodotus—who otherwise makes constant use of Greek names
everywhere—uses the Egyptian names Osiris for what “the Egyptians say is Dionysus”
(2.42) and Isis for she who is “Demeter in the language of the Greeks”
(2.59; see Monotheism and Polytheism).
This linguistic habit, however, has consequences. Hellenistic Isis can be depicted
with the attributes of Demeter, take over her epithets, such as “bringer
of wealth” (ploutodoteira) or “lawgiver” (thesmophoros), and be described
with qualities that come from Greece: “Among Greek cities, you love most
Athens: there, you brought forth grain for the first time, and Triptolemus distributed
it to the Greeks, riding a chariot drawn by your sacred snakes.” This
statement, from an aretalogy of Isis (i.e., a long list of her accomplishments),
transfers elements of Eleusinian Demeter to the Egyptian goddess. In the Late
Bronze Age, Assur, the main god of the Assyrians, was not only identified with
the Akkadian Enlil, but also took over Enlil’s role as the god of destiny.
Canaanite Baal, present in Egypt after the 18th Dynasty as a warlike and aggressive
divinity, sometimes took over the iconography of Seth: that might explain
why an Egyptian myth makes Seth lust after Anat, the Ugaritic consort of
Baal. In Hittite Anatolia, sun-divinities were important; scholars point out that
a Hurrian and Hittite sun-god were identified and that the Akkadian Shamash
lent them details of mythology and iconography, whereas the sun-goddess of
Arinna was identified with Hepat, a goddess whom the Greeks later knew as
Lydian Hipta, nurse of Dionysus.
Earlier scholars called all this “syncretism.” More recently, this term has
come under scrutiny: originally, it was a term of Christian missionary theology,
censuring the admixture of native religious traditions to Christian belief and
practice in a colonial setting; thus, it was a normative term. The use of similarly
normative terms in the history of religion—in a project that can be only
descriptive—has always created problems, most famously in the case of the
term magic, not the least because the necessary redefinition of the term proved
difficult and contentious, as the divergences in its use even in this volume
show (see Magic). Thus, more recently, syncretism was replaced by the morefashionable
term hybridity. This term originated in colonial history and was
also adopted to describe immigrant cultures; it always refers to the result of adaptations
and assimilation of either native or immigrant cultures or languages
to the dominant culture or language. Neither term describes accurately the
processes of transfer and assimilation that have been going on in Mediterranean
religions over the millennia, from the late Neolithic period to the rise of
Christianity. Sometimes, a dominant culture was the origin of religious features—the
Hittites were influenced by the Mesopotamian cultures, the Minoan
and Mycenaeans by Egypt and the Levant, the Etruscans and Romans by the
Greeks who arrived in southern Italy as colonists. Sometimes, items of a conqueror’s
religion were taken over by the conquered—the West Semite Hyksos
brought Baal and Anat to Egypt, the Persians brought Anaitis and the fire cult
to Anatolia. Sometimes, the conquerors adopted large parts of the religious
system already in place—most famously the Hittites, although the evidence is
encountering ancient religions 10
so closely focused on the king that it might distort the facts: the king had political
reasons for concentrating the empire’s religious traditions in his own hand.
In other places, the natives resisted the pressure of conquerors or colonizers:
the eastern Greeks turned the Persian term for a religious functionary, magu-,
into a term of abuse, while the Scythians on the northern shore of the Black Sea
killed their king when he became infected with the cult of Dionysus in Greek
Olbia (Herodotus, Histories 4.79). The Egyptians kept their distance from the
Greek settlers in Naucratis, who continued their local cults of Athena or Dionysus;
if anything, the settlers shaped details of their cult after impressive
Egyptian rituals that they witnessed.
Inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean, it seems, thus could travel wherever
they wanted and almost always meet the gods they knew; sometimes,
there might have been different stories attached to them—the Scythians, according
to Herodotus, thought that Zeus’s wife was Gaea; the Babylonians
narrated, as a citizen of Ugarit might have realized with some surprise, that
their Astarte, whom the Babylonians called Ishtar and the Sumerians Inanna,
once had been taken prisoner by her sister, the queen of the dead. But when
Hittites imagined that their Zeus, the storm-god Teshub, had been born from
his father’s body, some Greek traveler or merchant brought this back in a
somewhat garbled form, as the story that ended with Cronus vomiting up the
five siblings of Zeus together with the stone that he had swallowed instead of
his youngest son.
There were, of course, exceptions, where theological centralization imprinted
believers with the uniqueness of their own god—most prominent in
Judaism after its turn toward monotheism and then of course in Christianity.
But neither denied the existence of gods of the others—it was an ongoing concern
of Israel’s religious elite to prevent the cult of all those Baalim. The Christians
quickly turned the many gods of the others into daimonia (1 Cor. 10.20–
21), to be fought and exorcised. And the polytheists refused to recognize the
uniqueness of the one God and, continuing their interpretative mood, turned
YHWH into yet another form of Dionysus or of Baal.
Rituals and places
If, thus, travelers in the Mediterranean world found their own gods everywhere,
albeit somewhat disguised at times and speaking in foreign tongues,
would they also have been able to participate comfortably in another culture’s
cults or at least have recognized places of cult and understood most of the
things they saw being performed? And, as a possible consequence of this: is the
process of osmosis and assimilation that is visible with regard to the divine
world also visible in the forms of rituals and their physical surroundings?
The basic forms of cult seem to have been recognizable enough. When, in an
Ovidian tale, a young traveler from Greek Thebes passes an altar somewhere
in Lycia, “black with soot and ashes,” he imitates his local companion who is
11 what is ancient mediterranean religion?
mumbling a short prayer—nothing more than “bless me”—and then wants to
know “whether this altar belongs to the nymphs, to Pan, or to a local divinity”
(Metamorphoses 6.325–30). In other words, this foreigner recognizes the altar
as a marker of sacred space and a focus of the rituals connected with it, but he
is unable to name the recipient of the cult. Similarly, Herodotus had no problem
identifying processions, sacrifices, festivals, temples, images, and altars
when traveling in Egypt—to the extent that he derived Greek religion from
Egyptian, as some centuries later Dionysius of Halicarnassus derived Roman
religion from Greek.
Prayer and sacrifice, but also libation, procession, and votive gift, are the elements
of cult that, in manifold combinations, made up the impressive festivals
of ancient cities or were performed, alone or in combination, by individuals on
their own behalf; altar, temple, and image were markers of space where cult
took place. These ritual and architectural forms are almost ubiquitous elements
of religion—this must be the reason that a foreigner could recognize
them and understand their basic message.
When thus, on this very basic level, ritual might have been understandable
throughout human societies, the question begins to be much more complex
once we look into transfer and assimilation, and not only because of the problem
of attestation. While one’s own gods certainly were part of what defined
one’s identity—as was one’s city, one’s language, and one’s family—the rituals
in which one participated and their very specific forms, which were learned
from early youth, defined identity even more so. Changing rituals can be understood
to threaten loss of identity, as the debate about reforming the Catholic
liturgy after the Second Vatican Council made clear. And over and over
again, religious innovation and protest resulted in new rituals—the sacrifices of
Pythagoreans or Zoroastrians, the strictness of Jewish ritual rules, the specific
forms of baptism or Eucharist in early Christian groups all defined in-groups
against outsiders. And even outside this conscious step of distancing one’s
group from all the others, differentiation through behavior is vital because it is
behavior—not belief—that is visible. Meuli (1975: I.336) tells the story of the
German woman who attended a funeral in a neighboring village and inquired
solicitously whether one should start weeping already in the funeral home or
only when in the cemetery—local customs matter, and if they did even in the
highly normative world of Christian ritual, all the more so in the much more
diverse and much less normative world of the early Mediterranean cultures.
Pausanias’s guidebook, the sacred laws, and the many etiological stories can
teach us how many varieties of the basic sacrificial ritual existed even in the linguistically
and culturally rather uniform world of Hellenistic Greece.
Furthermore, even small differences can carry significance and express social
function, which makes assimilations much harder—or makes borrowing a
highly selective and conscious process. Libation, the visible pouring out of an
often valuable liquid such as oil or wine, is a ritual act that some scholars have
traced back to prehuman origins. Whereas in Greek and Roman cult, libations
are usually part of an overall sacrificial ritual or else confined to small gestures
encountering ancient religions 12
such as the one that opened and closed the symposium, they were much more
visible in the eastern monarchies; this has been seen as asserting social superiority
through the royal gesture of conspicuously squandering wealth. Libation
vessels with elegant long spouts thus become important items in Bronze Age
Anatolia and Mesopotamia—but also, at about the same time, at the royal
courts of Shang and Chou China. This should teach us how easily a similar
function—to turn libation into a conspicuous act—generates a similar form.
Still, transmission and borrowing are well attested in the sphere of ritual.
Not all cases are as straightforward as the case of scapegoat rituals. To drive
out an animal or a person charged with all the negative forces of the community
is something that West Semitic and Greek cities shared, and it seems to
have drifted west in the early Iron Age; this is benignly simple (see Ritual). The
case of hepatoscopy—the practice of using the liver of a sacrificial sheep to divine
the future—is more intriguing. It is attested in Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine,
Anatolia, and Etruria, not the least by the existence of surprisingly similar
liver models that were used to help the diviner’s memory. Again, a movement
from east to west is highly likely, despite the intriguing and unexplained absence
of the technique in Greece, the natural interface between the Levantine
east and Italy.
More complex still is sacrifice. Everywhere in the Mediterranean world, sacrifice
was at the center of cult. Its ostensible purpose was to feed the gods or
the dead: most often, from Ur to Rome, sacrifice was understood as a common
banquet of gods and humans. Thus, as in human diet, the meat of freshly
slaughtered domestic animals was the choice dish, but all other food, from
bread and fruit to wine, water, and oil, was used as well. Refusal to participate
in animal sacrifice is always the result of theology and, in some sense, a protest
against the killing, be it the Zoroastrians’ cult of pure fire or the Pythagoreans’
vegetarianism, which was grounded in their eschatological beliefs in reincarnation.
Beyond this very general agreement, which again goes well beyond
the Mediterranean world, things become complex and diverse. To convey the
food to the gods by burning—to take one of the most conspicuous traits in
Greek and Roman sacrifice—was no universal practice: in the large and rich
Mesopotamian and Egyptian temples, the priests of the king received the food
and presented it to the gods; then, the priest and their human guests ate it
themselves. This is why the ritual of “Opening the Mouth” is the fundamental
ritual for installing a cultic image in Mesopotamia and Egypt: “This statue
without its mouth opened cannot smell incense, cannot eat food, nor drink water,”
as a ritual incantation has it. But the prerogative of priests to feed on the
sacrifice is widespread even where burning dominates. When the newly conscripted
Delphic priests of Apollo despair about living high up on a barren
mountain, the god comforts them: “Each of you, a knife in his right hand, will
continuously slaughter sheep, and you will have plenty, since the mortals will
bring always them to me” (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 535–37). West Semites,
in marked difference from the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, burnt the gods’
parts on their altars, as did the Greeks already in the Mycenaean age and later
13 what is ancient mediterranean religion?
the Romans and Etruscans; they did not feed the images but the gods themselves.
Hebrews, after all, had no cult images at all, whereas Greeks and
Romans consecrated them in a different way or not at all. The sequence of
burning and banquet is common to all of them, as is the presence of both
“whole offering” and “shared offering,” the rite of entirely burning the animal
and the rite of sharing it in a banquet. Lines of transmission can be guessed at,
but they are complex: while the correspondence of Hebrew bÀmâ (high place
of cult) and Greek bÃmos (altar) seems to point to a derivation of the western
rite from the West Semitic world—with perhaps Cyprus as an interface—the
most conspicuous form of altar in Greece, the ever-growing heap of ashes and
remains of burnt animals, has parallels in central Europe already in the Late
Bronze Age. The practice of burning animals could have arrived in Greece
from several sides and is perhaps an Indo-European heritage reinforced from
the West Semitic east.
In other cases again, a common phenomenon does not necessarily call for
an explanation of transfer and assimilation. Ecstatic or “intuitive” prophecy
is known all over the globe, and it is well at home in the ancient Mediterranean.
Ecstatic prophets were widely attested in Mari during the epoch of
Hammurabi, and their similarity to more recent biblical prophecy has been
noted; the temporal distance, however, forbids the assumption of a simple
transfer. Female ecstatics are well attested in the cult of Ishtar at Arbela in the
Assyrian epoch; not much later, the Greeks have their Sibyl and the Delphic
Pythia, but also the male prophet Bacis; the fame of the Sibyl survives the
Christianization of the Roman Empire. While specialists like this can be imagined
as itinerant and thus as easy agents of transfer, it is impossible to indicate
simple lines of development, and there might be no necessity for it: suffice it to
indicate, once again, a common religious matrix.
In this essay, I have regarded the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world
as being in constant contact with each other—a contact that, similar to that of
languages in contact, resulted both in assimilation and in dissimilation. I have
not looked for specific characteristics of “the” religions of the ancient Mediterranean
world, beyond their being in almost constant contact; in fact, this, to
me, seems their main characteristic. This is a rather minimalist approach. I am
not looking for unique characteristics, those traits that would differentiate the
religions of the ancient Mediterranean from, say, the religions of Southeast
Asia or of Mesoamerica. To look for such unique traits in cultural studies too
often proves elusive and is motivated as often by ideological longings as by disinterested
scholarly concerns. Rather, I am looking for characteristics that confirm
the relative unity that would justify the enterprise of studying these different
religious cultures together in one vast project. Already the political and
social histories of the world between the Italian peninsula and the mountains
east of the Tigris argue for a high degree of interpenetration that began well before
the Late Bronze Age, and the same is true for cultural history, although
here, research has barely begun. The margins, as always, might be somewhat
encountering ancient religions 14
hazy and permeable to an outsider—ancient Iran also looks toward India,
Celtic northern Italy toward Gaul and Spain: there are no sharp boundaries in
cultural history. But the space in itself is clearly defined.
Nor have I given in to the temptation to sketch a typology of religions according
to the major sociopolitical forms, the opposition between city-states
and nomadic tribes being the main divide. But while the different concerns of
these groups certainly were reflected by the different functions of their divinities
and their rites, any more constant and fundamental difference in the religious
systems is elusive. Jewish monotheism cannot be explained by nomadic
pastoralism alone, but is the result of a complex constellation of social, economical,
and political forces. Many city-states such as Mari combined city
dwellers and nomads or developed their sedentary city life from a former nomadic
life. This double origin was easily visible in lifestyle choices, but proves
considerably more elusive in religion. We lack a clear religious parallel to
the exhortation of a prophet in Mari to his king “to ride in a chariot or on a
mule” and not to ride a horse, to follow the example of the “Akkadians,” not
the nomads—both lifestyles were available, but with different values attached
(Archives Royales de Mari, Tabl. VI.76.20). Cultural systems, furthermore,
can retain (and sometimes resemanticize) elements that belong to former
sociopolitical systems—the pastoralist’s reed hut remains prominent in
Mesopotamian rituals well into the Iron Age, and the Greek pantheon remains
organized as a royal court even under Athenian democracy. No theory up to
now convincingly correlates social and religious systems, and most attempts by
sociologists such as Max Weber or Niklaus Luhmann have concentrated on
Christianity and sometimes naively generalized Christian conceptions of religion.
Other possible differences, such as the difference between the religion of
a city-state and of a kingdom that unites many city-states, are even less relevant:
we do not deal with different religious systems but with rituals designed
to express the status of the king. These rituals are, on the king’s side, rituals of
his court, and, on the city’s side, additions to the already existing body of rituals
and beliefs, but they do not change the system.
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unserer Zeit im Spiegel der Religionswissenschaft, ed. Günther Stephenson.
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encountering ancient religions 16
Monotheism and Polytheism
Jan Assmann
What is polytheism?
“Monotheism” and “polytheism” are recent words, not older than the 17th
century ce, and they have different statuses. Monotheism is a general term for
religions that confess to and worship only one god. “One God!” (Heis Theos)
or “No other gods!” (first commandment)—these are the central mottos of
monotheism. The religions subsumed under the term polytheism cannot, however,
be reduced to a single motto of opposite meaning, such as “Many gods!”
or “No exclusion of other gods!” On the contrary, the unity or oneness of
the divine is an important topic in Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Greek, and
other polytheistic traditions. Polytheism is simply a less polemical substitute
for what monotheistic traditions formerly called “idolatry” and “paganism”
(Hebrew ÚÝbôdâ zÀrâ, Arabic shirk or jahiliya). Whereas monotheism constitutes
a self-description of religions subsumed under that term, no such selfdescription
exists for polytheistic religions. Monotheism asserts its identity by
opposing itself to polytheism, whereas no polytheistic religion ever asserted itself
in contradistinction to monotheism, for the simple reason that polytheism
is always the older or “primary” and monotheism the newer or “secondary”
type of religion. Monotheism is self-description, polytheism is construction
of the other. However, although polytheistic religions include a concept of divine
unity, these religions undoubtedly do worship a plethora of gods, which
justifies applying a word built on the element poly (many) to them. Unity in
this case does not mean the exclusive worship of one god, but the structure and
coherence of the divine world, which is not just an accumulation of deities, but
a structured whole, a pantheon.
Theologia tripertita
The most cogent theory of polytheism comes from an ancient author. Varro’s
concept of a “tripartite theology” refers to a general structure that is perfectly
well applicable not only to the Roman and Greek religions that Varro had
in mind, but also to ancient Egyptian and Babylonian religions. These religions
know three spheres or dimensions of divine presence and religious experience,
which closely correspond to Varro’s three theologies, showing that
we are dealing here with a rather general structure of polytheism. His theologia
naturalis (Greek theologia kosmikÁ, cosmic theology) corresponds to the cosmic
dimension of divine manifestation; his theologia civilis (Greek theologia
politikÁ, political theology) corresponds to the cultic dimension; and his theologia
fabularis (Greek theologia mythikÁ, mythical or narrative theology) corresponds
to the dimension of historia divina, the stories about the gods, their
names, epithets, and genealogies (Antiquitates rerum divinarum, frags. 6–10
Cardauns).
Cosmos. The first dimension of divine presence or manifestation is the cosmos
or nature. Polytheistic cosmology views the cosmos as a cooperative process:
the deities cooperate in creating and maintaining the world. In Egypt, the
sun-god and his daily course across the sky and the underworld beneath the
earth form the center of this processual cosmology. In Babylonia and Greece,
the gods seem to be less involved in maintaining the cosmic process and freer to
intervene in human affairs. There, the aspect of unity and coherence is expressed
above all in social and political terms, especially in the model of a royal
court. However, the idea of a highest god who rules as a king over the world of
gods is common to all polytheisms of the ancient world. Political philosopher
Eric Voegelin has coined the term Summo-Deism in order to emphasize the hierarchical
structure of polytheism. Typically, the highest god is also the creator
(Marduk in Babylonia; Re, later Amun-Re, in Egypt; although in Greece and
Rome, according to the best-known cosmologies, neither Zeus/Jupiter nor any
other god creates the world; it simply develops out of Chaos on its own).
In Egypt, the highest god combines the aspects of creator, sun, and king.
Here, the idea of unity seems most prominent. Before the monotheistic
revolution of Akhenaten, however, the fundamental plurality of the divine
world in its cosmic manifestation was never questioned. The cosmic process
was viewed as an interplay of convergent and divergent powers. Two otherwise
antagonistic powers, Horus, the god of royal legitimacy, and Seth, the god
of anarchic violence and force, cooperated in defending the sun-god against
Apopis, a water-dragon personifying chaos. The order must always be defended
against a gravitation toward disorder or entropy. Order is time or
movement, and it would come to an immediate standstill if the foe were definitely
annihilated once and for all.
In the eyes of the Egyptians, the success of the cosmic process was always at
risk. In the same way as the Mesopotamians, the Chinese, and the Romans,
Egyptians were constantly occupied in watching the sky and in observing all
kinds of natural phenomena with the greatest attention. But whereas in Mesopotamia,
China, and Rome this attention was associated with various forms of
divination that served to reveal the will of the gods and to foretell the future, in
Egypt it was connected with the daily ritual that served to assist the gods in
encountering ancient religions 18
maintaining the world, supplementing divine action with ritual action. Thus,
the Egyptians observed the regular and the recurrent, whereas cultures that focused
on divination observed the exceptional and deviant. In the context of
this task and their intellectual preoccupation with it, the Egyptians accumulated
an incredible amount of knowledge, a kind of sacred cosmology, whereas
the Sumerians and Babylonians, in the context of their preoccupation with divination,
accumulated a similar mass of omen literature, which established connections
between divine signs and historical or biographical events.
The cosmic dimension provides evidence of the gods through the natural
world and its phenomena. Nobody would dream of denying the existence of
the divine powers: they are overwhelmingly present in the shape of sun and
moon; air, water, fire, and earth; life and death; war and peace; and so on. It is
possible to neglect them, to break one of their specific taboos, to miss the correct
performance of their rites, but it is impossible to either enter or leave a relationship
which is always already established, into which we are born, and
which is never the matter of a personal decision.
Cult and political organization. The second dimension consists of the various
forms of terrestrial governance in which the gods of a polytheistic pantheon
typically participate. The more important deities of a pantheon are
“town-gods,” and the more important urban centers of a country are a god’s
cities in the sense that they are strongly associated with the name of a deity
whose temple is the chief temple of that town: Marduk and Babylon, Assur
and the city Assur, Athena and Athens, Ptah and Memphis, and so on. The
pantheon is an assembly of town lords and temple owners, headed, in some
cases, by a god whose temple is in the capital and who, for this reason, rules
not only his city but the whole country (e.g., Marduk and Babylon) or, in other
cases, who has important cults in virtually every city, even if the city worships
another divinity as its own (e.g., Zeus is prominent even in Athens). Aspects
both of unity and of diversity are prominent in the political and geographical
dimensions of godhead as well. The aspect of unity can be represented by the
unity of a country and its hierarchical structure of center and periphery (as in
Egypt) or by the periodic gathering together of different towns’ citizens at centralized
cult places such as Olympia (as in Greece), whereas the aspect of diversity
finds its expression in the specific identity and profile of the individual
towns and regions.
The political dimension of the divine world may also be called cultic, because
it is in their function as town lords and ladies that the deities receive
cultic worship. The cult is the service that a lord or lady requires and resembles
in many respects a royal ceremonial. The feasts are typically celebrated in the
form of a procession and have the clear political meaning of territorial ownership
and its annual confirmation.
Myth. The third dimension may be called the personal or biographical aspect
of the divine world. In a polytheistic religion, a deity cannot be spoken
about without reference to other deities. The gods live, act, and display their
personalities and characters in interaction, not only or even primarily with
19 monotheism and polytheism
humans, but with one another, in relation to other gods, in “constellations”
that find their expression in myths, genealogies, epithets, names—in short, in
everything that can be said about a deity. Divine constellations reflect the
fundamental order and elementary structure of human society—husband and
wife, brother and sister, mother and son, mother and daughter, father and son,
father and daughter, lover and beloved, lord and slave, hero and enemy, and
so on. These constellations unfold in stories (myths) of equally fundamental
character, founding and modeling the basic structures of human life, institutions,
hopes, and experience: love and death, war and peace, identity and
transformation, suffering and salvation. The relation between the divine and
the human world is anthropomorphic rather than anthropocentric. The natural
partner of a deity is another deity, not humanity. The gods of a polytheistic
pantheon care above all for themselves, in the second place for their cities and
their followers, and only exceptionally for humankind at large. But this relative
distance between the divine and the human worlds is compensated for by
intense analogy and a relationship of mutual modeling. The structures of the
divine world and the stories about the gods reflect the fundamentals of human
existence, but they function as models, and not as mirrors. The gods live and
die, rule and serve, suffer and enjoy, win and are defeated: they set the norms
and forms of human life, which repeats and reflects the timeless models and
follows the traces of historia divina.
The “theologization” of history:
Anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism
The tripartite structure of polytheism establishes a rather indirect relation between
gods and humans. The sphere of direct encounters and interventions,
which plays such an important role in Greek, Roman, and Babylonian mythology,
seems to be missing. How shall we account for the widespread belief that
illness and misfortune are expressions of divine wrath and that the gods intervene
in various forms in human affairs? There seems to be a fourth dimension
of divine manifestation and religious experience, which comprises human life
and history.
In Egypt, we actually observe the emergence of history as a fourth parameter
or dimension of the divine world, starting with the 18th Dynasty and gaining
predominance in the Ramesside age (ca. 1300–1100 bce). With the emergence
of the dimension of history, the relationship between the divine and the human
worlds changes from anthropomorphism to anthropocentrism. The gods not
only maintain the cosmic process, not only dwell and rule on earth in their
temples, and are not only involved in stories that take place in their own sphere
among the gods—they also determine the course of human history on earth,
the welfare of the state and the people; they do this by sending victories and defeats,
health and illness, prosperity and disaster. In Egypt, this “theologization
of history” is a new development. In Mesopotamia, however, as in Greece,
Rome, and Bronze Age Anatolia, the religious meaning of history seems to
encountering ancient religions 20
have been a concept that was in place from the start. Gods supervise the observance
of treaties and help to protect the integrity of their sanctuaries and cities.
In Mesopotamia we also find the concept of a “personal god,” which brings
the worlds of gods and humans into closer relationship, while at the same time
preserving the principle of plurality and diversity. Each human being has a specific
personal god among the lesser gods, who cares for him or her and intercedes
on his or her behalf with the greater gods.
Unlike Egypt, where any forms of historiography dealing with longer periods
of the past are missing until the Greco-Roman period, Mesopotamia yields
many royal inscriptions that narrate the entire extension of a reign and even
texts that stretch back over a series of different reigns into the remote past.
The Curse on Agade, for example, narrates the history of the rise and fall of
the Sargonid Dynasty during the 23rd and 22nd centuries bce. Among other
events it relates how King Naram-Sin destroyed the temple of Enlil in Nippur
and how Enlil responded to this crime by sending forth the Guteans, who put
an end to the Sargonid Empire. Similarly, the fall of the Empire of Ur is traced
back, in another text, to certain transgressions committed by King Shulgi. The
theological and juridical concept of religious guilt and divine punishment gives
meaning to history and coherence to the chain of events and sequence of dynasties.
In Egypt, disaster is a manifestation of chaos and blind contingency. In
Mesopotamia, however, it is read as the manifestation of the punishing will of
a divinity whose anger has been stirred by the king. In yet other cultures, such
as Greece, a disaster can be understood as preordained by fate (moira), although
fate’s decrees are often carried out by the gods. An event such as the
Trojan War, therefore, which was viewed as historical by the Greeks, can be
given meaning within a larger context of ongoing human culture.
The apex of the theologization of history is reached with biblical, especially
Deuteronomistic, historiography (see Van Seters 1983). The idea of forming
an alliance with God instead of only appointing certain deities as supervisors
of political alliances draws God much more closely into the ups and downs of
human affairs than had been the case in Mesopotamia and its neighboring civilizations.
There, history was just a field of possible interventions by the gods,
favorable or punitive; now it turns into one coherent connection of events
stretching from creation until the end of the world, a sequence known as
historia sacra in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
However, the idea of divine verdict and intervention was not totally absent
even in Egypt. On the contrary, the typically Egyptian idea of a judgment after
death appears as the strongest possible manifestation of the principle of divine
verdict. But the concept of postmortem human immortality provides a horizon
of fulfillment beyond history, whereas in Mesopotamia and Israel, where the
concept of human immortality is unknown, every account has to be settled on
earth. Here, the horizon of fulfillment is confined to the terrestrial world, but
stretched into the future, over generations and dynasties.
In Israel, this fourth dimension of theology tends to prevail over and, in the
course of time, to replace the three others. With the rise of monotheism, the
21 monotheism and polytheism
cosmos ceases to appear as a manifestation of divine presence and comes to be
seen merely as the creation, the work of God. The geographical and cultic dimension
is reduced, after the reform of King Josiah at the end of the 7th century,
to the temple at Jerusalem and no longer reflects the pluralistic identity
of various centers and regions. Historia divina, the stories that are told about
the gods and that display their characters and their vicissitudes, is turned into
historia sacra, the story of the One God and his chosen people. Historia sacra
is the successor of both the third or mythic dimension of narrative articulation
of divine constellations and the fourth dimension in the traditional
Mesopotamian sense of divine intervention in human affairs. YHWH intervenes
in human affairs not only occasionally; in entering the covenant with Israel,
concern with human affairs becomes YHWH’s dominant trait.
Historia sacra is a dimension of divine presence that excludes the principle
of plurality. There can be but one lord of history, one divine partner in a story
shared by god and humans. There are, however, surprising parallels to such an
extremely anthropocentric conception of the divine even in Egypt. A passage in
the Instruction for Merikare speaks of the ways that God cares for humans as
his cattle or herd, in terms strongly reminiscent of biblical anthropocentrism:
Humans are well cared for,
the livestock of god:
he made heaven and earth for their sake,
he pushed the greediness of the waters back
and created the air so that their nostrils might live.
His images are they, having come forth from his body.
For their sake he rises to heaven;
it is for them that he has made plants and animals,
birds and fish,
so that they might have food.
If he killed his enemies and went against his children,
this was only because they thought of rebellion.
For their sake he causes there to be light.
To see them he travels [the heavens].
He established for himself a chapel at their back.
When they weep, he hears.
He created for them a ruler in the egg
and a commander to strengthen the backbone of the weak.
He made for them magic as a weapon
to ward off the blow of fate,
watching over them night and day.
He thrashed the cowardly among them,
as a man beats his son for the sake of his brother.
God knows every name.
encountering ancient religions 22
This is not only an extremely anthropocentric view of creation, it is also a
monotheistic view of the divine. The text speaks of God; other gods are not
mentioned. This kind of monotheism, however, is not a matter of religion, but
of genre and perspective. If one looks at the world in the way that this text
does, the principles of plurality and differentiation disappear, and the ultimate
unity of the divine appears. This perspective is characteristic of the genre of
wisdom literature, a forerunner of moral philosophy that reflects in a very general
way on the fundamentals of human existence. Egyptian wisdom literature
generally speaks of god instead of specific gods. This is not only a generic
term, to be filled in by a specific god as the case may be (a god instead of the
god), but a specific term referring to the sun-god and creator, as in the Instruction
of Merikare. In the perspective of moral philosophy, this is the only god
that really counts, the one god on which everything else (including the other
gods) depends. Such a “monotheism of perspective” is conventionally termed
henotheism to distinguish it from monolatry as a monotheism of cult, worship,
and commitment, whereas the term monotheism is reserved for a combination
of both: the transformation of a henotheistic perspective into a full-fledged religion
or vice versa, the transformation of a monolatrous cult (which recognizes
the existence of other gods but worships only one) into a religion adopting the
henotheistic perspective in which the other gods do not exist at all.
In Egypt, the henotheistic perspective of wisdom literature and the polytheism
of cult coexist without any apparent conflict. During the New Kingdom,
however, the henotheistic perspective starts to affect certain domains of temple
literature as well, especially hymns to Amun-Re, the god of the capital, Thebes,
who becomes identified with the sun-god of Heliopolis. An early hymn to this
god, dating back perhaps even before the New Kingdom, adopts the anthropocentric
and henotheistic perspective of Merikare:
Hail, Re, lord of justice,
whose chapel is hidden, lord of the gods,
Khepri in his boat,
at whose command the gods emerge,
Atum, creator of human beings,
who differentiates them and makes them live,
who distinguishes people by the color of their skin,
who hears the prayers of those in distress,
and is well disposed to those who call on him,
who rescues the fearful from the overbearing,
who judges between rich and poor,
lord of perception, on whose lips is the creative word,
it is for his sake that Hapi has come,
lord of sweetness, great of love,
it is to make people live that he has come.
To be sure, the gods, plural, are mentioned in this text, which is still a far
cry from real monotheism and even henotheism. Yet the gods are put on a
23 monotheism and polytheism
level with humans and every other creature, and the general view is clearly
anthropocentric and henotheistic. Akhenaten’s monotheistic Amarna revolution
is the radical consequence of this shift from mythical anthropomorphism
to philosophical anthropocentrism. It realizes the henotheistic perspective in
terms of cult and religious institutions, turning the sun- and creator-god into
the sole and only one and denying the other gods any worship and even existence.
In the aftermath of this revolutionary step, the gods are readmitted into
cult and general worldview; the henotheistic perspective, however, still prevails,
and the gods tend now to be demoted, especially in hymns to Amun, to
“names,” “manifestations,” “symbols,” “limbs,” and so on, of the One. This
post-Amarna theology is closer to pantheism than to monotheism; however,
the tripartite structure of divine presence—the cosmic, cultic, and mythic dimensions—is
again fully expressed in the religious life of the country, and the
new concept of a fourth dimension, history, does not in any way invalidate the
importance of the other three.
What is monotheism?
Evolutionary monotheism
The idea of unity is not alien to polytheistic religions. On the contrary, the emphasis
on the oneness or uniqueness of God or the ultimate unity of the divine
world with its plethora of deities is obvious in Mesopotamian and Egyptian
texts and increases over time.
Translating gods. In polytheistic religions, the deities are clearly differentiated
and personalized by name, shape, and function. The great achievement of
polytheism is the articulation of a common semantic universe. It is this semantic
dimension that makes the names translatable—that is, makes it possible
for gods from different cultures or parts of a culture to be equated with one
another. Tribal religions are ethnocentric. The powers and ancestral spirits
worshiped by one tribe are different from those worshiped by another tribe.
In contrast, the highly differentiated members of polytheistic pantheons lend
themselves easily to cross-cultural translation or “interpretation.” Translation
functions because the names not only have a reference, but also a meaning,
namely, the god’s specific character as it is unfolded in cosmological speculation,
myths, hymns, rites, and so on. This character makes a deity comparable
to other deities with similar traits. The similarity of gods makes their names
mutually translatable. But in historical reality, this correlation has to be reversed.
The practice of translating the names of the gods created a concept of
similarity and produced the idea or conviction that gods are international.
The tradition of translating or interpreting foreign divine names goes back
to the innumerable glossaries equating Sumerian and Akkadian words, among
which appear lists of divine names in two or even three languages, such as
Emesal (women’s language, used as a literary dialect), Sumerian, and Akkadian.
The most interesting of these sources is the explanatory list Anu sa ameli,
encountering ancient religions 24
which contains three columns, the first giving the Sumerian name, the second
the Akkadian name, and the third the functional definition of the deity.
This explanatory list gives what may be called the meaning of divine names,
making explicit the principle that underlies the equation or translation of divine
names. In the Kassite period of the Late Bronze Age, the lists are extended
to include languages such as Amorite, Hurrian, Elamite, and Kassite in addition
to Sumerian and Akkadian. In these cases, the practice of translating
divine names was applied to very different cultures and religions. The origin
of this practice may be identified in the field of international law. Treaties had
to be sealed by solemn oaths, and the gods invoked in these oaths had to
be recognized by both parties. The list of these gods conventionally closes
the treaty. They necessarily had to be equivalent as to their function and in particular
as to their rank. Intercultural theology became a concern of international
law.
The growing political and commercial interconnectedness of the ancient
world and the practice of cross-cultural translation of everything, including divine
names, gradually led to the concept of a common religion. The names, iconographies,
and rites—in short, the cultures—differ, but the gods are the same.
This concept of religion as the common background of cultural diversity and
the principle of cultural translatability eventually led to the late Hellenistic
mentality, for which the names of the gods mattered little in view of the overwhelming
natural evidence for their existence and presence in the world.
Hyphenating gods. Scholars conventionally refer to an Egyptian phenomenon
that might be compared to the Mesopotamian technique of translating
gods as syncretism. It involves the collocation of two or three different gods,
leading to hyphenated names such as Amun-Re, Amun-Re-Harakhty, PtahSokar-Osiris,
Hathor-Tefnut, Min-Horus, Atum-Khepri, Sobek-Re, and so on.
As a rule, the first name refers to the cultic/local dimension, the actual temple
owner and lord of the town, whereas the second name refers to a translocal,
preferably cosmic deity. Thus, Amun is the lord of Thebes, in whom the sungod,
Re, becomes manifest. Ptah is the lord of Memphis, Sokar the god of its
necropolis, Osiris the god of the underworld and the dead whose Memphite
representation is to be seen in Ptah-Sokar. This relationship between deities
does not mean equation or fusion; the gods retain their individuality. Re does
not merge into Amun or vice versa. The gods enter into a relationship of mutual
determination and complementation: Re becomes the cosmic aspect of
Amun, Amun the cultic and local aspect of Re; Atum refers to the nocturnal,
and Khepri to the diurnal aspect of the sun-god. Hyphenation implies neither
identification nor subordination; Amun has no precedence over Re, nor Re
over Amun. In the course of time, however, this practice of “hyphenating”
gods fosters the idea of a kind of deep structure identity.
A similar practice occurs in Greece, although with very different ramifications.
A god worshiped throughout Greece, such as Artemis, may become associated
with a local god whose traits are similar (thus in Arcadia we find Artemis
Callisto). In these cases, however, an originally independent god—even a
25 monotheism and polytheism
god who continues to be worshiped independently in some cases—is subordinated
to the Panhellenic god both in the sense that the lesser god’s altar is
smaller than the greater god’s and in the sense that myth makes the lesser god a
“heroic” companion of the greater god.
“All gods are One.” In Mesopotamia, the pantheon is structured by strong
hierarchical relations of subordination, and this, in the long run, fosters similar
ideas of deep structural identity. The creation epic, the Enuma Elish, ends with
a hymn to the chief god, Marduk, calling him by fifty names. The gods who are
subordinated to Marduk become his names, aspects of his all-encompassing essence.
Another text assembles a group of major deities, identifying them with
roles of Marduk:
Ninirta is Marduk of the hoe,
Nergal is Marduk of the attack,
Zababa is Marduk of the hand-to-hand fight,
Enlil is Marduk of lordship and counsel,
Nabium is Marduk of accounting,
Sin is Marduk, the illuminator of the night,
Shamash is Marduk of justice,
Adad is Marduk of rains.
A hymn of Assurbanipal addresses Marduk as carrying the identity of the three
highest gods as personal properties: “You hold the Anu-ship, the Enlil-ship, the
Ea-ship.” The culmination of these tendencies is reached when the whole pantheon
comes to be seen as just aspects of one supreme god. “All gods are
three,” we read in an Egyptian text (Papyrus Leiden 1.350), which moreover
states that these three gods are just aspects of one god:
All gods are three:
AMUN, RE, and PTAH, whom none equals.
He who hides his name as Amun,
he appears to the face as Re,
his body is PTAH.
We easily discern here the three “dimensions” of polytheistic theology: name,
cosmic appearance, and cultic “embodiment” in a statue, dwelling in a temple,
ruling a city. These three dimensions, however, are encompassed and transcended
by a god who is referred to as only “He.” Amun is just a name screening
the true and hidden name of this god, of whom another hymn states:
People fall down immediately for fear
if his name is uttered knowingly or unknowingly.
There is no god able to call him by it.
In Egypt, this concept of a Supreme Being comprising in his essence the whole
pantheon goes back to the Ramesside period (13th century bce) and seems to
encountering ancient religions 26
be a reaction to Akhenaten’s monotheistic revolution. It stresses the oneness of
god while retaining the multiplicity of the divine. In the last instance, all gods
are but One, the immanent manifold manifestation and diversification of a hidden
and transcendent unity.
Hypsistos: belief in a Supreme Being. The idea that the various nations worshiped
basically the same deities but under different names and in different
forms eventually led to the belief in a Supreme Being (the Greek expression is
Hypsistos, the Highest One) comprising in its essence not only all the myriads
of known and unknown deities, but above all those three or four gods who, in
the context of different religions, play the role of the highest god (usually Zeus,
Sarapis, Helios, and Iao = YHWH). This superdeity is addressed by appellations
such as Hypsistos (Supreme) and the widespread “One-God” predication
Heis Theos. Oracles typically proclaim particular gods to be one and the same
together with other gods:
One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysus,
One god in all gods.
Pseudo-Justin, Exhortation against the Greeks 15 = Orphic frag. 239 (Macrobius,
Saturnalia 1.18.17 quotes the first verse)
In one of these oracles, Iao, the god of the Jews, is proclaimed to be the god of
time (Olam-Aion), appearing as Hades in winter, Zeus in springtime, Helios
in summer, and “Habros Iao” in autumn. (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.18.20; see
Peterson 1926: 243–44; Hengel 1969: 476–77; and the inscription Heîs Zeùs
Sérapis Iaó [CIL 2 suppl. 5665 = Dunand 1975: 170]). These oracles and
predications manifest a quest for the sole and supreme divine principle beyond
the innumerable multitude of specific deities. This is typical of the “ecumenical
age” and seems to correspond to efforts toward political unification
(see Peterson 1935, 1951; Schindler 1978; Momigliano 1987; Dunand 1975;
and Fowden 1993). The belief in the Supreme Being (Hypsistos) has a distinctly
universalist character:
The sons of Ogyges call me Bacchus,
Egyptians think me Osiris,
Mysians name me Phanaces,
Indians regard me as Dionysus,
Roman rites make me Liber,
The Arab race thinks me Adoneus,
Lucaniacus the Universal God.
Ausonius, Epigrammata #48 (trans. White 1985)
This tradition of invoking the Highest God by the names given him by the
various nations expresses a general conviction in late antiquity about the universality
of religious truth and the relativity of religious institutions and denominations
and the conventionality of divine names. According to Servius,
the Stoics taught that there is only one god, whose names merely differ accord-
27 monotheism and polytheism
ing to actions and offices. Varro (116–27 bce), who knew about the Jews
from Poseidonius, was unwilling to make any differentiation between Jove and
YHWH because he was of the opinion that it mattered little by which name he
was called as long as only the same thing was meant (“nihil interesse censens
quo nomine nuncupetur, dum eadem res intelligatur”; Antiquitates rerum
divinarum, frag. 16* Cardauns). Porphyry held the opinion that the names of
the gods were purely conventional. Celsus argued that “it makes no difference
whether one calls god ‘Supreme’ [Hypsistos] or Zeus or Adonai or Sabaoth or
Ammon such as the Egyptians do or Papaios as the Scythians.” The name does
not matter when it is evident what or who is meant.
In his treatise on Isis and Osiris, Plutarch brings this general conviction to
the point, stating that no one would “regard the gods as different among different
nations nor as barbarian and Greek and as southern and northern. But
just as the sun, moon, heaven, earth, and sea are common to all, although they
are given various names by the varying nations, so it is with the one reason [logos]
which orders these things and the one providence which has charge of
them” (On Isis and Osiris 67.377f–378a). Seneca stressed that this conviction
was based on natural evidence: “This All, which you see, which encompasses
divine and human, is One, and we are but members of a great body.”
Revolutionary monotheism
Negative or counterreligion. Whereas evolutionary monotheism may be seen
as the final stage of polytheism, there is no evolutionary line leading from polytheism
to revolutionary monotheism. This form of monotheism manifests itself
in the first place as a negative or counterreligion, defining what god is not and
how god should not be worshiped. Revolutionary monotheism is based on the
distinction between true and false, between one true god and the rest of forbidden,
false, or nonexistent gods. The introduction of this distinction into the
realm of religion constitutes a radical break. Polytheistic or “primary” religions
generally are not concerned with questions of what to believe, but how
to act. Not the truth of the beliefs but the correctness of the ritual performances
and recitations is what matters: orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy. No
primary religion is concerned with the danger of worshiping “false” gods; their
concern is, rather, not to neglect any gods requiring worship.
The first to establish a revolutionary monotheism was Akhenaten of Egypt
(ca. 1360–1340 bce). Here, the negative energy of monotheism manifested
itself not in explicit prohibitions (“No other gods! No images!”), but in practical
destruction. The temples were closed, the cults abolished, the images destroyed,
the names erased. Akhenaten’s monotheism was based on a physical
discovery: the sun was found to generate not only light and warmth, but also
time. Light and time were held to be sufficient principles to explain the whole
phenomenology of existence; the traditional pantheon was simply deemed
superfluous. Its abolition was the logical consequence of a new cosmology.
Akhenaten’s monotheism was a matter not of revelation but of natural evidence.
In this respect, it is closer to polytheism and to evolutionary monotheencountering
ancient religions 28
ism than to revolutionary monotheism in its biblical and postbiblical manifes-
tations.
Biblical monotheism is based not on evidence but on revelation. It is not a
matter of cognition but of commitment. It requires adherents to make a conscious
decision to accept revealed truth and reject deceitful evidence. Natural
evidence is debunked as seduction, as luring people away from revealed truth
into the traps and pitfalls of the false gods, that is, the world. The distinction
between true and false refers, in its ultimate meaning, to the distinction between
god and world. Revolutionary monotheism worships an extramundane
or transcendent god, whereas the deities of both polytheism and evolutionary
monotheism create and animate the world from within and constitute its
life. These religions may be termed “cosmotheism,” because they worship the
world as a divine being. Biblical monotheism is based on an extramundane
truth that cannot be seen or otherwise sensually experienced but only believed
“with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your power,” and so is
revolutionary as well.
The negative or antagonistic energy of revolutionary monotheism finds its
expression, not perhaps in (f)actual history but in textual memory, in scenes
of violence such as the story of the golden calf (when 3,000 men and women
were cruelly executed), Elijah’s competition with the priests of Baal (when the
priests were massacred), Josiah’s reform (when not only the “high places”
[bÀmôt] were destroyed but also the priests persecuted and killed), and the
forced divorce under Ezra of Israelites married to Canaanites (which was a
less bloody but equally violent act). This violence is not a matter of history but
of semantics. However, there were always situations when textual semantics
led to political action.
Canonization. Revealed truth that cannot be reexperienced in any natural
way must be codified in order to be transmittable to future generations. Revolutionary
monotheism appeals to memory and transmission rather than to observation,
attention, divination, and diligent maintenance. In order to transmit
its revolutionary message beyond the first generations of founders and followers,
it must develop a body of highly normative and canonized scripture. This
applies to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as to Zoroastrianism, Buddhism,
Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and other religions of the
East, all of which are based on a canon. The revolutionary break between
cosmotheism and monotheism is everywhere dependent on the invention of
writing. It is an “advance in intellectuality” as Freud called it, based on a new
cultural technology.
The appeal to memory and the prohibition of forgetting usually assume the
form of reading, learning, and interpreting. Remembering means a form of
reactualization of the normative impulses as they are laid down in the canon.
The texts have not only to be learned by heart but they have to be understood
and followed. This implies both believing in the truth of what the texts say and
the determination to organize the collective culture and the individual lifestyle
according to the codified rules, laws, and norms of scripture.
Idolatry, sin, and the construction of paganism. In consequence of its deter-
29 monotheism and polytheism
mination to distinguish between true and false, revolutionary monotheism
constructs the outside world of former and foreign religions as paganism, a
concept completely alien to primary religions. The Greeks knew “barbarians”
but no “pagans.” However, the distinction is primarily applied within the
group itself; it addresses the “pagan within” and cuts right through its own
community and even through the individual heart, which now becomes the
theater of inner conflicts and religious dynamics. The concept of idolatry became
psychologized and turned into a new concept of sin. Among the various
innovations brought into the world by revolutionary monotheism, the invention
of the “inner person” is of particular importance. Religion becomes a matter
of the heart and soul: “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a
broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51.19 [=
51.17 Hebrew]). “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6.5).
The distinction between true and false religion has not only a cognitive, but
also a moral meaning. In this early stage of monotheism, the “false gods” are
conceived of as fully existent and powerful beings who constitute a constant
temptation and lure the human heart into the pitfalls of idolatry. Idolatry is
seen not only as an error but also as infidelity and immorality. Without the existence
of other gods, the commandment to be faithful to the one god would
have little meaning. The gods of polytheistic religions, in their need of social
bonds, formed constellations within their own sphere and were not dependent
on humanity. The god of the Bible is a “jealous god,” having to count on the
love and loyalty of his chosen people, which inevitably fails in fulfilling his expectations.
Thus, together with counterreligion, the concept of “sin” is born as
the awareness of having failed in requiting God’s love and of having given in to
the temptations of the false gods.
The theologization of justice. Revolutionary monotheism is a religion in
which the idea of justice holds the central position. Whereas in polytheistic religions
such as in Egypt, the spheres of cult and justice are carefully separated
(justice is for humans, and cult is for the gods and the dead), in the Bible they
are emphatically connected. God does not want sacrifice, but justice. Justice
becomes the most prominent way of fulfilling the will of God. This led to the
still widespread conviction that justice and morals were brought into the world
only by monotheism and could not be maintained without it. The construction
of paganism implies the idea of lawlessness and immorality. This is, of course,
a polemical distortion. The gods, above all the sun-gods (Shamash in Mesopotamia,
Re in Egypt), watched over the keeping of the laws and acted as judges.
In Egypt, moreover, there is the idea of a general judgment of the dead, which
constitutes a first step toward a theologization of justice. But it is true that no
god other than YHWH or Allah ever acted as legislator. The idea of justice is
divine, but the formulation and promulgation of specific laws is the task of the
king. In Egypt, the laws were never codified, and Mesopotamia had law books
but no law codes. Every new king was free to promulgate his own laws and
was not bound to an existing legislation. The Torah was the first attempt at
encountering ancient religions 30
creating a real law code not to be superseded by any future legislation. This
was a revolutionary step by which the law—and with it religion itself, whose
center the law constituted—became independent of any political government.
The ideas of divine legislation, and not only codification but also revelation
and canonization, are closely connected. The law formed the content of the Sinai
revelation, and its codification in the various law codes in Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy formed the core of the evolving canon.
Bibliography
Dunand, F. “Les syncrétismes dans la religion de l’Égypte gréco-romaine.” In Les
syncrétismes dans les religions de l’antiquité, ed. F. Dunand and P. Levêque. Études
préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire romain 46. Leiden: Brill, 1975.
Fowden, Garth. Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Hengel, M. Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh. v. Chr. Tübingen: Mohr, 1969.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. “The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State.” In
Momigliano, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University
Press, 1987.
Peterson, E. Heis Theos: Epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche
Untersuchungen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1926.
———. Monotheismus als politisches Problem. Leipzig: Hegner, 1935.
———. Theologische Traktate. Munich: Kösel, 1951.
Porter, Barbara Nevling, ed. One God or Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient
World. [Chebeague, Maine:] Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2000.
Schindler, Alfred, ed. Monotheismus als politisches Problem: Erik Peterson und die
Kritik der politischen Theologie. Studien zur evangelischen Ethik 14. Gütersloh:
Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1978.
Van Seters, J. In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins
of Biblical History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
White, H. G. E., ed. and trans. Ausonius. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1985.
31 monotheism and polytheism
Ritual
Jan Bremmer
Readers of this book would, of course, expect a chapter on ritual.
Yet they may well be surprised that such expectations would
not have been shared by most 19th-century readers. In fact, our modern usage
of the term ritual is barely older than just one century. During most of the 19th
century, ritual signified a text, a scenario, or even a liturgy. As such, it was regularly
used in connection with the books of the Veda or the Rituale Romanum,
the standard manual for the Roman Catholic mass. It was only toward the end
of that century, around 1890, that the term started to be used in its modern
meaning of repetitive, symbolic behavior. This development coincided with a
general shift in anthropology and classics toward the observation of behavior
instead of an interest in myth and origins.
Yet in the first decades of “the ritual turn,” the main semantic content of the
term remained the notion of fixity and routine, although it now was also realized
that ritual need not always be religious. This gradual development of the
notion of ritual is perhaps the reason that no consensus has been reached
about its content. It is used for acts, such as initiation, that can last many years,
but also for acts that may last only a few minutes, such as a short prayer.
Moreover, as it is a modern term, there are no clear equivalents in the areas we
are interested in. We have therefore always to keep in mind that our approach
is a typically modern one, and not one necessarily recognized by the ancients
themselves.
Recent studies increasingly show that the ancient Mediterranean and Near
Eastern world was one where rituals and myths regularly traveled from one
culture to the next. Yet whoever tries to survey rituals in the whole of this area
will soon notice that it is impossible to work from the same basis in every
area. It is fairly clear that the enormous philological challenges in the ancient
Near East, such as the study of Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite, Ugaritic, Lycian,
Luvian, Hurrian, and Hittite materials constitutes, have induced scholars to
concentrate much more on the decipherment of their texts than on the applica-
tion of anthropological models to their meanings. Moreover, in the case of ancient
Israel and Egypt, the largely prescriptive character of their ritual texts
generally prevents us from seeing how ritual worked in concrete everyday life.
And our information about Roman ritual is often dependent on scattered notices
of only a few authors, with the honorable exception of the Acts of the
fratres Arvales. Elsewhere in Italy several longer ritual texts have turned up
but, unfortunately, they are very hard to read, such as the Umbrian Tabulae
Iguvinae from Gubbio or the even harder to read Etruscan liber linteus found
in Croatian Zagreb.
In contrast, we are extremely well informed regarding ancient Greece. Epic
and lyric, comedy and tragedy, lexicography and travelers’ accounts, archeology
and epigraphy—all have contributed to our knowledge of the various
Greek rituals, which we can sometimes follow over many centuries. Yet even in
ancient Greece we can regularly see a ritual only through a glass darkly, since
public rituals received more attention in our sources than private rituals, and
the tradition often concentrated on the less “normal” aspects of rituals. Still, it
is especially the study of Greek ritual that has been most innovative in recent
decades, with Walter Burkert leading the way. From the middle of the 1960s
onward, he started an approach to ritual that in the course of time would combine
a variety of approaches, such as functionalism and structuralism as well as
narrative and symbolic modes of analyses—an eclectic tradition also embraced
by the present author.
An immense number of rituals in our area could be studied, such as the rites
of passages of the life cycle (birth, maturity, wedding, death), the seasonal rituals
(New Year), or the crossing of one area into the next. Naturally it is impossible
to look at all of them in the limited space at our disposal. Instead, I will
concentrate on those rituals that have traveled from one culture to the next or
that have given rise to comments by members of a different culture. In this
way, we can see something of a shared ritual landscape between the Mediterranean
and the ancient Near East. We will first look at some more extended rituals,
the so-called scapegoat rituals and the Old and New Year festivals. Subsequently,
we will pay attention to the “simpler” rituals of processions and
purifications, and we will conclude with some observations on the muchdiscussed
relationship between ritual and myth.
Scapegoat rituals from Ebla to Rome
Let us start with a ritual that nicely illustrates the permeability of ancient Mediterranean
and Near Eastern cultures. Although some recently published cuneiform
tablets seem to suggest that the scapegoat ritual was already practiced in
Ebla in the 3rd millennium bce, it is only in Hittite texts that we can start to
read a fully elaborated ritual. A fine example is the prescription of Ashella, a
man of Hapalla (a city-state in southeast Anatolia), which dates to the 13th
century bce:
33 ritual
When evening comes, whoever the army commanders are, each of them
prepares a ram—whether it is a white ram or a black ram does not matter
at all. Then I twine a cord of white wool, red wool, and green wool, and
the officer twists it together, and I bring a necklace, a ring, and a chalcedony
stone and I hang them on the ram’s neck and horns, and at night
they tie them in front of the tents and say: “Whatever deity is prowling
about(?), whatever deity has caused this pestilence, now I have tied up
these rams for you, be appeased!” And in the morning I drive them out to
the plain, and with each ram they take 1 jug of beer, 1 loaf, and 1 cup
of milk(?). Then in front of the king’s tent he makes a finely dressed
woman sit and puts with her a jar of beer and 3 loaves. Then the officers
lay their hands on the rams and say: “Whatever deity has caused this pestilence,
now see! These rams are standing here and they are very fat in
liver, heart, and loins. Let human flesh be hateful to him, let him be appeased
by these rams.” And the officers point at the rams and the king
points at the decorated woman, and the rams and the woman carry the
loaves and the beer through the army and they chase them out to the
plain. And they go running on to the enemy’s frontier without coming to
any place of ours, and the people say: “Look! Whatever illness there was
among men, oxen, sheep, horses, mules, and donkeys in this camp, these
rams and this woman have carried it away from the camp. And the country
that finds them shall take over this evil pestilence.” (Trans. Gurney
1977: 49)
This is not the place to analyze the ritual in great detail, but we may note the
following characteristics. First, the cause of the ritual is pestilence. Second, the
ritual is not tied to a specific date in the calendar, but is executed ad hoc. Third,
the means of transfer can be either an animal or a woman. Fourth, the scapegoat
is not sent off without decoration, but the animal is adorned with a necklace,
a ring, and a precious stone and the woman is finely dressed. Fifth, the
scapegoat is sent away to the land of the enemies and offered to the hostile deity
who caused the pestilence. Finally, it is the king and the army commanders
who play the main roles in the ritual.
It is highly interesting to note that this ritual spread in various directions in
the ancient Near East. It traveled south, where we find it in the Old Testament
in Lev. 16, with its description of the Day of Atonement, which has also given
us the modern term scapegoat ritual. According to this description, the high
priest Aaron selects two goats (v. 5), the cheapest of the domesticated animals.
After a lottery, one of them is assigned to YHWH, whereas the other is meant
for Azazel, an obscure deity or demon (vv. 7–10). Aaron then transfers the sins
of the Israelites onto the goat by laying his hands on it (v. 21). Finally, somebody
(not further specified) brings the goat to the desert (v. 21). We owe a few
additional details to the Mishnah, treatise Yoma (4.2a; 6.6a), including the
goat’s adornment with a crimson thread around its head.
encountering ancient religions 34
It is not difficult to see the parallels between the Hittite and Israelite rituals.
Yet at the same time, we also notice that the Israelites appropriated the ritual
into their own sacrificial, theological, and calendaric system. The ritual is now
supervised by the high priest, not the king; the object to be removed no longer
is pestilence or another illness, but the sins of the people; the victim is only an
animal, since the Israelites did not sacrifice adult humans; the mention of
YHWH and Azazel seems to point to the earlier polytheism of the Israelites;
and, last but not least, the occasion is not an incidental event, such as a pestilence,
but the ritual instead is attached to a fixed point in the religious year.
Due to our poor knowledge of the prehistory of the Old Testament, we have
no idea when the Israelites took over this specific sacrifice, but we are better
informed regarding the Greeks. It probably was in the earlier archaic age (700
bce?), at a time of intensive contacts with northern Syria and late Hittite states,
that the Greeks appropriated the scapegoat ritual. Our best testimony derives
from a passage in Harpocration, where the so-called pharmakos ritual is
described:
They used to lead out at Athens two men to be purifications for the city at
the Thargelia, the one for the men, the other for the women. [The historian]
Istros [ca. 250 bce] has said in Book 1 of his Epiphanies of Apollo
that the word derives from a proper name, Pharmakos [Scapegoat], and
that he stole the sacred bowls of Apollo and was caught and stoned by
Achilles’ men and that the rites performed at the [festival of the] Thargelia
are a representation of this. (Harpocration, s.v. pharmakos = 334 FGrH,
frag. 50)
The very late, but reliable rhetorician Helladius (ca. 400 ce) adds:
It was the custom at Athens to lead out two scapegoats, one for the
men and the other for the women, for purification. And the men’s scapegoat
had black dried figs round his neck and the other had white [figs]. He
(the source) says that they were called symbakchoi. This purification was
an aversion of pestilential diseases. It took its start from Androgeos the
Cretan, after whose unlawful killing a pestilential disease fell upon the
Athenians, and the custom prevailed always to purify the city with scapegoats.
(Apud Photius, Bibliotheca 534a Henry, trans. D. Ogden)
Other examples, such as those from the cities of Colophon, Abdera, and
Massilia, help us to see that the Athenian scapegoat ritual was somewhat
closer to the Hittite example than the Israelite ritual was. First, the scapegoats
were human. Second, the ritual was directed against the plague. Apparently,
it could be performed ad hoc, but it had also been incorporated into the calendar,
as the ritual was performed yearly in early summer on the first day of a
two-day festival of firstfruit offering and seasonal renewal for Apollo, the
35 ritual
Thargelia. Third, in the city of Colophon the scapegoat carried dried figs,
bread, and cheese. Fourth, the scapegoat was led by fellow citizens out of the
city in a procession, but the Greeks did not send their scapegoats into enemy
country or offer them to a hostile deity. Our sources are curiously uninformative
about the final fate of the historical victims, but in some cases we hear of
the scapegoats being chased over the city’s border or thrown down a cliff into
the sea. The most important difference, however, is the Greek stress on the
purification of the polis. Whereas among the Hittites the king and the army
commanders play the main role in the ritual, in Greece it is the city that needs
to be cleansed.
Our final example derives from Rome. Roman history tells of three members
of the family Decius (father, son, and grandson) who dedicated themselves and
the lives of their enemies to the gods of the netherworld in three successive battles
(340, 295, and 279 bce). This so-called devotio took place when the battle
threatened to turn against the Romans. At those critical moments, the commander-in-chief
offered his life together with that of his enemies as a ransom
for the whole of the Roman army. However, the historicity of all three examples
is somewhat debated, and the information given by the historian Livy
(8.10.11) that a commander could offer a common soldier to die for all has
much to recommend it as the usual practice. Still, throughout Roman history,
the image remained prevalent that at some time in the past, army commanders
did sacrifice themselves in order to save the army and with it the Roman community.
It is clear that the Roman example is not only geographically but also
ritually furthest removed from the Hittite example, since we no longer have to
do with a plague or famine and there is no calendaric aspect to the ritual. Yet,
once again the community is saved by the sending away of one element of that
community.
These rituals can be approached in several different ways. We can look into
their origins and work out the similarities and differences. We can also look
into their functions. What did the participants expect would result from their
actions? In this respect, we notice that similarity in structure need not mean
similarity in meaning: for example, the sending away of an animal can imply
the removal of a pestilence, but also the removal of sins. Yet the rituals are also
expressions of gender and class: the Hittites send away a woman or an animal,
but not a man, whereas in Greece the human scapegoat often was a male slave
or a male member of the lowest classes. Moreover, we can see the varying loci
of power in the respective societies. Among the Hittites the king and army
commanders (as in Rome) play the leading role, but in Israel it is the high
priest, and in Greece the city as a whole acts out the ritual. Finally, the ritual
reflects the distinction us/them (we and the enemy), but also the opposition
culture/nature (the goat is sent into the desert). Ritual thus not only communicates
information about society, its values, and its power structures, but it also
socializes the members of a community, since through its representations
(however implicit) they learn what is important for the community as a whole.
encountering ancient religions 36
Old and New Year festivals
Let us continue with a brief look at the rituals that accompanied the transition
into a new year. Even in our own Western, ever-rationalizing world, this transition
is often accompanied by ritual acts, such as the production of noise and
fireworks or the organization of parades. Yet, equally, for many people the
transition will hardly be noticeable, and life carries on as usual. In the ancient
world, on the contrary, the transition was dramatized through some striking
ritual acts. During the Sacaea, a Babylonian festival that apparently was taken
over by the Persians (but the reverse cannot be excluded: our sources are too
scanty to decide the matter), something rather odd took place: the masters
served their slaves, a criminal acted for five days as king and even had access to
the legitimate king’s harem. Perhaps not surprisingly, the criminal was hanged
at the end of the festival.
A comparable humiliation of the king took place at the Mesopotamian
Akitu festival, the New Year festival that goes back to at least the middle of the
3rd millennium bce; this strongly suggests that the Sacaea was also some kind
of New Year festival. The Akitu festival was celebrated in the main cities of the
ancient Near East, such as Uruk, Nippur, and Babylon. On the fifth day of this
festival, which lasted the first eleven days (a clear indication of its importance)
of the first month, Nissan, the king was led into the main temple complex of
Babylon, where his regalia were taken away by the high priest. After the king
had stated that he had not neglected the gods, the priest brought out his scepter,
loop, mace, and crown from the cella of the god Bel/Marduk and returned
them to the king. The next day the king brought the gods out of the temple to a
special house (the so-called Akitu house) outside the city in a procession, before
returning at the end of the festival. This procession was evidently so important
that after the defeat of the Persian Empire the Seleucid kings continued
this ritual tradition. Yet rituals are rarely kept unchanged over long periods
of time, and a recently published fragment of an astronomical diary from the
time of King Antiochus III (ca. 242–187 bce) shows that the ritual had been
adapted to the Hellenistic ruler cult, since on the eighth day the king performed
“offerings for Ishtar of Babylon and the life of King Antiochus.”
As in the Mesopotamian ritual of royal humiliation, the role reversal between
slaves and masters also took place elsewhere. In 1983 a Hurrian-Hittite
bilingual text (ca. 1400 bce) was found in Hattusha that contained an Epic of
Release, that is, the release of slaves and the remission of debts, such as we
know from the Hebrew Jubilee festival (Lev. 25). The bilingual text does not
mention the ritual itself, but only supplies the accompanying myth in which the
highest god of heaven, Teshub, meets with the sun-goddess of the earth, Allani,
for a meal in which the primeval gods, who had been banished to the underworld,
also participate; they even sit at the right hand of Teshub. The celebration
of the temporary suspension of the cosmic order surely accompanied the
temporary suspension of the social order on earth. In other words, the myth
37 ritual
about the primeval gods was associated with a ritual of reversal between masters
and slaves.
Our inference of a role reversal is supported by a Greek ritual during which
masters and slaves reversed roles. In a poem on Greek origins for Roman festivals,
the Roman playwright Accius (ca. 170–86 bce; frag. 3) tells us about the
Athenian Kronia, a festival celebrated on the twelfth day of the first Athenian
month: “In nearly all fields and towns they happily feast upon banquets, and
everyone waits upon his own servants. From this has originated also our custom
that the servants eat with their masters in the same place.” Accius evidently
wanted to give the etiology of the Roman Saturnalia, but by doing so
he also related an interesting element of the Athenian Kronia, the festival in
honor of Cronus, one of the Titans. As was the case with the Hurrite/Hittite
festival, the Athenians clearly practiced a reversal of roles between slaves and
masters; moreover, as other sources tell us, on this day the slaves had a wonderful
time. Now we know that Attic comedy used expressions such as “older
than Cronus” and “older than Cronus and the Titans.” Evidently, the antiquity
of this divine generation became proverbial at a relatively early stage of Greek
tradition. Cronus and his fellow Titans thus can be legitimately compared to
the “primeval” gods in the Hurrian/Hittite epic. The mention of the city of
Ebla in this epic shows that the origin of this ritual of reversal has to be looked
for again in northern Syria, from where it traveled to the Hittites and, in a different
way, to the Israelites, as was the case with the scapegoat ritual.
The Kronia, in turn, influenced the Roman Saturnalia, in which on December
17 the god Saturnus was freed from his usual chains. The fettering of a god
was not unusual in the Mediterranean world and was concomitant with a loosening
of the social order, often by creating a carnivalesque atmosphere. This
was also the case in Rome, where during the Saturnalia the masters waited
upon the slaves, who could also put on the clothes of their masters. Moreover,
during the festival all Romans wore the pilleus, a cap that was symbolic of
manumission, thus indicating, in other words, a status raising of the slaves and
a status diminishment of the owners.
Yet such a status reversal was not limited to Roman males only. During the
Matronalia of March 1, the old Roman New Year, mistresses served dinner to
their slaves, and perhaps on that same day the Salian maidens, the obscure pendant
of the aristocratic Salii priests, performed a sacrifice, dressed with important
articles of clothes of the Salii. Finally, and perhaps more clearly, during the
Nonae Capratinae, a festival held on July 5, Roman handmaidens put on the
clothes of their mistresses and dined in huts, while their mistresses waited upon
them. Moreover, mistresses and handmaidens sacrificed together, which was
normally unheard of in Roman society. Finally, handmaidens also mocked
passersby (who were frequently more important) and asked them for money.
These different dates point to an important phenomenon in the ritual year of
the ancient Mediterranean and ancient Near East: winter, spring, summer, and
autumn all had festivals that were to some extent New Year festivals. In most
cases a change from scarcity to plenty or a period of leisure after laborious efencountering
ancient religions 38
forts will have sparked this feeling of a new beginning. And evidently, in no
way could the transition be better and more clearly marked than by a reversal
of the normal social order. This reversal could be expressed in different ways.
In the autocratic societies of the Near East the most illuminating way was the
temporary deposition of the king; in the more aristocratic and (relatively) democratic
slave-owning societies of Greece and Rome, the main reversal was between
masters and slaves or between mistresses and handmaidens. In the latter
case and in the wearing of the pilleus, we noticed a change of clothes. As even
today we change clothes for weddings and rituals, graduations and installations,
so also in antiquity change of clothing was one of the most important ritual
markers.
What was the function of such a reversal of roles? Undoubtedly, earlier generations
of scholars were often too generalizing in their analysis. Against scholars’
natural inclination to look for profound causes, we must always keep in
mind that, in the absence of a leisure industry, rituals in antiquity were often
one of the most important sources of entertainment and fun. These reversals
must have provided slaves and women with a highly welcome break in their
often monotonous lives. At the same time, masters and mistresses must
have played along, as they knew that the normal order would be restored at
the end of these festivals and thus their place in society would be confirmed
once more. The festivals will therefore have had a different meaning for the
varying social actors, although our sources are totally silent about their feelings.
On the other hand, the temporary reversal of roles could also tempt people
to try a permanent change of social roles. The Greeks in particular noticed
that festivals were often occasions for revolution and regularly guarded their
cities during the festivals of Dionysus, a god particularly connected with reversals.
It is not surprising, then, that the end of this period was dramatized by
certain ritual exclamations or, as in the case of the Athenian Anthesteria, by the
burning of the phallus that had been carried along during the main procession.
Processions and purifications
Having looked at some larger and more complicated rituals, let us conclude
with two kinds of rituals of a more limited scope: processions and purifications
(especially purification as a physical act that employs blood, water, or fumigations).
Processions are a phenomenon found all over the world and a good example
of a more limited ritual, which often does not last longer than a few
hours. Yet it is rarely a ritual in its own right. Processions are usually “framed”
(Erving Goffman’s term) by a special occasion that lends them their importance
and atmosphere. Just as there is an “atmospheric” difference between a
wedding and a funerary procession, so also as pure show the procession of a
Roman triumph was evidently far superior to a procession for a Greek sacrifice.
Two aspects are particularly important in processions: (1) the spatial arrangement,
which often takes the form of leaving the city or entering the city;
39 ritual
and (2) the ability of processions, the major ones in particular, both to serve as
a means of self-definition for a community and to articulate power relations
between the full members of a community and those with fewer rights.
Let us look at a few examples. Herodotus (2.58) thought that compared
with the Egyptians, the Greeks had only recently introduced processions.
This is hardly correct, since processions are often portrayed in Mycenaean iconography
and are even mentioned on Linear B tablets, but the reason that
Herodotus thinks so perhaps is (in addition to the usual claim of Egyptian priority)
the unusual splendor of some of the Egyptian processions. For example,
he was clearly greatly impressed by the boat procession at Bubastis (near modern
Tell Basta in the eastern Delta), during which men and women arrived in
separate barges in honor of the goddess Bastet. The boat procession is a good
example of what Graf (1996) calls a centripetal procession—a procession toward
a religious center (processions could also be centrifugal, leading away
from the center, as in the case of the Babylonian New Year festival). On the
boats, some women continuously clattered their castanets, whereas some men,
as was usual in ancient Egypt, played flutes—an interesting gender distinction
in music! Moreover, the women, when passing a town, brought their barges
close to shore in order to shout abuse at other women and to lift their skirts,
which indicates that this procession was framed by the atmosphere of a New
Year festival with its concomitant temporary subversion of the social order. Interestingly,
however, the men apparently did not participate in this kind of
(sexual) banter and preserved their dignity. Could the relation between the
sexes in Egypt not tolerate a mocking of the males?
The Greek term for festive procession was pompÁ, the procession that usually
culminated in an important sacrifice. The most impressive example was
undoubtedly the procession during the Athenian Panathenaea festival. During
this procession the Athenian citizens traversed the most important points
of their town, such as the commercial center, the Kerameikos, and the Agora,
and finally reached the great altar of Athena on the Acropolis. The procession
was mainly organized on egalitarian principles in groups according to deme
and thus constituted a display of the unity of the Athenian population; those
who were unable to participate undoubtedly lined the streets to admire the
procession. At the same time, however, the procession demonstrated the power
and status of the Athenians, since their colonies and allies had to parade a cow
and panoply, whereas the daughters of metics (immigrants without citizen
rights) carried parasols for the upper-class females. Yet processions could also
demonstrate modesty. When, during the most important Spartan festival, the
Hyacinthia, aristocratic girls rode in race-carts or carriages made in the shapes
of griffins or goat-stags, the daughter of King Agesilaus traveled in a vehicle
that was “no more elaborate than that of any other maiden” (Xenophon).
At some point, the Greek pompÁ was taken over by the Romans, who called
many of their processions pompae, such as the funerary procession (pompa
funebris), the circus procession (pompa circensis), and the triumphal procession
(pompa triumphalis). Yet these processions, especially the last, lacked the
encountering ancient religions 40
egalitarian character of the pompÁ, which must have struck some non-Greeks
as rather special, as seen in an astronomical diary from Hellenistic Babylon:
“In that month I heard as follows: King Antiochus went victoriously into the
cities of Meluhha [i.e., Egypt: ca. 169 bce], the citizens performed a pompÁ
[Babylonian pu-up-pe] and ritual acts according to Greek custom.”
Let us conclude our exploration of ritual with some examples of purification
on a small scale. Even today, purity is a highly esteemed value in Judaism and
Islam. They clearly continue a preoccupation with pollution that can be followed
via the Qur’an and the Old Testament into the earliest-known stages of
religion in the ancient Near East. Purity was also a highly important value in
ancient Greece, but the Romans were clearly much less concerned with it, and
their more reticent attitude in this case has been continued by Western Christianity,
where, as a whole, the problems of purity and pollution have been relegated
to a minor role on the religious stage.
Purification is often concerned with uncontrollable events in human life,
such as birth and death, illness and bloodshed. Sex, too, is an area where purity
regulations circumscribe activity. In Israel contact with a person suffering
from a venereal disease meant washing one’s clothes and taking a bath (Lev.
15). Water was, indeed, the most common means of purification in the ancient
world, as it is still today with the ritual baths for Moslems and Jews. However,
there were also other, more unusual means of purification, which apparently
traveled across religious boundaries, such as the use of blood and fumigations.
The Old Testament prescribed blood to purify a house that was infected with
spots of green or red mold, just as purifying blood was applied to people suffering
from leprosy, also a type of mold (Lev. 14). In Babylon, the blood of a
suckling pig was spattered on the bed of a person possessed by an evil spirit,
whereas in Greece deranged people themselves could apparently be showered
with the blood of a slaughtered piglet. Perhaps we find here the idea of blood
as a life-giving substance that could revive people or houses in a controlled ritual
context. As with the ritual of the scapegoat, one can hardly escape the impression
that ritual purification with blood also traveled from West Semitic
peoples to the Greeks.
This transfer also seems to have been the case with the use of sulfur as a
means of purification. In Babylon, people possessed by ghosts could be treated
by fumigation with a mixture of all kinds of substances, ranging from jackal
dung and human bone to sulfur, but we find the latter substance also in ancient
Greece: in the Odyssey 22.481–94 sulfur is used to purify Odysseus’s bloodstained
house after the murder of the suitors, and in the Hippocratic corpus it
is ritually applied to heal breathing problems and problems in the womb. Once
again, Babylonian influence is probable.
With these examples we come to the end of our discussion of rituals. It seems
clear that the ancient Near East was an important generator of rituals for the
rest of the Mediterranean. At the same time, we also notice that Egypt remained
outside the Near Eastern sphere of ritual influence. Its geographical
and, perhaps, political position enabled it to remain virtually untouched by
41 ritual
Anatolian and Mesopotamian influence in this respect. As in other aspects of
its religion, such as its fascination with the afterlife, Egypt remained very much
a loner in the world of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
Ritual and myth
The nature of the connection between ritual and myth is a complicated problem,
which has only gradually become better understood. In the 19th century,
scholars concentrated virtually completely on myth, but after the “ritual turn”
at the end of that century the relationship between myth and ritual became a
problem that had to be explained. The first to do so seriously was British classicist
Jane Harrison, who suggested several possibilities. In 1890 she stated
that myth is mostly “ritual practice misunderstood”; in her Themis, however,
she not only suggested that myth and ritual “arise pari passu” but also that
myth “is the plot of the drÃmenon” (the thing acted out or ritual) (1912: 16,
331). This latter statement was developed by the so-called English-Scandinavian
Myth and Ritual School, which concentrated on the Old Testament and
the ancient Near East. These scholars thought that myth and ritual were so
closely related that one could reconstruct a ritual from a myth, even when the
ritual was no longer known. Finally, the last quarter of the 20th century witnessed
two new, converging approaches. Burkert claimed that initiation rituals
are “demonstrative accentuations of biologically programmed crises, menstruation,
defloration, pregnancy, and birth. . . . The roots of the tales go back to
verbalized action, whether ritualized or not” (1979). As both myth and ritual
go back to “action programs,” they cannot be reduced to one another but originate
pari passu. This suggestion was taken up by H. S. Versnel (1993: 135)
and applied to seasonal festivals. From an analysis of the Kronia he inferred
not only a pari passu origin but also a correspondence in structure and atmosphere
of myth and ritual.
This stress on the correspondence and pari passu origin of myth and ritual
rightly points out that neither symbolic process can be separated from the
other. Yet as soon as we look at specific complexes of myth and ritual, it becomes
clear that these claims not only go too far—we do not know anything
about the actual beginning of the myth and ritual of the Kronia—but also neglect
to isolate important differences between myth and ritual, of which I will
mention three briefly.
First, myth is never a complete reflection of ritual but only selectively focuses
on certain parts of it. During the Babylonian New Year ritual, when the king
was temporarily dethroned, a version of the Enuma Elish, the epic of creation,
was recited, telling of how Marduk, the supreme god of Babylon, was imprisoned,
beaten, and wounded. Clearly, the myth does not mention the details of
the ritual, neither does its structure completely correspond with the much
longer ritual. Yet the myth corresponds in mood with the ritual, highlights its
encountering ancient religions 42
most dramatic part (the dethronement of the king), and gives it added meaning
by closely identifying the king with Marduk.
Second, the myths of the scapegoat ritual in Greece usually speak about the
death of a scapegoat, whereas the ritual enacted only its expulsion from the
community: what is symbolic and reversible in ritual often becomes realistic
and irreversible in myth.
Finally, myths are more mobile than rituals. Although we have seen several
migrating rituals, it is clear that myths can travel much more easily than rituals.
A good example is the Sumerian myth of the flood, which not only was appropriated
by the Greeks and Israelites but even traveled to India, before being
spread all over the world by Christianity. One myth can even be attached to
several rituals. In ancient Greece the myth of the conveyance by Orestes and
Iphigeneia of a very ancient statue of Artemis was told in places as far apart as
mainland Greece, Sicily, and Latium. In all of these cases, the myths also become
attached to preexisting rituals. In fact, despite claims made to the contrary,
myths virtually always appear to be later than the rituals they are connected
with, wherever we have sufficient evidence to determine their priority
(further see Myth).
Bibliography
Auffarth, C. Der drohende Untergang. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991.
Bremmer, J. N. Greek Religion. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
———. “‘Religion,’ ‘Ritual’ and the Opposition ‘Sacred vs. Profane’: Notes Towards
a Terminological ‘Genealogy.’” In Ansichten griechischer Rituale: Festschrift für
Walter Burkert, ed. F. Graf. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1998.
———. “The Scapegoat between Hittites, Greeks, Israelites and Christians.” In Kult,
Konflikt und Versöhnung, ed. R. Albertz. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001.
Burkert, W. Homo necans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
———. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979.
Graf, F. Nordionische Kulte. Rome: Institut Suisse de Rome, 1985.
———. “Pompai in Greece: Some Considerations about Space and Ritual in the Greek
Polis.” In The Role of Religion in the Early Greek Polis: Proceedings of the Third
International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult, ed. R. Hägg. Swedish Institute at
Athens. Stockholm: Paul Ånströms Förlag, 1996.
Gurney, O. R. Some Aspects of Hittite Religion. Schweich Lectures 1976. Oxford: Oxford
University Press for the British Academy, 1977.
Harrison, Jane Ellen. Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens. London and New
York: Macmillan, 1890.
———. Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912. 2nd ed., Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1927. Rept., Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing
Company, 1962.
Helck, W., and E. Otto, eds. Lexikon der Ägyptologie. 7 vols. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1972–92.
Hoessly, F. Katharsis: Reinigung als Heilsverfahren. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2001.
43 ritual
Linssen, M. J. H. “The Cults of Uruk and Babylon.” Diss., University of Amsterdam,
2002.
Parker, Robert. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1983.
Pongratz-Leisten, B. Ina sulmi irub: Die kulttopographische und ideologische
Programmatik der akÂtu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1. Jahrtausend
v. Chr. Mainz: Zabern, 1994.
Rix, H. Kleine Schriften. Bremen: Hempen, 2001.
Versnel, H. S. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, II: Transition and Reversal
in Myth and Ritual. Studies in Greek and Roman Religion 6.2. Leiden: Brill, 1993.
encountering ancient religions 44
Myth
Fritz Graf
Myth is, at a first glance, the English derivative of a Greek word,
mythos (word, utterance)—yet another legacy from the classical world, or so it
seems. This often has made Greek mythology not simply paradigmatic, but
even normative as to what myth is: whatever stories from a growing range of
cultures came into scholarly consciousness between the Renaissance and the
early 20th century were measured and classified against this background. But
things are not as simple as this. Applied to narratives, the Greek word as used
in the late 5th century bce most often denoted invented, fictional stories. Plato
opposed these stories to the truth, which could be verified or falsified by logic.
This became the dominant meaning: rhetorical theorists turned it into their term
for “fiction that lacks any resemblance to empirical reality,” and Roman theory
translated it as fabula; this became the term current in most European languages
until the 18th century. It is immediately clear that this ancient meaning
of the word is not ours: whatever our definition of myth—and there are more
than we would wish or care for (Doty 1986: 9–10)—we understand myths as
relevant and, in some deeper sense, true stories. Most scholarly attempts to understand
myth try to filter this truth, be it historical, psychological, religious,
ritualistic, scientific, or even biological, from the stories in an operation first
described by the Greek philosopher and essayist Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca.
50–120 ce): “Our aim is to purify the mythic, making it yield to reason” (Life
of Theseus 1; cf. Detienne 1981). This considerable semantic gap between ancient
and modern meaning is easily explained: myth is a term of modern scholarship,
invented by 18th-century German Hellenist Gottlieb Christian Heyne,
who latinized the Greek word to mythus and radically changed its semantics.
The western Asiatic mythological koinÁ
When, in 1764, Heyne created our term, Greek mythology was the only
known mythology of any Mediterranean culture: in this respect, it was the
paradigm and norm for what myth was understood to be. The process that culminated
in Heyne’s new terminology and its concomitant radical reevaluation
of mythical narrative had started with the confrontation of Greek myths with
the traditional stories of newly discovered ethnological cultures, and it had
found its first result in the rejection of Greek myths as “a heap of chimeras,
dreams, and absurdities” (“un amas de chimères, de rêveries et d’absurdités”;
Fontenelle 1724: 187). Heyne reacted to this by giving these same narratives a
radically different status—no more absurd inventions (fabulae), but the result
of primeval human thinking about the world and the container of age-old human
memories (mythi). His contemporary Johann Gottfried Herder made the
specific mythology into one of the defining characteristics of each ethnic group
(Volk) and moved away from Greek mythology to his native Germans. All
three—Fontenelle, Heyne, Herder—are exponents of the modernization of Europe
that came with the Enlightenment, its trust in reason as the highest authority,
and its struggle against a culture that was dominated by religion. The
labeling of mythical narratives as fiction in later antiquity had successfully neutralized
the stories of the pagan gods in the new Christian world, where there
was only one story that dealt with the divine, and that was revealed truth.
Fontenelle’s rejection was the rational reaction to such stories; Heyne’s reevaluation
turned myths into a new sort of truth, not revealed by God but formulated
by the budding reason of early humans, and it invested myth with the
dignity of an ancestral heirloom; Herder’s move clad them with the halo of being
a nation’s autochthonous truth, starting mythology on a pernicious path
the led to the synthetic national mythologies of the 20th century. The romantics
discovered and promoted Indian mythology as yet another and much older
mythology than the Greek. Greek mythology, however, remained in its splendid
isolation; whoever believed, as did Herder and the German romantics, that
mythology was the creation of the Volksgeist did not care about diffusion and
influences anyway. With the exceptions of Creuzer’s easily and quickly refuted
theories of an Indian missionary movement and of some diffusionist theories
in the 18th century, scholars did not try to connect Greek myths with other
mythologies, not the least because the mythical narratives of the neighboring
Bronze Age Near East were still unknown and the Old Testament was still
read as history. With the quasi-simultaneous publication of Max Müller’s and
Adalbert Kuhn’s essays on comparative mythology in the mid-1850s, the IndoEuropean
hypothesis—the derivation of most Western languages, from Indian
Sanskrit to Irish, from a common ancestor, the hypothetical “Old Indo-European”—began
to move Greek mythology out of its historical isolation: Greek
myths were read as related to the myths of other Old Indo-European cultures,
such as Vedic India or the Iran of the Avesta. Whereas the symbolistic
interpretations of Müller and Kuhn were quickly dismissed by their contemporaries,
the wider assumption of Indo-European mythology was developed by
scholars as different as Georges Dumézil and Jan Puhvel (Puhvel 1987), and it
is still very much alive.
With the discovery of the ancient Near Eastern cultures, the decipherment of
encountering ancient religions 46
cuneiform writing, and the growing understanding of the languages involved—
Akkadian and Sumerian in the 19th century, West Semitic languages and
Hittite in the early 20th century—an entirely new body of texts came to be
known; as a corollary, the Old Testament began to be read as yet another collection
of traditional stories. But these new discoveries rarely have affected the
study of myth and the normative status of the Greek stories; Egyptian mythology
always stood somewhat apart—not the least because of the absence of
long mythological narratives—and the Mesopotamian literary texts were of
exclusive interest to biblical scholars and never to the specialists of Greek mythology.
It is symptomatic that the two major collections of translations—
Hugo Gressmann’s (1909) and James B. Pritchard’s (1950)—presented those
texts as relevant for the study of the Old Testament only. Only after it became
clear, through Hrozný’s decipherment in the 1920s, that Hittite, the language
of the Late Bronze Age rulers of Anatolia, was an Indo-European language did
Hittite mythological texts begin to become visible outside their narrow discipline,
and this in turn has kindled interest in the other west Asiatic mythologies.
The decisive step was when Hans Gustav Güterbock published the narration
about Kumarbi, whom he provocatively named “the Hurrian Cronus”
(Güterbock 1946): this alerted some students of Hesiod to Near Eastern mythology
(it certainly helped somewhat that, after all, the Hittites were Indo-Europeans).
In the half century since then, insight has been growing that Late
Bronze Age and early Iron Age Greece participated at the margins of the great
ancient Near Eastern cultures (most impressively West 1997); in the last couple
of years, serious research into this field finally has begun.
West Asiatic mythology crystallized into often impressively long written
texts: narratives from Sumerian and Akkadian Mesopotamia, turned classics
and preserved, among other places, in the splendid library of Assurbanipal
at Nineveh, with the Gilgamesh Epic as the most brilliant example; Hurrian
and Hittite texts, among them the Cycle of Kumarbi, from the Hittite capital
Bogazköy (ancient Hattusha), but also a much-earlier version of Gilgamesh;
the Baal cycle and other narratives from Ugarit; and finally the Greek texts of
Homer and Hesiod, not to mention other lost epic poems from archaic Greece.
They form a significant and still-growing body of texts. They share not only
themes, scenes, and often enough structures, but also, on a more elementary
level, the fact that behind these written texts there must be a vast continent of
formalized oral storytelling—an insight less important because, in the understanding
of many scholars since Heyne and Herder, myth is a mainly oral phenomenon
than because oral transmission between the cultures and language
groups best explains the wide diffusion of and the somewhat fuzzy correspondences
between these stories.
Whereas it is firmly established that there was a long oral tradition immediately
behind the poems of Homer and Hesiod, whatever their exact origin, the
oral background of western Asiatic narrative texts is less well researched. But
some Hurrian texts set out with the singer’s announcement “I (will) sing”
(Schuol 2002), as do a few Akkadian texts (Dalley 1989: 204), while the stan-
47 myth
dard version of Gilgamesh opens with the promise of the singer: “I shall tell
. . . , I shall teach. . . .” Although this does not necessarily point to a contemporary
oral culture, as the opening of Vergil’s Aeneid teaches us, in this case it
might do just that: in all the west Asiatic cultures, literacy was not widespread
enough to serve as a vehicle of diffusion for these stories. Another
Akkadian text opens with a dialogue between the singer and audience in which
the bard offers a choice of themes for selection (Wilcke 1977). This looks even
more like the literarization of a common oral situation—which is not to deny
the strongly scribal character of many of the texts that have been handed down
from scribe to scribe and that contain that archetypical scribal phenomenon,
the list, as does the long conclusion of the Enuma Elish.
Not all similarities between the stories inside this narrative koinÁ, however,
need to be explained by diffusion. The Mesopotamian primeval deity Tiamat is
split in two to create sky and earth; Egyptian Nut (Sky) is lifted high above
her consort Geb (Earth); Hesiod’s Uranus (Sky) is violently separated from his
wife Gaea (Earth): these are local variations of the much more widely attested
theme of separation of earth and sky (Staudacher 1942), and the local variations
are widely different from each other. This, then, is a certain example of
a nearly universal motif; less certain is another one, the flood story. Although
attested in widely different cultures (Dundes 1988), the extant stories in Mesopotamia
(Atrahasis, the Nineveh version of Gilgamesh), the Old Testament
(Gen. 6–9), Syria (Berossus, FGrH 680; Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess 12–
13), Anatolia (Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.624–700), and Greece (Caduff 1986;
no trace in Homer or Hesiod) share so many details that diffusion is a more
economical hypothesis, despite the marked local variations.
Even less doubtful is the closeness between versions of what is called the
Succession Myth, which is present in the Hurrian Kumarbi Cycle, several
Mesopotamian stories (the best known being the Babylonian creation epic,
Enuma Elish), narrations about Baal in Ugarit and other West Semitic cultures,
and several Greek narrations, most prominently Hesiod’s Theogony.
In Hesiod’s familiar version, primordial Chaos (Void) is succeeded by Gaea
(Earth). Chaos becomes the parent of Erebus (Deep Underworld) and Night,
the dark roots of the cosmos; Gaea gives birth to Sea, Mountains, Nymphs,
and Uranus (Sky, the upper levels of the cosmos). Gaea makes Uranus her consort,
but when he begins to prevent their offspring from leaving her womb, she
persuades her youngest son, Cronus, to castrate his father. Cronus takes over
the kingship; in order to stay in power, he swallows all the children that his
wife Rhea bears him, until Rhea, frustrated, feeds him a stone disguised as a
baby in swaddling clothes and secretly gives birth to Zeus. Again, the youngest
son deposes his father and, together with his siblings, takes over the world. But
before establishing his own kingship, Zeus is challenged by the Titans, his father’s
siblings, and by Typhon, a monster created by Gaea herself and sent
against her grandson (whom she previously had helped in his fight against the
Titans). Both times, Zeus is victorious and then proceeds to “attribute the honencountering
ancient religions 48
ors to the gods.” (It is likely that the battle with Typhon is an addition to
Hesiod’s story, and in later accounts Zeus is also attacked by the Giants, other
sons of Gaea, before he is able to establish his own rule.)
In the Cycle of Kumarbi (Hoffner 1998: 40–42) the generation of gods who
are ruling under their king, who is the supreme god of the actual pantheon, is
preceded by several earlier generations of heavenly kings; the succession of
these kings was often violent, and the rule of the present supreme god has to be
defended against attackers: the Succession Myth narrates how the present order
of things came into being and notes that this order did not go unchallenged.
In the Hittite Song of Kumarbi, the primeval King Alalu is deposed by
Anu (Sky), his vizier; Anu’s son and vizier, Kumarbi, then deposes Anu. During
the struggle with Anu, Kumarbi bites off Anu’s testicles and swallows them,
thus impregnating himself; in a complex action that is only partially understood,
he gives birth to Teshub (the storm-god), Teshub’s vizier Tasmisu, the
Aranzah River, and several other gods. From that moment on, the rivalry between
the ruling Kumarbi and the pretender Teshub dominates the song cycle.
Kumarbi seems to have tried to swallow Teshub again but was tricked into
eating an object, perhaps a stone. Teshub might have become king already
in the Song of Kumarbi, but in other narratives, Kumarbi challenges him
through several intermediaries, among them the monstrous sea serpent
Hedammu (Song of Hedammu) and the stone giant Ullikummi, fathered by
Kumarbi through intercourse with a huge rock.
There are other succession stories as well. The Hellenistic author Philo of
Byblos told a complex Phoenician version, allegedly translated from the Phoenician,
which leads from Elioun and Beruth to Gaea and Uranus, whose son El
deposes him, to be succeeded (not necessarily violently) by a triad of gods who
dominated the actual pantheon, Astarte, Zeus Demaros, and Adodos (Hadad/
Baal) (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 1.10). Hellenization is obvious, although
its exact extent is difficult to determine. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle knows
at least the last two generations: El and Baal enter into a violent conflict, and
Baal fights and kills Yamm (Sea), El’s ally. Baal fights other monsters as well,
among them Mot (Death); this fight seems to end in a tie (Wyatt 1998: 34–
146). Zeus’s battles echo these fights, but they resonate also with the Babylonian
creation epic that pits Marduk, the Lord of Babylon, against Tiamat, at
the end of a succession of several divine kings (Dalley 1989: 228–77). Some of
these fights—Marduk against Tiamat, Baal against a dragon, Teshub against
Illuyanka, Zeus against Typhon, YHWH against Leviathan—make use of yet
another story pattern, the fight against a dragonlike monster. This motif has
also an Indo-European pedigree, but is more universal.
The complexity of this web of mythological narratives is obvious; no simple
explanation will do. But it is also obvious that it can be the result of only a
very long and very intricate process of communication—of stories heard in
marketplaces, in caravanserais, in royal courts and the wide spaces around
the temples, which were adapted by their singers to ever-new conditions and
49 myth
then more-or-less accurately remembered by travelers and merchants, brought
home and fed into yet another local network of storytelling, with its own pressures
and laws.
It was not only the contingencies of human memory and linguistic competence
that shaped those stories. They had to respond to their societies’ needs
and values. Noah “was a righteous man,” and he “walked with God” (Gen.
6.9), and Atrahasis was one “whose ear was open to his god Enki, he would
speak with his god and his god would speak with him” (Atrahasis 4.18–20):
both theocratic Babylon and priestly Israel focused on the hero’s piety. In
Ovid’s Rome, however, Deucalion is a lover of justice, and piety in the sense of
punctual ritualism (“god-fearing”; Metamorphoses 1.322) is reserved for his
wife, Pyrrha. The Enuma Elish puts much emphasis on Marduk, his temple,
his cult, and all the honors that the gods decree for him, and its narrative is
more interested in diplomacy among the gods than in the battle: the poem was
recited during the annual festival of Marduk in Babylon, and the urban audience
had little interest in deeds of war—in marked contrast to Gilgamesh.
Hesiod’s Theogony, on the other hand, avoids any reference to specific cults,
puts heavy emphasis on the systematic construction of the world through the
relevant genealogies, and describes in detail how Cronus castrated Uranus and
how Zeus fought Typhon: its intended audience must have varied, but shared
an interest in battle scenes, as did the audience of the Iliad. If a traditional tale
were to survive, it either had to be tied to a very specific, recurrent occasion,
such as a festival, or it had to adapt to ever-new conditions; presumably, it was
not the most successfully adapted stories that made it into the frozen state of a
written text, but rather those that offered enough semantic gaps for new interpretations
that aimed at opening up the now unchangeable story to its new au-
dience.
The way that these stories are conditioned by their societies is even more visible
in anthropogonical myths, stories about how humans came into being; after
all, these mythical narratives aimed at explaining the condition humaine in
a given society at a given time. In the priestly account of Genesis, God created
humans “in our image, after our likeness, to have dominion” over all other living
beings (Gen. 1.26), or God created man “from the dust of the ground” and
put him in paradise, where the first couple swiftly transgressed limits and was
sent out to suffer toils and death (2): whether guilty or not, humans are very
close to God. In both the Babylonian Atrahasis story and the Enuma Elish, humans
are created from clay and “flesh and blood” of a slaughtered god (Qingu,
Tiamat’s evil vizier, in the Enuma Elish) in order to “bear the load of the gods.”
In the theocratic state, humans, although by their nature akin to the gods, are
supposed to be their servants and slaves. In Hesiod’s Theogony, humans simply
appear at some point, break away from the gods, and challenge Zeus through
the trickster Prometheus. Zeus, however, creates woman, “the evil good” without
whom man cannot live: humans, although deeply indebted to Zeus for
their paradoxical stand in life, keep their distance and take a proud stance
against the gods. In the late 5th century bce, we begin to hear that Prometheus
encountering ancient religions 50
shaped humans from clay: although now the Greek trickster follows even more
closely the paradigm of Mesopotamian Ea/Enki, humans owe their existence
not to Zeus, but to his cunning adversary (see Cosmology, Time, and History).
Myth and ritual
The Babylonian creation epic was recited (or even enacted) at least once during
the New Year festival: on a surface level, the myth talks about the foundation
of the temple in which the audience was assembled—as the Homeric Hymn
to Apollo narrates the foundation of Apollo’s temples on Delos and in Delphi
(it presumably was composed from two hymns, one addressed to an audience
on the island of Delos, a second one in Delphi). The Delphic myth also
explains the lavish sacrifices connected with the performance of the oracle:
Apollo instituted them in order to feed his priests. Somewhat more complex is
the ritual connection of the Hittite myth of Telipinu (Hoffner 1998: 15–20).
For some unknown reason, Telipinu disappeared and “removed grain, animal,
fecundity, luxuriance, growth, and abundance.” A catastrophe ensues: “Humans
and gods are dying of hunger.” The gods search for him, finally find him,
and seem to perform a rite to make him come back (“I have just sprinkled your
paths with sweet oil”). Telipinu returns, seething with anger: a second ritual is
needed to banish his anger into bronze vats in the underworld: “That which
goes into them doesn’t come up again.” Finally, prosperity and peace return,
and Telipinu again “looks after the king and the queen.” The text ends with
what looks like a further description of ritual: before the god stands a pole or
tree on which a sheepskin bag is suspended; it contains every desirable thing,
from “animal fecundity and wine” to “plenty, abundance, and satiety.” We
lack information as to the circumstances in which the text was recited, but it
seems obvious that it gives a divine history to a set of rituals performed in connection
with the royal couple.
In all these cases, as in many others, myth provides ritual with a divine
foundation: the ritual is explained, legitimated, and removed from human influence.
In some cases, such as the Delphic part of the Hymn to Apollo, the
mythical narration is etiological, giving what Malinowski memorably called a
charter. But this is not what the “Myth-and-Ritual School” meant to do (and
Malinowski had developed his insight in reaction to this school): Frazer and
his Cambridge colleagues and followers who were later designated by that
nickname went considerably further. In their reading, every myth was generated
and shaped by a ritual; furthermore, as Frazer and, in his wake, the biblical
scholar Samuel H. Hooke theorized, the ritual in turn reacted to early human
preoccupation with fertility of fields, animals, and humans and intended
to promote it (Hooke 1933). The Babylonian creation myth was not only generated
by the Babylonian New Year ritual; the ritual intended to preserve nature’s
fertility through the crisis of the year’s end. Fertility as sole and only
horizon of ritual and myth was questioned rather quickly, and Jane Ellen Har-
51 myth
rison, whose first book (1903/1922) on Greek ritual had firmly adhered to
Frazer’s paradigm, replaced this in her second book (1911/1927) with
Durkheimian society and its collective concerns of cohesion and continuity.
The link between ritual and myth, however, remained, although its theoretization
became more and more complex (Versnel 1993).
Some facts, however, seem undisputed. Rituals and myths often are connected:
countless etiological stories explain the origin of a ritual or a festival.
Storytelling, however, follows very different rules from ritual performance, and
both motifs and entire stories migrate from culture to culture, seemingly without
any ritual, and they can attach themselves to new rituals in other cultures.
This, then, argues against any genetic connection between myth and ritual; if
ever there was one, this was so far distant in prehistory that we cannot even
guess at it. But attach to each other they do, and often such myths follow a narrative
structure that is comparable to the ritual structure: the recombination of
myth and ritual does not seem entirely arbitrary. A handful of structural patterns
seem to dominate most rituals as well as most myths, such as the Quest
Pattern (Propp 1928). The explanation that makes such structures genetically
independent from each other and sees them as basic structures of human experience
(Burkert 1979) is as good as any other and elegantly moves the question
away from any genetic relationship between myth and ritual.
The ritual performance of the Babylonian creation myth during the New
Year festival has always been crucially important for any myth-and-ritual theory.
This performance dramatizes the implications of the ritual cycle in which
it was embedded. The beginning of the new annual cycle is marked by a ritual
process that moves from the dissolution of the old order to the onset of the
new one: the mythical narrative turns this into a beginning on a cosmic scale
that is not only felt as the success of creation but as the euphoria of “catastrophe
survived”: the Babylonian narration highlights Marduk’s victory, not the
coming-into-being of the cosmos. The Athenian festival cycle that surrounds
the beginning of the year expresses a similar transition, although in a more
complex way. Two of its festivals, the Kronia and the Panathenaia, focus on
Cronus, the god whom Zeus deposed and who ruled in the Golden Age, before
culture, work, and society; and on Athena, the goddess who gained Athens
(thanks to her benefactions) and who will forever protect her city. In this instance,
there is no public performance of mythical narration comparable to
that in Babylon, but Athena’s winning of the city is represented on the west
pediment of the Parthenon and thus was visible as soon as the festive procession
entered the sacred precinct. This procession prominently displayed and
carried up to the goddess a sacred tapestry (peplos) embroidered with an image
of Zeus’s victory over the Giants, a battle nearly as decisive for Zeus’s reign
as Marduk’s against Tiamat was for his, and one in which Athena played a
prominent part at the side of her father. In yet another way, the Israelite Sukkot
festival combines the specific ritual forms of inversion and dissolution at the
turn of the year (Exod. 34.22)—erecting temporary twig huts, dancing, and
wine drinking—and the agricultural horizon of harvesting (“when you gather
encountering ancient religions 52
in from the field the fruit of your labor”; 23.16) with the narration of Israel’s
stay in the desert during the return from Egypt: a detail of the foundation story
of Israel serves as explanation and legitimation of the rite and, at the same
time, puts it into the wider horizon of a fundamental new beginning. The Roman
Parilia, yet another festival where ritual inversion and a focus on agrarian
life are dominant (this time the purification of the sheep), is explained with the
story of how Romulus founded Rome.
In a more performative reading, the recitation of the creation myth during
the New Year ritual makes the renewal happen, as it does in certain (“magical”)
healing rites. An Akkadian incantation against toothache starts with a
long narrative of creation, and many Egyptian and Greco-Egyptian spells make
use of either a known or an otherwise unknown mythical story that serves as
the powerful antecedent and parallel to the problem in hand: the narration of
the one paradigmatic past event, when the gods easily solved the problem at
hand, once again will solve it. The memory of a powerful past event carries its
own performative power (see further Ritual and Magic).
Myth, history, and memory
In the cases of Israelite Sukkot and Roman Parilia, the myth that accompanies
the rite is no cosmogonical myth—the creation myth will become important
only for Rosh Hashanah, a New Year festival in postexilic Israel—but an event
that is, at least in its indigenous reading, part of Israel’s and Rome’s histories:
the exodus from Egypt and the foundation of the urbs.
Mythical narratives were often supposed to be closely connected with historical
events. In the view of many indigenous cultures, what we call myth is really
history: the Muses, patrons of storytelling, are daughters of Mnemosyne
(Memory), after all. In the view of many interpreters of myth, whether native
or not, mythical stories contain memories of historical events, albeit in a very
distorted form, and it was seen as the task of interpretation to formulate general
laws that would undo the distortion. This view is as old as Greek historiography
(Hecataeus, FGrH 1F1), and the methods of turning myth into history
varied widely, from simple rationalization to complex symbolical operations.
In monotheistic Israel, every intervention of God in the visible world—from
the creation to the ongoing protection of God’s people—is understood as history:
where God reveals the past, there is no place for myth. In contrast to this,
the surrounding polytheistic cultures knew stories that were similar to Greek
myths of gods and heroes: narratives featuring the gods only—such as the Babylonian
creation myth and the Theogony of Hesiod, the Kumarbi or Baal
cycles, or the Egyptian narrative of Isis and Osiris—and narratives that show
humans, often as protagonists, interacting with the gods—such as the
Gilgamesh poem in Mesopotamia, the story of Keret in Ugarit, the tale of
Appu in Anatolia, and the Iliad and Odyssey in early Greece. This is a function
of the fundamental dichotomy between immortal gods and mortal humans,
53 myth
and in the figures of both Gilgamesh and Homer’s Achilles human mortality is
explicitly problematized. In many narratives, the human protagonists are kings
of old or otherwise powerful people: only past humans of high distinction were
worthy of being retained in memory. Gilgamesh, “son of Lugulbanda, perfect
in strength,” is the king who built Uruk’s walls; the names of Lugulbanda and
Gilgamesh appear in the Sumerian King List of Uruk (although separated by
another name), and Gilgamesh is given a different father there, a high priest:
whatever the historical facts, already the Sumerians regarded Gilgamesh as
king of old (Dalley 1989: 40). Keret in the story from Ugarit is king of Khabur
and seen as an ancestor of the ruling dynasty of Ugarit (Wyatt 1998: 177), as
perhaps is Danel in the story of Aqhat. Priam is king of Troy; Agamemnon is
king of Mycenae, and his contingents are led by a host of local kings; Theseus
is king of Athens. Romulus, Numa, and Servius Tullius are kings in Rome, and
it reflects the insistence of the Romans that historians still believe in their historicity,
not on the basis of any factual evidence—Plutarch, at least, made no difference
between Theseus and Romulus. Only the Hittite narration of Appu has
a protagonist who is an ordinary citizen, albeit a very wealthy one. All these
protagonists directly interact with the gods: Gilgamesh resists being seduced by
Ishtar and suffers punishment for his temerity; Aqhat refuses to give his bow to
the terrible goddess Anat and also suffers; Keret is personally protected and
helped by El, who even creates a healing-goddess for him; the Trojan Paris is
rewarded by Aphrodite for his judgment; and the Olympians all take parts for
or against King Priam and his city. Romulus has a divine father; King Numa
has a divine lover, and he does not hesitate to interact with Faunus, Picus, and
even Jupiter in a battle of wits that he wins (Ovid, Fasti 3.275–344).
With these narratives, scholars sometimes felt at a loss about nomenclature:
were they dealing with “myths,” “legends,” or “epic poems”? The question is
irrelevant at best, misleading at worst: it is a matter of our own categories, and
there is no scholarly consensus as to what these categories mean. Legend is
as modern a term as myth, and it is often used for Christian stories, such as
saints’ lives, or for stories that claim a historical background (Sagen in the terminology
of the Grimm brothers); neither of these associations is desirable. If
myth, furthermore, is seen not as a specific narrative but as the plot structure
that transcends individual narratives—a meaning that takes account of the
many variations, spoken and written, of a given story—and if myth and epic
poem are not mutually exclusive categories, then an epic poem is one specific
concretization of a myth or of an entire cluster of myths, as is the case with
Gilgamesh and the Iliad, compositions in the prehistory of which shorter individual
songs (Einzellieder) are still preserved or recoverable. The difference
between myth and epic poem, then, is the result of the creative power with
which the individual narrator reacted to his myths and the pressures of the
performative situation. In other words: both the Middle High German
Nibelungenlied and Wagner’s Ring Cycle are concretizations of the same myth.
Whether any myth contained historical memories or was generated by a specific
historical event—as the Nibelungenlied contained memories of the situaencountering
ancient religions 54
tion of central Europe at the time of the Big Migrations or as the Chanson de
Roland had as an origin a specific event during a campaign of Charlemagne—
is very much a matter of scholarly research and debate, and recent examples
also show that such a historical core does not explain much of the narrative. It
would be as futile to reconstruct the history of early Sumerian kingship from
Gilgamesh as it proved futile to reconstruct the Trojan War from the Iliad, despite
our growing awareness of Troy as a historical city-state at the margins of
the Hittite Empire. Mythical narratives are no faithful memories of things past;
they are construed according to the memory that every generation believes it
needs for its own purposes.
Triumph and demise of mythology
Some narratives had a larger impact than others and traveled from one culture
to another—not just as story patterns, but as story plots that included
both specific actions and specific actors. Versions of Gilgamesh were widespread
around Mesopotamia; Akkadian, Hurrite, and Hittite versions were
kept in the Hittite capital Hattusha-Bogazköy in the later 2nd millennium, and
the best-known version belonged to Assurbanipal’s library in Nineveh. Another
story, Nergal and Ereshkigal, was found in widely different versions in
Akhenaten’s Egyptian capital (modern Tell el-Amarna) and, several centuries
younger, in Mesopotamia. We might be tempted, in these cases, to talk about
literature, not mythology, and compare the fate of Homer’s poems: copies
of the Iliad and the Odyssey made their way to Alexandria and Rome, with
the Latin translation of the Odyssey being the first Latin literary text, the
Odusia of Livius Andronicus (ca. 240 bce); and we could point out that most
modern libraries have copies and translations of all three epics. But the distinction
between mythology and literature is tenuous and somewhat arbitrary:
modern writers still generate versions of these stories, following once again
the story plot (or myth) that transcends an individual version. And while most
modern versions never attain long-standing societal relevance, some achieve
at least a short-lived relevance, such as Christa Wolf’s Cassandra or Joyce’s
Ulysses.
But this only, once again, points to the transitory character of most scholarly
categories. More urgent, in the present context, is another phenomenon: the
migration and wholesale acceptance not of a single story, but of an entire body
of stories, a mythology. The archives of Hattusha not only contained the different
versions and translations of Gilgamesh, they presented an extraordinary
collection of mythical texts written in Hittite, Hurrian, and Akkadian and
concerning divinities who were Hittite (such as Telipinu), Hurrian (such as
Kumarbi), Mesopotamian (such as Anu or Enki/Ea), and Ugaritic (such as Baal
or Anat). One reason for this variety seems to lie in the character of Hittite
domination: the empire was multicultural, and the cults that the king attended
to were not just his own ancestral cults, they comprised the worship of various
55 myth
divinities all over his kingdom. Myths were indispensable for the performance
of cult—hence their presence in the royal archives. Not that this explains everything;
the versions of the Gilgamesh story, for example, must have been collected
for reasons not very different from those that make the story still worth
reading and thinking about some millennia later: the story has no connection
whatsoever with cult but talks about general themes—the quest for friendship
and the urge to overcome mortality.
The surprising western expansion of Greek mythology had different reasons.
Not much after 800 bce, the first Greek settlers arrived on Ischia, off the coast
of Campania, and in the next two centuries they built their cities around the
southern coast of the Italian mainland and on Sicily. The colonists exploited Italy’s
fertile soil and rich metal deposits; merchants must have preceded the colonists.
The first images of Greek myths appear not much later, as do the first
examples of writing. Before 500 bce, Etruscan cities had taken over Greek
gods such as Apollo, both his name and his iconography; the Romans had built
a temple to the Dioscuri, the Castores, in their Forum, adorned another temple
with pedimental sculptures presenting Athena and Heracles, and equated their
Volcanus with the Greek Hephaestus: the fragment of a vase image showing
how Hephaestus introduced the drunken Dionysus to Olympus was found on
the Forum next to the Volcanal, Volcanus’s cult site. By 300, Etruscan bronze
mirrors depict countless scenes from Greek mythology, often with the names
of the persons added, in native alphabet and native spelling: gods and heroes
of the Greeks had become a firm part of the Etruscan imaginary world, and
scenes that depict not a Greek but a (presumably) Etruscan myth are rare
indeed. When Roman literacy sets in, the staggering extent of the takeover
becomes visible. Whereas many Roman gods retain their Latin names—in
Ennius’s famous list of the twelve Olympians (Annales 62–63), only Apollo is
Greek—their iconography and their stories derive from Greece. Roman mythology
presents itself mainly in the accounts of the historians: Romans read
their nondivine myths as easily in a historical key as their Hellenistic Greek
contemporaries did with their epic poetry. The quality of the images and the
stories must have had an important hand in this expansion, as had the lifestyle
of the Greeks, their architecture and technology; temple building, the symposium
on couches, the writing system were adapted, as well as stories and images.
The Iliad and the Odyssey, the Theban epics, and the feats of Heracles
fascinated Etruscans and Romans in the same way that the Gilgamesh story
had fascinated listeners in western Asia (and Gilgamesh, too, belonged to a culture
that set standards for life and technology), and many stories that arrived
in the West were far removed from any anchoring in cult and ritual. But they
in turn could be put to use for new etiologies or serve as models for new stories:
the Roman rite of praying with a covered head is explained by a story
from the mythology connected with Aeneas (Dionysius Halicarnassus, Roman
Antiquities 12.16.1), and the story of Numa, Faunus, and Picus is manifestly
influenced by Greek narratives. Scholars have argued that such stories were
“literary” and “poetic inventions” and therefore not “real” myths; but this
encountering ancient religions 56
argument rests on the romantic definition of myth as a story of hoary antiquity
and falls flat as soon as tradition and relevance, not age, are made the
main criteria.
The final test of Greek myth’s resilience came with the expansion of Christianity.
Confronted with the one living and revealed God, the gods of the
Gentiles became demons (1 Cor. 10.20–21), and their stories were turned into
exhibits in the court of public opinion: the easy life of the Greek gods, their
sexual appetites, and their sometimes negligent cruelty were ready proofs of
their bad character and of the satanic inspiration behind their cult. The Christians
treated the mythological narratives no differently from the way they
treated the Gospels: true accounts of life and exploits of the divine and human
actors. Such accusations were not exactly new: moralizing Greek philosophers
had condemned these same stories, from Xenophanes of Colophon and
Heraclitus of Ephesus onward (late 6th century bce). Plato joined them, advocated
heavy censorship of storytelling, and created his own philosophical
myths, as had well-meaning sophists. But immediately, interpretation came to
the defense of the traditional stories: what counted was not so much the surface
reading but an underlying philosophical or moral meaning; truth could be
distilled from the myths, if only they were read in the proper way. Generations
of philosophers developed allegorical readings, and by Hellenistic times, the
system was well in place (Dawson 1992); it was easily turned against the Christian
accusations. And once Christianity had changed from the small world of
marginal sectarians into a movement ready to convert entire cities and provinces,
positions were swapped once again. Mythical narratives were too well
embedded in the fabric of ancient culture and daily life to be excised or exorcised,
and Christian teachers used these same instruments of allegory in order
to tame the pagan stories for their own use. Seemingly without effort, the
mythical narratives could be made to teach the Christian message.
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encountering ancient religions 58
Cosmology: Time and History
John J. Collins
According to Greek tradition, Pythagoras “was the first to call the
sum of the whole by the name of the cosmos, because of the order which it displayed”
(Aetius 2.1.1). Cosmology, strictly speaking, is the rational discussion
of the cosmos, which developed in Greece from the 6th century bce onward.
The word is used more loosely to refer to any discussion of the nature and coherence
of the world. Such discussion can be found long before the beginnings
of Greek science and philosophy in the myths of the ancient Near East, especially
those that dealt with cosmogony or creation.
Creation myths
It is important to bear in mind that ancient religion was not dogmatic or systematic
in the manner of later Western faiths. There were no creeds to which
everyone subscribed. There were several creation myths in ancient Egypt. Each
city that rose to power formulated its own myth of creation. In the cosmogony
of Heliopolis, the creator-god was Atum; in Memphis, Ptah; in Hermopolis
and Thebes, Amun. Each cosmogony, however, had only one creator-god, and
he was credited with giving life to the gods as well as to humanity. The sun-god
Re appears in almost every creation account, and his name is often joined with
that of other creators (Amun-Re, Re-Atum). The actual process of creation
was conceived by human analogy. One model supposed that the origin of life
came from the creator’s semen. In the Heliopolitan cosmogony, Atum generated
the first divine couple from himself, either by masturbation or by spitting.
Another model associated the creative power with the utterance of a word. In
the Memphite Theology, Ptah creates “through what the heart plans and the
tongue commands.” A third model, based on the work of an artisan, was
exemplified by the potter-god Khnum. Life was often thought to have originated
on a primeval mound, which emerged when the primeval flood receded.
These Egyptian creation myths are remarkable for the lack of conflict in the
process. Egyptian history did not lack conflict, but the myths projected a sense
of stability and permanence. This stability was expressed in the concept of
maÚat, an all-embracing principle of order that governed all aspects of nature
and society. A creator-god such as Ptah and Atum was “lord of maÚat.” MaÚat
was sometimes portrayed as a goddess, Maat, the daughter of the sun-god Re,
who accompanied him as he sailed across the sky. The sovereignty of the creator-god
had its counterpart on earth in the rule of the pharaoh. The conflict
often encountered by the monarchy was acknowledged in the myth of Osiris
and Seth, but this myth too ended in stability. The evil Seth was defeated by
Horus, the posthumous heir of Osiris, who then became king on earth. The living
pharaoh was the embodiment of Horus, while the dead king, Osiris, was
ruler of the netherworld.
In contrast to the Egyptian creation myths, those of the Semitic world were
stories of conflict. The best known of these myths is the Babylonian Enuma
Elish, which casts Marduk, god of Babylon, in the role of creator. More precisely,
it distinguishes two stages in creation. In the beginning was a primordial
couple, Apsu and Tiamat, often understood to represent freshwater and saltwater
respectively, although this distinction is not explicit in the myth. The
mingling of their waters produces the other gods. The creation of the world is a
separate process. The young gods kill their father Apsu, but are then endangered
by the wrath of Tiamat. Marduk is the hero who does single combat
with Tiamat and kills her. In return, he is made king of the gods. From the carcass
of Tiamat he creates the world: He split her like a shellfish into two parts.
Half of her he set up as a sky and posted guards to make sure that her waters
did not escape. He further fixed the astral likenesses of the gods in the sky and
determined the months and the year. Finally he made humanity, from the blood
of Qingu, an ally of Tiamat, to serve the gods. Another Mesopotamian myth,
Atrahasis, describes a different occasion and process for the creation of humanity,
involving a mixture of the blood of a god with clay. The political overtones
of the Babylonian myth are transparent. If the gods need a strong monarchy
in order to ward off danger, so too does Babylon.
We do not have a story of the creation of the world from Syria or Canaan.
The god El is called father and is said to have begotten other deities. We might
infer that creation was conceived as a form of procreation. The closest analogues
to Enuma Elish in the Ugaritic literature are found in the myths of Baal.
These myths describe combat between Baal and Yamm (Sea) in one episode
and between Baal and Mot (Death) in another. What is at stake is the kingship
of the gods, under El. These myths are often viewed as cosmogonic, on the
grounds that they establish order in the universe. Support for this view comes
not only from the analogy with the Enuma Elish but from the frequent association
of creation with the defeat of a monster in biblical poetry (e.g., Job 26; Ps.
89.10 [= 89.11 Hebrew]). These combat myths suggest that creation, or the
order of the cosmos, is fragile and has to be reestablished periodically in the
face of recurring dangers.
encountering ancient religions 60
The canonical account of creation in the Bible (Gen. 1) is closer in spirit to
the Egyptian myths where a sovereign creator creates by his word, unhindered
by any opposition. (This is not necessarily to posit Egyptian influence. There is
some evidence that the biblical writers were deliberately rejecting the Babylonian
account of creation, as they use the word tßhôm, cognate of Tiamat, to refer
to the deep without personification.)
Tales of primeval conflict are also found in Hittite (Anatolian) mythology
(ANET 120–28). One such myth tells how Kumarbi attacked the king of
heaven (Anu) and bit off and swallowed his “manhood.” As a result he became
pregnant with three dreadful gods, including the storm-god. The end of the
myth is fragmentary, but it is likely that Kumarbi was eventually challenged for
the kingship by the storm-god. In another myth, the Song of Ullikummi,
Kumarbi rebels against Teshub, the storm-god. In this myth, Kumarbi impregnates
a rock and fathers a giant, Ullikummi, who wreaks havoc on heaven and
on earth. Eventually, the giant is crippled by the god Ea. This myth tells us incidentally
that the gods severed heaven from earth with a cleaver. Yet another
Hittite myth tells of a battle between the storm-god and a dragon, Illuyanka.
Greek mythology provides no comprehensive creation myth such as we have
in the Enuma Elish. Hesiod synthesizes a range of mythological traditions in
his Theogony. In the beginning was Chaos (a yawning void). Then came Earth,
Tartarus (a terrible place beneath Hades), and Eros. From Chaos came Erebus
(a dark region between Earth and the netherworld) and Night. Of Night were
born Aether and Day. Then Earth brought forth Heaven and the Sea. Then she
lay with Heaven and bore numerous gods. In contrast to Near Eastern mythologies,
Earth is begotten, not made. While it is not clear how Earth, Tartarus,
and Eros emerge from Chaos, the later stages of creation are explicitly sexual.
While Heaven and Earth are not absolutely primordial, they are the progenitors
of the great majority of the gods. Heaven (Uranus) is father of Cronus,
who in turn is father of Zeus, the eventual supreme god. Hesiod has his own
combat myth: the conflict between Zeus and the Titans and Typhon, which
ends with Zeus’s confirmation as king of the gods. This conflict is not related to
the creation of the world, however (see further Myth). The primeval character
of Earth in Hesiod is consonant with the view of later Greek philosophers such
as Aristotle that the world is eternal. This view was sharply at variance with
the prevalent belief in creation in the ancient Near East. According to Hesiod’s
Works and Days, the gods made the first human beings in the time of Cronus.
A quite different account of the origin of the world was proposed by Plato in
his dialogue the Timaeus. Plato reasoned that the world must be created since
it is visible and tangible, and all sensible things are in a process of change. The
creator, whom he calls simply “god,” desired that all things should be good
and nothing bad and therefore made the world as perfect as possible. Accordingly,
the cosmos became a living creature, endowed with soul and intelligence,
and may even be called a god itself. Because of its perfection, it was imperishable.
The emphasis on the goodness of creation is reminiscent of the biblical
account in Gen. 1 and made the Timaeus attractive to later Jewish and Chris-
61 cosmology: time and history
tian philosophers. Plato’s creator is a craftsman, a dÁmiourgos, like many of
the creator-gods of the Near East. As in the myths, creation is not fashioned
out of nothing. Where the myths began with unformed matter, or the biblical
“waste and void,” Plato posited invisible and formless space. Plato’s idea of
creation, however, was exceptional in the Greek world. Aristotle was more
typical in regarding the cosmos as a self-contained whole, ungenerated and imperishable.
Moreover, there is always some question as to how Plato intended
his myths to be understood.
Plato’s view that the initial creation was good was fully in keeping with the
ancient creation myths. Hesiod provides several explanations for evil in the
course of his Theogony and Works and Days (e.g., Pandora’s jar). Only the
Persian Zoroastrians, however, attempted to account for evil in the cosmogony
itself. In their account, two opposing cosmic entities existed from the beginning:
Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd), the wise lord who was god of light, and Angra
Mainyu (Ahriman), the god of darkness. These gods struggled throughout history.
In a variant of this myth, the opposing gods were twin offspring of one
supreme good god. The idea of a devil or Satan, which appears in Judaism in
the Hellenistic period and became very influential in Christianity, was probably
of Persian origin. The influence of the Persian myth can also be seen in the
Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls, which say that God created two spirits to govern humanity,
one of light and one of darkness.
The view of the world
Throughout the eastern Mediterranean world and Near East, the basic view of
the world in the earliest literature is tripartite, distinguishing heaven, earth,
and netherworld. The Egyptians variously described the heavenly realm as a
bird, a cow, a woman (the goddess Nut, balancing on her feet and hands), or a
flat plane held up by pillars. The sun-god Re was thought to traverse the
heaven by day and then journey back to the east through the netherworld at
night. After death, the soul or spirit had to encounter various dangers in the
netherworld, but the righteous person might hope to ascend to a blessed life,
either on earth or in heaven. The blessed abode of the dead is often called the
Field of Rushes or Field of Offerings. It is far removed from everyday human
life, but different texts seem to imply a location in the heavens or at the ends of
the earth. The hope of the righteous was also expressed in terms of joining the
stars and mingling with the gods in heaven.
In Mesopotamia, too, heaven was the abode of the gods (there were also
gods of the netherworld). Human beings, however, were restricted to the netherworld
after death, and this was a gloomy place. The futility of the quest for
immortality is the theme of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The quest takes the hero to
the ends of the earth to the abode of Utnapishtim, the flood hero, who had
been granted eternal life. The myth of Adapa, in contrast, tells of the ascent of
its hero to heaven, where he is offered eternal life, but rejects it because of the
encountering ancient religions 62
advice given him by the god Ea. The legend of Etana also tells of an attempt to
ascend to heaven, which apparently ended in failure. The general principle held
true: heaven was for the gods, humanity lived on earth and descended to the
netherworld after death. There is also some evidence in Mesopotamian traditions
for multiple heavens, but these had no effect on human destiny.
The most important Mesopotamian contribution to the study of the cosmos
was in the areas of astrology and astronomy. The Babylonians looked to the
stars for clues to the intentions of the gods. The practice of astrology implied
that the movements of the stars and human affairs were interconnected, as indeed
were other phenomena on earth, such as the flight of birds. But the Babylonians
also developed more scientific forms of astronomy, both by observation
and by mathematical calculation. There was no clear distinction between
astrology and astronomy. The movements of the stars were thought to be significant
for events on earth. The term Chaldean, which originally referred to a
tribe that rose to power in Babylon, was used to designate astrologers in the
Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Neither Syria nor Israel contributed much to the study of the stars. Astrology
was discouraged in biblical tradition because of the temptation to worship
the host of heaven, although there is evidence that some Jews practiced astrology
in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Here again the world was usually
seen as tripartite. In both Canaan and Israel, heaven was the abode of the heavenly
host, while dead human beings descended to a gloomy netherworld. There
is some evidence that exceptional individuals, including kings, might hope for
immortal life with the gods. The Bible allowed that a few individuals (Enoch,
Elijah) had been taken up alive to heaven. But such cases were exceptional. The
stars were the heavenly host, divine or angelic beings, who were sometimes
thought to intervene in human affairs.
The earliest Greek conceptions of the cosmos were very much like those of
the ancient Near East. The earth was a flat circular surface, surrounded by the
river Oceanus. The sky was a disk of comparable size above it, held up by pillars
guarded by Atlas (so Homer) or by Atlas himself (Hesiod). The gods were
variously said to live on Mount Olympus or in the aether above the sky. The
dead went down to Hades, beneath the depths of the earth, where there was
no joy.
Beginning in the 6th century, however, Greek cosmology was transformed
by several developments that would have long-lasting consequences far beyond
the borders of Greece.
First of these was the rise of a new approach to cosmology, pioneered by the
pre-Socratic philosophers. This approach favored explanations in terms of
matter, without positing divine interventions. Even when the philosophers
spoke of gods, they were not anthropomorphic in the manner of the myths, but
rather represented aspects of the cosmos. Of course the demise of the gods was
neither immediate nor complete, even in the domain of Greek philosophy, as
can be seen from the Timaeus of Plato. Plato not only defended the idea of a
creator, but argued that the world had a soul and bitterly attacked the materi-
63 cosmology: time and history
alistic view of the universe put forward by some philosophers. Other Greek
thinkers, such as the Stoics, dispensed with the creator and regarded the universe
itself as divine. The Stoics supposed that the universe was animated by
Pneuma (Spirit) or Logos (Reason), a fine fiery substance that represented the
active element in humanity as well as in nature. These Hellenistic concepts provided
a way of reconceiving older Near Eastern ideas. Egyptian maÚat and Israelite
wisdom were traditional concepts of cosmic order. Jewish Hellenistic writings
such as those of Philo show how such concepts could be given Platonic or
Stoic overtones in the Hellenistic period. Even those such as Jews and Christians,
who insisted on a creator-god and therefore found Plato more congenial
than they found the Stoics, reconceived their understanding of deity in terms
that were more cosmological and less anthropomorphic. In Hellenistic Judaism,
wisdom or spirit was considered to be the divine element in the universe,
which pointed beyond itself to a creator. In Stoic theology, the cosmos, animated
by spirit, was itself the deity.
The development of Greek astronomy led to a new view of the universe, significantly
more complex than the old three-tiered model. Pythagoras held that
the earth and the heavenly bodies were spheres moving in harmony. Plato accepted
the idea that the earth was a sphere and supposed that the moon, sun,
planets, and fixed stars revolved around it in their own orbits (Republic 10.
616–17; cf. Timaeus 36–39). With some variations, this model became widespread
in the Hellenistic period and later. Cicero, in the Dream of Scipio, posited
nine spheres. The outermost, the starry heaven, contains the whole and is
itself the supreme god. Beneath it are seven other spheres: Saturn, Jupiter,
Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. The ninth and central sphere, the
earth, is immovable and lowest of all. The model of the geocentric universe,
with various refinements, was given its classical expression by Claudius Ptolemy
of Alexandria in the 2nd century ce. The attempt of Aristarchus of Samos
in the 3rd century bce to argue for a heliocentric universe had little impact.
This new view of the universe is reflected in the Near Eastern cultures in various
ways, primarily in the belief in multiple heavens. An Egyptian depiction of
the cosmos from the Ptolemaic era shows the goddess Nut bending over the
world not once but twice. Jewish and later Christian apocalypses tell of visionaries
ascending through multiple heavens, typically seven, but sometimes three
and occasionally other numbers. These visionary texts are not concerned with
scientific cosmology, but they reflect the assumptions of their time about the
general shape of the universe.
Related to the interest in multiple heavens was the belief that the righteous
dead lived on in heaven with the stars. The epitaph of soldiers fallen at
the Battle of Potidaea in 432 bce says that the aether had received their souls,
the earth their bodies (IG I3 1179). The idea of heavenly immortality was given
philosophical nuance by Hellenistic philosophers, who associated the aether,
or upper heavenly regions, with the finest, most divine substance. Eastern peoples
related it to their own traditional beliefs. In Jewish apocalypses, astral
immortality meant joining the host of heaven or the angels. In the Hellenistic
encountering ancient religions 64
period, even Hades was often located in the heavens. The new view of the
world had no logical place for an underworld, although the old beliefs lived on
in popular religion. Plato’s pupil, Heracleides Ponticus, is said to have claimed
that the Milky Way was the path of souls passing through Hades in the heaven.
Jewish and Christian apocalypses located the torments of the damned as well
as the joy of the blessed in the heavenly regions.
Celestial eschatology tended to imply a negative view of the earthly regions.
The soul was weighed down by bodily existence and was liberated to rise up
after death. This tendency was taken to an extreme conclusion in late antiquity
in the gnostic cosmologies that saw the creator or demiurge as an evil figure
and that represented the creation of the material world as a fall. The material
world was then viewed as an evil place from which souls had to be saved by enlightenment
and ascent to the realm of spirit. This late antique view of the
world had come full circle from the insistence of the Bible and of Plato that
both the creator and the creation were very good.
Time and history
The ancient creation myths had implications for the understanding of time and
history, although they did not devote much explicit reflection to them. The
heavenly bodies were seen to regulate time. When Marduk fixed the stars in the
Enuma Elish, he established the months and the years. In the biblical account,
the world was created in six days so that God could rest on the Sabbath, completing
the week. According to Plato, who was vastly more systematic in his reflections,
time and the heaven came into being at the same instant. The sun,
moon, and planets were created in order to distinguish and preserve the numbers
of time. The myths generally implied a cyclic view of history. They described
not only the beginning of things, but paradigmatic events that could
be reenacted over and over. For the Egyptians, each sunrise recapitulated the
establishment of maÚat. For the Israelites, historical events such as the Exodus
or the return from the Babylonian Exile were reenactments of the victory of the
creator over the chaos dragon. From early times, Egyptians and Babylonians
were aware that all the planets revolved. Plato formalized the idea of a Great
Year—the period of time that it takes for the sun, moon, and five planets
to complete their rotations and return simultaneously to the same positions in
relation to the fixed stars. Plato suggested that the revolving Great Years were
punctuated by periodic disasters of fire and flood, which were reflected in
Greek mythology in the stories of the fall of Phaethon while driving the chariot
of the sun and the myth of Deucalion. The Stoic doctrine of ekpyrÃsis
(conflagration) also involved the periodic return of all things to the primal substance
and their subsequent renewal.
It was axiomatic in the ancient world that gods could intervene in human affairs
and implement their plans in history. Mesopotamian rulers often attributed
their rise to power to the plan of their patron deity. Homer’s gods acted
65 cosmology: time and history
purposefully, even if they were often at odds with each other. In most cases,
these divine plans concerned limited episodes. The biblical accounts of the
role of YHWH in the history of Israel are exceptional in their scope, spanning
several generations. Moreover, the opening chapters of Genesis provide an
account of early universal history, which forms a backdrop for the emergence
of Israel. Nonetheless, the biblical story of Israel stops well short of providing
a comprehensive view of all history. Such a view emerges only in the
apocalyptic writings of the Hellenistic period. In the Greco-Roman world, the
best analogue to the early biblical history is found in Vergil’s Aeneid, which describes
the emergence of Rome as the culmination of an epic history under divine
guidance.
Hesiod’s myth of the successive ages of humanity, in his Works and Days,
is important for the emergence of a concept of universal history. It is quite possible
that the poet is adapting a myth of Median or Persian origin, but this
is difficult to establish because of the notorious difficulty of dating the Persian
sources. Hesiod (Works and Days 109–196) enumerates five ages: first
the golden, then the silver, then the bronze. The fourth is not defined by a
metal, but is that of “the godlike race of heroes who are called demigods,
the race before our own.” The fifth age is that of iron, of which Hesiod says
that he wishes he had either died before or been born afterward. Since he
allows that something will come afterward, some people have supposed that
he expected a return to the golden age, but Hesiod does not say this. He
leaves the future open. The return to a golden age is suggested much later in
Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue, which refers to a “last age” predicted by the Cumean
Sibyl.
The division of history into epochs or saecula was developed by the Etruscans
and taken over by the Romans. A natural saeculum was the highest age a
human being could attain (approximately one hundred years). A civil saeculum
began with the founding of a city or state and lasted as long as any member of
the founding generation lived. The end of a saeculum, however, was not always
obvious and had to be inferred from signs given by the gods. Ten saecula were
allotted to the Etruscan people, after which they would disappear. In the mid-
1st century bce there was speculation about what point in the process had
been reached. On one interpretation, a comet that appeared after the murder
of Julius Caesar marked the end of the ninth saeculum and the beginning of the
tenth. The grammarian Servius (4th century ce) said that the “last age” of
Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue was the tenth. Whether this final age should be understood
in the context of Etruscan speculation is disputed.
The most elaborate division of history into periods in antiquity was that of
the Zoroastrians. The classic form of their theology of history is found in
the Middle Persian Bundahishn. According to this theology, the two opposing
primordial spirits, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, coexisted for three thousand
years before the creation of the world in its physical state. Thereafter world
history would last for nine thousand years, divided into three periods of three
encountering ancient religions 66
thousand years each. The first three thousand would pass according to the will
of Ahura Mazda, and the second three thousand would be a mixture, governed
by both gods. The third period is divided into three distinct millennia. The end
of each millennium is marked by tribulations and disasters, followed by the
coming of a new savior. The final battle would be fought at the end of the third
period. The final millennium is further divided into periods. The Bahman
Yasht reports a vision by Zarathustra of a tree with four metallic branches,
gold, silver, steel, and mixed iron. These are interpreted as representing four
historical periods. A variant of this vision, also in the Bahman Yasht, lists the
ages as seven in number.
The Persian texts are preserved in Pahlavi manuscripts from the 6th to 9th
centuries ce, but the division of history into periods is certainly much older
than this. Plutarch, writing around the late 1st or early 2nd century ce, gives
an elliptical account of the myth, which he derived from Theopompus (early
4th century bce). One god would dominate the other and be dominated for
three thousand years. For another three thousand they would fight and make
war. In the end the evil power would be destroyed. It is not clear whether this is
a somewhat garbled form of the myth known from later sources or whether it
represents a different division of history. It is clear in any case that the division
of history into millennia was known in Persian tradition before the Hellenistic
age. Some scholars have supposed that the Persian tradition of four ages symbolized
by metals, attested in the Bahman Yasht, underlies Hesiod’s schema of
four declining ages. Such a proposal is difficult to verify because of the late
date of the Persian sources, but this kind of periodization is an integral part of
Persian cosmology, while it is exceptional in Greek tradition.
In Jewish apocalyptic writings of the Hellenistic period, history is sometimes
divided into ten generations, a schema most probably derived from the Persian
millennium. This division is frequently found in the Jewish and Christian Sibylline
Oracles. So, for example, in Sibylline Oracles books 1–2 history is divided
into ten generations, punctuated by the flood in the fifth generation and culminating
with a conflagration. These oracles sometimes incorporated the work
of pagan Sibyls, and so the question arises whether the tenfold division of history
was a feature of the Sibylline genre outside Judaism. The only evidence for
this, however, is Servius’s interpretation of Vergil’s last age as the tenth, in the
4th century ce. The evidence suggests that the use of Sibylline Oracles to provide
a comprehensive overview of history was a Jewish adaptation of the
genre.
Other schematizations of history were also popular in Jewish and Christian
tradition, notably the sevenfold division derived from the days of creation or
from the idea of a sabbath. Christian writers such as Lactantius in the early 4th
century ce held that the world was in the 6th and final millennium of its history.
Lactantius drew on a wide range of ancient philosophical and mythical
speculations about the cosmos, including the late Persian Oracle of Hystaspes,
a work that has sometimes been regarded as Jewish. The syncretistic character
67 cosmology: time and history
of late antiquity is shown by the difficulty of distinguishing Persian, Jewish,
and other traditions in texts such as this.
Cosmic eschatology
The periodization of history is closely related to the expectation of an end of
history or of the world. Ancient Near Eastern myths, such as the Enuma Elish,
saw the establishment of kingship as the end of a process. Insofar as one might
speak of a goal in history, it was the establishment of a definitive, lasting kingship.
In the Bible, this was provided by the Davidic dynasty, which was supposed
to last forever. When the Judean monarchy was dissolved by the Babylonians
in the 6th century, hopes for the future focused on the restoration of the
Davidic line. Sometimes this was expected to usher in a virtual golden age (e.g.,
Isa. 11.6: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb”). A Babylonian prophecy from
the 6th century bce speaks of a king who would rule the entire world and
whose dynasty would stand forever and exercise authority like the gods. Later,
Vergil’s Aeneid promised Rome an imperium without end, and the Fourth Eclogue
described the transformation of the earth.
One widespread motif relating to the hope for definitive kingship envisioned
a sequence of four kingdoms and a fifth. Herodotus noted a sequence of empires
in Asia: Assyrians, Medes, Persians. Since the Medes never ruled in the
West, this sequence is probably of Persian origin and viewed the Persians as the
final, definitive empire. In the Hellenistic era, the sequence was extended to include
Macedonia and finally Rome. This schema could be used in the interests
of imperial propaganda, but it could also be used for subversive purposes. In
the Bahman Yasht, the fourth kingdom is identified as “the divs with disheveled
hair,” an unflattering reference to the Greeks. The implication of the vision
is that this kingdom will be overthrown at the end of the millennium. The
Jewish Book of Daniel is more explicit. Daniel sees a statue made of different
metals representing a declining series of kingdoms. (This vision is closer to the
Bahman Yasht than to Hesiod, insofar as the final kingdom is a mixture of iron
and clay.) In the end, the statue is destroyed by a stone representing the Kingdom
of God, which presumably would be represented on earth by a Jewish
kingdom.
The classic expressions of cosmic eschatology are found in Jewish and Christian
apocalypses. The Hebrew prophets had spoken metaphorically of the
end of the world in describing the destruction of specific places. Beginning in
the 2nd century bce, however, such language is used more literally. The Apocalypse
of Weeks in 1 Enoch says that at a fixed point in the future the world
will be written down for destruction, and the old heaven will be taken away
and replaced with a new one. The apocalypse of 4 Ezra, written at the end
of the 1st century ce, provides for a period of primeval silence between the
destruction of the old world and the new creation and resurrection of the
dead. The Book of Revelation in the New Testament also predicts the destrucencountering
ancient religions 68
tion of this world and the creation of a new one. Revelation provides for a
thousand-year reign on earth for the just before the new creation. The popular
use of the word millennialism is derived from this motif in Revelation. The
motif of a final millennium in history, however, had older roots in Persian
tradition.
The final conflict in apocalypses such as Daniel and Revelation has much in
common with the old creation myths of the ancient Near East. In Revelation,
the angel Michael casts a dragon down from heaven, and there are also beasts
on land and sea. In the new creation, the sea (which was personified in the old
Canaanite myths) is no more. In these texts, imagery that was used in the
myths to describe the beginnings of the cosmos are projected into the future, to
describe its consummation. It is likely, however, that the apocalyptic view of
history is also influenced by Persian tradition. In the Zoroastrian myth, each of
the last three millennia is characterized by tribulations and disasters, followed
by the coming of a new savior. At the end of the final millennium, those who
are still alive will not die, and those who are dead will be raised in a general
resurrection. The wicked are purified in streams of fire as part of the purification
of the world. After the conflagration, all things will be made new.
The hope for resurrection at the end of a predetermined historical sequence
first appears in Jewish tradition in the apocalypses of Enoch and Daniel in the
Hellenistic period. The Zoroastrian myth was certainly current before this
time. The most complete reflection of the Persian account of the last things in
Jewish or Christian tradition is found in the Christian author Lactantius in the
4th century ce. Lactantius synthesized various traditions in his writings and incorporated
lengthy passages from the Oracle of Hystaspes.
Greek tradition usually viewed the world as imperishable, despite periodic
destructions by fire and water. This was true even for Plato, despite his affirmation
of creation. Even Hellenized Jews, most notably Philo of Alexandria,
allowed that the world may be made immortal by the providence of God, even
though it is by nature destructible. The notion of cosmic conflagration
(ekpyrÃsis) held a prominent but controversial place in Stoic thought. The
ekpyrÃsis would purify the cosmos, but would not entail a judgment. Stoics
disputed among themselves whether it would be followed by palingenesia, renewed
birth and repetition of all things. The Roman Seneca, writing in the 1st
century ce, spoke of the time when the world would extinguish itself in order
to renew itself again. Stars would collide, and all matter would burn with a single
fire. Seneca claimed support for these ideas from Berossus, a Babylonian
priest who presented Babylonian tradition in Greek in the early Hellenistic
period. According to Seneca, Berossus said that these things would happen in
accordance with the course of the stars and even predicted the time of the
conflagration. The idea of cosmic conflagration is not attested in Akkadian
sources, however, and seems to have no basis in Babylonian tradition.
A rare example of cosmic eschatology in the Egyptian tradition is found in
the late Apocalypse of Asclepius, which is written in Greek and associated with
the Hermetic corpus. This apocalypse retains some of the characteristics of po-
69 cosmology: time and history
litical oracles. An evil age is caused by the invasion of foreigners, and this is
followed by a radical transformation of the earth. It differs from earlier Egyptian
tradition by envisioning a destruction of the world by fire and flood and
then its restitution to its pristine state. It reflects the syncretism of late antiquity,
where ideas circulated widely and the coherence of cosmos and history
was widely assumed.
Bibliography
Clifford, R. J. Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible. Washington,
D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1994.
Cohn, N. Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic
Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Collins, J. J., ed. The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 1: The Origins of
Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity. New York: Continuum, 1998 (esp. essays
by A. Hultgård and H. Cancik on Persian and Greco-Roman traditions).
Couliano (Culianu), I. P. Expériences de l’extase: Extase, ascension et récit visionnaire
de l’hellénisme au moyen âge. Paris: Payot, 1984.
Wright, J. E. The Early History of Heaven. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Wright, M. R. Cosmology in Antiquity. London: Routledge, 1995.
encountering ancient religions 70
Pollution, Sin, Atonement,
Salvation
Harold W. Attridge
Ancient societies, like all human groupings, set boundaries on human
behavior, defining actions that disrupted human relations in various ways
as wrong. Some actions such as murder, incest, or theft were almost universally
condemned, although what counted as truly unjustifiable homicide or illicit sex
might vary and the boundaries of the moral community within which such actions
were prohibited might vary. Other actions could easily accrue to a list of
wrongful acts, from the trivial (making others sad, as in Egypt) to the profound
(rebellion against God, as in Israel). Whatever the faults, people of all societies
found ways of committing them, either inadvertently or maliciously. Religious
systems, understood here to be the complex of rituals and stories that provided
a symbolic matrix for social institutions, provided mechanisms for dealing
with these actions and eliminating their results. Ritual and story, however,
were not the only mechanisms for dealing with wrongful acts. Legal systems
also defined crimes and specified forms of punishment and restitution. Legal
systems intersected with the religious at significant points in some traditions.
Within the religious sphere, the mechanisms for dealing with “sin” involve
two major conceptual schemes. Sin may be conceived as an objective defilement,
a form of pollution that infects the sinner and the people and places with
which the sinner might come in contact. To deal with the danger presented by
the sinner, mechanisms usually involve some effort to remove the pollution or
the polluting agent. Alternatively, sin may be understood in more personal
terms as an insult or offense to divine power. In that case, mechanisms for dealing
with the sinner may involve appeasement of the offended power, either
through cultic action or repentant behavior, restitution, and reconciliation.
The logic of sin as an offense against a deity leads to suffering being construed
as divine punishment and the possibility of vicarious suffering as a mechanism
for atonement.
Each of these somewhat conceptual schemes for dealing with sin may be
seen as an “ideal type,” useful for heuristic purposes but seldom at work independently.
Both are often at play in cultic traditions, and the logic of both will
inspire attempts to develop moralizing critiques of traditional practice and,
later, theologies of sin and atonement in the monotheistic religions of late
antiquity.
Pollution
Pollution was a particularly weighted form of generic uncleanness. Even this
category could be construed differently in different cultural systems, since
“dirt” is simply matter out of place and the boundaries of “clean” places are
culturally determined. Mud on a farmer’s foot in the field need not be dirt; mud
on the floor of the farmer’s hut could be. Pollution was that form of “dirt” that
prevented participation in the realm of the sacred; impurity at any level was
simply incompatible with sanctity. It was necessary to be pure in order to enter
a temple or engage in a ritual, although being pure might not be a sufficient
condition to allow participation, which could be limited to people of a certain
age, sex, or status. The requirement to maintain purity was thus more incumbent
upon participants in religious rituals than it would be on nonparticipants.
In cultures with a permanent priestly class, the requirements for purity would
weigh more heavily on them than on the laity.
Many things could cause pollution, but the primary sources of pollution
were natural substances: blood, spittle, semen, decaying flesh. Many polluting
acts involved contact, willing or unwilling, with such substances, but the material
stuff of polluting dirt was the paradigmatic source of pollution. Ancient Israel’s
extensively documented purity system defined sources of pollution, including
diseases of the skin (Lev. 14); bodily discharges, such as semen or
menstrual blood (Lev. 15); and corpses (Num. 19.11–16). Similar sources of
pollution are attested in ancient Mesopotamian sources (van der Toorn 1985:
30–31). Birth, sex, and death are also major sources of cultic pollution in
Greece. Bits of flesh from the corpse of Polynices polluted the altars of the gods
(Sophocles, Antigone 999–1047). It was not right (themis) for the goddess Artemis
to look upon her dead devotee (Euripides, Hippolytus 1437). The sacred
island of Delos was kept free of pregnant women and the mortally ill. (Abundant
examples may be found in Parker 1983.) In addition to such common
sources of pollution, particular animals might be unclean for certain temples,
as in Egypt or for a people as a whole (Lev. 11.24–47).
To encounter simple forms of impurity was thus unavoidable for most people
much of the time. In fact, in some systems, such as that of ancient Israel,
some ritual impurity was required. Thus, the act of sexual intercourse,
required to fulfill the divine commandment to be fruitful and multiply (Gen.
1.28), would render husband and wife ritually impure. Similarly, to bury dead
encountering ancient religions 72
relatives was required even of Israelite priests (Lev. 21.1–3; Ezek. 44.25),
though the act was defiling.
The paradigmatic case of pollution is contact with an offensive substance
that renders a person “unclean” and not suitable for participation in cult.
Sources from many different cultural traditions treat various wrongful acts
under the same general rubric. Thus a Mesopotamian incantation seeks absolution
for both the ritual infraction of “eat[ing] what is taboo to [a] god
[or] . . . goddess” and also a wide variety of social transgressions, such as “oppress[ing]
the weak woman,” “estrang[ing] companion from companion,”
“[taking] money . . . not due,” and so on (Reiner apud Milgrom 1991: 22–23).
Similarly the Egyptian Book of the Dead (125) involves a negative confession,
a denial that the deceased was guilty of various negative actions (“stopping a
god in his procession,” “eating what is bwt,” or “making anyone weep”) and
transgressions (stealing, murder, adultery). The Israelite priestly manifesto demanding
holiness of the people, Lev. 19, combines the moral injunctions to revere
parents and avoid theft and sexual immorality with instructions about the
proper eating of sacrificial food and appropriate hair trimming and body decoration.
Modern categories of cultic, social, and moral infractions were simply
not part of the conceptual scene at the earliest stages of the religious traditions
of antiquity. Hence the use of the term pollution for serious moral offenses is
readily understandable.
Another impetus for the understanding of serious moral infractions as polluting
may have to do with the involvement of blood in some of them, at least
homicide and illicit sexual activity. Murder was a special source of pollution
in many cultural contexts. Even gods were required to wash themselves after
killing (Atrahasis 1.206–7; van der Toorn 1985: 16). Mesopotamian sources
consider bloodshed an abomination (Annals of Assurbanipal: asakku) or an
offense that brings a divine curse (Surpu 2.49). In Israel, major infractions such
as bloodshed (Num. 35.33), sexual infractions (Lev. 18.24–30), and idolatry
(20.1–5; Ps. 106.34–41) polluted either the sinner (Lev. 18.24), the sanctuary
(20.3; Ezek. 5.11), or the land as a whole (Lev. 18.28; Ezek. 36.19). Early
Greek law codes (Draco, 7th century bce) could invoke the category of pollution
in connection with murder. This was probably not an innovation, but
a vestige of a long-established cultural form. Dramatists of the 5th and 4th
centuries wove concern with pollution in objective or personified (Erinyes)
form into their plays. Heinous crimes such as patricide (Oedipus) or matricide
(Orestes: Aeschylus, Choephoroi 269–96; Euripides, Orestes 580–84) could
produce miasma, an objective state of pollution that isolated the perpetrator
(Plato, Euthyphro 4c) and prevented participation in ritual (Euripides, Orestes
1600–1604). Such pollution had more-serious consequences, bringing destruction
to nature and culture (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1644–45).
Sexual offenses could be equally polluting. Sumerian law declared that a
man who raped a girl publicly became impure (van der Toorn 1985: 17). Even
a god such as Nergal remained impure, despite bathing, after an affair with the
73 pollution, sin, atonement, salvation
queen of the netherworld. In Israel, the priestly sources of Israel viewed various
illicit sexual unions as abominations (tôÚÁbôt; Lev. 18).
Offended deities
The appeal to the divine as the sanction of the moral order was a powerful
tool of social control. Yet in many traditions, fickle and impetuous deities
could be offended at various minor slights. In the ancient Near Eastern myths
of Atrahasis (ANET 104–6), the god Enlil is enraged at noisy humans and decides
to obliterate them in a flood. In Egypt the goddess Hathor/Sekhmet
(ANET 10–11) lusts for human blood. The Greek Artemis, after having been
forgotten at a sacrifice, sends the scourge of the Calydonian boar. The Roman
authorities blamed the defeat of their army by Hannibal at Trasimene on the
neglect of religious ceremonies, at least according to Livy (22.9).
Gods could be offended by more serious slights. The Iliad opens with a scene
of plague besetting the Achaean army at Troy because Agamemnon has incurred
the wrath of Apollo by carrying off the daughter of his priest (Iliad 1.8–
52). More serious still was the direct affront to the dignity of a god caused by
sacrilege, the transgression of the places and things sacred to the deity, a concern
widely attested in ancient sources. What counted as sacrilege included
purely cultic issues: the misuse of sacrificial animals, improper disposition of
sacred implements or foods, or introducing pollution into sacred spaces. Thus,
in the defense of the sacred, the two conceptual realms of objective pollution
and divine human relation merge.
The affront of a sacrilegious act was particularly apparent when the deity’s
name was invoked in vain. Ancient Near Eastern political treaties or covenants
often involve oaths invoking divine guarantors of the treaties and threatening
severe punishments for those who do not abide by the oaths. The TukultiNinurta
Epic of the 13th century bce describes the anger of the Babylonian deities
caused by the king’s treaty violations. Either by defiling the deity’s sacred
space or by dishonoring the deity’s name or status, the sacrilegious transgression
evoked a divine sanction. In the epic just mentioned, the result was the offended
deities’ defection to Assyria, which conquered Babylon. The Mesha
Stele from 9th-century Moab (ANET 320–21) describes a similar situation, in
which the god Chemosh delivered Moab into Israelite control for a time.
Homer, too, knows that Zeus punishes perjury (Iliad 4.160–62).
Gods may have felt abhorrence at the fact of moral pollution, their honor
may have been compromised, or they may have been offended by the rebellious
and ungrateful character of their subjects. In any case, their wrath manifested
itself in fearsome responses. Israel’s God can be as fierce as other ancient deities
(Deut. 32.34–43; Ezek. 36.16–19), but his wrath is not arbitrary; rather,
it is focused on transgressors, on the people in covenant with him who forget
their obligations (Exod. 22.21–24 [= 22.20–23 Hebrew]), particularly by
committing idolatry (32:7–10; Ps. 106.37–42). This wrath at the violation of
encountering ancient religions 74
the covenant leads, in the judgment of the prophets, to national destruction
(Isa. 22:1–14) and exile (27.1–11). Expectations of a major day of divine
wrath, in which YHWH would wreak vengeance on his foes, developed in Israel
(Amos 5.18–20). In early Christian hands, the eschatological wrath of
God against the universal reality of sin forms the background for the news of
salvation (Rom. 1.18; Rev. 15.7).
While the threat of divine sanction could undergird moral and legal obligations,
the understanding that the divine punished transgression provided a
way of interpreting human history. Human suffering in the form of plagues,
droughts, or military defeats was prima facie evidence for sin and divine wrath.
The plague that visits Thebes due to Oedipus’s actions stimulates a search for
the guilty party, and a storm at sea leads to the search for the sinful prophet Jonah.
The prophets of Israel, and the historical works they inspired, thus often
appealed to the covenant formulas as the basis for their theological assessment
of history. The theology of providential divine retribution at work in history
was hardly confined to Israel, but also appears in Greek (Polybius, Dionysius
of Halicarnassus) and Roman (Livy) historians.
Eliminating pollution and sin
For the simple and unavoidable or required forms of pollution, there were
ready remedies. Things that caused impurities could be disposed of in various
ways: by being burned, buried, or simply washed away. Simple procedures—
such as a ritual bath, use of special substances (natron in Egypt; wine, clay, various
plants, flours, salts in Hittite sources; the ashes of a red heifer in Israel
[Num. 19]), periods of abstention from social contact (e.g., for new mothers or
mourners) or from contact with the realm of the sacred—would restore the
polluted person to a state of purity. The impurity removed, the individual
could once again cross the boundary from profane to sacred and participate in
cult. Homer’s heroes must wash or purify themselves before sacrifice (Iliad
6.266–68), and all Athenian citizens had to purify themselves before entering
the sacred space of the assembly. Israelite women were excluded from touching
sacra after menstruation or birth, for varying periods of time: seven days for a
son, two weeks for a daughter (Lev. 12.1–8).
Pollution could affect larger social units and thereby require more extensive
treatment. Ancient Mesopotamian (9th-century bce Assyria under Assurnasirpal:
REVIA 2.218.85; 226.26/27; and Salmanasar: RMA 3.15.26; 3.66.70) and
Hittite sources report rituals for purifying armies. Places as well as people
could become polluted. But cleansing was readily available through washing or
“wiping” rites, such as the ancient Akkadian kuppuru (Wright 1987: 291). In
Israel, houses as well as people could be affected with a skin disease and require
extensive purification (Lev. 14). Greeks of the archaic and classical periods
knew of katharmoi (rituals for washing, wiping, rubbing, fumigating) and
professional purifiers, forebears of both magicians and physicians.
75 pollution, sin, atonement, salvation
A frequent way of dealing with pollution and other undesirable substances
such as disease was through rites of disposal. Such rites could involve various
mechanisms for transferring the offensive pollution to a bearer of impurity, by
spitting, touching, or passing through special gates. Or the pollution could be
symbolically concretized through colored threads placed on a victim and then
removed. The bearer of the pollution could then be either banished or destroyed.
Such rituals are found in materials from ancient Ebla, 13th-century
bce Hittite texts (the Pulisa and Ashella rituals for removing plagues), the Israelite
scapegoat ritual, and in various pharmakos rituals in Greek cities such as
Abdera, Massilia, and Athens. Israel had its equivalents in the ritual for cleansing
a leper, which involved the sacrifice of one bird and the expulsion of another
(Lev. 14.2–7, 48–53), and above all in the scapegoat procedure, part of
the ritual of the annual Day of Atonement. Part of the procedure involved sacrifice
of one goat while another decorated goat was sent to the desert, to the
mysterious “Azazel,” bearing all the iniquities, sins, and transgressions confessed
by the people (16.21). This complex ritual has given its name to the
whole class of such ritual actions. The relationship among these scapegoat rituals
and the differences among them have been the subject of considerable
scholarly study. Although there are significant formal cross-cultural similarities,
such as the use of decorated animals or human beings, specifics of goals
and procedures vary considerably (see Ritual).
The manipulation of blood was frequently part of rituals designed to eliminate
pollution. Actions involving blood would be particularly understandable
in the case of the severe pollution caused by the shedding of blood, on the assumption
that only blood, the locus of life itself (Lev. 7.26–27, 17.14), could
purify the pollution caused by blood (explicitly at Num. 35.33; cf. the rite for
dealing with bloodguilt when the murderer was unknown, Deut. 21.1–9).
Israel’s priestly code contains provisions for sacrifices connected with other
purification rituals (e.g., Lev. 15.29, for an irregular discharge of blood), but
there are two major blood sacrifices explicitly designed to deal with transgressions:
the “purification sacrifice” (ÉaÇÇÀÛt; Lev. 4) and the “reparation sacrifice”
(ÛÀšÀm; 5.14–6.7 [= 5.14–26 Hebrew]). Both are designed in order to
“make expiation” (kpr). The animal used for a “sin offering” varied with the
status of the offerer, and its blood would be sprinkled at various sacred locations
(4.5–6, 18, 25, 30, 34; 7.2). The relationship between these sacrifices and
their underlying logic are unclear. The blood of these sacrifices may have been
understood as a powerful cleansing agent, removing from sacred space the
stain of the sin’s pollution. Similarly, the blood of the sin offering of a bull on
the Day of Atonement was to “make atonement for the holy place, because of
the uncleannesses of the people of Israel” (16.16). The ÛÀšÀm is distinctive in
that a monetary offering could be substituted (5.15) and in that it required restitution
(5.16; 6.5 [= 5.24 Hebrew]). The latter requirement indicates that, for
some priestly circles, atonement involved more than ritual. In their current literary
setting, both sacrifices deal with “inadvertent” sins (4.2; 5.14), although
the ÛÀšÀm also applies to swearing falsely, suggesting a broader scope.
encountering ancient religions 76
Appeasing divine wrath
Although divine wrath may be distinguished from sinful pollution for heuristic
purposes, they often appear to be intimately linked. Thus in the Hittite scapegoat
rituals, gods are asked to “be appeased” by the human offerings (Wright
1987: 46, 50). But while apotropaic rituals might avert divine wrath, an offended
deity might be treated as an offended human being.
Torts could be repaired by acts of restitution or the payment of a ransom.
Stolen property could be restored, with an added penalty perhaps (Exod. 22:1
[= 21.37 Hebrew]), or one could pay for a gored ox (21.35–36). Serious
crimes such as bloodshed required vengeance, the death of the murderer
(21.12) at the hands of an “avenger of blood” (gÃÛÁl haddÀm; Num. 35.19).
The Israelite legal tradition rejects the possibility that those responsible for the
wrongful death of another could avoid the death penalty by payment of a ransom
(Exod. 21.30; Num. 35.31), but the condemnation suggests the existence
of the practice. Interestingly, the term for “ransom” (kÃper; Greek lytron) derives
from the same root as that used of cultic “expiation.” The language of
ransom was used in Israel for the sanctuary tax paid by the people (Exod.
30.12). Although they knew the mechanism, Israelite literature does not extensively
exploit notions of ransom as ways of dealing with divine wrath. A stark
alternative is provided in the Roman tradition of devotio, according to which a
general could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by vowing himself to the
infernal gods (Livy 8.9.1–11.1; 10.28.12–29.7).
Wrongs against others could require propitiation and appeasement of the offended
party. Insofar as a deity may have been involved, atonement usually included
some sort of ritual of appeasement, perhaps a sacrifice or other offering
to the offended deity, but also a direct appeal, in which the offending
human being confessed guilt and sought reconciliation. Such appeals are found
in hymns from the 2nd millennium bce, such as one to Marduk found at
Ugarit (Ras Shamra 25.460) or to Ishtar in ancient Babylonian (Iraq Museum
58424).
The notion of moral wrong as an act of rebellion (pšÚ) against the divine lawgiver
is characteristic of ancient Israel, forming the heart of the prophetic
summons to repentance and renewed fidelity to the covenant relationship. The
Torah (Lev. 26.40) recognizes the need for repentance and confession. The prophetic
movement that achieved written form in the 8th century insists on
confession and repentance (Jer. 3.11–14; 4.1–2). The pattern of confession
continues with renewed vigor in the Second Temple period (Ezra 9; Dan. 9.4–
19) and provided the framework for much early Christian treatment of sin and
atonement.
Confessions of sinfulness and penitent appeals to divine mercy are not incompatible
with notions of purification from sin’s pollution. Striking versions
of the pattern are found in Israel’s lament psalms. Psalm 51 combines many of
the metaphors, asking YHWH for mercy, for cleansing (vv. 2, 7 [= vv. 4, 9
Hebrew]) from sin, for purging from interior guilt (v. 6 [8]), leading to moral
77 pollution, sin, atonement, salvation
renewal (v. 7 [9])—all of which is made a condition of effective sacrificial offering
(v. 16 [18]). Similarly Ezekiel, in the 6th century, proclaiming a hopeful
vision for Israel’s future, portrays YHWH as promising Israel purification
from the uncleanness of idolatry and interior transformation with a new heart
and spirit (Ezek. 36.22–33), all of which prepares for a renewed sanctuary
(40–48).
Emphasizing the interpersonal character of sin, atonement could also involve
the intercession of a mediator, one who, as the Hebrew tradition says,
“stands in the breech,” pleading for transgressors, such as Moses (Exod.
32.11–14, 30–34; Ps. 106.23), kings such as Hezekiah (2 Chron. 30.18–20),
priests in general (Num. 8.19), specific priests such as Aaron (16.47 [= 17.12])
and Phineas (Ps. 106.30), or an angel (Job 33.24). A trusted mediator could
avert divine wrath, as could an innocent representative of a people, whose suffering
for others’ transgressions brought healing (Isa. 52.13–53.12).
Criticism and resignification
Ancient rituals of purification from pollution, either ritual or moral, as well as
cultic mechanisms either for dealing with the objective results of sin (expiation)
or for appeasing the wrath of offended deities (propitiation), were subject to
moralizing or rationalist criticism.
Israel’s prophets, while calling for repentance, denounced a reliance on the
mechanics of cult (1 Sam. 15.22–23; Amos 5.21–23; Isa. 1.10–15; Mic. 6.6–9),
although that critique did not entail the total rejection of cult. (A similar
critique seems to underlie the Zoroastrian revolution in ancient Persian religion.)
Combining ritual and moral behavior was not unique to Israel. Thus
Xenophon, leading his fractious Greek army, calls for both repentance and
purification after some of his troops murdered local ambassadors (Anabasis
5.7.13–35).
Important for later developments were the admonitions of Israel’s teachers
of wisdom, who advocated various personal moral practices to expiate sin.
Proverbs 16.6 highlights works of compassion; texts from the Second Temple
or Hellenistic period suggest such things as virtuous obedience to parents (Sir.
3.3), almsgiving (3.30), and fasting (34.30–31; Psalms of Solomon 3.8; Testament
of Reuben 1.10) as expiations.
In the Greek world, two significant developments occurred at the beginning
of the classical period: a rationalist criticism of traditional purification rites
and an insistence that moral purification was required for “salvation.” Greek
philosophers ridiculed purification rites—for example, Heraclitus decreed the
foolishness of “trying to wipe off mud with mud” (frag. B 5). Later, Aristotle’s
pupil Theophrastus described those obsessed with such practices as “superstitious”
(deisidaimÃn, literally being excessively afraid of the divine world and
its powers; Characters 16). Equally open to criticism was the notion that gods
needed propitiation from human worshipers. No, argued philosophers, deity
needed nothing, least of all human sacrificial gestures.
encountering ancient religions 78
While rationalists ridiculed rites, some groups of the 5th and 4th centuries
bce, particularly Pythagoreans and those who followed teachings attributed to
Orpheus, transformed purification rituals from cult-related practices to boundary
markers of their own groups. Plato denounced the rituals and the books
connected with Orpheus as trickery (Republic 364b–65a), yet appropriated
their insistence that purity of the soul was a precondition for blessed immortality.
Such beliefs find striking attestation in gold leaves from four 4th-century
bce burials at Thurii in southern Italy, which speak of the deceased as coming
“pure from the pure” and as members of the race of blessed immortals; two of
the leaves say that the deceased has done “penance for works unjust” (see
Mysteries).
Plato could criticize popular purifiers yet retain vestiges of traditional notions
of pollution, as in the Laws (9.831–73), which indicates degrees of pollution
deriving from bloodshed. More importantly, his depiction in the Phaedo
of Socrates’ last hours is replete with language of purification. The soul, says
Socrates, can attain to the realm of truth only if it distances itself from the contaminating
imperfections of the body, with its “loves, desires, fears, and fancies.”
Only that which is pure (katharon) can attain the realm of the pure
(Phaedo 66b–67b; 80d–81d). Plato’s distinctly religious language here, as often,
provides emotional support for a complex epistemological, aesthetic, and
moral vision. Purification from pollution is not a ritual matter, but a distancing
of the true self from the realm of physical passion. This reorientation has ultimate
salvific consequences, and the combination will appeal to many later religious
Neoplatonists, both pagan (Porphyry, Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras)
and Christian (Origen, Augustine).
Ancient notions of pollution found new homes in other spheres. Hippocratic
physicians focused much of their treatment on the katharsis of unbalanced
and hence polluting elements (Parker 1983: 213). Aristotle, perhaps inspired
by the Hippocratics, applied the same notion to the effects of tragedy (Poetics
6.1449b28).
Heirs of the Israelite tradition in the Hellenistic period, influenced by such
Greek rationalism and their own native sapiential tradition, reduced the ritual
elements of their tradition to symbols of the moral (the 2nd-century bce Letter
of Aristeas). The Jewish philosopher of 1st-century Alexandria, Philo, who
read his scriptures through Platonic lenses, insisted on the observance of ancient
Israelite purification rules, but found in them Platonic ideals. Souls, that
is, must be made pure before bodies can be cleansed (Special Laws 1.263–69),
and, while eliminating the impurity of the corpse, one engages in contemplation
(On Dreams 1.209–12).
The cosmic power of sin
As general social practice and ritual observance dealt with undesirable conditions
and actions in concrete practical ways, some religious systems developed
large conceptual frameworks for dealing with the realm of the undesirable in
79 pollution, sin, atonement, salvation
all its complexity. Ancient Egyptian sources delineated a negative realm that
opposed the realm of maÚat, the realm of goodness, order, and sufficiency. Zoroastrian
sources in 5th-century Persia, in an influential move, posited, as
part of a comprehensive theodicy, an opposition of two fundamental forces,
personified as the deities Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. Perhaps inspired by such
dualism, Jewish sectarians of the Second Temple period envisioned a world divided
into two spheres, one guided by a Spirit of Light, the other by a Spirit of
Darkness, responsible for all evil. The Dead Sea Scrolls provide the primary
testimony to this scheme (e.g., Rule of the Community, also known as 1QS or
Serek ha-Yahad). Jewish apocalypses of the period, such as the 1st-century ce 4
Ezra, also decry the pervasive power of sin. Other works provide explanations
for that power. Perhaps the most colorful is the tale in the 3rd-century bce
Book of Enoch. On the basis of Gen. 6, this Jewish apocalypse recounts the
myth of the Watchers, heavenly beings who became enamored of human women,
had intercourse with them, and induced them to sin (1 Enoch 6–9). In such a
context, moral transgression became not simply a matter of an individual’s
failing, but part of cosmic phenomenon, a manifestation of a universally pervasive
sin.
Cosmic sin required a cosmic response. Jewish sources of the Second Temple
period envisioned a decisive intervention by God into human history to restore
Israel, often at the hands of an anointed (hence Messiah) royal or priestly figure,
either human or angelic. This action could involve the elimination of political
oppression (Daniel, Psalms of Solomon) or the elimination of sin through
the action of an angelic priest such as Michael (Dan. 12) or Melchizedek
(Melchizedek [11Q13] from Qumran). Such apocalyptic hope resolved problems
with sin and sins in a rosy eschatological future.
Along with an increasing sense of the power of sin, sectarian Jewish sources
also extended the category of pollution to serve as a general description for all
sin (e.g., at Qumran, the Thanksgiving Scroll [1QH] 19[11].10–11).
The rabbinic movement, which came to dominate Israel’s religious life after
the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 ce, marks a shift. Continuing
the critical stance of the Jewish wisdom literature, the rabbis agree that the
means of expiating sin are to be found in the moral order. In a famous anecdote,
Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai (late 1st century ce) responded to a colleague’s
lament for the devastated temple by noting that expiation was possible
through almsgiving (Avot of Rabbi Nathan 1.5.4). Other rabbis noted the
power of suffering and death to effect forgiveness of sin (Tosefta, tractate
Yoma 5.6). At the same time, the rabbis insisted on repentance as the key to
finding forgiveness for sins.
The rabbis also found their own way of treating the category of pollution
and the mechanisms for dealing with it. Instead of expanding the category to
cover the whole of the moral order, as did earlier sectarian Jews, or finding in it
a metaphorical scheme for comprehending the destiny of the soul, as did the
Platonic tradition, they concentrated on the details of ritual pollution in the
Torah and developed a detailed logic of the rules of purity. In doing so, they deencountering
ancient religions 80
marcated a realm of behavior for the renewed people of Israel and focused on
their obedience to the divine command and their common identity.
While the rabbis constrained the realm of pollution, they also avoided the
cosmic power of sin. Their equivalent to the notion of the two cosmic spirits
found in the Dead Sea Scrolls is a simple psychological model. In each human
heart there are two roots (yÁËer), one good, one evil (e.g., Jerusalem Talmud,
tractate Ta’anit 66c; Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sukkah 52b; Sifre Deuteronomy
45 on Deut. 11.18). The individual is not a pawn of cosmic powers, but a
moral agent capable of choosing good and avoiding evil.
Early Christians inherited both the Jewish scriptures and the traditions that
interpreted them. The claims that Jesus was the designated Messiah, assigned
to effect that eschatological salvation (Rom. 1.3), appropriated the apocalyptic
hopes of contemporary Jews. Some of his followers viewed salvation more in
political and social terms (Luke 1, the Magnificat). Others focused on how Jesus
provided salvation from sin, either by declaring sins forgiven (Matt. 9.2;
Mark 2.5; Luke 5.20; 7.47) or by empowering his disciples to do likewise
(John 20.23). Some followers used cultic imagery to rationalize his death. In
their eyes it was a sacrifice, which provided expiation for sins (Mark 14.24;
Rom. 3.25; 1 Cor. 15.3; Heb. 9–10). Jesus was thus the “Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world” (John 1.29). Such imagery was probably
based on Jewish martyrological traditions and perhaps reflected the influence
of Isa. 52.13–53.12 and its vision of vicarious suffering as sacrificial expiation.
Most fruitful for later Christian notions was the theology of Paul, who combined
a sacrificial understanding of Jesus’s death with a cosmic notion of sin
as a force so pervasive that it could even disable the revealed Torah and master
human hearts (Rom. 7.7–25). Like the apocalyptic Jewish tradition from
which he emerged, Paul understood that such a cosmic force required a cosmic
response. Although he hoped for a future in which all such cosmic enemies
would be finally overcome and salvation thus achieved (1 Cor. 15.54–55), he
felt the salvific effects already in his own experience. He rationalized the effects
of Jesus’s death as the provision of a new “spirit” that transforms human
hearts and liberates them from the power of sin (Rom. 8). Similarly, the Epistle
to the Hebrews envisions the death of Jesus as a new Day of Atonement sacrifice,
which expiates the stain of guilt not on altars, but on human consciences
(Heb. 9.14) and works its liberating power by providing an example of fidelity
to God for followers to emulate (Heb. 10, 12). Hebrews also employs the notion
of Christ as an intercessor (7.25) or mediator (8.6), evoking figures such as
Moses and Melchizedek.
Early Christians did not, however, confine themselves to a single image
for describing the effects of the salvation wrought by Christ. His death was
also viewed as a “ransom” (Mark 10.45) or “redemption” that purchased freedom
from sin at the price of his blood (1 Cor. 6.20; Eph. 1.7; 1 Pet. 1.18–19).
Such language combines ancient notions of the ransom for bloodguilt with
contemporary images of purchase from slavery. Alternatively, the mythic imagination
of early Christians could conceive of the death of Christ as a battle
81 pollution, sin, atonement, salvation
against the hostile power of sin, or its personification in Satan. Christ, then,
achieved salvation as the victorious warrior over the powers of evil (Col. 2.15;
Heb. 2.14–15; Rev. 19.11–16). In more personal terms Christians, particularly
Paul, drawing upon language of Hellenistic diplomacy, focused on the effect of
reconciliation that took place between God and humankind through the death
of God’s son (2 Cor. 5.17–19; Rom. 5.1–11).
Later Christian authors were generally content to follow the lead of the New
Testament, understanding salvation primarily in terms of a deliverance from
sin effected by Christ’s sacrificial death and the power of the divine spirit. This
vision implied the problematic assumption that spiritually transformed human
beings would no longer be subject to sin, or at least would not commit serious
sins, a notion resisted in 1 John 1.8. A corollary held that for those who did
sin or commit apostasy from the group forgiveness was impossible (Heb. 6.4–
8). Such rigorism continued in the 2nd and 3rd centuries with Tertullian in
North Africa and Hippolytus and Novatian in Rome. A more realistic attitude
toward the continuing reality of sin led to the development of a penitential
system.
Persecutions of the mid-3rd and early 4th centuries were a particularly important
catalyst, as the church had to deal with weaker Christians who had not
found the courage to embrace martyrdom and had betrayed their commitment.
After the Decian persecution, Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage in North Africa,
in his work On the Lapsed, insisted against rigorists that even such extreme
sinners could find reconciliation with the church, but only under the direction
of the bishop.
While some Christians wrestled with the social consequences of sinning by
members of the church, others, particularly 2nd-century groups, such as the
Marcionites and those labeled by their opponents as gnostic, dealt with the
topic in a more theoretical way. Inspired perhaps by early Christian rigorism
and by an emphasis on Jesus as revealer of esoteric wisdom, they developed a
notion of cosmic sin as ignorance of the transcendent deity. A typical expression
of the notion is the 2nd-century Gospel of Truth, a work associated with
the Valentinian school, which proclaims the rule of error caused by ignorance
of God. Jesus remedied that problem and “took away the sin of the world” by
revealing the hidden godhead (cf. also the 3rd-century Valentinian Tripartite
Tractate). For such thinkers, the personal notions of propitiation of an angry
deity or expiation of an objective polluting stain were not relevant. As Jewish
interpreters had done for their cultic and ritual traditions in the Hellenistic
world, these “knowing” Christians reinterpreted traditional moral and cultic
categories in their own intellectual terms.
One late-antique religious movement akin to Gnosticism that did take seriously
the category of pollution was Manicheism. In a system that recalls the
combination of ascetical practice and interior purification encountered in early
Pythagorean circles, this 3rd-century ce system advocated, particularly for its
“elect” members, a strict dietary regimen that supported the moral purification
of the soul, enabling its final return to a heavenly home.
encountering ancient religions 82
Augustine, a sometime follower of Mani, in the early 5th century brought to
its culmination the ancient Christian reflection on sin. Starting from Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans and its notion of the cosmic power of sin, Augustine developed
his own understanding of how sin worked its ways. Where Paul had
pointed to the narrative of the fall in Genesis as an example by virtue of which
all human beings sinned, Augustine, relying on the Latin translation of Paul’s
text, found a doctrine of original sin, transmitted to successive generations of
humankind by the very physical act of sexual reproduction.
Bibliography
Albertz, Rainer, ed. Kult, Konflikt und Versöhnung: Beiträge zur kultischen Sühne
in religiosen, sozialen und politischen Auseinandersetzungen des antiken Mittelmeerraumes.
Alter Orient und Altes Testament 285. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag,
2001.
Breytenbach, Cilliers. Versöhnung: Eine Studie zur paulinischen Soteriologie.
Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 60.
Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989.
Janowski, Bernd. Sühne als Heilsgeschehen: Traditions- und religionsgeschichtliche
Studien zur Sühneteologie der Priesterschrift. 2nd ed. Neukirchen: Neukirchener
Verlag, 2000.
Milgrom, Jacob. Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance.
Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 18. Leiden: Brill, 1976.
———. Leviticus. Anchor Bible 3. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1991–.
Miller, Patrick. Sin and Judgment in the Prophets. Society of Biblical Literature Monograph
Series 27. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982.
Neusner, Jacob. The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism. Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity
1. Leiden: Brill, 1976.
Parker, Robert. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1983.
Sanders, E. P. Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies. London: SCM/Philadelphia:
Trinity, 1990.
———. Judaism: Practice and Belief. London: SCM/Philadelphia: Trinity, 1992.
van der Toorn, K. Sin and Sanction in Israel and Mesopotamia. Studia Semitica
Neerlandica 22. Assen: van Gorcum, 1985.
Wright, D. P. The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite
and Mesopotamian Literatures. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
101. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987.
83 pollution, sin, atonement, salvation
Law and Ethics
Eckart Otto
Anthropological foundations of morality in ancient culture
Ethics as a theory of morals considers maxims of conduct from the point of
view of the normative good, seeking its philosophical foundations and the consequences
of good action. It brings to awareness aspects that implicitly govern
action, to the extent that action is morally qualifiable. In the ancient world of
the eastern Mediterranean, moral action is characterized by a synthetic view of
life, which assumes a correspondence between the way that people fare in life
and their deeds. The distinction between “what is” and “what ought to be” is
foreign to antiquity, as is any distinction between moral duty and one’s fate in
life. In the ancient way of thinking, people consist of their actions, so that their
existence is determined by fulfilling their obligations.
In the ancient world of the eastern Mediterranean, the moral quality of an
action is measured by the extent to which it is in accord with the community’s
values and maxims; this accord is expressed by the way that justice is defined.
The West Semitic root Ëdq does not mean justice in the sense of a iustitia
distributiva, but rather solidarity and loyalty to the community in one’s actions,
so that the noun Ëdqh can be formed in the plural. The Egyptian term
maÚat also denotes a iustitia connectiva of active solidarity and reciprocity of
action. An act in accord with maÚat toward a person in need is stored in the
collective memory of the community and recalled when someone who displayed
solidarity needs assistance; the opposite term, Úwn-yb (greed in one’s
heart, avarice) denotes egotism. In the Egyptian Lament of the Farmer, this notion
of reciprocity is elevated to a moral requirement: “Act for the one who
acts for you.” The Greek philosopher Democritus observes that a person who
loves no one is loved by no one and that the person who commits an evil act
against another is unhappier than the victim. In ancient shame cultures, the
collective memory of society not only directs the deed reciprocally against the
perpetrator, but grants an honorable reputation to those loyal to the commu-
nity, while humiliating the evildoer. The gods’ first task, then, is simply to guarantee
a correspondence between a person’s deeds and a person’s fate.
In a polytheistic pantheon the function of maintaining the world order implied
by this correspondence falls not only to the highest god, such as the West
Semitic El or the Greek Zeus, but also to special gods such as Shamash, the
sun-god of Mesopotamia; Maat, the Egyptian goddess who embodies order in
the world; or DikÁ, the Greek goddess whose function is to see that laws are
enforced. In monolatrous and monotheistic religions such as that of the god
YHWH, this function of the sun-god can be either integrated into the god’s
character (as in Ps. 72) or separated and personified as a substitute figure such
as Wisdom (Prov. 1.20–33; 8.1–36). Only when experience runs counter to the
synthetic view of a correspondence between the quality of one’s deeds and
one’s life, and the insight gains ground that this correspondence is precarious,
are gods put to use as a higher authority for direct retribution. With this development,
a motif stemming from sacred law and the law of contracts, in which
the divinity directly punishes infringements of sacred duties or of clauses in a
sworn contract, is transferred to the broad field of moral action.
At the same time, divine intervention in the world of humans acquires a
moral dimension. The arbitrary will of the gods, whose intentions human beings
seek to understand through divination, is domesticated by means of its attachment
to the moral standards of human action. Thus, the ancients were familiar
with numerous stories in which a divinity miraculously intervened in
order to rescue a good person (Lycurgus, Lament of Leocrates 95–96). But
since the idea of divine intervention on behalf of the morally good person is
not consistently verified by experience, the link between deed and life can be
extended over several generations, to make it mesh better with experience. In
the early 6th century, Solon taught that while divine retribution could strike
evildoers quickly, it might also be delayed and strike their descendants many
years later. In approximately the same period, the Decalogue of the Hebrew Bible
postponed divine retribution until the third or fourth generation, to keep
the possibility of reform open (Exod. 20.5). Since experience also fails to confirm
these theories in every case, divine retribution can be interpreted as a judgment
imposed on the dead in an afterlife as well. The notion cropped up first in
Egypt during the 12th Dynasty (Merikare, Papyrus Petersburg, lines 53–57)
and found its classic expression in the Egyptian Book of the Dead around 1500
bce. It made its way to Greece by at least the first half of the 5th century
(Pindar, Olympian 2.58–83) and in the 2nd century bce reached the Hebrew
Bible on the periphery of the canon (Dan. 12.1–3).
For ancient peoples, what counted as “the good” before all ethical theory
was traditional conduct in the sense of what was customary and therefore
“normal.” As a concept of the morally good, the Akkadian word išaru(m) (Hebrew
yšr)—meaning “normal, right, appropriate” and, in connection with the
synthetic view of life, also “fortunate, favorable”—expresses the traditional
character of ancient value systems. Išaru(m) is based on the verb ešeru(m) (to
be straight, to go straight ahead), from which the abstract noun mišaru(m)
85 law and ethics
(justice) also derives, containing the aspect of correcting or straightening out
what deviates from the normal. The word kittu(m), which often forms a
hendiadys with mišaru(m) and derives from the verb kânu(m) (to be firm, lasting),
also gives expression to the traditional character of the Mesopotamian
value system, which guarantees the stability of expected behavior through the
traditional nature of ethical and legal norms. In Mesopotamia the promotion
of social cohesion was inseparably linked to the concept of justice, as is shown
by the mišaru(m) and (an)durÀru(m) edicts of Babylonian and Assyrian kings
in the 2nd and 1st millennia bce, which served to reduce social tensions by forgiving
debts and freeing slaves. But they also confirm the traditional character
of the ancient Near Eastern concept of justice, which in this respect is paradigmatic
for the whole value system of the ancient world. Mišaru(m) does not imply
the idea of justice in the sense of social equality, so that the mišaru(m)
edicts were not promulgated with the intention of ending social inequality.
Rather, they were designed to prevent expropriation as a result of debt that
would drive families out of the hereditary social class. The traditional character
of this mentality is underscored by a Sumerian proverb: “The man who
sows crops should sow crops; the man who harvests barley should harvest barley.”
Thus, the good as that which is just is what has always been realized in
human action, not an “ought” or obligation, separated from what is, but
rather the realized ethical substance of society since time immemorial. There
the “ought” is in a state of tension with the possible action and becomes an independent
entity when actions deviate from what counts as normal in society.
At this point, morality meshes with law, insofar as both judicial practice and
the social mišaru(m) edicts of the king were understood as correctives or a
“straightening out” (šutÁšru[m]; causative form of the verb ešÁru[m]) that restored
normal, that is, good, conditions as the epitome of just conditions.
The values intended to guide moral action propagated in the memorial inscriptions
of the dead and in the educational literature of ancient oriental and
biblical wisdom literature are correspondingly traditional. They demand neither
great feats nor ascetic self-denial nor martial heroics, but rather are the
values of an average bourgeois morality in the modern sense, to which belong
diligence, self-control, discretion, honesty, obedience to parents, teachers, and
superiors, but also generosity toward inferiors and those with a low position in
society, as well as patience—that is to say, above all, an awareness of one’s own
limitations and the need to rely on fellow human beings and the gods. From
such recognition follows a proper measure in all things. In this respect, the
Egyptian teaching of Ptahhotep from the first half of the 2nd millennium
should be compared with the maxims in chapters 10–30 of the biblical Book of
Proverbs, the core of which dates from the first half of the 1st millennium.
The canon of values reflected in memorial and wisdom literature of the ancient
eastern Mediterranean remained stable from the 3rd to the 1st millennium,
and particular accents were set solely with regard to the literature’s function.
Thus the teachings of Ptahhotep, which served to educate officials, laid
stress on the virtues important for dealing with one’s superiors and inferiors,
encountering ancient religions 86
whereas the biblical proverbs were not oriented toward a specific profession
and sought to educate in a more general and comprehensive manner. The
bourgeois character of this eastern Mediterranean value system, which propagated
an ethos of compassion derived from awareness of one’s own limits and
need for help, had a cultural and historical foundation; in contrast to value
formulations of the western Mediterranean, it did not grow out of an aristocratic
ethos. Instead, an intellectual caste of priests and sages drew on proverbs
based on popular morals to formulate their value system. If the values,
taken by themselves, possessed an astonishing similarity from Mesopotamia
to Egypt (which derives less from processes of reception than from a socially
and anthropologically based fundamental morality or from the peasant and
bourgeois majority in the populations of these lands), nevertheless they occupied
very different positions in their respective religious systems and in the
anthropologies connected with them, which gave expression to different historical
experiences and the sense of life. The Middle Babylonian creation epic
Enuma Elish dates from the close of the 2nd millennium and from at least
the 8th century on was recited regularly on the fourth day of the New Year festival
in Esangila, temple of Marduk in Babylon; tablet 6.31–40 describes how
Marduk, the god of the Babylonian Empire, killed Tiamat, the creature of
chaos who embodied everything that causes life to fail, and made the world
out of her corpse. Marduk then created humanity from the blood of Qingu,
Tiamat’s general, as servants for the gods and to free the gods from the guilt
they bore for not opposing Tiamat’s claim to rule. Thus, the fate of human beings
was to work off the guilt of the gods. If they were created from the material
of chaos, in the form of Qingu’s blood, then it becomes easy to understand
why human beings are not only mortal but also grow feeble with increasing
age. The myth concludes with the gods building the imperial temple Esangila
out of gratitude to Marduk.
In this system, a person could lead a successful life only by following
Marduk, god of the empire, who conquered chaos and was represented on
earth by the king of Babylon. For a fulfilled life, it was therefore necessary to
obey the laws of the Babylonian state or, in the Assyrian version, to obey the
laws of the Assyrian ruler, who represented the god of that empire, Assur. An
Assyrian myth about the creation of human beings and the king from the first
half of the 1st millennium makes a distinction between the creation of human
beings (lullû-amÁlÄ), who are supposed to relieve gods of the toil of cultivating
the land, and the creation of the king as a “human being who by virtue of his
superiority makes decisions [malÂku amÁlÄ]”—to the king is granted rule over
people and the power to wage war following the gods’ instructions. This synthetic
view of life, in which good actions correspond to success, is linked with
loyalty to the state; it is valid only in the context of state rule and is limited
even there, since from the time of its creation humankind was ordained to deprivation
and toil for the benefit of the gods and the state as embodied by
the king.
The Hebrew Bible endorses the contrary anthropological view, which origi-
87 law and ethics
nated in Judah in the 8th century. The writing of the Aaronic priests, conceived
in the time of exile as a response to the Enuma Elish, similarly ends with the
construction of a holy shrine (here the tent of the encounter in the Sinai). It
does not, however, recount the story of the creation of the world and human
beings as the conclusion of a complex cosmogony and theomachy; rather it
places the creation of the world and humans, in accordance with a monotheistic
concept of God, at the very beginning. Humans, in this view, were not created
to labor in atonement for the sins of the gods, but to give shape to the
world as God’s representatives. In Mesopotamian royal ideology, the motif of
humanity made in the image of god (soeloem) was reserved for the king as
god’s representative (salum); in the Israelite version, the priesthood opposed
the negative anthropology in Mesopotamian ideology, which bound humankind
to the state legitimated by God, by applying the motif to every individual
and democratizing the royal ideology. Already, in the late preexilic era, the
writer of Deuteronomy set absolute loyalty to the Jewish god YHWH against
the Assyrian demand of absolute loyalty to the state, by subversively transferring
the oath of loyalty to King Asarhaddon to YHWH in Deut. 13 and Deut.
28. In this manner, the Deuteronomist imposed limits on demands for loyalty
to the state and also deprived the state, in the form of king, of its function as a
channel of divine grace. For the first time in the cultural history of the ancient
orient, ethical values were disengaged from loyalty to the ruler. Correspondingly,
biblical wisdom could formulate criticism of rulers that fit the kingdom
of Judah, which was connected with Assyria, by attacking it on the basis of observation
of nature: “The locusts have no king, / yet go they forth all of them
by bands” (Prov. 30.27). The emancipation of ethical thinking from the state,
which was initiated by small circles of intellectuals in Judah, prevailed when
the kingdom came to an end during the late Babylonian and Persian era in Judah
and consequently prevailed in the Hebrew Bible as well.
This emancipation also ran counter to Egyptian ideology of the state, which
still linked the possibility of overcoming the barrier of death to an individual’s
loyalty to the state, without resorting to the crass negative anthropology that
characterizes the Mesopotamian myths of human creation. In Egypt it was
held that all human beings owed their ability to breathe—their lives—to the
goddess Maat, who provided order and regularity to the cosmos as she guided
the course of the sun-god. However, her protective power was directed particularly
toward the king, the son of the sun-god and Maat’s own brother. Just as
the sun-god defeated chaos on a cosmic scale as he crossed the skies and,
guided by Maat, enabled maÚat (justice) to prevail, so the king embodied this
principle in the human sphere. State rule was, thus, the prerequisite for an individual’s
ability to lead a just life in terms of community solidarity, the sole standard
of just behavior that would permit one to pass the test on the day of judgment.
But unless the king, deified as Osiris, overcame the barrier of death, an
individual had no path into the afterlife. Part of the royal practice of maÚat
consisted of rewarding subjects for conduct that conformed to it, but it also
consisted of using the law courts to resolve conflict and eliminate conduct
encountering ancient religions 88
likely to cause harm (isfet). The state played an indispensable role, because human
actions were by their very nature not in accord with maÚat; the human
heart followed the law of the stronger (isfet), that is, egotism that endangers
society. MaÚat could reach human hearts only through the medium of the king.
In Jerusalem, too, people knew that human beings could not realize “loyalty to
the community” in their own actions, through their own power alone. Despite
a positive theology of creation (Ps. 8), loyalty was not granted to humankind
by nature; instead, a sense of loyalty to the community, and with it the ability
to act for the benefit of the community, was conveyed through a sacrifice
(Deut. 33.19; Ps. 4.5 [= 4.6 Hebrew]) with YHWH’s blessing (24.5; 89.14–16
[= 89.15–17 Hebrew]; 99.4; Isa. 1.21–27; 33.5). In comparison with Egypt
and Mesopotamia, the king in Judah was relegated to the background in the
process of granting loyalty.
The ancient western Mediterranean value system differed from the eastern in
being based primarily on an aristocratic ethos rather than an everyday morality
of peasants and the middle classes. The aristocratic ethos was not primarily
concerned with social cohesion, but rather stressed agonistic values of combat,
placing defense of personal honor (timÁ) before justice (in the sense of actions
that further a sense of community). The twenty-second book of the Odyssey, in
which the poet shows Odysseus killing 108 young men who sought the hand of
his wife, Penelope, during his long absence, glorifies behavior that attaches
higher value to the renown of a great feat in the eyes of an aristocratic audience—even
if it consists of mass murder—than to peace in the community.
Hesiod, by contrast, who at about the same time questioned this traditional
glorification of honor and combat, made justice (dikaiosynÁ) the core concept
of his value system, in a reversion to ancient Middle Eastern wisdom literature.
An ethos that declares victory in battle as the highest value was branded as unjust
hubris, which the gods would avenge, and in accordance with this the nature
of the gods themselves, particularly Zeus, was recast in ethical terms. Aristocrats,
as judges, were made responsible for ensuring that justice prevailed,
with justice being limited to punishment of injustice. The aspect of social cohesion
and solidarity, which colored the concept of justice in the eastern Mediterranean,
was largely absent in Greece.
Nevertheless dikaiosynÁ in Hesiod implies that peace and the well-being of
the community are valued more highly than a hero’s fame. It exhorts people
who feel they have been wronged to resist boundless revenge and instead accept
payments from the wrongdoers; thus will conflicts end. Only if the wrongdoer
refuses to cooperate should one wait for an opportune moment and strike
back. In contrast to ancient Middle Eastern wisdom literature, Hesiod neither
required the wronged person to forgo retaliation entirely nor adopted the lex
talionis. This role existed in ancient Babylonian law only to protect free citizens
from physical injury and was limited in the biblical law of the book of the
covenant (Exodus) to murder or manslaughter; in all other cases it was replaced
by reparation in some form. Where Hesiod considered it appropriate to
take revenge by inflicting double the injury suffered, he was taking into ac-
89 law and ethics
count the aristocratic ethos of defending one’s honor. The notion of boundless
revenge did remain a theme of Greek literature well into the classical period
but, as the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles show, this was done in order
to criticize it, for one could set limits on revenge only when values higher than
honor existed. Not until Plato’s Gorgias and Republic was the concept of
honor finally dismantled in favor of dikaiosynÁ and was it declared better to
suffer injustice than to commit it.
The negative anthropology found in Mesopotamian mythology, which
bound people to the state, which in turn served as mediator between them and
the world of gods, was alien to Greek thought; from the archaic epoch of aristocratic
rule to that of the citizen polis, Greece did not develop total subordination
of every individual under the state as in the orient. In the orient, the view
of chaos and order as opposites found expression in the motif of the battle
against chaos, which originated in the West Semitic region and spread from
there to Mesopotamia and also in Egypt in a rudimentary form. This opposition
served to justify a policy of military aggression, given that the antithesis of
war was not peace but chaos. In Greece the opposition between order and
chaos did not lead to an expansionist imperial policy; instead it took the form
of a cultural antagonism between Greeks and non-Greeks, who were labeled
barbarians. It gave expression to the self-esteem of people in the region, based
on culture, which could also take the form of moral superiority. In the early
5th century, a consciousness of moral superiority over the barbarians was
strengthened by the successful repulsion of Xerxes’ invasion. However, moral
standards became differentiated within Greek culture as well. Isocrates created
a moral pyramid in which Athenians stood at the top, above first the other
Greeks, and then the barbarians; and Euripides alleged that barbarians commonly
practiced incest and murdered relatives (Andromache 173–76). He also
asserted that gratitude and friendship were unknown to them (Helen 501–2)
and that this dissimilarity between Greeks and barbarians was due not to nature
(physis) but to nomos (custom) and sophia (intelligence), that is, it represented
a cultural difference.
Distinctions were also made within Greek culture. Athenians saw themselves
as honest and friendly (Demosthenes, Against Leptines 109), but considered
the Spartans treacherous (Aristophanes, Peace 1066–68, 1083), while the
inhabitants of Phasalus were supposed to be dishonest in business dealings
(Demosthenes, Against Lacritus 1–2). On the other hand, a Panhellenic value
system was applied when Greeks distinguished themselves from barbarians. As
grave inscriptions show, its central values were courage (aretÁ) and avoidance
of harmful behavior (sÃphrosynÁ). The lines of demarcation separating Greek
communities from the outside world arose not, as in the political theologies of
the ancient Near East, from the identification of strangers with the mythical
power of chaos that has to be suppressed by the political authorities, but from
the Greeks’ perception of their own cultural and moral superiority. As a result,
Greek policies were more defensive, but there were no powerful religious impulses
at work driving the creation of a large empire. They had to be borrowed
encountering ancient religions 90
from the Orient through Macedonia. But as a result, religious impulses to rationalize
ethics were also lacking in Greece; they could emerge only from a philosophy
that had begun to emancipate itself from traditional religion.
The realm of the gods and morality in ancient cultures
The degree of connection between human ethos and divine behavior varied in
ancient cultures. The biblical world of Israel and Judah lay at one extreme and
Greek culture at the other, with Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia occupying
intermediate positions. In both Greek and ancient Near Eastern thinking,
the key difference between human and divine beings was that the latter
were immortal. But in moral terms the Greeks considered the difference between
mortals and gods to be small, since their gods, unlike humans, were not
morally infallible (anarmatÁtos). Greek gods could be seduced by Eros; they
were sensitive about their own honor and could feel jealousy like human beings.
In both the archaic and classical periods, the most important gods could
be described as indifferent to the social norms of human interaction. At the
root of this religious thinking lay the archaic ethos of the aristocracy, which
permitted a hero to have a direct relationship with a protective divinity, which
could rupture human ties. The logic of reciprocity in dealings between mortals
and gods was the same as in relationships between friends in the aristocratic
ethos, so that a divinity would support human protégés even when they violated
the norms of a human community, as long as they were defending their
honor. Norms that furthered the cohesion of a community through solidarity
of action and pursuit of conflict resolution were thus of exactly the wrong kind
to be strengthened or promoted by religious impulses. Greece had no class of
intellectual religious specialists to support ethical rationalization. Greek religion
was a religion of sacrifices; it required the performance of sacrificial duties
from everyone and thus allowed no independent caste of priests to develop
alongside the political leadership, which took its models from the martial ethos
of the aristocracy. As a result, the city-states also lacked a class of religious intellectuals
in a position to rationalize the ethics of the religious system and propel
it toward socially beneficial values, enabling religion to confront politics as
political theology and achieve political standing for such norms.
A way out of traditional religion became necessary as soon as the insight
grew that human beings could neither protect themselves against contingencies
in life through magic nor rely on divine assistance, since the gods were not
bound to any norms of behavior. The political elite thus prevented an ethical
rationalization of religion in Greece. In contrast, during the late period in
Egypt the priests’ domination of politics allowed religion to regress to a form
of personal piety with no regard for the connective norms of social justice. This
late form of Egyptian religion released the gods from the norms of maÚat and
gave them instead an arbitrary freedom of action; human beings responded
with a personal piety that released the norms of connective justice from the so-
91 law and ethics
cial dimension and transferred them to the individual relationship with a god.
Good fortune in life was now believed to be secured not through social behavior,
but by turning toward the divinity according to the do ut des (I give so that
you will give) principle. This also held true for the Egyptian king, who became
the paradigmatic pious example to his people, while the motif of divine descent
was transferred from the king to a child of a god in a holy trinity. Whenever
productive tension between religion and state politics disappears, the religious
system loses its power to rationalize the ethics of a society, as examples from
ancient Israel and Judah in the Hebrew Bible show.
In the social crises of the Judean kingdom, priestly intellectuals turned the
norms of neighborly solidarity into theology, presenting them as the will of
God, and constructed models of social solidarity in Exodus (21–23) and Deuteronomy
(12–26), which they offered in response to the policy that had been
carried out. The scriptural prophets, and the circles of intellectuals who took
their cue from them, measured the behavior of the people by the standards
propagated by the priests’ collections of law and informed the people what the
consequences for failing to comply would be. A characteristic of priestly theology
was its distance from the state; implicitly theology thus became criticism of
the state, which the prophets made explicit as criticism of the king. In this way,
in postexilic Judaism, YHWH, the one god who behaved ethically and required
ethical behavior from followers, became the objective of a thoroughgoing
process of ethical rationalization for all areas of life of his clientele, which
expressed itself in the elevation of the Pentateuch to the Torah (Law) and thus
could develop its power to guide conduct. No magic, which in Egypt undermined
the rationalizing power of the thought of a last judgment, could liberate
people from the consequences of their actions. The hostility of Judaic religion
to magic (combined with monotheism’s closing off the possibility of ascribing
any misfortune experienced in life to adverse deities and to the negative anthropology
derived from it) increased the need for an ethical shaping of life,
since misfortune could be the result only of human activity. The rationalization
of religion was further increased by the political experience of being at the
mercy of the great powers, with all the resulting consequences for the fate of
the individual; it gave rise to questions about how such experience could be
reconciled with a belief in YHWH as an ethical god. As a consequence, eschatological
thinking became universal, which subjected the entire population of
the world to the ethical will of YHWH and sought in it the solution to the
problem of theodicy for Judah. The high degree to which rationalization was
achieved in the Hebrew Bible permitted Judaism and its offshoot, Christianity,
to survive as world religions, whereas the religions of other ancient centers of
power perished.
The history of Mesopotamian religion offers a complex picture that should
be divided according to literary genres. This more differentiated interpretation
replaces the notion held by scholars in the past, who thought that the conception
of divinity acquired an ethical dimension at the time of Hammurabi, in the
first half of the 2nd millennium. In this view, the gods developed from morally
encountering ancient religions 92
fallible figures into beings possessed of a moral perfection unattainable by humankind,
with the result that human misfortune could no longer be ascribed to
demons and had to be traced back to unethical human behavior instead. However,
Sumerian legends dating from the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia require
a more differentiated interpretation. In mythic narratives the pantheon of gods
serves to reconcile phenomena in the sphere of human life that appear contradictory—such
as life and death, order and chaos, peace and war, fertility and
infertility, man and woman—and to render them comprehensible; this is done
by personifying these occurrences as deities whose behavior follows the logic
of human interaction. An ethical idealization of gods would have undermined
this function of myth. The function of gods in myths must be distinguished
from their task in the traditions of wisdom literature and law, where they interact
primarily not with one another but with human beings and direct human
behavior by establishing a code of values. In Mesopotamia, this ethical link between
deities and humanity was used chiefly to provide a religious foundation
for the king as the font of law (see the prologue and epilogue of the Codex
Hammurabi) and in the function of deities as witnesses in the law of contracts.
In both functions—foundation and witness—the official pantheon of gods
worked solely through the channel of the king, the mediator of divine action in
the world, to affect individual citizens, although everyone was entitled to pray
to gods such as Shamash, Marduk, or Ishtar. A citizen’s personal relationship
to deities was focused on a tutelary god, who was believed to accompany this
person during his or her lifetime and act as an intermediary with higher-ranking
gods. Since the gods had ethically ambivalent relationships with one another,
the pantheon of gods had only a very limited function as a model for human
action. Only magical manipulation could save human beings from the
urges to exact retribution that were imputed to gods in Mesopotamian religion.
And since a tutelary god was expected to take the side of the human client
even if that client had failed to behave ethically, religion was the source of
very few impulses toward ethical rationalization. Wisdom teachings were cultivated
in the state schools for scribes, and the ethical indifference of religion offered
a good basis for the emancipation of these teachings from religion as secular
philosophy following the Greek pattern; however, such an emancipation
prevented a close connection between religion and the state, which also prevented
an emancipation of priestly specialists as champions of an ethical rationalization
of religion. This connects Mesopotamian religious history with that
of Egypt. It is true that the ethical values of connective justice that are supposed
to guide human behavior were personified in the goddess Maat, who
was connected with the order of the cosmos and thereby provided with the
very highest religious authority; however, the achievement of ethical rationalization
of Egyptian religion was reduced by the fact that, in the synthetic view
of life, the consequences of human action could be deflected through magic.
The achievement of ethical rationalization of Egyptian religion was limited
chiefly by its being a state ideology, in which the king embodied maÚat, although
in contrast to Mesopotamian religion the functions of integrating con-
93 law and ethics
tradictory experience and stabilizing human morality were united in the figure
of the goddess Maat through the aspects of connective justice, until in the late
period this process also broke down.
The realm of the gods and law in ancient culture
Every ancient society needed law to strengthen its internal cohesion, both in
order to settle conflicts and thereby minimize violence and also to enforce sanctions
against socially harmful behavior and violations of social norms. In societies
organized as states, the state either carried out these functions of law or supervised
them; in monarchies, the degree to which the king personified legal
functions determined whether laws were codified and with what function. In
Egypt, the king’s personification of law as Maat’s representative meant that no
restrictions could be placed on his right to decide litigation; in theory the king
handed down judgments without being bound to codified norms, although in
practice this occurred only in specific instances of capital crimes. Thus no laws
of the king are documented from predemotic times, only a decree of King
Haremheb (18th Dynasty) along with decrees to officials that regulated privileges
and instructions about how to carry out their duties. In Mesopotamia,
the king was regarded as having received a mandate from the gods to enforce
the law; he could delegate this task to officers of the state government. In this
system, legal principles as descriptions of legal practice could be codified for
teaching purposes, used to give religious legitimation to the king’s juridical
function, or presented to the public for propagandistic purposes, as in the case
of the Code of Hammurabi.
Collections of laws could also either advertise judicial reforms, as in the
case of the Middle Assyrian laws, or document such a reform, as did the
Hittite laws. In the legal system of the Achaemenids, judgments handed down
by the king acquired the status of unalterable law for the courts. When the Persians
conquered a province, imperial policy for maintaining order was to enforce
any codified indigenous laws. A first step toward making the law independent
of the state occurred in Anatolia in the 2nd millennium. According to
early Hittite royal ideology, the king was not the font of law, but required a divine
model in order to obey the law. Then, as a result of influences from
Mesopotamian and Egyptian ideology, the king in the Hittite Empire came to
be regarded as the earthly representative of the weather-god and as such functioned
as lawgiver and supreme judge. Only in Judea and Greece, where in the
long run the legal systems were separate from the king, was the law—either
granted by YHWH or voted by the citizens of a city-state—able to take an independent
stand vis-à-vis the state. Whereas the laws of cuneiform justice primarily
described and documented the judgments that had in fact been handed
down and prescriptive legal functions remained a royal prerogative, in Judea
and Greece the laws exercised this prescriptive royal function themselves (nomos
ho pantÃn basileus, custom is king of everyone; Pindar, frag. 169). In the
encountering ancient religions 94
Torah, the law is declared to have originated as divine revelation received on a
sacred mountain in the desert; the circumstance prevented it from being reduced
to an instrument of political power. In classical Greece, the people could
become the font of laws; the gods simply confirmed them. In Judea, the theory
that law emanated from divine revelation, which was broadly developed in the
Pentateuch from the exilic period on, prevented a similar process of democratization
in formulating laws, since a class of scribes, who derived their norms
from interpreting and extending the Torah, assumed an increasingly dominant
intellectual leadership in Achaemenid and Hellenistic Judea. Through its consistent
presentation of law in theological terms, the Hebrew Bible made the Torah
into an independent counterweight to every state that became subject to
Jewish law. The followers of Alexander, on the other hand, came under the
influence of ancient royal ideologies; their kingdoms took on a more-oriental
character, and the king came to embody the law as nomos empsychos (living
law) in a development that aroused fierce resistance among Jews in the
population.
The emancipation of ethics from traditional religion in
Greek philosophy
Greece had no intellectual class of religious specialists who could rationalize
traditional religion and make it able to address the need for salvation, who
could develop comprehensive theories to explain the experiences of negative
contingency that impeded satisfaction of this need, and who could then impart
them to their clientele in combination with moral precepts in a manner that
furthered social solidarity. Thus from the 6th century, new ways to satisfy these
needs arose along the margins of Greek culture, such as Asia Minor (Miletus),
and then also affected traditional religion in its centers (Athens). Xenophanes
(570–480 bce) took a critical stand against traditional Greek religion, declaring,
“Homer and Hesiod attributed behavior to the gods that human beings
consider shameful and scandalous, such as theft, adultery, and deceitful dealings”
(DK 21B11). When people wished to protect themselves from the will of
the gods, which they understood to be amoral and arbitrary, they called upon
the synthetic view of life, as Odyssey 1.32–34 already put it: “All evil, men
proclaim, comes from the gods, yet nevertheless these fools ignore fate and divine
warnings, and cause their own ruin.” In this view the gods are anthropomorphic
figures and only a mirror image of limited human imagination. While
Xenophanes deduced the existence of a transcendent god from this—a problematic
deduction because different nomoi among the human cultures had then
to be traced back to differences in the world of the gods—skepticism prevailed
among the Sophists. Rhetorical arguments and matters of content diverged, so
that different moral judgments could coexist side by side. Increased knowledge
about non-Greek peoples and their laws and customs in the 5th century led to
a more relative view, in which laws were thought to be mutable rather than un-
95 law and ethics
changing. The Greeks learned to distinguish between what existed in nature
(physis) and what had been established by human beings (nomos). A debate
then followed over whether people ought to follow their natural instincts or
act in accordance with the laws and conventions of their community. Traditional
nomos thus became open to alteration.
In the 4th century, Plato, in a debate with the Sophists, developed a concept
of nomos that was based on new epistemological and ontological reasoning
and that did not draw on existing laws. He placed nomos in a world of ideas
from which the material world of sensory experience was derived; human beings
could approach this world by means of their powers of reasoning. A lifelong
striving for knowledge became the principle of moral behavior. Since the
rational human soul stemmed from the intangible world of ideas before it was
implanted in the body, every grasp or comprehension of an idea was held to be
a memory. And since a person’s worth consisted of one’s soul, one acted well
and justly in improving the condition of one’s soul and the souls of others. Ethics
became a doctrine of happiness that reformulated the popular connection
between one’s deeds and one’s fortune in life, for justice now numbered among
the things “that must be loved for their own sake and for the consequences resulting
from them by everyone who wishes to be happy [eudaimÃn]” (Republic
358a). Justice could be secured permanently and human happiness realized
only in the framework of the polis. Concrete ethical norms were determined by
membership in one of the city-state’s social classes and by the condition of
one’s soul. Aristotelian ethics, taking this as its starting point, is a theory of human
happiness (eudaimonia). Since human beings are disposed by nature to
live in communities, ultimately the goal of happiness could be attained only in
the polis, so that ethics became one part of political theory. For Aristotle, happiness
consisted in virtue (aretÁ) as a reasonable, self-controlled life and in the
possession of external goods (Nicomachean Ethics 1099a–b), so that human
happiness was not completely under human control, but remained a “gift of
the gods.”
The Hellenistic schools of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Pyrrhonian skepticism
sought to point out ways by which eudaimonia, understood as the highest
goal (telos) of human life, could be detached from its connections with
the polis and the gods and thereby brought entirely under human control.
These philosophers removed from the definition of happiness all material
goods that might not be available at certain times, so that the greatest good
in Stoicism was virtue, and in Epicureanism it was happiness (hÁdonÁ); both
terms included an attitude of indifference (apatheia/ataraxia) toward the material
sphere. The Christian ethics of antiquity held this philosophy, which
sought to attain happiness through one’s own efforts, to be a way of suppressing
one’s experience of evil and a form of arrogance. True virtue was associated
with piety and hope: “For we are encompassed with evils, which we ought
patiently to endure, until we come to the ineffable enjoyment of unmixed
good; for there shall be no longer anything to endure. Salvation, such as it shall
encountering ancient religions 96
be in the world to come, shall itself be our final happiness” (Augustine, City of
God 19.4).
Bibliography
Assmann, Jan. MaÚat: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten. Munich,
1990.
Dover, K. J. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Oxford, 1974.
Ferguson, John. Moral Values in the Ancient World. London, 1958.
Lambert, W. G. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford, 1960.
Lévy, Edmond, ed. La codification des lois dans l’antiquité. Paris, 2000.
Otto, Eckart. Theologische Ethik des Alten Testaments. Stuttgart, 1994.
97 law and ethics
Mysteries
Sarah Iles Johnston
No aspect of ancient religions has evoked greater interest—and a
greater range of interests—than that of mystery cults. Scholars have repeatedly
combed textual and archeological evidence in attempts to uncover their
secrets (what was done? by whom? to whom?), and a variety of people from
outside of academia have invoked and adapted the cults for their own uses.
Mozart’s Magic Flute, which draws on 18th-century Masonic perceptions of
the mystery cult of Isis, is a well-known example; today, neopagan religious
groups worship the gods of mystery cults in what they believe is the way that
ancient initiates did.
In the latter part of this essay, we may gain some insights as to why mystery
cults are of perennial interest. But I will begin with a summary of what scholars
think we can say with certainty about the most prominent cults. In the short
run, this means emphasizing Greece and Rome, the homes of mystery cults in
the strictest sense of the term. This eventually leads us, however, into other cultures
of the ancient Mediterranean, first through a contextualization of the
Greek and Roman mystery cults within a range of religious phenomena with
which they share salient characteristics, notably a promise of personal transformation
and a demand for secrecy; and then through examining how later
religious and philosophical systems, including Christianity, adapted the word
mystery.
Overview
Any model of mystery cults will be imperfect, both because there were variations
among individual cults in antiquity and because there remain disagreements
of definition among scholars. But we must start from at least a provisional
model; and so before discussing the cults themselves, I first list five
criteria that many cults shared:
• Mystery cults demanded secrecy; initiates were forbidden to divulge what
they had experienced (“mystery” comes from Greek myein [to close]).
• Mystery cults promised to improve initiates’ situations in the present life
and/or after death.
• Initiates garnered these advantages by establishing a special relationship
with divinities during initiation.
• Mystery cults were optional supplements to civic religion, rather than
competing alternatives (this is why we call them “cults,” rather than “re-
ligions”).
• Myths were associated with the cults, which narrated tales of the cults’
divinities.
Space allows detailed discussion of only two cults here; four others are
sketched more briefly, and there were other, “lesser” mysteries in antiquity
as well.
The Eleusinian mysteries
The myth of Demeter and her daughter, who is called both Kore (Maiden) and
Persephone, was associated already in antiquity with mysteries held in Eleusis,
a town fourteen miles west of Athens. The myth appears in several, slightly different
versions, of which the best known is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
Hades, king of the underworld, snatched Persephone away to be his wife.
Demeter searched desperately for her missing daughter and, having discovered
Persephone’s fate, retreated in grief from the gods’ company, disguised herself
as an old woman, and took work as a nursemaid in the royal Eleusinian family.
When her secret attempt to immortalize the family’s son was interrupted, however,
Demeter became angry and, throwing off her disguise, cast the earth into
famine. Under pressure, Zeus compelled Hades to return Persephone to her
mother, but Hades first gave Persephone pomegranate seeds to eat, which obligated
her to return to the underworld for part of each year thereafter. Hades
promised Persephone that as his wife, she would have power over “everything
that lives and moves” and the ability to punish those who displeased her.
Demeter, reunited with her daughter, restored fertility to the fields and instructed
the Eleusinians in her mysteries, promising blessings to initiates both
during life and after death and warning that the uninitiated would face an afterlife
in dank darkness.
Ancient sources make clear the connections between this myth and the
Eleusinian mysteries. But it must be emphasized that the Hymn to Demeter is a
literary work and probably was composed for recitation in a public context. It
was not the sacred text of a cult that prized secrecy as highly as the mysteries
did, and we cannot assume that all the actions it narrates signify what initiates
actually did within the walls of the Eleusinian precinct. The Hymn can be used,
however, in combination with other ancient information to paint a picture of
the mysteries in broad strokes. It is likely, for example, that individuals some-
99 mysteries
how imitated Demeter’s experiences during initiation and in doing so passed
from grief to joy (ancient sources mention such a transition)—we know that
they drank a mixture called the kykeÃn, which Demeter also is said to have
drunk in the Hymn, and that in doing so, like Demeter, they broke a fast. It is
possible that they watched a dramatic reenactment of Persephone’s kidnapping
and return (a cave on the site looks like a probable setting for the kidnapping,
and we are told that a bronze gong was rung during the mysteries to signify
Persephone’s return). Some sort of ritual probably took place around a special
well in the precinct, which is echoed in the Hymn by Demeter’s encounter at a
well with daughters of the Eleusinian king. Thematically, too, the Hymn resonates
with concerns addressed in the mysteries, most prominently the hope
that a special relationship with Demeter and Persephone would protect one
from the direst aspects of the mortal lot.
Other pieces of information take us further. Athens controlled the mysteries
(many of its priesthoods were in the hands of two Athenian families), and thus
the public parts of the ceremony were held each year in Athens, after certain secret
objects had been carried from Eleusis to Athens under close guard. An
Athenian official called an assembly in which the opening of the mysteries
was announced. The next day, at the Athenian harbor, each initiate bathed
himself or herself and a piglet, which would later be sacrificed, perhaps on
the third day. The fourth day was given over to latecomers who had to catch
up with what they had missed. On the fifth day, initiates walked from Athens
to Eleusis wearing white garments and carrying torches. At a certain point during
this journey, yellow ribbons were tied on their right hands and left legs, and
at another point, as they crossed the Cephisus River, insults were cast at them
by former initiates (we are not sure why). The secret objects that previously
had been carried from Eleusis to Athens were carried back again on this same
journey.
Upon arrival at Eleusis, initiates entered a walled precinct—and it is here
that our certain information dwindles; under threat of death, initiates kept
their secrets well. We do know that whatever happened inside the precinct
consumed three days and that it culminated at night inside a hall called the
Telesterion—literally, the place of “completion” or “initiation.” Something
highly significant was shown to the initiates in a sudden burst of torch light
(one ancient source that many scholars judge trustworthy claims that it was
“just a sheaf of wheat”; the significance of the object, whatever it was, may
have been largely symbolic). We know that each initiate had to have his or her
own mystagÃgos—a guide who had already been initiated and thus could ensure
that the initiate completed the process correctly. We know that initiates heard
and said special things and felt that they had personal contact with Demeter
and Persephone. We know that, toward the end of the process, initiates poured
libations to the dead. And we know that it was possible to be initiated a second
time at Eleusis, into a higher level of the mysteries. But beyond this, all is conjecture.
Whatever happened at Eleusis must have been highly appealing, howencountering
ancient religions 100
ever: the mysteries drew initiates from all over the ancient Mediterranean and
operated from the archaic into the late imperial period.
The Samothracian mysteries
The Greek word mystÁria (mysteries) properly applies only to the Eleusinian
festival, but mystÁria was also used to refer to other, similar cults, and modern
scholars have followed suit. Herodotus provides our first example, in the 5th
century bce, when he describes a cult on the island of Samothrace as mystÁria
(2.51).
The Samothracian mysteries were almost as long-lived and popular as the
Eleusinian (they continued till the reign of Constantine), but we know less
about them. They centered on gods whose names were secret and whom ancient
authors associated with a variety of other gods, including (perhaps in imitation
of Eleusis) Demeter, Persephone, and Hades; other evidence, however,
suggests a central goddess and two male attendants. We know only three details
of Samothrace’s nocturnal initiation rite: initiates had to wear purple
sashes, to tell the priest what the worst deeds were that they had ever committed,
and to wear iron rings once they were initiated. Protection against dangers
at sea was the most famous benefit of initiation; we hear nothing about postmortem
benefits and have only fragments of myths associated with the cult. In
contrast to Eleusis, individuals could be initiated not only during an annual
festival, but at any time.
The Bacchic mysteries
Unlike the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries, initiations associated with
Dionysus (or Bacchus) could be performed anywhere—in fact, some Bacchic
priests made their livings by wandering from place to place, performing “initiations”
(teletai; cf. the Eleusinian Telesterion). The ability to initiate was considered
a special craft, and many priests claimed inclusion in a chain of teachers
and students stretching back to mythic priests of Dionysus. In spite of
this, techniques of initiation varied. From Herodotus we hear about a thiasos
(group) of Dionysiac initiates raving through the night in a sort of maddened,
ecstatic release (4.79). We hear elsewhere about initiates, especially female, ascending
mountains to participate in initiations that included nocturnal dancing.
The phallus, symbol of generative power and sexuality, appears often in
Dionysiac iconography.
Such practices and images have fueled imaginations. In Euripides’ Bacchae,
female worshipers tear apart live animals and, eventually, the king of their city.
A famous Roman repression of Bacchic cults in 186 bce followed accusations
that they were fronts for murder, sodomy, and other crimes. We have no evidence
that such extremes were reached by real initiates, but the note of wild
abandon that such stories strike does reflect a genuine element of Dionysiac
101 mysteries
cult: Dionysus released worshipers from everyday concerns and limits. Less
wild, perhaps, were initiations connected with the gold tablets, which centered
on learning the story of Dionysus’s birth and sufferings. The variegated picture
of initiation rites is complicated further because the goals of initiation varied.
In some cases, ecstatic communion with the god was foremost, with little or no
thought for the afterlife. Other rites assuaged the wrath of the dead and thus
protected the living from their attacks. Still others sought to ensure the initiate’s
own happiness in the next world. Also open to question is how many of
these cults were formally called or considered mysteries.
Here I will focus on the rites involving the gold tablets, as they both align
most closely with my working model of mystery cults, and use the word
mystÁs, which refers to an initiate of a mystery. The tablets, which have been
found in Greek and Italian graves dating from the 5th century bce to the 2nd
century ce, are small sheets of gold inscribed with instructions that guide
the soul of the dead through the underworld and ensure that it receives preferential
treatment from underworld deities. They also incorporate fragments
of hexameter poetry derived from poems attributed to the mythic poet Orpheus,
which narrated the story of Dionysus and Persephone. Fritz Graf suggests
that these texts were also read aloud during initiations, which supports
the idea that the tablets served to remind the soul (which was expected to
be confused after death) of what it had already learned while alive. Some
tablets were placed in the corpses’ mouths, as if to actually “speak” on their
behalf.
The instructions on the tablets include admonitions to avoid certain paths
in the underworld and to drink from waters of Memory instead of those of
Forgetfulness; this probably refers to the need to remember mistakes made
during the last life lest one repeat them in the next (reincarnation also is implied
by mention of a “circle of grief” from which the initiate will eventually
escape). The tablets also remind the soul of declarations that it must make to
Persephone, stating that it is pure, that it belongs to the divine race, that it has
paid the penalty for “unrighteous deeds,” and that “the Bacchic one himself
[Dionysus] has released” it. The reward for doing and saying everything correctly,
according to the tablets, is to join other mystai (initiates) and bacchoi
who feast and drink in a pleasant part of the underworld. Similar declarations
must be made to guardians who otherwise would prevent access to the waters
of Memory. A late-4th-century bce funerary vase from southern Italy, now
in the Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art, illustrates the reward: at the center of
the scene, Dionysus shakes hands with Hades as Persephone looks on with approval;
to his side are figures who represent the joyous afterlife that Bacchic
initiates win, and separated from him, cut off from pleasure, are famous
mythic figures who failed to accept Dionysus.
The declarations concerning unrighteous deeds and atonement on the tablets
can be explained by reference to the myth of Dionysus and Persephone.
Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Persephone. While a child, he was lured
away by jealous gods called Titans, who killed and consumed most of him.
encountering ancient religions 102
Athena salvaged his heart, which Zeus fed to his lover Semele in order that Dionysus
might be reconceived. In due course the god was (re)born, although
Persephone continued to mourn her loss. Meanwhile, Zeus incinerated the Titans
and humanity arose from their remains. Thus human nature is predominantly
wicked. Humans must strive both to overcome this and to atone to
Persephone for the Titans’ crime through initiation into the Bacchic mysteries;
otherwise they will suffer after death.
The cult of Meter
Meter (Mother) referred to a variety of goddesses who were either at home in
Greece or imported from Anatolia (e.g., Cybele). Their worship included ecstatic
dancing that induced insensitivity to pain; most extremely, some male
worshipers castrated themselves while in this state, dedicating their virility to
the goddess and serving her thereafter as eunuch priests. A mythic exemplar of
self-castration developed during the late Hellenistic period: Cybele maddened
her mortal consort, Attis, because he had betrayed her; he castrated himself
and bled to death. Whether such acts were always considered part of mystery
initiations is unclear, but we do hear about eunuchs and other priests of these
goddesses who, like Bacchic priests, wandered around performing initiations.
Benefits were expected to accrue during life and perhaps after death.
Cybele officially entered Rome in 205/204 bce under the name of Magna
Mater (Great Mother), at the suggestion of the Sibylline Books. It is later, during
the imperial period, that we first hear about one of the cult’s most striking
features, the taurobolium (bull slaughtering), although something called the
taurobolium had also been practiced earlier in Anatolia. Our evidence for the
Roman taurobolium is incomplete, but Philippe Borgeaud has convincingly
suggested that it involved sprinkling initiates with blood from the testicles of a
freshly castrated bull. Thus, men who did not wish to castrate themselves (and
women) could partake of the goddess’s benefits. Initiation could be renewed
after a number of years by repeating the taurobolium. The Christian author
Prudentius exemplifies the polemics directed against mysteries in later ages
when he invents a far bloodier taurobolium (Peristephanon 10.1011–50): a
bull is slaughtered atop a grate; an initiate crouches underneath in a pit, waiting
to be drenched in fresh blood—but this is unlikely to reflect real practices.
The cult of Mithras
Mithra was an old Indo-Iranian sun-god concerned with the making of alliances
who was transformed into Mithras by Roman men in the 1st century ce
into a god of mysteries. His mysteries particularly attracted soldiers and emphasized
bonds of brotherhood. This was enhanced by the small size of individual
Mithraic cults, which spread throughout the Roman Empire even as far
as Britain.
Initiates met in Mithraea, real or artificial caves that were decorated with
103 mysteries
frescos and reliefs to serve as models of the cosmos; in some intellectualized
forms of Mithraism, this is reflected in the initiates’ goal of causing their souls
to ascend through the heavens, but most initiates were probably more concerned
with the benefits that Mithras offered in the here-and-now, and it is difficult
to know what such cosmic representations meant to them. (There is evidence
that Mithraic worshipers were interested in astrology, too, but we do not
know why.)
On either side of a central aisle in Mithraea were benches on which initiates
reclined to dine, imitating the meal shared by Mithras and the sun-god (who
sometimes appears as a separate entity in Mithraism). We know that there
were seven grades of initiation—raven, bride, soldier, lion, Persian, sun-runner,
and father—but little about what they signified or required. Tauroctony (killing
of a bull) is central to the cult: numerous altarpieces show Mithras engaged
in such an act, and we can guess that it was repeated by initiates. An inscription
from one Mithraeum, “you saved us with the outpouring blood,” is taken
to refer to Mithras’s tauroctony, which often is supplemented in artistic representations
by symbols of fertility (e.g., a sheaf of wheat springs from the dying
bull’s tail). We have no textual traces of Mithraic myths, which makes interpretation
of these representations difficult.
The mysteries of Isis
The Greeks knew about the Egyptian goddess Isis from at least the time of
Herodotus and believed that Egyptian worship of Isis and her husband Osiris
was similar to that of their own mysteries. But the first clear traces of a Greek
mystery cult for Isis appear in an aretology that was inscribed and displayed in
Isiac sanctuaries during the last two centuries bce (the aretology itself may be
older). In it, Isis declares that she has brought agriculture, good laws, and other
benefits to the human race and that she has shown humans how to perform
mystery initiations; probably she is here identified with Demeter, as she often
was elsewhere, and the mysteries she claims to have bestowed on humanity are
those of Eleusis (Merkelbach 1995: 113–19).
Information on initiation into Isiac mysteries in the proper sense becomes
available only during the imperial period; they took place either at Isiac temples
or private houses. The fullest account is found in the final chapter of a
2nd-century ce novel, Apuleius’s Golden Ass. Lucius, the hero, although eager
to be initiated and frequently visited by Isis in dreams, must wait until the goddess
signifies that the time is right (not all initiates had to wait to be “called”;
other evidence indicates that initiation was usually available on request). He
abstains from forbidden foods, bathes, and purifies himself. Secrets of the cult’s
holy books are explained to him, and yet further secrets narrated to him. He
fasts for ten days, dons linen clothes (wool was prohibited in the cult), and at
night is taken into the innermost part of her temple in Corinth. There he undergoes
a process that, he claims, involves a journey to the underworld, “trial by
the elements” (probably water, fire, and air), and an introduction to all the
gods. The following morning he is given a new and splendid cloak, a torch,
encountering ancient religions 104
and a garland of flowers and is displayed publicly to all worshipers of Isis. After
he has celebrated for several days, Isis tells him to return home, but she and
Osiris subsequently instruct him in dreams to seek initiation into the mystery
cult of Osiris in Rome. Eventually, he is further initiated into the pastophoroi,
a group of priests who serve Isis and Osiris (we are told elsewhere that at least
some Isiac priests, in any given place, had to be Egyptian in order for the cult
to be properly conducted). The blessings that the gods confer on Lucius include
not only eschatological promises but an enhanced ability to earn money as a
lawyer.
The myth connected with Isiac mysteries comes to us only in the 1st centuries
bce and ce and closely mimics that of Eleusinian Demeter (Diodorus
Siculus 1.21–25; Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 12–19). That Isis seeks and
then mourns her husband Osiris, rather than her child, underscores the
close link between the two spouses, which was already important in Egypt.
Other Egyptian deities, such as Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, were also
adopted by Greeks and Romans, but Isis remained the central figure in her
mysteries.
Interpretations
So much for the basic facts about mystery cults, such as they are. What can be
said about how the cults functioned and how they fit into the larger religious
and societal climates of not only Greece and Rome but more broadly the ancient
Mediterranean?
Initiation as a process
Several ancient authors emphasize that initiates into mysteries not only did
and said things as part of their initiation, but experienced things. In other
words, there was a passive aspect to initiation. This is borne out by the passive
participles that are sometimes used to describe initiates: those initiated
into the cult of Meter, for example, are described as tauroboliati (they have
been “tauroboliated,” to coin a word) and those in the cult of Dionysus are
said to be bebaccheumenoi (they have been “bacchiated”). Initiates do not
simply go through required motions and gain promised rewards, they are
“processed” by what they experience in the mysteries and emerge as something
new.
In this respect, mystery initiation has a great deal in common with Mediterranean
rites of passage. The adolescent undergoes a rite from which he or she
emerges as an adult; the unmarried woman emerges from the wedding ceremony
not only as a married woman in the sense of having a husband, but in
the sense of being, in the eyes of her society, a different sort of woman altogether,
with new responsibilities and rights. Some scholars have even suggested
that the Eleusinian mysteries, and perhaps other early Greek mysteries, developed
out of clan-based adolescent initiation rites: the Eleusinian priesthood
105 mysteries
was controlled by two Athenian clans, the Eumolpidai and the Kerykes, and in
the myths connected with some mysteries, an adolescent or child (Persephone,
Dionysus) experiences the sorts of transitions that are often associated with
rites of passage in myth, such as death, marriage, and rebirth. Iconography and
myth, moreover, associate Demeter (and sometimes Persephone) with the care
and maturation of children, both at Eleusis and elsewhere.
But the mysteries’ broader similarity to rites of passage, as procedures that
process individuals and enable them to emerge as something new, prompts
another observation: most parts of Greece (including Athens, home of the
Eleusinian mysteries) had no rites of passage that formally and explicitly
changed adolescents into adults, at least during historical times; what we find
instead in some places are optional rites that celebrate the maturation of a few
individuals (which usually meant the children of the noble and the wealthy).
Why earlier, more widespread rites of passage died out (if they ever existed at
all) is a question we cannot consider here, but we can at least ponder the striking
correlation: it was precisely in a culture from which rites of passage were
missing that mysteries developed. Rome, which eagerly adopted Greek mystery
cults and then went on to create some of its own, similarly shows few traces of
adolescent rites of passage after the 3rd century bce. It is tempting to see mysteries,
which promised to “complete” or “perfect” (telein) individuals, as developing
to fill a gap.
Initiation and community
Another sort of ritual in which individuals undergo experiences and then
emerge with a new status are initiations into professions, such as blacksmithing,
or into roles, such as priest or king. Egyptian artisans of many sorts were
initiated into their professions, and Mesopotamian priests were initiated into
the priesthoods of Nanna and of Enlil and Ninlil, for example. Like adolescent
rites of passage, these sorts of rituals can be glimpsed behind some mysteries.
The Samothracian mysteries preserve traces of blacksmiths’ guild initiations
(e.g., the iron rings that initiates wear and the worship of artisan divinities
called Kabeiroi). The predilection of soldiers for the Mithraic mysteries may
also point toward a group with guildlike bonds, and the seven grades of
Mithraic initiation suggest an interest in delineation and assumption of hierarchical
roles. One possible link between guild initiations and mysteries is that
both promise to let the individual in on valuable secrets—secrets that will enable
them, in the case of guilds, to prosper in their profession and, in the case
of mysteries, to prosper in life more generally—or prosper after death. Not so
long ago, indeed, the English word mystery could be used to refer to one’s
trade or occupation. Although linguists tell us that this use really derives from
the Latin word ministerium (service, work), its development was influenced by
the Greek mystÁria and its connotations: an apprentice was understood to be
initiated into the secrets of his craft by his master. Masonic mysteries straddle
the two significations.
encountering ancient religions 106
Even when contextualized within these other forms of initiations, however,
one strikingly unusual characteristic of the mysteries still sets them apart: they
were not mutually exclusive. One could be initiated into as many mystery cults
as one desired and could afford; during the imperial period, wealthy individuals
made a “grand tour” of them. Into some mysteries, moreover, one might be
initiated more than once. This is different from adolescent initiations, for example,
in which the transition from child to adult is singular, irreversible, and
without any need (or, usually, possibility) of supplementation. It is also different
from initiation into guilds insofar as individuals seldom had more than one
profession and therefore more than one guild membership. By the same token,
mystery initiation is different from initiation into a position such as kingship,
which usually is held exclusively of other such positions.
One reason that mystery cults may have tolerated and even supported multiple
memberships among initiates was that the benefits they promised were garnered
not so much by entering into a community of people who would support
one another (as in the case of an adolescent entering the adult community or an
apprentice entering a guild) as by making the personal acquaintance of one or
more gods. In a polytheistic system, the more gods one knew, the better, and
particularly in a polytheistic system such as the Greeks had, where there was
no concept of dualism or of orthodoxy and heresy, there was no need to avoid
one god in order to please another.
Mystery initiations, then, in contrast to other forms of initiation, focused
more closely on the individual as an individual than they did on the individual
as a new member of a group. Even at Eleusis, where hundreds or thousands
were initiated on the same night, each initiate had to have his or her own
mystagÃgos who performed the salient acts constituting initiation, whatever
they were. Other mysteries, such as those of Dionysus or Meter, were promulgated
partly by independent practitioners who initiated one or a few people
at a time. If we believe Apuleius’s account, Isiac initiation was individualized
as well.
This is not to say that there was no concept of community at all among initiates:
Dionysiac initiates might celebrate the god within a thiasos of participants
that remained the same and called each other symmystai (fellow initiates).
At some point during many mysteries, there was communal feasting—
most notably in the cult of Mithras, whose places of worship included dining
couches—and after death, initiates might expect to continue feasting and rejoicing
with others of their kind. There is evidence for Dionysiac initiates helping
to ensure that their fellows were properly buried and that the celebrations
of the thiasos were well funded. But by and large, we lack indications that initiates
felt an obligation to one another; the bond forged among them was not
one of codependence, but rather of shared privilege. Plato mentions that common
initiation into mysteries contributed to building a friendship, but he also
makes it clear that this was just one among many other social ties that the two
friends shared—it was the sort of thing that men of their stature did (Letters
7.333e).
107 mysteries
The rewards of secrecy
Secrecy is the most famous and constant characteristic of mystery cults, from
which the modern meaning of the word mystery develops.
But secrecy was not characteristic of mystery cults alone in the ancient
world. The details of some adolescent rites of passage and many other genderspecific
rites were kept secret both from the young people who had not yet
been initiated and from all members of the opposite sex. In ancient Sparta, in
fact, the name for male rites of passage was Krypteia (The Hidden [Ritual]).
Guild initiations were kept secret as well. Moving outside of these two phenomena,
we find plenty of others: in some societies, only the king or a certain
priest might know, for example, where a particular sacred place was situated
and how to tend it, or how to use and interpret the secrets in a sacred book. In
Egypt, for instance, the priestly “overseer of secrets” alone knew where certain
figurines were buried, and only the pharaoh, in his role as chief priest of the
sun-god, had access to certain mortuary texts. In Athens, only one family, the
Gephyraioi, had access to a special temple of Demeter Achaia. In Mesopotamia,
the crafts of writing and reading—and therefore access to sacred documents—were
closely guarded not only by limiting access to the academy but by
employing cryptographic writing in some cases. Throughout the Mediterranean,
practitioners of magic possessed secret methods of accomplishing remarkable
things and guarded them well.
But all forms of secrecy are not the same. We must distinguish between “absolute”
secrecy—that is, a situation in which the very existence of something
is unknown to outsiders—and “relative” secrecy—a situation in which outsiders
know that something exists but do not know all of its details (mysteries
are an example of the latter). Absolute secrecy, in fact, is uncommon in religious
systems that do not embrace concepts of orthodoxy and heresy for two
reasons.
First, absolute secrecy is uncommon because unless a given practice or belief
is outlawed, there is no need to hide it. Outside of Christianity and Judaism,
concepts of orthodoxy and heresy were virtually unknown in ancient religions
and so, therefore, was the need for absolute secrecy. A partial exception is the
covert practice, for strategic or social reasons, of acts that are otherwise well
known and accepted. For example, silent prayer was unusual in the ancient
Mediterranean; when people prayed silently, this usually meant that they were
asking for something they did not want others to know about. A charioteer
might pray silently when asking a god to hobble his opponent’s horses so that
the opponent would not hear the prayer and counteract it with one of his own.
The would-be adulterer might pray silently for help in seducing a married
woman. The technique (prayer) is socially accepted even if the ends to which it
is directed must be hidden.
Second, absolute secrecy is uncommon because religious systems, or cults
within religious systems, need to advertise themselves and their advantages,
both in order to gain converts or initiates and in order to win prestige (the two
encountering ancient religions 108
goals are closely linked). And here, ironically, secrecy helps: nothing appeals to
human nature more than something that is described as secret, as contemporary
advertisers know well. The appeal lies partially in the promise that those
who join will garner special advantages (i.e., that the secrets are valuable) but
partially in the sheer fact that in learning them one becomes part of a special
group, be it the group of Bacchic initiates, adult men, stonecutters, caretakers
of the hero’s secret cult, or something else.
Of course, these remarks look at matters from the outside; members of secret
groups have other explanations for their secrecy, such as the need to protect
gender-exclusive knowledge from the potentially ruinous interference of
the other gender or the need to shield a divinity’s benefits from those who had
not been properly prepared to receive them. Hekhalot mystics, for example,
avoided discussing what they knew outside of their own circle, claiming that it
could cause damage in the hands of the uninitiated; mystics in Egypt and Mesopotamia
made similar statements. But this is not to say that all ancient individuals
looked at mysteries from the inside; Plato and others remarked on the
way in which itinerant priests of the mysteries used their claims of secret
knowledge to line their own pockets. Other ancient outsiders, particularly the
early Christian writers, attacked the mysteries’ claim to secrecy from a different
direction, charging that it cloaked behavior that was not only heretical by
Christian standards, but illegal and inhuman, such as cannibalism and human
sacrifice; the Romans who opposed the Bacchanalia in 186 bce used a similar
argument. This is an old trick, but a perennially effective one: those who share
a secret that has been attacked cannot defend it without betraying it.
A final observation about secrecy in mystery cults takes us back to the issue
of community. Most groups that share secrets share other characteristics as
well: adolescents who undergo a rite of passage share not only the secrets they
learn in the process but the preexisting fact that they are male (or female) and
of a certain age. Guild initiates share their intention to pursue a certain craft
and, typically, also share membership in the same socioeconomic class. Most
mystery cults, in contrast, drew initiates from a broad socioeconomic spectrum,
from both genders, and from all age groups. Mithraism is an exception,
insofar as it was restricted to males. The Eleusinian mysteries are another partial
exception, insofar as they did not allow the initiation of children (except
for one special child initiated each year on behalf of the city), but otherwise
they were markedly catholic: so long as a person had the ability to understand
Greek and did not carry the stain of murder on his or her hands, he or she was
welcome at Eleusis. The lack of other unifying characteristics among initiates
in most mystery cults makes the demand for secrecy—and whatever it was that
the demand for secrecy shielded—all the more important in defining the initiates’
identities as members of the cult. This identity did not extend very far into
life outside of the cult, but the very pledge that initiates gave to guard the secret
for the rest of their lives (and, as far as we can tell, almost all initiates kept to
this promise) would have worked to remind them thereafter of the group that
they had joined and what they had gained in doing so.
109 mysteries
Later developments
Already in the classical period, mystÁria and cognates such as mystÁs (initiate)
could be used metaphorically to refer to matters that were difficult to grasp but
important for a person’s welfare. Plato, for example, often uses them to describe
the process of learning philosophy (e.g., Menexenus 76e). Philosophical
metaphor became reality in later antiquity, however, when some Platonists
used mystÁria, mystÁs, and other terms to refer both to varieties of Platonic philosophy
that emphasized spiritual development through the acquisition of esoteric
knowledge and to rituals that brought the philosophers into close contact
with the gods (Chaldaean Oracles, frag. 132). Interaction with the gods was
expected to purify the philosopher’s soul, enabling it to ascend into the divine
realm and eventually, after death, escape the circle of reincarnation to which
other souls were condemned.
Meanwhile, a singular form of the word mystÁria (mystÁrion) came to denote
simply a secret in the sense of something an individual wanted to keep
hidden from others; we encounter this meaning frequently in the Jewish Apocrypha
(e.g., Jdt. 2.2, Sir. 27.17). Partaking of all these meanings were ancient
magicians’ uses of the words: a “mystery” could be a special tool or technique
that a magician might wish to keep hidden from other magicians in order to
preserve his competitive edge; a technique that the gods had given the magician;
a procedure into which one magician had to initiate another—or several
of these things at the same time, as a single spell from a single magical papyrus
demonstrates (PGM IV.723, 732–50, 794). Lingering behind some of these
uses, both philosophical and magical, was the concept of ineffability—that is,
the idea that something remained hidden because its divine nature simply
could not be expressed by human words. To understand a mystery, one had to
experience it oneself or learn it directly from the gods.
Some early Christian uses of mystery align with the developments that we
have just reviewed: for instance, God’s mysteries were made known to humans
by divine revelation (Eph. 3.3) or by special instructions that only an inner circle
would understand (Matt. 13.11); God’s mysteries promised salvation to the
individual soul, particularly eschatological salvation; certain aspects of God’s
plan for humans were ineffable mysteries (Col. 1.27). But the word developed
in an interesting new direction as well and took the idea of mystery religions
along with it. Christ’s disciples proclaimed themselves to be eager to reveal
God’s mysteries to anyone who would listen; they erased any division between
initiate and noninitiate and rejected the need to undergo special rituals before
receiving valuable information (1 Cor. 15.51; Eph. 3.9). As Paul and Timothy
said: “pray for us also, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare
the mystery of Christ . . . that I [Paul] may make it clear” (Col. 4.3–4).
The use of mystery to mean a secret that must be kept, as we see it used in the
Jewish Apocrypha, for example, is absent. As a proselytizing religion that
aimed to build the largest possible community as quickly as possible, Christianity
used the lure implicit in the word mystery more boldly than anyone preencountering
ancient religions 110
viously had and in doing so turned one of the best-known qualities of mystery
religions—privilege through exclusivity—upside down.
It is in part their air of exclusivity—and correlatively, the tantalizing chance
that we might conquer exclusivity and seize knowledge that the Greeks and
Romans (unlike Paul and Timothy) strove to keep hidden—that makes ancient
mystery religions so attractive even now. For some, attaining that knowledge
promises the same sort of spiritual benefits that it promised two thousand
years ago, as a search of “mysteries” on the internet will demonstrate:
throughout the world, neopagan groups busily process new initiates. For others,
it promises the same sort of satisfaction that one gets from solving other
scholarly puzzles, only more so—after all, knowledge of the ancient mysteries
has been occluded not only by the same intervening centuries that dim our
knowledge of all aspects of ancient cultures, but also by deliberate concealment.
Any scholar who turns up a new bit of evidence or provides a persuasive
new interpretation shares the feeling of a master cryptographer who has
cracked an enemy code. And this leaves us with an interesting question: if,
some day, scholarship miraculously were to reveal all of the mysteries’ secrets,
would they still fascinate us? Luckily, perhaps, it is a situation that we are very
unlikely to confront.
Bibliography
Beck, Roger. “The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of Their Genesis.” Journal of
Roman Studies 88 (1998): 115–28.
Borgeaud, Philippe. La mère des dieux: De Cybèle à la Vierge Marie. Seuil, 1996.
Burkert, Walter. Ancient Mystery Cults. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Cole, Susan Guettel. Theoi Megaloi: The Cult of the Great Gods of Samothrace. Études
préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire romain 96. Brill, 1984.
Graf, Fritz. “Dionysian and Orphic Eschatology: New Texts and Old Questions of Interpretation.”
In Masks of Dionysus, ed. T. H. Carpenter and C. A. Faraone. Cornell
University Press, 1993.
Kerényi, Carl. Eleusis: Archetypical Image of Mother and Daughter. Tr. Ralph
Mannheim. Princeton University Press, 1967 (orig. 1960).
Merkelbach, Reinhold. Isis Regina—Zeus Sarapis. Teubner, 1995.
111 mysteries
Religions in Contact
John Scheid
Contact among different religions and gods was a constant in the ancient
world. Ancient Rome, for example, always had more than one religion,
and it was only during the last period of its history that it saw the spread of exclusively
monotheistic religions. The public religion of Rome involved all Roman
citizens as such, but this religion was not the only one they had to deal
with. In Rome itself, every citizen belonged to several other religious communities,
starting with the household religion, which was autonomous with respect
to the public religion; the associations or social groups to which a citizen could
belong—colleges of merchants or artisans, neighborhood groups, or military
units—each of which had its own religion; and, finally, specific forms of religious
practice, such as those involving sorcery, magic, and divination, which
continued to flourish despite occasional persecution. Moreover, citizens of a
Roman colony had religious obligations within the public religion of that colony.
The gradual diffusion of Christianity did not suppress this pluralism, since
the various Christian communities, divided and resistant to central authority,
coexisted for a long time and shared the field with the two other religions “of
the book,” Judaism and, eventually, Islam. In this way, the religious life of the
ancient world was shaped by a plurality of overlapping religious obligations
that were not mutually exclusive, but among which certain ones had prece-
dence.
What was true inside Rome and the city-states that surrounded it was
equally true outside of that circle. Because these city-states were relatively
small, they themselves were surrounded by other small states in fairly close
proximity, whose religious systems were nonetheless different, despite significant
structural resemblances. Rome was bordered on the north by Etruscan
city-states, on the south and southeast by Latin-speaking and, more generally,
Italic populations. These cities and peoples had their own religions, with which
their neighbors had become familiar and with which they had learned to get
along. In fact, in the archaic period, influential families moved back and forth
between the various city-states, and they seem to have adapted, without too
much difficulty, to local religions. Etruscan families are known to have lived in
Rome; there is also the story of the arrival in Rome of the Sabine Attus
Clausus, ancestor of the Claudii clan, with five thousand followers who assimilated
into the Roman populace.
At another level, Rome was part of the Latin League that united thirty communities;
the annual foundational act of this league was a common sacrifice to
Jupiter on Monte Cavo. It would be interesting to know how this sacrifice was
conducted and how it was perceived by representatives of the thirty groups,
whose religious customs differed significantly, despite their kinship. But the literary
tradition never mentions issues of this sort—perhaps owing to the absence
of consistent source material from this period and this particular religious
practice and perhaps especially because, by the very nature of their
religious systems, these separate groups were accustomed to practicing religious
cohabitation: it was what they did every day in their homes.
Furthermore, none of these religions proselytized. A person belonged to a religious
community by virtue of birth or social position, and a notion such as
conversion made no sense at all. Belonging to a religion was part and parcel of
having a social position, and one’s ritual obligations concerned life in this
world; religion did not demand an act of faith and personal conversion as a
preliminary condition of membership in the body of those “faithful” to a deity,
even in the mystery cults, for which initiation was required. Depending on his
social situation, a citizen was subject to some kind of religious obligation,
whether he liked it or not. Participation in mystery cults was, of course, a matter
of choice, but, in fact, a citizen’s social situation was more often the central
factor, because it opened up the possibility of choice. Thus, initiates of the cult
of Mithras were recruited among mid-level Roman military and administrative
personnel. Taking into account, too, that all these religions were polytheistic,
ritualistic, and nonexclusive, one can understand the ease with which contacts
were made between adherents to the various systems of religious obligations,
which overlapped and complemented one another but were not in opposition.
The precise distinctions that scholars establish between public, semipublic, and
domestic cults, for clarity’s sake, are justified because they correspond to legal
reality, but in daily life, the citizen perceived no such distinction, since everything
came together for him in a set of more-or-less important and constraining
religious obligations, to which he was subject depending on the time or place.
The situation was hardly any different for what gradually became the Roman
world. The religious systems of Greek city-states functioned in roughly
the same manner as those of Rome and Italy. And even in the Jewish nation,
which practiced a monotheistic religion, the presence of “Greek” groups and
city-states with their polytheistic cults was a historical and political fact that
was never systematically questioned, despite the stricter conception of purity in
Jewish traditions. A similar situation developed in Egypt, where the ancestral
religion of the Egyptians—governed by a pharaoh whose origins were Greek,
then by a Roman, the emperor—existed alongside Greek cults. In Alexandria,
113 religions in contact
the powerful Jewish community and the Greek community occupying the same
neighborhoods—a characteristic of Alexandrian identity—led to sporadic pogroms
and conflicts, particularly in the period of Jewish uprisings; these were
triggered more by rivalry, however, than by radical religious opposition.
Initially limited to areas of immediate overlap, contacts and exchanges between
religions were a fundamental fact of religious life in the entire Mediterranean
world. Contacts did not stop expanding even with the Macedonian
and Roman conquests. Whether out of cultural inclination or as a matter of
convenience, today’s observer views different religions as isolated communities
or else as categorically opposed. Such an approach is misleading when applied
to antiquity because, with the exception of particular situations circumscribed
by the historical moment, the religions of the Mediterranean world
have never been isolated. Contacts and interpenetrations have never stopped
taking place.
Such a religious universe could not be radically affected by changes owing to
Hellenistic and Roman imperialism, at least as long as religious values were
compatible, because relations with the religions and gods of others, as well as
the assimilation of new gods and religious modes, constituted part of Roman
religious behavior. Contacts were not always peaceful, however.
Conflicts and resistance
In the case of political or military conflict, any religion could become the evil
enemy, even if it was to shed that designation once peace was reestablished. So,
for the Romans, during the Third Samnite War (295 bce), the rites of the
Samnites were deemed barbarous, a judgment that had never been made before
and one that was of course abandoned when the Samnites were integrated into
the Roman city-state. The situation was no different in the Hellenistic world or
in Syria or Egypt. Depending on the fluctuations of conflicts and truces, religions
could be the object of accusations and repressions, but for political and
military rather than religious motives. While the Alexandrian Greeks and Jews
exchanged mutual accusations, their aim was to do the other group harm, not
to destroy its practices and beliefs; for the most part, each side managed to accommodate
the other’s form of religion. In spite of the catastrophe attributed
to the Jewish Wars (66–70, 135 ce) and the religious consequences brought on
by the destruction of the temple and the Hasmonean kingdom, once peace had
returned, there was no longer any fundamental enmity between Jews and
Romans in the greater part of the Roman world. After the Jewish Wars, when
Greek and Roman presence increased in Judea, the rabbinic schools developed
rules that allowed Jews to live in the same community as non-Jews, instead of
radically prohibiting such cohabitation. So, in spite of the profound changes in
Judaism provoked by the destruction of the temple, the period afterward was a
relatively calm and prosperous one for Jewish communities, particularly in
Asia Minor and Rome.
encountering ancient religions 114
In Rome, some cults or ritual practices, such as those of Isis and Bacchus or
those of various philosophers and seers, were persecuted from time to time, but
never permanently and for their own sake. The sole prevailing issue was what
passed for public order, that is, the political situation. The well-known suppression
of the Bacchanalia (186 bce) reveals the Roman desire to preserve
strict control over religious developments in Rome and in Italy and over the
admission of new religious practices into Rome. This repression aimed at putting
an end to a new form of the cult of Bacchus, imported from Campania.
The Bacchic communities did not belong to the public religion, but rightly or
wrongly, their sudden proselytizing, combined with other practices viewed as
disruptive to the public order, seemed to reveal a desire to create an organization
encompassing all of Italy; in other words, the thiasoi (groups of worshipers)
were thought to mask a vast conspiracy. These accusations and suspicions
forced the intervention of magistrates, who severely curtailed the Bacchic
movement and reduced the cult to what it had been before its expansion
(Pailler 1988). This incident shows that Roman society and its authorities did
not always react with tolerance to the introduction of new religious practices,
even where cults with private status were concerned. The state sought to exert
control over the population and repressed even the slightest attempt on the
part of the populace to organize outside of public structures.
Some cults offered the possibility of this kind of organization, hence the hostility
of the authorities, if the political context alerted them. There is no need to
dwell on the subject of the wars that sprang out of Jewish resistance to the
gradual Hellenization in Judea, brought about first by the Seleucids, then by
the Romans. The policy of assimilation followed, in early imperial times, by
the Hasmonean kings, a policy that reflected a much more conciliatory position,
could not prevent the complete rejection of Roman influence by radical
groups. The Jewish Wars offer a well-documented example of insurrection
against the Romans, in which motives of a religious order played a central role
and constituted the basis for the rebellion. During another Jewish revolt, in
116–17 ce, pagan temples seem to have been destroyed, notably in Cyrenaica.
The pogrom incited in Egypt by this revolt characterized Jews in part as enemies
of the Egyptian gods (Frankfurter 1992). Furthermore, the Greeks of Alexandria,
protesting against Roman tyranny, also invoked the local Sarapis
cult; more generally, in Egypt, Thrace, and Gaul, indigenous priests often
played a role in insurrections (Beard, North, and Price 1998: 347). At the time
of such rebellions in Germany, Gaul, and Brittany, for example, Roman temples
were destroyed and participation in Roman religions was terminated. We
should note, however, that local cults were generally integrated into the local
Roman religion and that their priests were often members of the local elite. All
this tends to show that the insurgents were rejecting the Romans rather than
their gods and that religions themselves changed direction depending on political
events: during such conflicts, the religious practices and the gods that had
once symbolized integration into the Roman world became symbols of submission
or, in the case of indigenous cults, symbols of freedom.
115 religions in contact
Contacts and exchanges
In the course of antiquity, and especially under the Roman Empire, contact
among peoples, ethnic groups, and religious communities gave rise to lively
and lasting exchanges, leaving aside occasional revolts, wars, or pogroms.
From the earliest period about which we have information, Athens, Rome, or
Carthage welcomed traditions and deities whose names revealed their foreign
origins.
Let us take Rome as an example: its expansion was the most spectacular of
all, and it allows us to study the process of “acculturation” in detail. The religious
architecture of the 6th century bce—that of the Capitol, for example—
was in large part borrowed from the Etruscans. Tradition even attributes it,
along with the Capitoline triad housed in the temple, to kings and artisans
from Etruria. This same tradition holds that Roman rites of divination, such as
the technique of interpreting auspices and even the practice of triumphal processions,
were derived from Etruscan practices, and it situates the origins of the
Sibylline Books, introduced by an Etruscan king, in Campania. Whatever the
value of these traditions, it is clear that the Romans were not scandalized that
central elements of their religious rites came from neighboring peoples. Early-
20th-century historians clearly had more difficulty understanding this openness
to outsiders; Georg Wissowa expressed astonishment at the idea that the
most important gods of the Roman state, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, were of
foreign origin (1912: 40–43). The vestiges of the archaic period likewise reveal
an early Hellenism, by way of the Etruscans and neighboring Italic city-states.
Statues from the archaic temples of Saint Omobono are clearly derived from
contemporary Greek art, as is the decor on the temple of Castor and Pollux in
the Roman Forum. Furthermore, it was during this early period that Hercules,
Apollo, and Castor and Pollux themselves were installed in Rome. These deities
owe more to relations with the Italic city-states (Tibur, Tusculum) than to
direct contacts on the part of the Romans with Magna Graecia (the parts of Italy
that the Greeks had colonized), and they show in any case the extent to
which all the peoples of ancient Italy were open to other religious traditions.
Archeological digs show that the Carthaginians, with the Etruscans, worshiped
Uni-Astarte in her temple at Pyrgi (Cerveteri), and of course it is well known
that emissaries from the Italian city-states consulted the oracle at Delphi.
These cults and gods attest to cultural and political exchanges and probably
to migrations of social groups. A historical example offers some information
about the integration of foreign deities. During the siege of Veii (396 bce), the
Romans used the rite called evocatio to adopt the local goddess Juno Regina as
a Roman deity; after the taking of the city, the goddess was solemnly transported
to Rome, where she was given a temple and a public ceremony on the
Aventine. The Carthaginian goddess Juno Caelestis was believed to have been
“evoked” when Carthage was taken in 146 bce. As Roman colonies were established
in North Africa, many local Punic cults were taken up by these Roman
city-states. More generally, even if a war was not going on, deities were
encountering ancient religions 116
simply invited to Rome and established there without regard to their origin.
The uninterrupted series of such deities reflects the Roman expansion, first in
Italy and then in the Mediterranean: Diana, Feronia, Juno Sospita, Dis Pater
and Persephone, then Aesculapius, Venus Erycina, and Magna Mater—and a
little later, of course, the importing of deities was not restricted to Rome. In
the 4th century bce, the Carthaginians introduced the cult of Demeter and
Persephone into the city to atone for the devastation of their sanctuary in the
area around Syracuse. In Athens, the Thracian deity Bendis played a role in
civic cults starting in the 5th century bce, and Isis was introduced into the city
at the beginning of the 4th century bce.
Influences and “acculturation”
The integration of these cults came about without difficulty, according to a
complex system. As far as we can tell, in Rome, for example, public ceremonies
were celebrated either in the Roman style or according to a “foreign” mode,
and this had been true for a long time. The Capitoline triad and Castor and
Pollux seem always to have been honored according to Roman rituals, while
the Hercules of the Ara Maxima was honored according to different, rather
more “Greek” modalities. At the beginning of the 4th century, the first celebration
of a lectisternium (a banquet for gods) harkened back likewise to the
Greek tradition of theoxenia (entertaining gods at a meal). Nothing is known,
of course, about the domestic practices of this period, except for the slow
transformation of funerary rites; we can follow their evolution throughout
Italy under the influence of aristocratic traditions coming from Greece and
Magna Graecia. During the historical period, the situation was much the same,
although it responds to different imperatives that were at work then. From the
Punic Wars on, Rome entered into direct contact with the Mediterranean
world and, at the beginning of the 2nd century bce, with the countries of
Greece. The introduction of gods and religions belonging to other religious cultures,
and probably new representations of Rome’s relation to the rest of
the world as well, shaped the evolution of Rome’s relation to the gods and
cults of others. The more general concept of the “cult according to the Greek
ritual” was created in Rome in this context, although this type of practice was
not limited to Rome. The cult of Demeter and Persephone in 4th-century bce
Carthage must have been celebrated by Greeks living in Carthage who followed
the Greek rite. About the same time, a priestess of Greek origin presided
over the new “Greek” cults of Ceres that had been introduced in Rome.
The concept of the “Greek rite” was not an old one, although evidence for
the practice itself was already present from the beginning of the 4th century
with the introduction of lectisternia, with their clear reference to the Greek
theoxenia. The very term ritus Graecus (Greek cultic mode) appears for the
first time in the 2nd century bce in a text of Cato the Censor (Orationum, frag.
77 Malcovati); it remained relatively rare and somewhat surprising. If the
117 religions in contact
Romans put “ceremonies according to the Greek rite” (sacra Graeco ritu) or
“Greek cults” (Graeca sacra) in this category, this does not mean that the cults
of all Greek deities fell under the same rubric. The rites of the cults of Hercules,
Apollo, and Saturn were “Greek,” for example, but not those of the cults of
Aesculapius, Bacchus, Hecate, Nemesis, or Magna Mater. The cult of Castor
and Pollux could have been classified under the Greek mode, especially since
Demetrius Poliorcetes cited the cult of the Castores as proof of the Romans’
and the Greeks’ common parentage (Strabo 5.232); but the Romans apparently
never categorized it that way. On the contrary, the twins were patrons of
the Roman cavalry, that is, patrons of the elite and therefore of a constitutive
element of Roman identity. And this is not because they were perceived as being
less Greek than, for example, Hercules, because an ancient inscription from
Lavinium called them quroi (= Greek kouroi, a term often used to describe
them in Greece; Degrassi 1957–63: no. 1271a). On the other hand, Hercules
came from Tibur (Tivoli) and the Castores came to Rome from Tusculum,
rather than from any of the Greek city-states.
The Romans classified certain festivals and one of the modalities of Roman
sacrifice as being of Greek origin. In Livy, cults founded by Romulus were celebrated
according to the Alban rite (from Alba Longa, the twins’ homeland),
but the cult of Hercules corresponded to the Greek rite because it had been
founded by Evander, who came from Greek Arcadia (Livy 1.7.3). Cato asserts
that the Saturnalia, the festival of Saturn, was celebrated according to the
Greek rite. The cult of Apollo was viewed as the best illustration of the Roman
Greek-rite cult. Early in the 2nd century bce, part of the cult of Ceres fell into
the same category. A Sibylline oracle of 125 bce prescribed a religious service
that had to be celebrated by children according to the Achaean rite; other, still
older Sibylline oracles advised processions and celebrations according to the
Greek rite (see, e.g., Livy 25.12.10, 13). Finally, the protocols of the Secular
Games at the beginning of the empire specified that the sacrifices be celebrated
“according to the Greek rite” (Graeco Achivo ritu). In other words, the category
was complex; it was not simply limited to all the religious services concerning
a deity originating in the Greek world or to all the rites belonging to
the cult of these deities.
If we look closely at the literary texts, two additional phenomena stand out.
In the first place, the concept of the Greek rite refers to an ethnic group (the
Greeks) and not, as with the Alban rite, the Roman rite, or the cinctus Gabinus
(the manner of draping the toga practiced by the Gabinians during the Romanstyle
cult), to a city-state such as Alba, Rome, or Gabii. This distinction denotes
an opposition between a ritual mode belonging to a smaller group, or
even to a city-state integrated within the Roman state, and a broader, less distinct
group that extends well beyond any given city-state. In the second case, a
different category is involved, one that is no longer institutional but almost
geographic or cultural—in any event, it is quite vague. It would be interesting
in this regard to know when the Romans themselves characterized certain of
encountering ancient religions 118
their rites as “Roman.” At first glance, this classification makes sense only if it
is contrasted to another cultic category—to the Greek-rite cults, for example.
In other words, the ritual concept of the Greek mode, invented around the
time of the Second Punic War, is a good illustration of the open but complex
relationship between the Romans and foreign cults and gods. In the 2nd century
bce, the major point of reference was Greece (or what passed for Greece
in the Romans’ eyes). This reference corresponds, on the one hand, to the second
Hellenization of Rome, which was much more profound than the diffuse
Greek influence of the archaic period; it transformed Roman culture. On the
other hand, the reference reveals that Hellenization was actually a Roman phenomenon.
From this viewpoint, the Hellenization of Rome and its religion perfectly
illustrates the results of intercultural relations. When they had direct
contact with the Greeks, the Romans had continuing access to the high culture
of the period. From then on, it was no longer possible to think of Roman
culture and institutions in a non-Greek manner. A cultivated Roman thought
in ways defined by Greek philosophy, and Rome’s national literature—its mythology
in particular—could not help but be incorporated within the framework
of a continuation of Greek literature. On the religious level, this intellectual
broadening took a certain number of old or recent phenomena that were
or appeared to be Greek and translated them into a cultic category. The cults
themselves nevertheless unquestionably remained Roman and were not simple
transpositions of Greek rites (Greek being a highly artificial category in this instance).
The Greek-rite cults were much more a way for the Romans to affirm
that they belonged to the Greek world, a justification for their imperialism or
at least for their quest for alliances. The construction of a notion such as the
Greek mode of venerating the gods was a completely Roman phenomenon,
produced with no outside assistance. It is, in a manner of speaking, a fine example
of self-acculturation. One can see in it, of course, a certain degree of fas-
cination.
If admiration for Greek literature, art, and science could sufficiently justify
the Hellenization of Roman culture, the same was not true for the
Hellenization of Roman religion. In the latter context, it is more appropriate to
speak of the way in which the Romans thought of themselves from then on.
Not only did they introduce rites, such as the Matronal rites of Ceres, that created
the (Greek) Eleusinian rites in Rome, in a way, but they also retrospectively
Hellenized a part of their religious patrimony: at least by the time of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century bce), they discovered that they were
in fact Greeks and thought of themselves as belonging to the Greek world.
With this outlook, they made their own culture eminent and respectable, but
they also justified their imperial ambitions. To the extent that Hellenism was
thought to be the highest form of culture, whose mission was to dominate the
world, Roman Hellenism could maintain uncomplicated aspirations to hegemony.
A rather striking illustration of this attitude is found in the decoration of
the temple dedicated to Hercules and the Muses (179 bce), which was built by
119 religions in contact
Fulvius Nobilior beside the via triumphalis to celebrate his victory over the
Aetolians, a rather bloody victory that verged on violating human rights. On
this monument of Roman Hellenism, probably realized under the guidance of
the poet Quintus Ennius, the unusual association of the hero with the Muses,
as attested at the Asklepieion in Messana (Pausanius 4.31.10) and by Isocrates
(Philippus 109–10), refers to a new type of domination to be exercised henceforth
on the cultural level by the triumphant Romans, and it recalls the civilizing
mission carried out by Hercules at the beginning of Roman times. In this
temple, the most ancient period of Rome’s past was associated with symbols of
the highest knowledge, notably from the Pythagorean traditions, so as to express
the superiority of Rome over the Greeks, thanks to a Herculean imperator
in his invincibility and his culture.
Expansions
Following the end of the Social War and the integration of the Italics (inhabitants
of Italy whose language was related to Latin) into the Roman city-state
during the 1st century bce, religious issues took on new dimensions. Not only
did the Italics become members of the public religious community of Rome in
this way, but their city-states were increasingly transformed following the Roman
model. This evolution continued throughout the empire, until the moment
when all free men became Roman citizens (213 ce). The expansion of the
Roman city-state, combined with the continuous creation of Roman-style citystates
elsewhere, profoundly changed the religious landscape of Rome and the
Roman world.
Both as occasional allies and through the Latin or Roman colonies that were
gradually created across Italy, the Italic peoples had long been familiar with
Roman religion. Similarly, the Roman city-states that were established in Italy
came into contact with other cults and gods, so that at the local level their religions
functioned in the way that Rome functioned in the administrative center
of the Roman state. They integrated local and public deities by taking up the
particular cult practices attached to the former or by Romanizing them. For
example, from the very beginning of the empire if not earlier, the city of
Potentia included in its pantheon Mefitis Utiana, the patron goddess of a
neighboring place of cult worship (Rossano di Vaglio), and under Augustus
the colony of Hispellum became owner and manager of the old temple of
Clitumnus, at the headwaters of the river with the same name. The principal
deity of the colony of Lucus Feroniae was the local goddess Feronia. Nowhere
was there any question of despising or destroying earlier religious forms. In
turn, the Italic city-states were subject to Roman influence. Thus, in the Iguvine
Tables, one can note the appearance of Roman institutional terms over the
course of the 3rd century bce. Other Italian cities, after their conquest, even
had to merge their principal cult with Rome. Such was the case, for example,
encountering ancient religions 120
with Lanuvium, where the cult of Juno Sospita was celebrated in common with
the Roman state from 338 bce.
The consequence of this gradual fusion, in the context of the city-states of
Roman Italy, was the gradual arrival of local Italic cults in Rome itself. At various
historical moments, Diana, Juno Sospita, Feronia, and Angerona were
given temples and cults in Rome. Conversely, an increasing number of Roman
citizens living in Italy never went to Rome. Their lives unfolded in the “little
homeland” of their city or colony, and their belonging to the Roman state was
primarily a legal matter. As Roman citizens, they were all subject to the obligations
of the public religion of Rome, and they profited from the benevolence of
the Roman gods. But as they no longer participated in Roman institutional life,
Rome became for them mainly a common reference point that they would encounter
in literature or in the legends depicted on the various coins of the
realm. This was clearly also true for the public religion of Rome. There was
never any celebration of Roman religion at the level of the entire Roman citizenry,
in a sort of religion of the empire, but it is undeniable that the cult celebrated
by the magistrates and priests in Rome established a constant spiritual
connection among all those who benefited from Roman citizenship. At the
same time, the numerous Roman cities existing in the world, each with its own
civic religion independent of Rome’s, gave a diversified and still more pluralist
picture of what foreigners might call Roman religion.
The golden age of religious pluralism
The peace that followed the Roman conquest of the world and the civil wars
extended and accelerated the integration of peoples and city-states into the Roman
world. The displacement of individuals also contributed to a mix of cultures
and religions that was more intense than ever. In Rome itself and in other
large cities, the flow of people from the entire world was manifest in the regular
arrival of new cults and religions. But contact between them began to take
place on a different level. Few new gods came into Roman public religion after
the end of the Republic. The deities Isis and Sarapis, who had become public
gods in the 1st century ce, were the last important foreign gods to become Roman,
before the short-lived experience of Sol Elagabalus (218); then Aurelian’s
Sol Invictus (3rd century), likewise a god of Syrian origin; and finally, in the
4th century, the Christian god. No deities of Celtic or German origins were admitted
into the religion of Rome; their integration took place on the local level,
in the colonies and cities, in keeping with the overall evolution of religious
practices: new cults spread at the subordinate or local level.
On the domestic and private level, a large number of new deities came
into Rome, starting in the 1st century ce, at times enjoying fairly important
places of worship: Jupiter Heliopolis, the Palmyrene gods, Jupiter Dolichenus,
Mithras, the Jewish god, and the Christian god. Bringing together smaller or
121 religions in contact
larger communities of Romans and non-Romans, these cults existed side by
side in general harmony. Most of them were even established in communal
sites where the collective cults of the Roman neighborhoods were practiced.
Heliopolitan cults were set up in the old sacred wood of Furrina on the
Janiculum, that of the Palmyrene gods in the Gardens of Caesar alongside
other Roman and non-Roman cults (the sanctuary of Fors Fortuna, Hercules,
Jupiter Beheleparus), and that of Jupiter Dolichenus and Mithras in some vicus
(village or neighborhood) shrines (e.g., the famous Dolichenum of the Aventine
and the Mithraeum near the vicus of the Via Marmorata).
In other words, in the various collective sanctuaries of Rome’s neighborhoods,
ancestral cults and new cults often came into contact, meaning that
their celebrations became collective events. And as far as we know, Jewish
prayer sites, like Jewish cemeteries, were not excluded from the collectivity.
They belonged to the life of the neighborhood, just as other religious sites did,
to the extent that, in Rome, a synagogue might serve as a topographical reference
point (CIL 6.9821). Consequently, conditions were ripe for a broadening
of religious experiences to include, in particular, religions whose practices differed
from the ancestral ritualism. Proximity could encourage association with
Jewish families and synagogues, all the more easily in that Jews could participate
in the festive life of the neighborhood, in marriages and banquets, as long
as they could observe the dietary rules drawn up in the 2nd century bce by rabbinic
schools; a place was likewise made for Romans who wished to pray to
the god of the Jews. During periods of relative calm, Christian sanctuaries,
which were more discreetly established in private domains since they were the
object of latent hostility, might also attract “pagans.” In the 3rd century, in any
event, Christian churches were known, since their goods could be confiscated
by the emperor Valerian.
The unification of the world
The unification of the world under Roman dominion also transformed the conditions
of religious life in the provinces of the empire, especially in areas relatively
exempt from urbanization. In the East, in Egypt, and in Africa, traditional
religious life went on without much change, except that the finances of
the large sanctuaries were more strictly controlled (at Ephesus, for example).
Under the Republic, Greek city-states had already taken into account the eruption
of Roman power in their world by creating cults dedicated to the goddess
Roma or by honoring some particular Roman governor. Beginning with the
empire, these provinces and city-states created cults dedicated to Roma and
Augustus, in keeping with traditions going back to the Hellenistic period. In
Egypt, with the exception of the cult of the emperor, Greco-Egyptian religious
life continued to develop along its own lines. But from that point on, the Roman
administration, following a tendency already evident in the Ptolemaic period,
exercised tighter control over temple revenues and personnel. Similarly,
encountering ancient religions 122
in Jerusalem, the Romans controlled the election of the high priest, oversaw
the financial matters of the temple, and restricted the functions of the Sanhedrin.
In other respects, the cult continued as before, and the temple was granted
the privilege of collecting the annual tax from the Jews. After the war of 66–
70, this tax was allocated to the reconstruction of the temple of Jupiter on the
Capitoline in Rome. This measure, intended to humiliate the Jews, actually exercised
a decisive influence on the definition of Jewish identity.
In Africa, except for the prohibition against the sacrifice—real or imaginary—of
children, nothing arose to disturb the religious life of the free citystates.
But in Africa, more than in the Greek-speaking provinces, the creation
of colonies and cities exerted an influence over the evolution of religious life.
Local cults were revived within the framework of the colonies and were celebrated
in Latin; but we cannot tell to what extent the cult remained in conformity
with Punic traditions. The new colony of Carthage, in particular, assimilated
local deities such as the Cereres (the Roman version of the Greek
goddesses Demeter and Persephone), Aesculapius, Saturn, and Juno Caelestis
at the end of the 1st century bce. Along with specifically Roman deities, these
gods of Punic origin from then on typified the religions of the metropolis of
Roman Africa, which comprised an original mix of gods and cults. Thus both
the local religions and the Roman religions became still richer and more complex.
And, of course, with the opening of the world, Eastern religions, Judaism,
and Christianity also took hold in Africa.
It was in the less urbanized provinces of western Europe, however, that the
most significant mutations came about. Iberia had already known Greek and
Punic colonization and, after centuries of fierce resistance, had adapted itself to
the Roman mold. At the time of the conquest, Gaul, Germania, and the countries
of the Danube were occupied by different ethnic groups that may have belonged
to a single culture but that had virtually never known unity and organization
into city-states of the Mediterranean type. One of the first results of the
Roman conquest was to unify these different peoples and to inspire an idea of
identity transcending that of clan. This was accomplished both at the level of
the city-states, which were often created by the occupying Roman presence
with the help of local elites, and at the level of the provinces (e.g., the altars to
Augustus in Lyon, Narbonne, and Tarragon). Thanks to the process of urbanization
following the model of the Mediterranean city-states, some of these
groups acquired a self-awareness that they had never known before. This phenomenon
became increasingly pronounced, starting with the beginning of the
empire, when the Romans took peoples who had up to that point been living in
small, fragmented units and regrouped them into city-states. The municipal
laws discovered in Baetica make it clear that the creation of Latin or Roman
cities and colonies transformed the religious life of these communities. The
populations involved were often led to combine the entire set of religious practices
and traditions that they viewed as collective and characteristic of their
people into a single public religion, that of their city or colony. As the citystates
in question were often Latin or Roman colonies, they had to conform to
123 religions in contact
the common rules of Roman religious law. Unfortunately the sources currently
available are of little help in showing how and to what extent older rites were
integrated within the framework of local public cults.
With the exception of the prohibition against human sacrifice and druidic
practices—about which we know very little—and the establishment of provincial
cults, the Romans rarely intervened in this process of integration, except as
advisers. Some of the local elites, in any case, had done military service with
auxiliary troops of the Roman army and were thus familiar with the universe
of city-states and civic religions, so they were in a position to accelerate the institutional
development of their peoples. And just as the Romans themselves
had reacted to their discovery of high Greek culture, these communities also
aspired to their own participation in the Roman world. A large number among
them gradually came to think of themselves as Roman. In this way, many Iberian,
Gallic, and Dalmatian communities laid down the foundations for original
local religions, which had never before had such scope. Once their opposition
to Roman occupation had been surmounted, the local elites of these
provinces may be said to have (re)invented their own cultures and religions under
the pressure of Roman urbanization and within its formal framework.
Given that the cultural language of this new construction was Roman, it is
very hard to tell to what extent the gods and cults of the northern provinces
masked indigenous gods and rituals. The example of the Hellenization of the
Romans can serve as a model, but it must be emphasized that the experience of
military victors and rulers is different from that of defeated and subjugated
peoples. On a different level, the deep transformation of Judaism resulting
from the destruction of the temple provides a clear illustration of the second
experience. After the Hellenizing evolution of the Jews, the catastrophe of 70
ce profoundly modified the Jewish religion.
The impetus toward interreligious exchanges prompted by the unification of
the world is undeniable. The relative tolerance of the Romans and the people
of the ancient world explains how religions and gods that came from all over
were able to establish themselves in all the provinces without major conflict. As
we have seen, plurality was the rule. With the exception of certain followers of
Isis, Judaism, and Christianity, no religious group defined itself by a particular
name. Furthermore, the term Isiac was rare, and the designation Jew was as
much ethnic as religious. Only the label Christian came close to the term as it is
used today. For the Jews, who never had any central authority, it was more the
Jewish tax of 70 ce than ritual traditions and common memory that raised the
question of Jewish identity. Without undertaking any active proselytizing, Jewish
communities were open to converts who lived according to Jewish law and
to “God-fearing” individuals who adhered to only some of the prescriptions.
The only lasting conflict with a religious community involved the Christians.
Despite long periods of tolerance that allowed many people, especially in the
cities, to associate with Christian communities and to blend certain Christian
beliefs and rituals into their own domestic religions, the risk of repression
was undeniably omnipresent. Before the middle of the 3rd century, the reasons
for the hostility of the authorities stemmed more from concerns about disturencountering
ancient religions 124
bances of the public order than from a struggle against a religion as such.
On the Christian side, hostility toward the Roman state, Roman cities, paganism,
and Judaism was motivated by the Christian rejection of polytheism and
the existing religions. Decidedly given to proselytizing, Christian communities
tried to attract their neighbors to their religion, at least if the Christian sources
are to be believed. For “pagans,” this phenomenon of attraction was inscribed
in the order of things from the moment they accepted the proximity of Christians
in their neighborhoods or, for example, in professional associations. The
Christians were able to attract the pagans because of the kinship between their
religious doctrines and the issues known from pagan philosophical instruction.
For many, however, their experience led not to the abandonment of their ancestral
traditions but rather to an ultimately traditional practice of religion
that was open to the religious practices of neighbors and social partners. Even
apart from the Christians, who remained close to the Jews, a sign of such tolerance
can be seen in what Christian apologetics calls lapsi, individuals who
were not so much lukewarm Christians as people who had adopted a certain
number of Christian practices and representations and made them part of their
personal religion, but without wishing to belong to the Christian community
in the strict sense. Another example can be found in the Naassenes, whom
Hippolytus condemned and who combined, to a certain extent, Christianity
with the mysteries of Magna Mater. If they were in any danger, the Naassenes
abandoned the incriminating practices, as they did not see these as representing
the central core of their religious experience.
The situation seems to have changed when Constantine and his sons raised
Christianity to the level of a public religion. The rapidity and depth of the evolution
must not be exaggerated, however. Non-Christian ancestral cults continued
to be practiced for a long time at the local and domestic levels. Nor did
the Christians abandon certain older practices; in the 5th century, Christians
still carried out sacrifices and made vows before an image of Constantine
(Philostorgius, Ecclesiastical History 2.17), in spite of repeated interdictions.
Religious pluralism was not forcefully suppressed from one day to the next, either.
Leaving aside the old cults and Judaism, let us note that Christians themselves
were divided into regional and provincial communities, often far removed
from one another, if we are to believe the history of heresies and
doctrinal quarrels. The fact remains that this evolution ended up completely
transforming the religious landscape of the Mediterranean world. From this
point on, pluralism came increasingly to involve the religions of the book: Judaism,
Christianity, and, as of the 7th century, Islam.
Bibliography
Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1998.
Degrassi, Attilio. Inscriptiones latinae liberae rei publicae. 2 vols. Biblioteca di Studi
Superiori 23 and 40. Florence, 1957–63.
Frankfurter, David. “Lest Egypt’s City Be Deserted: Religion and Ideology in the Egyp-
125 religions in contact
tian Response to the Jewish Revolt (116–117 ce).” Journal of Jewish Studies 43
(1992): 203–20.
North, John. “Conservatism and Change in Roman Religion.” Papers of the British
School in Rome 44 (1974): 1–12.
———. “Religious Toleration in Republican Rome.” Proceedings of the Cambridge
Philological Society 25 (1979): 85–103.
Pailler, Jean-Marie. Bacchanalia: La répression de 186 av. J.C. à Rome et en Italie: Vestiges,
images, traditions. Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome
270. Rome, 1988.
Scheid, John. “Aspects religieux de la municipalisation: Quelques réflexions générales.”
In Cités, municipes, colonies: Les processus de municipalisation en Gaule et en
Germanie sous le haut-empire romain, ed. Monique Dondin-Payre and MarieThérèse
Raepsaet-Charlier. Paris, 1999.
———. “Graeco Ritu: A Typically Roman Way of Honouring the Gods.” Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology 97 (1995): 15–31.
Wissowa, Georg. Religion und Kultus der Romer. Munich, 1912.
encountering ancient religions 126
Writing and Religion
Mary Beard
In 304 bce, or not long before, a man by the name of Cnaeus Flavius displayed
in the Forum at Rome, for the first time, the official calendar of religious
festivals. Or so several Roman writers assure us. It was a revolutionary
act. For up to that point, the calendar of festivals and all kinds of information
that went with it (including various legal rules and formulas and details of the
days on which one was allowed to bring cases) had been in the hands of a small
group of priests: “hidden away in the storeroom of the pontifices” as the historian
Livy puts it (From the Foundation of the City 9.46.5) and making the people
as a whole dependent on secret priestly knowledge. The ancient writers disagree
about exactly at which stage of his career Flavius did this. Was it while he
held the office of aedile (a middle-ranking elected magistracy in the city)? Or
was it earlier, while he was still a government clerk (scriba)? Cicero even debated
this problem in 50 bce, in a letter to his friend Atticus (To Atticus 6.1),
who had raised the awkward possibility that the calendar had actually been
made public more than a century before Flavius’s intervention. But, details
apart, this action was clearly seen as a blow against the power of the traditional
priestly and governing class at Rome—Flavius himself being (in Livy’s
words again) “of humble birth” or, more precisely, the son of an ex-slave.
How accurate this anecdote is, we simply do not know. But, accurate or
not, it brings into view some of the most important aspects of the interaction
between religion and writing, not just in Rome but throughout the ancient
Mediterranean world—and, indeed, more widely. First, the apparent complexity
of the written document that Flavius is supposed to have revealed: an established,
annual calendar of rituals, linked into a whole series of regulations
about the use of different days in the year and other procedures of civil law.
This kind of elaborate religious codification, with its fixed and complex rules
of proper behavior, is scarcely conceivable without the resource of writing. Second,
the contested political dimension. This story presents two alternative
models of how written religious knowledge might be deployed: on the one
hand, as the private text of an exclusive, literate priestly group, and so a formidable
weapon in the armory of priestly control; on the other, as a potentially
public piece of information, and so—as Flavius was to demonstrate by his
posting of the calendar in the Forum—a weapon in the democratization of religious
power. Third, the controversy between the ancient writers on the precise
version of events is itself ultimately a product of writing. For the history of religion
in the strictest sense, the very idea that religious history could be a subject
of study and debate, separate from practice and tradition, largely depends on
the “reification of the past” that comes with written records. We ourselves, of
course, are beneficiaries of those same records; for in the absence of Roman
writing, we would now know nothing of Flavius and his calendar, still less be
able to explore its significance.
This chapter will reflect on the issues raised by Flavius’s story, among other
facets of the interaction of religion and writing in the ancient Mediterranean
world. It will attempt to set these in the context of more general, theoretical,
and anthropological studies of the role of written texts within cultural systems
and the contested interface between traditions of “literacy” and “orality” that,
since the invention of writing itself, have characterized every culture, whether
ancient or modern. A particular point of reflection will be the idea of the “religion
of the book.” How far are ancient Judaism and Christianity, with their
apparent reliance on a defining body of doctrinal texts, to be set apart from the
other religions discussed in this volume?
The implications of writing
Over the last fifty years or so, the disciplines of both history and anthropology
have focused intensely on the cultural history of reading and writing. For ancient
historians one obvious question has been: how many people in any given
ancient society were literate? It is a question that is, of course, easier to pose
than to answer. Even in modern societies, with all their resources of mass survey
and testing, literacy rates are notoriously hard to pin down; and they fluctuate
according to the definition of literacy deployed (many more people can
read than can write, many more can sign their name than can transmit even a
simple message in writing). From antiquity, we have no statistical data. Our
conclusions must be based on deduction from hints in ancient literature and
documents, on comparison with the slightly clearer evidence from more-recent
premodern societies, and, frankly, on a good deal of guesswork. For all these
uncertainties, however, most scholars would now agree that throughout the
ancient Mediterranean adult male literacy—in the sense of the ability to send
and understand a simple written message—generally remained below 20 percent.
There may have been a few, short-lived exceptions to that rule in particular
communities in the ancient world. But even the apparently literate culture
of the classical Greek city-states or of early imperial Rome was not founded on
the mass ability to read and write. And in many societies the rate of literacy
encountering ancient religions 128
would have been considerably lower than 20 percent. A recent estimate for ancient
Egypt, for example, suggests that at most periods less than 1 percent of
the total population was literate. For obvious social, cultural, and political reasons,
far fewer women than men could ever read and write.
Some of the consequences of this are clear and hold good for all ancient societies.
Crucially for any understanding of ancient religion, the vast majority
of people experienced religion orally. This is true, to some extent, even today.
At least, no religious system is, or has ever been, mediated entirely in writing;
oral communication, performance, and reaffirmation are always significant
components of religious practice. Nonetheless in antiquity, unlike in the modern
West, most of the population had access to the language of religion
(whether doctrine, the word of the divine, exegesis, administration, or dissent)
only orally. Modern scrutiny of the written traces of ancient religions (and—
notwithstanding the importance of visual images—the history of religion is
heavily dependent on written evidence) must always bear in mind the wider
oral context of that writing, the interface between oral and written traditions.
Beyond that, however, the particular ramifications of restricted literacy are
varied in different societies, religions, and social groups. The map of ancient
illiteracy is much subtler than any raw percentage might suggest. It is linked
to different political and social structures: a democratic system of government
might prompt a different spread of literacy from a palace bureaucracy; while
urban life was everywhere strikingly more literate than was rural life. But
it may also be linked to the character of the writing system involved: syllabic or
pictographic scripts often entail different patterns of literacy from alphabetic
systems. In Egypt, for example, hieroglyphs—known as “the god’s words”—
were not only different in function from the simpler, so-called Demotic script
(hieroglyphs were used predominantly in official, public inscriptions, very
commonly in temples) but competence in hieroglyphic writing was confined to
a much-smaller scribal or priestly group. There is no clear division between
those with and those without access to the written word that operates across
the religions of the Mediterranean world.
But the impact of writing on a religious system does not depend solely on the
rates of literacy within any given religious community. Nor is that impact restricted
to the literate minority—leaving the illiterate majority in an entirely
oral culture unaffected by the strategies and conventions of literacy to which
they have no direct access themselves. It is now well recognized that the existence
of writing within a society (even if it is a tool that can actively be deployed
by only a tiny few) can have wide cultural consequences that affect illiterate
and literate alike. Quite simply, writing almost always (and, some would
say, necessarily) changes the ways that societies operate and think about themselves—in
religion as much as in any other sphere.
Many of the recent studies of this cultural aspect of writing owe their intellectual
origins to a famous article by Jack Goody and Ian Watt entitled “The
Consequences of Literacy,” first published in 1963. In this theoretical essay,
which took archaic and classical Greece as its prime example, Goody and Watt
129 writing and religion
emphasized the intellectual and cognitive consequences of the spread of alphabetic
writing systems. Part of their argument rested on the sheer permanency of
writing. For them, entirely oral cultures were marked by the “unconscious operation
of memory” and forgetfulness (“social amnesia”): where there is no
written record, myths and traditions that no longer seem useful or appropriate
are simply forgotten and pass out of the cultural memory. Practices continue
in what is thought to be the traditional way (“as our ancestors did it”), but in
fact are constantly adjusted—albeit tacitly and unconsciously—to new circumstances
and ideas. But once writing is employed as a recording device, later
generations will be faced with the written evidence of their earlier customs and
thought and will need consciously to align their own behavior to it—whether
in the form of rigid conservatism, explicit rejection of tradition, or self-consciously
critical “historical” analysis. To take one of Goody and Watt’s key examples,
“once the poems of Homer and Hesiod, which contained much of the
earlier history, religion and cosmology of the Greeks, had been written down,
succeeding generations were faced with old distinctions in sharply exaggerated
form: how far was the information about the gods and heroes literally true?
How could its patent inconsistencies be explained? And how could the beliefs
and attitudes implied be brought into line with those of the present?” (1963).
Similar factors lie behind the development of explicitly skeptical traditions.
Every society includes men and women with unorthodox ideas, people who
adopt a radically dissenting attitude to generally accepted views on religion,
politics, and social order. But in an entirely oral culture, skepticism tends to die
with the individual skeptic. Once the skeptic commits his or her views to the
permanency of writing, however, the possibility opens of a whole tradition of
skepticism, an alternative counterculture, parallel to society’s orthodox norms.
This is obviously of particular importance in the history of religion and in the
development of radical, skeptical inquiry into traditional religious “truths.”
Goody and Watt cite the example of the Greek thinker Xenophanes in the 6th
century bce, whose surviving work includes criticism of the then-standard
views on the anthropomorphic form of the gods: “If horses were able to draw,
they would draw the forms of the gods like horses” (DK 21 B15). Xenophanes,
we may add, in confirmation of their point, was still being read and quoted at
the end of antiquity, more than a millennium later.
Goody and Watt also stress the influence of writing on the potential complexity
of any organization, whether political, social, or religious. As Goody
argues at greater length in his later book, The Domestication of the Savage
Mind (1977), the ability to transcend oral memory by the apparently simple
device of a written list opens up a whole series of intellectual possibilities—
from the detailed classification of property (furniture, animals, or agricultural
produce can be listed by type, weight, location, and so forth) to the intricate
definition of calendrical time, dividing the year according to months and days
and the religious obligations appropriate to each occasion (as in the calendar
“published” by Cnaeus Flavius). At its most ambitious, Goody and Watt’s
scheme follows some earlier theorists in suggesting that the invention of writing
drives a cognitive revolution, enabling for the first time certain forms of
encountering ancient religions 130
what we might call logical thinking—from the simple syllogism (if a then b,
etc.) to other more complicated forms of algebraic logic.
This work has prompted considerable reaction, both favorable and—in
some specific respects—dissenting. Goody himself, in response to those who
objected that the phrase consequences of literacy appeared to suggest a toorigid
schema (in which literacy was always and necessarily followed by various
social and intellectual developments) now prefers the phrase “the implications
of literacy.” It also remains very much an open question what level of literacy
in a society, and what form of literacy, would entail the implications (or consequences)
proposed. In their first article, Goody and Watt envisaged “widespread”
and “alphabetic” literacy, stressing the democratic and revolutionary
intellectual power of the Greek system of writing as against the scribal, narrowly
restricted literacy of the syllabic or pictographic systems of ancient
Babylonia or Egypt. But in his later work on lists, Goody drew as much on ancient
Near Eastern material as on Greco-Roman examples (including lists and
hierarchical rankings of deities from Babylonia and Egypt). In general, although
the range and spread of writing differed significantly in different ancient
Mediterranean societies, we can trace at least some of Goody and Watt’s
implications in all the (partially) literate communities covered by this volume.
Certainly, the impact of writing on ancient Mediterranean religion is evident
far beyond the culture of ancient Greece, on which Goody and Watt principally
drew. We have already noted the existence of a Roman calendar of festivals,
whose complex and elaborately codified information would have been
unthinkable without the resource of writing: in the most detailed examples of
these calendars, the written data laid out include the legal and religious status
of each day of the year, the divisions into months (and the main divisions
within months), the traditional roster of public holidays and more recent additions
to this set of festivals, plus some information on the festival concerned
(the principal deity attached, the place of celebration, or the reason for its
foundation). Other aspects of religion also illuminate (and are illuminated by)
the Goody-Watt hypothesis. The logic of Mesopotamian divination, for example,
has been linked to the particular conventions of pictographic script in
which it was recorded, while in Roman cult, one of the most striking features
was the preservation of archaic and apparently obsolete religious lore. By
the 1st century ce, the ancient hymn sung by the Salii at their regular ritual
“dance” through the streets of Rome was incomprehensible—it is reported by
one Roman writer—even to the priests themselves. Likewise the hymn chanted
by the Arval Brethren and recorded on one of the inscriptions documenting
this priesthood’s ritual activity in their sacred grove a few miles outside the city
of Rome appears now (as it must have appeared to most Romans for most of
their history) to be bafflingly archaic mumbo jumbo; it makes (and made)
sense, if at all, only to a few specialists in the earliest form of Latin. The preservation
of these ancient religious texts would have been impossible without
written documents; and indeed the inscriptions from the Arval grove explicitly
refer to written copies of the hymn used by the priests in their chanting.
But Goody and Watt’s implications go further than that (as Gordon has ar-
131 writing and religion
gued in his 1990 study of Roman religion in the light of Goody and Watt’s
work). First, the incomprehensibility of these texts itself stimulated further
writing, in learned commentaries that (often equally obscurely) attempted to
interpret and explain their meaning. A commentary on the Salian hymn existed
already in the 1st century bce, and one of the most distinctive parts of
Roman religious discourse from that time on was a whole series of specialized
treatises that offered exegesis on arcane aspects of cult and cult history (e.g.,
On Religious Formulas or On the Derivation of the Names of the Gods). Writing,
in other words, stimulated more writing. Second are the implications
for religious power and control that follow from the obscurantism enshrined
in this writing. For unintelligibility (which, in Gellner’s words, “leaves the disciple
with a secret guilt of not understanding”) could be an important defense
of priestly or other expert religious power. The public display of written
mumbo jumbo, and the importance vested in it as hallowed tradition, was
almost bound to enhance the authority of those who could claim to understand,
while disadvantaging those who could not and were reliant on the interpretative
skills of others. If the story of Flavius offered a popular, democratic
parable of writing, other written forms offer the directly opposite
message.
Influential and instructive as they are, Goody and Watt’s theories can, however,
be misleading if applied too rigidly, particularly in the sphere of religion.
The dangers are most clearly seen in the fundamental issue of the function of
writing. For Goody and Watt, writing is an essentially utilitarian activity. It is
there to be read and to be acted on as appropriate. So, for instance, written records
of procedures establish precedent and encourage conservative practice
precisely because they are consulted and their example followed. But a significant
part of religious writing is not utilitarian in this way. With its functions
classified under the admittedly rather vague rubric of “symbolic,” it may act to
display, to memorialize, to reify and make permanent a variety of legitimate
and illegitimate religious claims and actions—not necessarily to be read and
used, at least not within the community of living mortals. The most extreme
case of this is the use of writing within the varied group of religious practices
we now know as magic. Spells and curses, written on lead or papyrus and deposited
in tombs or wells, may well have been thought to preserve the magician’s
oral utterance and to take it as close as possible to the dead or chthonic
powers who would mediate or bring about the desired result. More than that,
the transgressive forms of writing commonly adopted in curses (e.g., words
written back to front, varieties of nonsense script) served to reify the transgressions
implicit in the curse itself. One Athenian spell, from the 4th century bce,
makes this link explicit. It is written backward, from right to left, and reads:
“In the same way that this is cold and ‘out of true,’ let the words of Krates be
cold and ‘out of true’ in the same way, his as well as those of the accusers and
lawyers who accompany him” (Wünsch 1897: appendix no. 67). But even outside
the particular area of “magical” practices, ancient religious writing was
often not principally intended for a reader, and even some of the most extenencountering
ancient religions 132
sive and detailed religious records were not systematically consulted as a guide
to precedent. The records of ritual procedures made by the Arval Brethren and
inscribed on stone in their sacred grove did not consistently dictate the future
conduct of ritual—as the numerous changes in procedure that the texts document
make clear. The inscription memorialized the rituals carried out, rather
than providing a reference guide for how to act in the future. Likewise the vast
majority of the many thousands of Roman inscriptions detailing vows and the
performance of sacrifices can hardly have been widely consulted—or intended
to be so; instead they instantiated and made permanent the ritual act itself.
Writing, in other words, could be as much an integral part of religious symbolism
as an external record of it.
Religions of the book?
It is conventional to draw a sharp distinction in terms of the role of writing between
Judaism and Christianity on the one hand and the rest of the religions
covered by this volume on the other. In Judaism and Christianity, doctrine and
the word of God was defined in writing; they were—and still are—“religions of
the book.” This was not the case anywhere else, from Babylonia to Roman Italy;
and in these other religions, so it follows, writing played a less important
(or, at least, a less structurally central) part. How useful a distinction is this?
Precisely how sharp should we make it?
There is no doubt at all that writing (and reading) had a particularly loaded
role to play in the ancient Judeo-Christian tradition. It was not simply a question
of the textual basis of religious doctrine. Writing was invested with even
greater power and authority than that. So, for example, the Book of Exodus
makes the radical claim that the tablets given to Moses on Sinai carried texts
that were not merely the word of God in the sense of being divinely inspired,
they were actually divinely written: “And he gave to Moses, when he had made
an end of speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony,
tables of stone, written with the finger of God . . . And the tables
were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon
the tables” (Exod. 31.18; 32.16). And it is well known that Jews accorded considerable
veneration to the physical form of their sacred texts, as if (in the
words of Goodman) “religious power was enshrined within the physical object
on which the divine teachings were inscribed.” Torah scrolls were written according
to strict rules, in carefully prescribed lettering, in ink and on the best
parchment. Josephus—the Jewish priest and historian who eventually sided
with the Romans in the Jewish revolt that ended in 70 ce—was well placed to
observe that the destruction of a Jewish text by a Roman soldier ended in a riot
(Jewish War 2.229–31) and that Vespasian and Titus had a scroll of the Torah
carried in their triumphal procession through Rome in 71 (7.150); the scroll itself,
among the other booty on show, was a powerful symbol of Roman victory
over the Jews. Not surprisingly perhaps, these texts sometimes filled the sym-
133 writing and religion
bolic role of writing that we have already noted. As Goodman and others have
pointed out, the miniature texts used in phylacteries (pouches for Torah texts,
bound onto the arms or forehead) “were encased in leather in such a way that
they usually could not be read at all.”
In early Christianity, too, the importance of writing went well beyond the
existence of scripture (a word that is directly derived from the Latin for “writing”:
scriptura). The divergences between different groups of early Christians
(divergences sometimes cast as the struggle of “orthodoxy” against the “heretics”)
were often cast in terms of the competing authority of different written
texts, as well as different interpretation of the canonical Gospels. One 7th-century
Christian theologian, for example, could refer to the “foul, loathsome,
and unclean writings of the accursed Manicheans, gnostics, and the rest of the
heretics” (John of Damascus, Orations 2.10). Written texts were also crucial in
such cohesion as the early church could obtain. The scattered communities of
early Christians depended, very largely, on written communication for any
sense of group identity; the letters of Paul from the 50s and 60s ce are only the
start of a tradition of epistolary exchange that aimed to reinforce and define
the Christian community. And, in general, the symbolism of writing pervaded
Christian discourse and visual representation. Jesus, for example, appears in
early Christian sculpture displaying a book roll as his major attribute. One
vivid image of heavenly power comes in the form of the “book of life,” into
which angels transcribe the names of good Christians for ultimate reward,
while the names of sinners are listed with equal rigor elsewhere. Lane-Fox has
aptly referred to these recording angels as “a literate police force, active above
early Christian saints and sinners.” Another image, in both Christianity and
Judaism, pictures the prophet as a man who has literally consumed the written
word of God. In John’s visionary account in the Book of Revelation, “I took
the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was as sweet as honey in
my mouth . . . And I was told, ‘You must again prophesy’ (Rev. 10.10–11); or
as God said to Ezekiel, “Eat this scroll, and go, speak” (Ezek. 3.1).
Yet it is not quite so simple as it might seem. For a start, on the basis of what
we can infer about levels of literacy throughout antiquity, most people, even
in these apparently “textual” religious communities, must have had their texts
mediated orally. In fact, one conservative—though not implausible—recent estimate
puts the total number of Christians who were fluently literate at the
end of the 1st century ce as no more than fifty at any one moment. But, even
more significant than any low rate of literacy, both Judaism and Christianity
embraced alternative traditions that appear to have vested as much authority
in oral as in written discourse. In Judaism, for example, there was a powerful
view that Moses was given the oral law, as well as written texts, on Mount
Sinai; and the Mishnah, although it was authoritatively codified in writing
around 200 ce, parades in form and style its oral origins as the sayings of rabbis.
In Christianity, by contrast, the claims of oral authority were upheld by
the simple fact that Jesus himself wrote nothing. And, for all the textual obsessions
of the early church, there was an influential strand of Christian thought
encountering ancient religions 134
that positively glorified illiterate simplicity, while stressing that the Christian
faithful did not need a learned (which often, in effect, meant a “pagan”) education.
Some early Christian saints were praised precisely because they were sine
litteris (illiterate), as were Jesus’s own disciples. John and Peter, for example,
are dubbed “illiterate” (aggrammatoi) in the Acts of the Apostles (4.13). Predictably,
perhaps, “pagan” intellectual critics of Christianity seem to have
found such “holy ignorance” a further ground for mistrust of the new religion.
The picture becomes even more complicated if we start to compare the role
of writing in the Judeo-Christian tradition with other religions covered in this
volume. It is certainly the case that no other ancient belief system was so reliant
on a group of doctrinal written texts. And it is partly for this reason—because
we do not find writing where, as heirs of the Judeo-Christian tradition, we expect
to find it—that scholars have tended to suggest that the practice of religious
writing was less significant in ancient religions outside Judaism and
Christianity. In fact, although there are clear differences, they are not so stark
as they might appear at first sight. We have already noted the Egyptian term
for hieroglyphs as “the god’s words” and observed the central role of writing
in those religious practices that go by the name of magic. The world of GrecoRoman
“paganism” offers an even wider range of the uses of writing in cult
and belief. Although the official state cults of Rome and the Greek cities were
not generally founded on divinely inspired or divinely written texts, in some
noncivic cults—such as those of Orpheus and the Egyptian Hermes—the word
of the god, as inscribed in sacred texts, did hold a central place. At Rome itself,
the major state collection of oracular texts, the Sibylline Oracles, owed its origin
and its authority to the figure of the Sibyl of Cumae—a divinely inspired
prophetess. The Sibylline Oracles were regularly consulted at times of danger
and trouble for the city, and they were, in a sense, the word of god; they were
preserved and recopied (even if conveniently amended in the process) with the
full panoply of religious care. Other ancient oracles worked entirely through
writing, without the involvement of even an original oral prophecy: the oracle
at Praeneste (near Rome), for example, was based on the consultation of
written wooden tablets, which had been discovered miraculously—already inscribed—inside
a nearby rock. Although modern scholarship has tended to
privilege the oral consultation of an oracle (as at the famous oracle of Apollo at
Delphi), Greco-Roman gods regularly communicated in writing.
But writing pervaded the religious world of Rome in other senses. The
priestly colleges were associated with so-called priestly books. Although these
do not survive beyond the occasional fragmentary quotation and their exact
content is still disputed, it seems very likely that they recorded details of religious
formulas and procedure (or, in the case of the document that Flavius
published, calendrical and legal information). More striking still, however, is
the role of writing in dedications and vows in temples and sanctuaries. When
Pliny the Younger visited the sanctuary of Clitumnus near modern Spoleto in
the early 2nd century ce, he found a site full of the written word: “Everything
there will delight you,” he wrote to a friend, “and you can also find something
135 writing and religion
to read. You can study the numerous inscriptions in honor of the spring [fons]
and of the god, which many hands have written on every pillar and wall” (Letters
8.8.7). Even today, when almost everything inscribed on perishable material
has disappeared, many Greco-Roman sanctuaries still preserve the written
traces of their worshipers’ activities and expressions of piety or gratitude. Although
Pliny suggests that the elite visitor might find plenty to read (and, he
goes on, to laugh at) in such a sanctuary, the reading visitor can hardly have
been uppermost in the mind of most of those commissioning these inscriptions.
Much more likely, the intention of the writing was to memorialize, or give permanence
to, the ritual act commemorated. More generally, in a religion in
which there were no clear articles of faith, no formal badge of belonging or ceremony
of initiation, memorializing religious action in an inscription was a way
of “writing oneself in” to “membership” of the religious community. This
sense of “writing as belonging” took a notable twist in the conflicts between
Christianity and traditional civic cults in the Roman Empire during the 3rd
century ce. The emperor Decius ordered that everyone should sacrifice to the
gods to prove that they were not Christian. But not just that. Once they had
sacrificed in the presence of two official witnesses, they could be issued with a
written certificate to authenticate their action—and, no doubt, to produce if
challenged again. A few of these certificates still survive from Roman Egypt
(e.g., Mitteis and Wilcken 1912: no. 124).
What underlies these different manifestations of the written word in ancient
religions is not a simple clash between “religions of the book” and the rest. It
is rather a series of questions about the mediation of divine power that all
religions must accommodate, if not answer. What forms of communication—
written or oral—carry most authority? How do you weigh the immediacy of
orality against the permanency of writing? How does religious speech relate to
religious text? Different religions offer different answers to these questions—
and different answers at different periods and in different circumstances. In
studying ancient religious systems, it is much more helpful to concentrate on
that constant play-off between oral and written traditions, in all its different
varieties and with all its different emphases—rather than to use the role of
writing as a fixed standard against which to classify or hierarchize the different
religions. This sense of religious dialectic is brilliantly captured in a Jewish
story from the 6th-century ce Babylonian Talmud (tractate Bava Metzi’a 59a–
b). In a dispute between a group of rabbis set in the 2nd century, different
forms of authority were claimed for their different interpretations. One, Rabbi
Eliezer, after performing a variety of miracles to support his own position,
finally—in the face of continuing disagreement from his colleagues—called on
heaven itself to prove his point. A supporting divine voice indeed came: “The
law accords with what he says.” But even this was not enough. One rabbi
claimed that the voice did not really come from heaven; another claimed that,
even if divine, the voice did not carry the day, for the written law must hold:
“Since the Torah has already been given from Mount Sinai, we do not pay attention
to heavenly voices, for You have written already at Mount Sinai”; and
encountering ancient religions 136
he went on to advise God to vote with the majority. And God’s reaction to this
dispute? “He laughed and said, ‘My children have defeated me.’”
The religion of writing
So far I have discussed the role of writing in ancient culture and religion as if it
were a topic of interest to modern anthropologists and historians of religion;
and I have largely referred to writing as if it were a practice that reacted with,
but was essentially separate from, religion. That is, of course, part of the story;
but only a part. Writing could also be very much an integral part of religion
and ritual, not simply an external influence on it. I have already mentioned
briefly the symbolic role of writing within various cult practices, including
magic. This should prompt us to see writing itself, potentially at least, as a ritual
activity. This was certainly the case in the Arval Grove, where the inscriptions
themselves document some of the rituals associated with their inscribing
(iron was a prohibited substance in the grove, so the introduction of the iron
tools had to be accompanied by expiatory sacrifices). In Greece the formal inscription
and preservation of oaths and treaties was often similarly ritualized.
In Plato’s Critias, written in the 4th century bce, he envisages a sacrifice in the
mythical Atlantis, where the blood of a sacrificial animal is made to wash over,
literally, the texts of preserved laws (119c–20c). And, as Steiner has observed
(1994), the 5th-century bce historian Herodotus projects a similar concern
with ritual inscription onto illiterate barbarians. If barbarians do not use alphabetic
writing, at least they “inscribe” their oaths as scars on the body of the
oath taker (3.8; 4.70).
No less important is the incorporation of writing into ancient cultural commentary
and myth. Plato, for example, in his dialogue Phaedrus has the character
of Socrates argue that the invention of writing was culturally deleterious,
among other reasons because it weakened the human memory (why bother to
remember when you can refer to a written text?) and because it was indiscriminate
in those it addressed (unlike an oral philosopher, who could choose his
audience). And many ancient cultures attributed the origin of writing to divine
(or heroic) invention. Egyptian hieroglyphs were said to be the brainchild
of the god Thoth. Greek myths ascribed writing variously to (among others)
the god Hermes, the mythical Palamedes, or the semidivine Prometheus, who
brought writing to mortals as part of his civilizing mission, which also included
the gift of fire. Others, however, would have backed the claims of Orpheus, legendary
poet, musician, and mystic. He originated, it was said, from Thrace (in
the far north of Greece), and different mythical accounts accorded him a quite
different role in the history of writing: one tradition makes him its inventor;
another claims that, as the Thracians were well known to be illiterate, he could
not possibly be writing’s ancestor. But more influential still was the idea that
after his death his decapitated head continued to sing, and the words were either
directly and miraculously transcribed on tablets or else copied down by
137 writing and religion
faithful secretaries. “Orphic texts” (versions of which circulated widely in
Greece) were thought to hold healing properties and to offer, to those who read
them, the hope of life after death.
The myth of the talking head of Orpheus and the miraculous properties of
Orphic texts might seem a world away from the story of Cnaeus Flavius and
his practical assault on the priestly monopoly of knowledge in early Rome. But
that indeed must be the range spanned by any study of religion and writing in
the ancient world: from mundane record keeping to the “words of god”; from
academic exegesis to magical mumbo jumbo; from writing in blood to writing
in stone.
Bibliography
Baines, J. “Literacy in Ancient Egyptian Society.” Man 18 (1983): 572–99.
Beard, M. “Writing and Religion: Ancient Literacy and the Function of the Written
Word in Roman Religion.” In Literacy in the Roman World, ed. M. Beard et al.
Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 3. Ann Arbor, 1991.
———. “Writing and Ritual: A Study of Diversity and Expansion in the Arval Acta.”
Papers of the British School at Rome 53 (1981): 114–62.
Bottéro, J., C. Herrenschmidt, and J.-P. Vernant. Ancestor of the West: Writing, Reasoning,
and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece. Chicago, 2000.
Bowman, A. K., and G. Woolf, eds. Literacy and Power in the Ancient World. Cambridge,
1994 (see esp. essays by M. D. Goodman and R. Lane Fox).
Goody, J. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge, 1977.
Goody, J., and I. Watt. “The Consequences of Literacy.” In Comparative Studies in Society
and History 5 (1963): 304–45; reprinted in Literacy in Traditional Societies,
ed. J. Goody. Cambridge, 1968.
Gordon, R. L. “From Republic to Principate: Priesthood, Religion, and Ideology.” In
Pagan Priests, ed. M. Beard and J. North. London, 1990.
Harris, W. V. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, Mass., 1989.
Hopkins, K. A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Roman Empire.
London, 1999.
Mitteis, L., and U. Wilcken. Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, vol. 1.2.
Leipzig: Teubner, 1912.
Sawyer, J. F. A. Sacred Languages and Sacred Texts: Religion in the First Christian Centuries.
London, 1999.
Steiner, D. Tarn. The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece.
Princeton, 1994.
Wünsch, R. “Appendix continens defixionum tabellas in Attica regione repertas.” In
Inscriptiones Graecae, vol. II/III, Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum. Berlin: Reimer,
1897.
encountering ancient religions 138
Magic
Sarah Iles Johnston
A problem of definition
It was to be the greatest temple of all time—built to the glory of YHWH by
King Solomon, in fulfillment of a promise that his father, King David, had
made. Enormous and splendid, the temple would provide a place where the ark
of the covenant could safely be stored and where all of Israel could worship.
But in the course of its construction, a problem arose. Solomon’s favorite
workman was attacked each night by Ornias, a vampirelike demon who stole
the workman’s vitality by sucking on his thumb. Solomon prayed to YHWH
for help, and YHWH sent a ring to Solomon via the angel Michael. This ring,
on which was engraved a device that came to be known as the “Seal of Solomon,”
could be used to control all the demons of the world. With help from
the angel Ouriel, Solomon used the seal to stop Ornias from attacking his
workman and then to order Ornias to invoke Beelzeboul, a more powerful
demon who in turn invoked all the other demons. By interrogating them, Solomon
learned what their names were and which plants, stones, and animal parts
could be used to avert each one of them.
Solomon compelled the conquered demons to finish building the temple and
afterward drove them into bottles, which he sealed shut with his ring. He buried
the bottles under the temple, where they remained until the Babylonians
pillaged Jerusalem many years later. Assuming that the bottles contained gold,
the greedy invaders broke them open and once again let loose upon the world a
host of demonic ills. Henceforth ordinary people, lacking Solomon’s power to
imprison the demons, could keep them at bay only by wearing amulets engraved
with his seal or by using the techniques that Solomon had learned from
the demons themselves. It was because he had foreseen the demons’ eventual
release, indeed, that Solomon had recorded the means of averting each one so
carefully.
This story of Solomon and the demons, which is taken from a narrative
called the Testament of Solomon that dates back to at least the 2nd century ce,
is an apt introduction to an essay on magic, for it implicitly raises an issue that
looms large in scholarly studies of the topic: namely, how can we distinguish
between “magic” and “religion”? Using a special seal and other techniques to
control demons makes Solomon look like what many would call a magician.
This accords with other ancient portraits, where he is presented as an expert in
incantations, astrology, alchemy, and other arts commonly gathered under the
rubric and appears on amulets against illness and the Evil Eye. And yet, it
could also be argued that several elements in the story situate Solomon within
the realm of religion: the fact that the seal was a gift from YHWH, Michael
and Ouriel’s assistance in its delivery and deployment, and Solomon’s use of
the conquered demons to build YHWH’s temple.
The story itself concedes nothing to this problem; the cultures in which
it originated and developed simply armed Solomon with the tools that they
revered as efficacious against demons and legitimated both him and those tools
by linking them closely to YHWH and his angels. Nor was Solomon unusual
among YHWH’s devotees: Moses and Aaron performed deeds that we might
call magical—not only did they turn a staff into a snake (Exod. 7.8–12) but
they also devised such things as love charms and invisibility spells (PGM
VII.619–27). Christ raised the dead and exorcised demons, feats often credited
to magicians in antiquity; his name, as well as that of Iao (a variation of
YHWH), empowered such things as memory charms and divinatory spells and
appeared in ancient grimoires side by side with, for example, instructions
for engraving silver tablets and creating (and later eating) female dolls made
of bread dough (PGM III.410–66). The Greek hero Jason received the first
iynx (a tool for making people fall in love) from the goddess Aphrodite (Pindar,
Pythian 4.213–19). And on the Metternich Stele, the goddess Isis proudly
claimed to teach heka (an Egyptian word that the ancient Greeks translated as
“mageia” [magic]) to her favorite mortals. In other words, pagan divinities and
heroes no more repudiated what we might call magic than did YHWH and his
followers. In fact, far from rejecting such practices, ancient peoples enhanced
their gods’ and heroes’ reputations by boasting that they knew more about
such practices than did other cultures’ gods and heroes.
And yet the modern scholarly quest to establish a division between magic
and religion does have some roots in antiquity, insofar as both ancient and
modern discussions hinge on terminology: what one chooses to call any particular
activity (and, it follows, who is doing the choosing) determines whether
the activity is understood as acceptable or discredited, pious or blasphemous,
religion or magic. In antiquity, magic (a term that I use as a shorthand way of
referring to a variety of ancient Mediterranean words) almost always referred
to someone else’s religious practices; it was a term that distanced those practices
from the norm—that is, from one’s own practices, which constituted religion.
Among magicians themselves, distance could lend glamour and authority—for
instance, Greek magicians claimed to one another that their spells had
been invented by legendary Egyptian, Persian, or Jewish magicians—but to
encountering ancient religions 140
nonmagicians, distance usually implied charlatanry, alliances with dark gods
and demons, and coercion of gods to whom other, properly reverent people
prayed. Thus, in later antiquity, outsiders who feared and derided Judaism and
Christianity called both Christ and Moses goÁtes, a term that had come to
mean, by this time, charismatic quacks who lured their followers into illegal
and immoral activities and who claimed to command armies of demons.
Centuries earlier, Sophocles’ Oedipus insulted Teiresias, a priest and prophet
whom he no longer trusted, by calling him a “scheming magos” (Oedipus
Tyrannus 387).
Thus, magic was almost always a normative, rather than a straightforwardly
descriptive, term, and looking at the ancient world from our own vantage
point, we can make no clean division between it and religion. Not only were
many gods and religious leaders reputed to employ techniques that we might
call magical (in Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia, in fact, some forms
of what we call magic were in the purview of official priests), but when we examine
the techniques themselves, we discover that they differ from other religious
practices more in details than in substance or attitude. For example, the
structure of “magical” prayers was identical to that of “religious” prayers in
most Mediterranean cultures, and in cultures where sacrifice was an important
part of religious practice, it stood at the center of magical practices as well.
Amulets against illness and other crises invoke the aid of the same saints and
holy men whom we meet in religious texts.
As for the details, we can explain many differences between magical and religious
practices by noting (as some ancient authors already did) that the magician
was a “technician of the sacred,” someone who knew more about how to
approach the superhuman world than ordinary people did. This gave him the
means to innovate and improvise on established techniques. The fact that in
some cultures, magicians made their livings by freelancing their skills and in
others used them to supplement the incomes they earned as temple priests gave
them the impetus to innovate and improvise, for the most successful practitioners
would be those who confidently boasted an extensive and varied repertoire,
adaptable to all occasions.
The scholarly quest to divide magic from religion, which began in earnest in
the late 19th century with Sir E. B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture and Sir James
Frazer’s Golden Bough, stems from a similar desire to divide the unacceptable
from the acceptable, which in their post-Darwinian world meant not only the
impious from the pious, but also the unevolved from the evolved—that is, the
“primitive” from the “advanced” means of understanding the cosmos and attempting
to affect it (often, “science” was brought in as a third entity to be distinguished
from both magic and religion). Thus, Frazer argued that magicians’
techniques developed out of an assumption that they could coerce gods and
crude “prescientific” concepts such as contagion and sympathy, whereas religious
practitioners, having advanced beyond this spiritually, focused on prayer
and theology and scientists developed intellectually sounder means of investigation.
Frazer and other armchair anthropologists used these neat (and implic-
141 magic
itly Western, Christianocentric) divisions to distance European culture from
the tribes in Africa, South America, and New Guinea, about whom missionaries
sent back reports. Variations rang changes on Frazer’s scheme; Malinowski,
for instance, pitted magic and religion together against science (emotional phenomena
against rational) but also pitted magic and science together against religion
(pragmatic empiricism against nonempiricism). All such attempts, under
the scrutiny of later scholarship, have been shown to rest on shaky dichotomies
between “us” and “them.” Most scholars of religion now concede that a reliable
means of dividing magic and religion will never be found.
Does this mean that the endeavor to define magic has stopped, or should
stop? No, it continues for several reasons. For one thing, scholars continue to
try to identify the ways in which specific cultures internally defined magic. Although
this emic approach can never be carried out perfectly—because we
can never put ourselves completely into the mentality of another culture—attempts
are nonetheless illuminating. Scholars of the ancient Mediterranean
have another reason to pursue definitions of magic as well: we increasingly
realize that religious practices and ideas traveled fluidly across cultural boundaries;
it profits the Assyriologist to compare notes with the Hellenist, the
scholar of Judaism with the Egyptologist, and so on. Having at least rough
heuristic models under which we can categorize practices and ideas from all of
these cultures, and thus compare them, facilitates discourse and analysis. As
long as we keep in mind that our definitions of magic are provisional and beware
of slipping into essentialist assumptions, definitions help us identify and
better understand the salient features of magic in the ancient Mediterranean. It
is in this spirit that the rest of this essay proceeds.
The power of words
Virtually all religious practices involve words, whether written, spoken aloud,
or silently pronounced, because virtually all religious practices constitute attempts
to communicate with other beings—gods, demons, angels, the dead, or
the cosmos itself. (Only certain forms of mysticism, which typically stand at
the margins of the religions from which they evolve, encourage worshipers to
empty their minds of words completely and focus on something that lies utterly
beyond language.) Distinctions between “religious” and “magical” uses of language
are as elusive as any other distinctions between religion and magic.
Yet two comments can be made. First, those whom ancient cultures called
magicians often were credited with extraordinary expertise in the use of words.
In Egypt, temple priests, who also served as freelance magicians, were highly
trained in both the written and oral use of words; heka itself was described as
being “excellent of words”; and Thoth, the god of writing, was also a god of
magic. Plato’s Socrates—to take just one of many examples from the GrecoRoman
sphere—said that the leaf of a certain plant would make a sick person
well again, but only if special words were pronounced at the same time as the
encountering ancient religions 142
leaf was administered: “The leaf alone is nothing,” he asserted (Charmides
155e5–8; cf. Pliny, Natural History 28.3.10–11). Second, particular ways of
using words are commonly associated with magic, and the ancient magician
tended to be marked by the power that his speech acts carried.
Curses
One characteristic shared by many magical uses of words is that they work automatically—that
is, pronouncement or inscription of the words puts the statements
they make into effect virtually immediately, either with or without accompanying
ritual actions. Although this characteristic can be found across a
range of speech acts, it is particularly common in curses—and curses, although
not associated exclusively with magic, often appear in ancient collections of
magical lore or in narrative descriptions of magic and its practitioners; they
constitute one of the reasons that magicians were treated with respect born of
fear (cf. Pliny, Natural History 23.4.19).
We can pursue the “automatic” nature of many curses by adapting a heuristic
model developed by Christopher Faraone for study of one specific form of
Greek and Roman curse, the defixio—a curse written on a small piece of lead
or wax and deposited within a grave or other subterranean area. Faraone divides
the speech acts found on defixiones into four groups, the third and fourth
of which I combine here. (1) “Direct” formulas, in which the curser uses
a first-person verb to curse or restrain the victim from performing an action
(“I curse so-and-so”); this is a “performative utterance” that is expected to effect
what it describes without further ado. The curser, in other words, assumes
no gap between his ritualized articulation of the curse and its fulfillment.
(2) Formulas in which imperative verbs direct the actions of gods, demons,
and other nonhuman agents against the victim (“Restrain so-and-so!”). Although
we might argue that there is no guarantee that the desire expressed
by these statements will be fulfilled, the baldly imperative tone (which is less
commonly found in speech acts that ancient Mediterraneans labeled “religious”)
leaves little doubt that the curser presumes success. (3) “Wish” formulas,
which use optative verbs (“May so-and-so fail!”). Here we begin to shade
into what both ancient and modern commentators often call prayer, that is,
a venue in which a deity’s help is sought yet never assumed to be guaranteed;
but we must keep sight of two differences: a prayer is more likely than a curse
to include statements intended to persuade a god or demon to cooperate with
the petitioner (“I have given you sacrifices in the past”; “I will build you a temple”;
etc.), the implication being that the god or demon may not, in the end,
fulfill the desire. Moreover, this type of curse often includes what Stanley
Tambiah has called “persuasive analogies” (“As the corpse [with which this
inscribed curse is buried] is cold and lifeless, thus may so-and-so be cold
and lifeless”). Similar are the vivid metaphors used in some curses: “May
your root not sprout upon the earth, may your head droop at the hands of
the harvester!” The use of such analogies and metaphors suggests an expecta-
143 magic
tion that, if the curse is properly composed and spoken or inscribed, success
will follow; although requests for divine aid are sometimes included in such
curses, emphasis lies on finding the right analogies and metaphors—the right
words.
I do not mean to suggest a dichotomy here, pairing magic with curses and religion
with prayers (for example); nor do I mean to suggest that all curses, and
only curses alone among speech acts, were understood to work automatically—although
it is interesting that techniques such as persuasive analogy
are found most often, outside of curses, in other speech acts associated with
magic (thus a Jewish love charm, like many others from the Mediterranean, decrees,
“Just as [this potsherd burns, so shall] burn the heart of so-and-so, after
me”; and a Mesopotamian healing spell asks that “the illness be stripped off
like these dates [are stripped from a tree]”). The pairs religion–magic and
unguaranteed fulfillment–automatic fulfillment mark the end points of heuristic
spectrums; if we were to plot each individual example of any type of speech
act (curse, prayer, etc.) along either spectrum, we would see a spread. But the
curse, a type of speech act that ancient cultures tended to place at the magic
end of the first spectrum, also falls more often than other speech acts at the automatic
end of the second one. The automatic nature of many curses is further
demonstrated by the belief that one could instantly nullify the effects of a written
curse by destroying the material on which it was written.
Secret words
Magicians frequently used special words and phrases, typically described as secret.
Often, the words were understood as special names of gods or angels,
names sure to catch the entity’s attention; a magician who used them would
not fail to gain aid. This does not necessarily represent coercion of the god or
angel; although coercion is clearly intended in some cases, in others, we can
better understand the use of secret names as forging a stronger bond between
the magician and the addressee, as shared possession of secret knowledge typically
does (see Mysteries). In yet other cases—for example, in Jewish incantations
that use permutations of YHWH’s name—powerful names seem to work
on their own, rather than to invoke their bearers.
Notably, magicians believed that many of these secret names had been handed
down from other cultures and represented other languages (which is not incorrect:
Jewish names are embedded in otherwise Greek magical texts and vice
versa, for example) or even the language of the gods and demons they addressed.
Although the names might belong to a deity whom the magician’s
native language called something else, he never “translated” them—not only
because they might please the god more in their original forms but also because
the power of some onomata barbara (barbaric names) was inherent in their
phonetic sounds or in the shape of the letters used to write them. Unbroken
repetition of a name in some magical texts (often three, seven, or nine times,
but even seventy times, in one Jewish amulet) underscores this latter point, alencountering
ancient religions 144
though repetition of significant words and phrases could play other roles in
magic, too. Theocritus’s poetic representation of a Greek love spell includes periodic
refrain of vital phrases in a manner suggesting that repetition works in
the divine world just as it does in the mortal: it further guarantees divinities’
cooperation (Idyll 2). Similarly, a spell in the Greco-Egyptian papyri tells the
magician to start reciting an invocation at the seventh hour of the moon and to
keep saying it until the “god hearkens to you and you make contact with him”
(PGM II.1–64).
All of this is interesting with respect to what was said about the automatic
nature of magical language above. Some magical words do work automatically
insofar as they function by virtue of their inherent power alone; others can be
understood as signals that immediately and unconditionally put other forces
into action (what might be called the “Open Sesame” effect); but others function
in the same way as ordinary speech acts among humans do, even if they
have greater potential than other speech acts—that is, they may not work all of
the time, or at least not immediately. One thing we can say about all of these
uses of secret language is that they further demonstrate that the Mediterranean
magician was someone who possessed knowledge of gods, demons, angels, and
the cosmos that was deeper, more detailed, and more varied than that of the
average person. It was by virtue of this knowledge, rather than by virtue of any
essential difference within himself or the sorts of things he did, that he was apt
to be more effective in his interactions with the supernatural entities. The
magician was no Merlin, sired by a demon and thereby naturally endowed
with superhuman power. Although lineage might predispose one toward magic
(David, Solomon’s father, was credited with exorcizing Saul of an evil spirit;
Medea was the niece of Circe), most Mediterranean magicians had to be
trained by their elders—Hogwarts School is just the most recent exposition
of a very old idea. Even the gods’ help was frequently described in terms of
teaching. Aphrodite taught Jason how to use the iynx; and Isis taught mortals
heka (a tradition that the satirist Lucian mocks by making his archmagician,
Pancrates, spend twenty-three years under her tutelage, in secret chambers beneath
the earth; Philopseudes 34–36).
Narrative power
Historiolae (little stories) are short narrations inserted into written or spoken
spells, usually evocative of longer tales that are well known. For example, a
Coptic Christian spell first sketches a story of how Jesus and the angel Michael
relieved a doe’s labor pains; implicit is the presumption that the patient for
whom the spell is recited will similarly be relieved. The spell then goes on to
sketch a tale of how Horus had stomach pains and sought the help of his
mother, Isis; this is followed by explicit requests for their aid in curing the
stomach pains of the child over whom the spell is recited (Meyer and Smith
1994: no. 49).
What is interesting here is not so much how easily Christianity juxtaposes it-
145 magic
self with native Egyptian religion (Mediterranean religions were fluid, and magicians,
as improvising freelancers, were more fluid than most), but rather the
juxtaposition of a historiola whose relevance to the immediate situation is
stated with one whose relevance is not. The first suggests that historiolae are
similar to the persuasive analogies and metaphors mentioned above, insofar as
the magician offers them as patterns that he wants the current situation to follow.
(Some Mesopotamian examples take this idea further: they begin with a
description of the patient’s illness, followed by a historiola-type narration of a
deity listening to the description and prescribing for it.) The second suggests
something similar to the way in which some secret words work: power is inherent
in the narration itself, and recitation calls that power into action without
further ado. Again, assumptions that we tentatively made about how magical
words work are challenged; again, although we can cling to some extremely
broad generalizations (“ancient Mediterranean magicians were experts in using
words”), we cannot go much beyond that.
Eating your words
The written word lends itself to physical manipulation and thus to methods of
deployment that the oral word does not. Words inscribed on an amulet or a
curse tablet remained effective as long as they physically existed, continuously
averting demonic illnesses or binding enemies as if someone were speaking
them over and over. What happened to a word once it had been properly inscribed,
moreover, happened to what it represented as well: a Babylonian spell
for eliminating an opponent prescribes writing his name on a lump of clay and
casting it at midnight into a river (Abusch 1998: 63). Analogously, writing particular
words down repeatedly, but each time leaving off another letter until
the words disappeared completely, would make the illness that the words represented
disappear. Some Greek and Latin curse tablets were inscribed with no
more than the victim’s name and then were folded and pierced with a nail. Although
rituals were probably performed and words spoken while the tablet
was pierced, the primary action, the piercing of the name, underscores how
deeply the word and its referent were linked in ancient magic.
And the creativity of ancient magicians went beyond even this. Spells in
the Greco-Egyptian papyri advocate writing words on natron tablets that are
then dissolved in drinking water or on leaves that are subsequently licked;
physically ingesting the words brings the benefits they represent. Sometimes
other liquids are used to supplement the words’ force: Jewish magicians spoke
words over a cup of wine employed in the havdalah ceremony and then drank
it (MS TS K1.117); and in a Greek spell attributed to Moses, words on a natron
tablet are dissolved in a mixture of wine and the milk of a black cow
(PGM XIII.343–646). A Hurrian physician recited incantations over oil that
was to anoint the “lord of the army,” his horses, chariot, and weapons before
going into battle (KUB 30.42 1.8–14 = CTH 162).
encountering ancient religions 146
Again we see that the power of the word is understood differently in different
circumstances: sometimes as a stand-in for its referent, sometimes as carrying
power in and of itself. That words could be used in a variety of (sometimes
mutually exclusive) ways does not seem to have bothered magicians—they
used whatever was reputed to work. Sometimes, spells even included a fallback
technique (“If that doesn’t work, try this instead”). This brings a further insight
about ancient magic: not only did it lack an orthodoxy, as did most Mediterranean
religious systems themselves, but it scarcely had anything that could
be called an orthopraxy. As mentioned earlier, “magic” in a given culture typically
used variations of the same main rituals used by the culture’s “religion”
(e.g., sacrifice, purification procedures), and if we stand back far enough, we
can make certain other gross generalizations (e.g., magicians were experts in
using words). But the more closely we look, the harder it is to generalize. Not
only do things shift within specific cultures (Egyptian magic made greater use
of written words, and Greek magic made greater use of spoken words, for instance;
Frankfurter 1994), but they shift from spell to spell.
The power of images and essences
Much of what has been said about words applies to another characteristic
often connected with ancient magic: the creation and manipulation of images.
Thus, images (drawings, statues, etc.) often stood in for their referents. When
a doll was pierced with needles by a magician, the woman whom it represented
was understood to be affected as well. Binding the statue of a demon, ghost, or
witch and carrying it into the wilderness or otherwise disempowering it was
understood to disempower its referent as well (a particularly complex Mesopotamian
example is offered by Abusch 1998: 56–58). The soles of pharaohs’
sandals were engraved with images of enemies, allowing the pharaohs to crush
them with every step. This strong connection between image and referent is underscored
by the magical technique of making a god angry with one’s intended
victim by telling the god that the victim has abused the god’s image (e.g., PGM
III.110–12). Images, like inscribed words, continuously enacted what they portrayed:
wearing an amulet engraved with a picture of Saint Sisinnius lancing a
child-killing demon caused the saint to perform this act repeatedly on behalf of
the wearer. We read about consumption of images, too. One example involves
dolls made of bread dough (PGM III.410–66), another is a spell where images
of Isis and Horus are to be drawn on the hand of an ill person, who then licks
them off. Horus’s healing power might also be internalized by sketching his seven
eyes on natron and then dissolving them into beer (Ritner 1993: 95–96, 104).
Words and images are not mutually exclusive: many cases of manipulation
involve both. Aramaic incantation bowls placed a picture of a fettered demon
in the middle of concentric circles of written charms against it (examples in
Lesses 2001), and some curse “tablets” were actually small, inscribed human
147 magic
figurines, representing their victims. But attention to images in particular raises
another topic important throughout Mediterranean magic: what the Greeks
called ousia (a participle from the Greek verb “to be”; the term might be translated
as “essence”). Ousia comprised material taken from someone or something:
hair, fingernail parings, fringe from a garment, a nail from the cross on
which a criminal had been crucified, a plank from a shipwrecked vessel. Ousia
might be understood as a special sort of image, a physical object that stood in
for what was otherwise missing, making it present. In some cases, this meant
the object of the spell: if you wished to curse someone or to make someone fall
in love with you, it was useful to have some part of that person to manipulate.
In other cases, it meant the entities on whom you relied to work the spell: nails
from crucifixes and planks from fatal shipwrecks could represent the restless
dead on whom magicians relied to carry out many tasks (as could actual parts
of corpses). Ways of using ousia varied, from attaching it to an image representing
the referent or to something on which the referent’s name was inscribed—in
both cases the ousia acted to connect the image or tablet more
closely to the referent—to burning it, to rubbing it while you invoked the referent,
or to incorporating it into an image, a statue.
Earlier generations of scholars would have called the use of ousia an example
of sympathy: that is, what happens to the ousia or the object to which it
has been attached happens “sympathetically” to its referent (Greek sympatheia
literally means “experiencing [something] together”). Recent scholars have rejected
this idea, along with most other Frazerian inheritances. Some of their
remarks are insightful: thus Fritz Graf (1998: 137–41) emphasizes that in
piercing a doll with needles a magician did not intend to make the referent feel
pain in those spots, but rather feel desire. The needles should be understood as
indicators of where something is to take place, rather than as miniature weapons
injuring miniature flesh, and thus “sympathy” must be understood as
something more complex than A:B::a:b. And yet there is no denying that sympathetic
ideas were at work in antiquity. That ousia from a corpse could substitute
for the practice of depositing or performing the spell at a grave builds on
this: possession of the ousia brought the ghost to you instead of your going to
visit the ghost. In Apuleius’s story of a love spell gone wrong, a witch’s house is
visited by sexually aroused goatskins because her assistant gathered hairs the
witch used as ousia from goatskins instead of from the man whom the witch
desired (Golden Ass 3.15–18).
Late antique theorists of cosmic matters built their ideas on the same premises—although
they transferred their attentions to the heavenly realms and
rejected the term magician, calling themselves Neoplatonic philosophers, theurgists,
or followers of Hermes Trismegistus instead. According to them, sympathy
or philia (friendship, in the sense of a bond between otherwise separate
entities) pervaded the cosmos, tying the higher, more-perfect, and divine realms
to the lower realms of the material world, where humans dwelt. Philia created
“chains” of existence, at the top of which were particular divinities and at the
encountering ancient religions 148
bottom of which were materials—gemstones, animals, plants, and so on—that
shared the divinities’ natures. Learning what these materials were and how to
manipulate them enabled the worshiper to contact the divinities and thus perform
many of the same feats as magicians did (they rejected such things as using
the restless dead and casting love charms, but engaged in divination and
control of the weather, for example). The implicit idea is the same as that behind
the use of ousia: in order to affect or make use of something that is unobtainable,
obtain something that is existentially connected to it. Ironically, it
was precisely this idea that survived antiquity and was embraced by Christian
Neoplatonists such as Marsilio Ficino during the Renaissance. By developing
the concept of sympathy—a concept that was understood by Frazer and his
followers as distinguishing magic from (Western, European) religion—Ficino
and his followers found ways of bringing the ancient learning they so admired
into line with Christianity.
Imagination and reality: Gender
As used in the ancient Mediterranean, magic is a normative term, but scholars
have sometimes fallen prey to using it to distance groups of people or practices
as well. Related to, and complicating, these issues are several others. For
example, some scholars have argued that Mesopotamians worried a great deal
about being attacked by witchcraft (i.e., magic deployed for injurious purposes)
and thus expended effort on averting it and eliminating its sources, but
did not actually practice witchcraft themselves. In other words, witchcraft
was all in the Mesopotamian imagination; there was no reality behind it. This
is not an argument with which I agree (nor does Tzvi Abusch, an expert on
Mesopotamian witchcraft), but it serves well to demonstrate the problems that
our imperfect sources cause for us, for it springs from the fact that whereas
plenty of information about people averting witchcraft and accusing others of
witchcraft survives from Mesopotamia, virtually none survives for the practice
itself. Obviously, this could be an accident of chance—for example, if curse
tablets had not been made largely of lead, we might doubt that magic was
practiced in classical Greece to any significant degree; and if the Egyptian climate
had not been so kind to papyri, thus preserving numerous extensive, detailed
examples of magician’s textbooks, we might not believe what accusing
Christian authors tell us about the “pagan” practice of magic in late antiquity.
We are always at the mercy of our recalcitrant sources and must learn to read
through, past, and around them whenever we can.
An especially challenging set of questions in this regard involves gender. In
this chapter, I have consistently used male pronouns to refer to Mediterranean
magicians. In most cases, this was because the text I quoted or referred to explicitly
discussed men—exceptions are the (female) Hurrian physician who recited
powerful words over oil used to anoint the “lord of the army,” Medea
149 magic
and Circe, the (female) star of Theocritus’s poetic love charm, and the witch in
Apuleius who accidentally attracted goatskins. But what was the reality—did
more men than women really practice magic in the ancient Mediterranean?
Our sources are frustratingly lacunose on this issue; particularly frustrating
is that in the Greek and Roman worlds, we tend to hear more about female
magicians in literary sources than in working texts—the magical “recipe
books” of the papyri, for example, scarcely mention them. This may reflect, as
some scholars have suggested, a situation in which women seldom practiced
magic but men (who wrote almost all of the literature) nonetheless liked to
portray them as doing so—because it expressed their fear of women or because
it was titillating (nor are the two mutually exclusive). It may also reflect a situation
in which women’s magic consisted of actions that were regarded as too
trivial or female-centered to record in working texts (spells to protect children,
for example). And yet, we know of two real cases in classical Athens in which
women were tried on charges of magic, which suggests that even in the real
world, their magic could impinge upon the world of men in threatening ways
(Versnel 1990: 116–18). Another consideration is that the professional magicians
(on whom this essay has focused) were likelier to be male, just as other
professionals were, and in Egypt, where the sorts of magic that come to our attention
were predominantly the prerogative of temple priests, we should not be
surprised to hear little about women in the sources. But there was plenty of
“do-it-yourself” magic going on, as well, for which we do not have good records.
In this venue, women may have been just as active or even more active
than men.
So much for Greece, Rome, and Egypt—but the situation seems to have been
different in some other Mediterranean cultures. Royal Anatolian magic involved
not only the female physicians mentioned above but other women as
well: one king, for example, accuses a rival of hiring female magicians to
thwart him (KUB 21.17 1.9–12), and collections of magical lore were centrally
compiled in the Hurrian kingdom of Kizzuwatna by female magicians (Haas
1972: 27–29; cf. 37). Witchcraft (i.e., magic deployed for injurious purposes)
was more strongly attached to women than men in early Judaism: thus, “most
women are witches,” said the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Sanhedrin 67a).
Here again, we must be leery of rabbinic sources because they were created
by men and make women look bad—they undoubtedly exaggerate both the
degree and the evil nature of women’s involvement with magic. Moreover,
as Rebecca Lesses shows, there is reason to think that women in Sassanian
Babylonia, including some who considered themselves Jewish, were as active
as men in magic that had beneficial ends: for instance, they were sometimes involved
in the creation of incantation bowls, used the bowls about as often as
men, and used them against some of the same problems.
In the end, we cannot answer most of our questions about gender and magic
very securely. Moreover, when we do think we have secure answers, fate often
confounds us by bringing new evidence to light. After several respected scholars
of Greco-Roman magic had concluded that women cast love spells to win
encountering ancient religions 150
men only in literature (i.e., in the male imagination) and that in reality love
spells were cast only by men to win women, a new curse tablet from 4th-century
bce Thessaly gave us a splendid example of a woman using magic to separate
the man she desired from his wife (Voutiras 1998). Similarly, Robert Daniel
and Franco Maltomini (1990: 132–153) provided an undeniable example of
a lesbian love charm from 3rd- or 4th-century ce Egypt, which compelled us to
look again at a few similar cases that had been swept under the rug.
It may seem that this essay is full of words such as “might,” “could,” and “although,”
and phrases such as “tended to”; a reader who is new to this topic
may understandably feel frustrated by the paucity of unqualified statements. I
have deliberately resisted the temptation to make such statements. For one
thing (this should be obvious by now), most scholars of the topic have agreed
to disagree—or rather have agreed that our materials make it difficult to reach
so firm a state as the word agreement implies. All of us have our opinions
on what constituted magic in the ancient cultures we study and how magic
worked in those cultures, technically, socially, and intellectually. But most of us
also know that the evidence we use to support our opinions is too lacunose and
its sources are too biased for any opinion to remain unchallenged very long. In
other words, beyond a few precepts that are so broad as to be almost useless,
there is no current consensus on the topic that I could have presented.
And yet, because this lack of consensus springs from the protean, kaleidoscopic
nature of magic in the ancient Mediterranean itself, my choice to reflect
it will also, I hope, convey to readers the nature of the topic. If readers leave
this essay with as many questions as they had when they began it, I shall not be
disappointed—so long as at least some of their questions are new.
Bibliography
Abusch, Tzvi. “The Internalization of Suffering and Illness in Mesopotamia: A Development
in Mesopotamian Witchcraft Literature.” In Magic in the Ancient Near
East. Studi epigrafici e linguistici sul Vicino Oriente antico 15. Verona, 1998.
———. Mesopotamian Witchcraft: Toward a History and Understanding of Babylonian
Witchcraft Beliefs and Literature. Leiden, 2002.
Alexander, Philip S. “Incantations and Books of Magic.” In Emil Schürer’s History of
the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and
Martin Goodman, vol. 3.1. Edinburgh, 1986.
Daniel, Robert, and Franco Maltomini. Supplementum magicum. Abhandlungen
der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sonderreihe
Papyrologica Coloniensia, vols. 16.1 and 16.2. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag,
1990 and 1992.
Faraone, Christopher A. “The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells.” In
Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and
Dirk Obbink. New York, 1991.
Frankfurter, David T. M. “Narrating Power: The Theory and Practice of the Magical
151 magic
Historiola in Ritual Spells.” In Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. Marvin Meyer
and Paul Mirecki. Religion in the Graeco-Roman World 129. Leiden, 1995.
———. Religion in Roman Egypt. Princeton, 1998.
———. “The Writing of Magic and the Magic of Writing.” Helios 21.2 (1994): 189–
221.
Graf, Fritz. Magic in the Ancient World. Tr. Franklin Philip. Cambridge, Mass., 1997
(orig. 1994).
Haas, Volkert. Magie und Mythen im Reich der Hethiter, vol. 1: Vegetationkulte und
Pflanzenmagie. Hamburg, 1972.
Johnston, Sarah Iles. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in
Ancient Greece. Berkeley, 1999.
———. “Sacrifice in the Greek Magical Papyri.” In Magic and Ritual in the Ancient
World, ed. Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World
141. Leiden, 2002.
Lesses, Rebecca Macy. “Exe(o)rcising Power: Women as Sorceresses, Exorcists, and
Demonesses in Babylonian Jewish Society of Late Antiquity.” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 69.2 (2001): 343–75.
Meyer, Marvin, and Richard Smith, eds. Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual
Power. San Francisco, 1994.
Ritner, Robert Kriech. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Studies in
Oriental Civilization 54. Chicago, 1993.
Smith, Morton. Jesus the Magician. New York, 1978.
Swartz, Michael D. “Jewish Magic.” In The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4. Ed.
Steven T. Katz. Cambridge, forthcoming.
Tambiah, Stanley. “Form and Meaning of Magical Acts: A Point of View.” In Modes of
Thought, ed. R. Horton and R. Finnegan. London, 1973.
Versnel, Hendrik S. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, I: Ter Unus. Studies
in Greek and Roman Religion 6.1. Leiden: Brill, 1990.
Voutiras, E. Dionysophontos Gamoi: Marital Life and Magic in Fourth-Century Pella.
Amsterdam, 1998.
encountering ancient religions 152
histories
Egypt
Jan Assmann and David Frankfurter
Classical period
There is no Egyptian word for “religion,” but there is a text that clarifies the
Egyptian concept. According to this text, the sun-god and creator, Re, placed
the king on earth in order that he might establish maÚat (justice/truth/order)
and annihilate isfet (injustice/lie/disorder) by judging humankind and satisfying
the gods (i.e., by giving offerings to the gods and funerary offerings to the
dead).
Establishing maÚat and annihilating isfet: this formula refers to a broad
concept of religion, encompassing both cult and culture. Within this broad
concept, the text draws a further distinction, setting off cult (satisfying the
gods) from justice (judging humankind). This distinction between the spheres
of justice and cult has been consciously and emphatically destroyed in biblical
monotheism, where justice moves into the center of religion. In Egypt, the
question of justice is dealt with not in the context of religion proper, which is
concerned with satisfying the gods, but in the comparatively secular context of
judging humankind. In the broader frame of establishing maÚat, however, justice
and morals play a central role, and almost everything that the Bible has to
say on these topics is inherited from its ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian
neighbors.
At the center of Egyptian religion, however, was cult. The main function of
cult was to establish a connection between this world and the otherworld,
where not only the gods but also the transfigured spirits of the dead were supposed
to live. The basic form of this connection was an exchange of goods. The
living served the gods and spirits with offerings and sacrifices and received in
return all kinds of support and blessing. The ultimate aim of these offerings,
therefore, was not to “feed the gods,” but to support this connection, and the
cultic barter was only a symbolic expression of contact and communication.
Every presentation of offerings, in temples and tombs, was accompanied by a
spell stressing its symbolic or sacramental meaning. However, the Egyptian
concept of the divine was not restricted to the sphere of the cult. The gods were
believed to dwell in the otherworlds (supernal and infernal) and to take only
temporary sojourn in cultic representations such as cult images, symbols, sacred
animals, trees, and objects. Cult was concerned with establishing and supporting
this sojourn, to make the divine descend from heaven into the image,
to transfer divine actions from the celestial to the terrestrial realm. During the
offering ritual, the god or the spirit was invoked to come from all parts of the
world in order to partake of the offering meal; he or she was not supposed to
be simply present in the temple or tomb. The gods were believed not to dwell
on but only to visit earth, and this visit would irrevocably end if cult were discontinued.
Withholding offerings would make the gods not starve but only retreat
into their supernal or infernal abodes.
The cult with its rituals, symbols, and recitations formed only one dimension
of divine presence. Another dimension was the cosmos as a sphere where the
divine manifested itself. According to the Egyptians, the world or cosmos is a
process rather than a space, and the idea of order is more a matter of successfully
overcoming disorder and destruction than a matter of spatial structure
and beautiful arrangement. Virtually all of the gods cooperate in the project of
maintaining the world, of keeping the cosmic process going. The core of this
process is constituted by what the ancient Egyptians conceived of as the solar
circuit, the daily course of the sun across the heavens and through the netherworld.
In the eyes of the Egyptians, the success of the cosmic process was far
from taken for granted—it was constantly at stake. In the same way as the
Mesopotamians, the Chinese, and the Romans, the ancient Egyptians were
constantly occupied in watching the sky and in observing all kinds of natural
phenomena with the greatest attention. Yet unlike with the Mesopotamians,
Chinese, and Romans, the goal of this attention was not divination, that is,
finding out the will of the gods and foretelling the future, but to assist the gods
in maintaining the world and to accompany divine action with ritual action.
Thus, the Egyptians observed what was regular and recurrent in the skies,
whereas cultures interested in divination watched for exceptions and deviations.
In the context of this task and intellectual preoccupation, the Egyptians
accumulated an incredible amount of knowledge, a kind of sacred cosmology.
In the cosmic dimension of divine presence, every major Egyptian deity had
a specific cosmic manifestation and played a role in the cosmic process, in the
same way as, in the cultic dimension, they had a place on earth in which to exert
their terrestrial rulership. In both dimensions, the principle of diversity was
irreducibly relevant: the cosmic process resulted from the synergy of a multitude
of different powers, and the order and structure of Egypt found its expression
in the various towns and cities ruled by deities. All of the major deities are
lords or ladies of a town, and all of the major towns or cities are the realms of
specific deities. The institution of divine rulership served as a representation of
social and political identity. The focus of social and political identification in
Egypt was the temple and its lord, a specific deity. Being citizen of a town
histories 156
meant being a member of a festive community, participating in the feasts that
were celebrated in the form of processions. The concept of civic allocation was
thus invested with religious meaning. It was a kind of covenant, where the religious
tasks of the citizen corresponded to the political role of the deity. But the
principle of political identity and representation was not limited to the level of
villages, towns, and cities. The gods Horus and Seth represented the two parts
of Egypt, Lower and Upper Egypt, and later Egypt and the foreign countries.
The sun-god Re, later Amun-Re, represented the unified empire. Therefore, the
cultic dimension of divine presence can also be called the political dimension.
Cult and political identity are simply aspects of one and the same concept of divine
presence and communication.
The third dimension of divine presence is constituted by what the Egyptians
understood by the term name. A name in the Egyptian sense is not just a name
but everything that can be said and told of a person. A name is not just an
identifier but a description, a linguistic representation of a person’s essence.
Telling the names of a deity means reciting hymns and eulogies in his or her
praise. To the linguistic dimension of divine presence belong Egyptian concepts
of sacred language and sacred texts, whose recitation in the appropriate context,
according to the ancient Egyptians, has magical power and contributes to
the maintenance of the world.
The most important realization of the linguistic dimension of divine presence
is myth. Egyptian mythology is centered on three basic myths: the myths
of cosmogony, of Osiris, and of the solar circuit. In Egypt, the principle of
mythical thinking is the logic of establishing analogies between three discreet
realms: cosmos, state, and individual destiny (especially death). Therefore, cosmology,
political philosophy, and funerary beliefs may not be separated; all
three levels of reality are constantly projected onto each other in Egyptian religious
texts. The myth of Osiris is centered on the problem of death; however,
it is also the myth of the state, because every king plays the role of Horus, the
son and avenger of his predecessor; and it has a cosmological meaning, because
it clarifies the relation between heaven, earth, and netherworld. The
myth of the solar circuit is basically cosmological; however, it also concerns the
state and human destiny (death), because the sun-god is the model of Pharaoh
in establishing maÚat and the model of the dead in being reborn every morning.
The cosmogony is about the origin of the cosmos and of the state; it tells how,
after a period of symbiosis, the gods departed to heaven and the state was
established in order to organize ways of communication between the nowseparated
worlds of the gods and the living. Thus, establishing analogies and
making the three levels of reality transparent to each other constitutes the basic
principle of the linguistic articulation of divine presence. The three dimensions
of divine presence correspond surprisingly well to Varro’s distinction between
three forms of theology: political (civilis), cosmic (naturalis), and poetic
(fabularis). Yet this correspondence does not mean that we are dealing here
with a universal structure. Mesopotamian and, above all, biblical religion
is different in that a fourth dimension, history, becomes more and more promi-
157 egypt
nent. This process has repercussions even in Egypt, and the rather eruptive
emergence of history as a fourth dimension of divine presence after the
Amarna experience (1320 bce) changes the structure of Egyptian religion in a
profound way. From now on, the gods are believed to intervene in the course
not only of history but also of individual biography. This means the rise of
personal piety as an attitude of deep confidence in and submission to the will
of god.
Another line of religious evolution that led to fundamental changes in the
structure of Egyptian religion is the rise of theological discourse, triggered first
by the breakdown of the Old Kingdom, when the experience of distress and
disorder posed the classical problems of theodicy. The central problem underlying
the theological discourse of the New Kingdom is the relationship between
God and gods on the one hand and between God and world, or creator and
creation, on the other hand. Both of these relations are simply aspects of the
same question, because the gods and their constellations and cooperations constitute
the world in Egyptian thought. Theogony and cosmogony are the same.
According to the cosmogony of Heliopolis, which played the role of a “great
tradition,” the One (Arum), the personification of preexisting Oneness, creates
the world by engendering Shu and Tefnut (air and fire), who engender Geb and
Nut (heaven and earth), the parents of the five children of Nut who prolong
cosmic reality into the institutions of civilization and human history. This same
sequence of generations corresponds also to a succession of rulers: cosmogony
appears as cratogony, the emergence and evolution of power. The most important
epithet of the highest god in Egypt, the quality that distinguishes the highest
god from the other gods, is temporal firstness. To be the first means to be
the chief.
With the New Kingdom, the imperialistic politics of the Thutmosid Dynasty
brought about a new, universalistic cosmology. The order of creation did not
stop at the Egyptian borders but stretched far beyond, comprising many nations
with whom Egypt now entered into political relations. This new image of
the world immensely enhanced the supremacy of the sun-god within the Egyptian
pantheon who, from his original embeddedness in the synergetic process
of maintaining the cosmic process, moved more and more into the position of
sole creator and preserver vis-à-vis a world inhabited by both humans and
gods. Akhenaten’s monotheist revolution drew but the logical consequences in
eliminating the gods altogether. His god is alone in creating and maintaining
the world, producing light and warmth by his radiation and time and development
by his motion. The theology of the post-Amarna period readmits the
gods into the world, but it also stresses the distance and solitude of the solar
creator and maintainer of the world. Now, besides creation, a new model is
used to express the God-world or God-gods relationship. This is the Ba concept.
Amun-Re comes to be called the “hidden Ba,” whose manifestations are
either the other gods or the visible cosmos itself. God remains One, relating to
the world in a similar way to that in which the Ba relates to the body, an invisible
animating principle. This new idea of god is not only a response to Amarna
but also the origin of the Hermetic idea of god, deus mundus, a god whose
histories 158
body is the world. The Ramesside formula of “The one becoming millions” anticipates
Hermetic formulations such as hen kai pan (one yet also many), una
quae es omnia (you who are one and everything), and so on. The Ramesside Ba
theology reaches its apex in the Late Period with the cult of the ten Bas in
Thebes and El-Hibe. The idea of the world as the incorporation of a soul-like
God and of God as a soul animating the world remains central in Egyptian theology
even after the New Kingdom and the flourishing of the theological dis-
course.
bibl.: J. Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (trans. D. Lorton; Ithaca,
2001). H. Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York, 1948). E. Hornung, The
Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (trans. J. Baines; Ithaca,
1996). S. Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion (London, 1992). B. A. Shafer (ed.), Religion
in Ancient Egypt (London, 1991).
j.a.
Later period
The later period of Egyptian religion, from the Greco-Roman and Coptic eras
up to the Muslim conquest, involves a gradual separation and ultimate rupture
between traditional Egyptian cults and foreign rulers, with consequences for
cults, priestly institutions, religious literature, and popular religion. The stages
of transformation can be roughly divided into the Ptolemaic period (305–30
bce), which saw an infusion of royal patronage and the expansion of the Egyptian
religious infrastructure; the early Roman period (30 bce–early 3rd century
ce), which saw the bureaucratization of Egyptian religious institutions for purposes
of Roman control and taxation; the later Roman period (mid-3rd–4th
century ce), which saw the economic decline of much of the Egyptian religious
infrastructure and principal temple centers; and the Coptic period (late 4th–
7th century ce), which saw the Christianization of Egyptian religion, involving
both the persecution of traditional cults and the expansion of local forms of
Egyptian Christianity.
Most of the temples visible today in Egypt—Philae, Karnak, Edfu, Kom
Ombo, Kysis, and others—owe their principal expansions to Ptolemaic patronage.
Ptolemaic kings styled themselves as Pharaohs according to archaic
royal mythology, and they involved numerous priesthoods in the cultivation
of this image. Some of this propaganda responded to a series of revolts around
Thebes during the 2nd century bce, which were sponsored and probably led
by temple priests (sometimes to support a “native” Pharaoh) and in whose
suppression Ptolemaic armies were often engaged. Consequently, the Ptolemaic
kings were themselves presented as sons of Re and conquerors of chaos
(Rosetta Stone), and they were consistently represented on temple reliefs as pious
maintainers of cosmic order and fertility (Philae, Edfu).
Ptolemies also developed new cults at the center, like Sarapis (an anthropo-
159 egypt
morphic hybrid of the Apis bull and Osiris), and on the periphery, like
Mandulis (based on a Nubian god). The influx of Greek language, art, and religious
and philosophical ideals affected many domains of Egyptian religion.
Temple scriptoria produced mythological tracts and legends in Greek, sometimes
with influence from Greek literature. An already script-oriented religion
absorbed Greek writing for record keeping, oracle responses, ritual spells, and
even the quasi-nativist prophecies of the 2nd century bce that paradoxically
urged the expulsion of Greeks (Oracle of the Potter). Encouraged by a Hellenistic
romanticism of Egypt as the origin of culture and of Egyptian priests
as consummate philosophers, some priests sought to convey Egyptian ideas
in Greek philosophical or theosophical guise and to present their hieroglyphic
systems, ritual traditions, and magical procedures as peerless in the Mediterranean
world (Manetho; cf. Herodotus 2.2.5–3.1; 2.54.1–2). By the Roman
period, the Egyptian wizard—an exoticized image of a lector-priest literate
in hieroglyphs—would become a standard of Greek fiction, and Egypt itself
would become the land of magic and mystery. Hellenistic artistic ideals influenced
both domestic and public representations of gods like Isis, Amun, and
Harpocrates (the Horus-child). Such representational styles—in poetry as
well as art—contributed to the pantheization of certain Egyptian gods as omnipotent,
Mediterranean-wide deities. Isis, for example, is hailed in inscriptions
and papyri as the universal goddess, invoked in various lands by names
like Aphrodite, Hecate, and Demeter. The particular center of such synthetic,
multimedia activities was the new city of Alexandria, but many other cities
also became centers of mixing classical and Egyptian cultures (e.g., Panopolis,
Oxyrhynchus).
In none of these endeavors was Egyptian religious tradition smothered or replaced
by Hellenism. Rather, Egyptian myths, deities, rites, and priestly roles
were extended and developed through these various Greek expressions. As
much as the god Sarapis, for example, emerged de novo in the 4th century bce,
he had clear Egyptian roots and had become an installation in shrines and festival
calendars by the early Roman period. As much as new “foreign” gods such
as Astarte, Demeter, and the Dioscuri arose as the protectors of immigrant
communities, by the early Roman period they had become expressions of native
gods such as Isis or Sobek, the crocodile god. Sobek himself, among the
most distinctive of Egyptian deities, was the object of multiple different crocodile
cults around the Fayyum region, almost all of which had thoroughly incorporated
Greek language into every aspect of organization and communication.
The Roman period begins with the immediate consolidation of imperial control
over priesthoods and temples. Under Augustus, the temple institutions
were organized in a single bureaucracy under an imperial agent, the Idios
Logos, their financial resources attached exclusively to imperial munificence.
The annals of Egyptian religion from this period—predominantly in Greek—
thus show a new determination in record keeping: priestly initiation oaths; inventories
of temples, their property, and festivals; and other forms of institutional
accounting, prepared for Roman supervision. Emperors continue to suphistories
160
port Egyptian temples and priesthoods and are celebrated for it in temple
reliefs; but the Roman relationship to Egyptian religion carries a distinct ambivalence.
Egyptian cults have become a common feature of cities around the
Mediterranean world, and Egyptian priests have grown ever more famous as
court ritual experts and fictional wizards. Yet fears that such “foreign” cults
might subvert political order, and fears of the revolutionary potential of indigenous
priesthoods, all lead Roman officials to exert control over priestly affairs
on every level: proscribing oracles, for example, in an ill-fated declaration of
the late 2nd century ce.
Still, sources for this period show ever-new dimensions of Egyptian religion
flourishing: a great variety of oracle shrines, producing both written and
mysteriously vocal responses and attracting pilgrims’ devotional graffiti; mortuary
workshops in which archaic traditions of mummification and burial
were extended to include gold masks (as in several oasis necropolises) or portraits
of the deceased (as in Fayyum necropolises); and new forms of ancient
deities, developed for local or domestic protection, such as Bes, Tutu, and
Petbe, enlarging the phalanx of protector-gods that included most prominently
Harpocrates-on-the-crocodiles, produced on small stone stelae to ward off
dangers.
It is also at this time that the great literary syntheses of Greek and Egyptian
theosophy are produced: the Hermetica (revelations of the scribal god Thoth in
his Greek guise, Hermes the thrice-great) and the writings of Egyptian priests
such as Chaeremon and Iamblichus. These texts articulate in Greek terms the
efficacy of ritual utterance and gesture, the power of images and places, the relationship
between an incomprehensible Divinity and the gods of traditional
devotion, and the moral life of the one seeking communion with Divinity. The
intellectual conventicles that produced such literature probably departed from
temple scriptoria and took on a life of their own during the 2nd and 3rd centuries,
ultimately communicating or even merging with similar scribal groups
producing Christian (including gnostic) texts.
At the beginning of the 3rd century, Egyptian temples themselves were thrust
officially from imperial patronage onto the diminishing financial resources of
local councils; and with the declining economy of the empire over the course
of the 3rd century, the infrastructure and institutions of Egyptian religion fell
into decline. The sprawling precincts of Memphis, Thebes, and Edfu dwindled
and were largely abandoned. Other temples, as at Douch (Kharga Oasis),
Abydos, and Deir el-Bahri (Thebes), cultivated oracle cults to maintain some
income; while local temples, such as those of Canopus and Menouthis near Alexandria,
and peripheral complexes, like that of Isis at Philae, continued to
prosper with more circumscribed catchment areas. A literature of apocalyptic
decline, rooted in ancient Egyptian imagery of the liminal interregnum period
(but now phrased in Greek, Hermetic, and even Christian terms), arose in
the 3rd century to express utopian hopes for an eschatological kingship and
the reestablishment of gods and proper worship (Asclepius 24–27; Apocalypse
of Elijah). Egyptian papyri and Christian legends both record the impact of
161 egypt
religious edicts issued by anxious 3rd-century emperors (Decius, Valerian,
Diocletian) in the hope that the general decline of the empire could be averted
through mass uniformity in ritual display.
The empire’s official embrace of Christianity in the early 4th century
touched off a series of edicts (e.g., the Theodosian Code) restricting non-Christian
religion that, if not immediately repressive on traditional Egyptian piety,
certainly threw some cults further onto their local-support networks. Given the
centrality of image processions, shrine devotion, and divination in traditional
religious expression, rather than sacrifice as the 4th-century edicts imagined
heathen ritual, much active piety fell outside the edicts’ scope (and was difficult
to police anyway).
Traditional Egyptian religion in the 3rd and 4th centuries consequently underwent
a centrifugal shift away from major temple complexes. Papyri, inscriptions,
and archeological remains show the persistence of local cults to familiar
avatars of Isis, Sobek, Horus, Bes, Tutu, and other deities, as well as
regional pilgrimages, festivals, and oracles—all rather circumscribed expressions
of communities’ religious self-determination. The lives of Christian saints
in the 4th through 6th centuries recall “heathen” domestic practices with ancient
roots: household shrines, festival lamps, popular devotion to the Nile or a
village image. From this evidence we derive less a sense of Egyptian mythology
persisting than of the vitality and “place” of ancestral religious practices.
Yet among priests, such as those who collected the many spells preserved in
the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri, older myths were preserved and extended,
combined with foreign names, and often directed to new types of
“magic” with foreigners in mind—the priest self-styled as a wizard according
to Roman expectations. These spells show the preservation of solar myths, imagery
of Anubis and Thoth, and stories of the great Egyptian gods alongside
Homeric verses and Syrian deities. The early forms of Coptic writing (Egyptian
language transcribed in Greek letters) that appear in such texts suggest that the
very writing system that Egyptian Christians would eventually appropriate began
as a way for ritual experts to fix ritual pronunciation. Other priests—at the
Bucheum of Armant or the Isis temple of Philae, for example—devoted themselves
to more-traditional shrine duties; and it is in such places that hieroglyphic
writing continued to the end of the 4th century. Well into the 4th century,
one priesthood maintained an internationally renowned oracle temple of
the popular fertility-god Bes at the ancient shrine of Osiris at Abydos, only to
be closed when the Christian emperor feared its potential to intervene magically
in imperial affairs. Egyptian priestly families remained prominent in the
intellectual culture of cities such as Panopolis and Alexandria, producing poetry
and philosophy and trying to maintain their priestly traditions in some
form in a Christian world.
By the end of the 4th century the violent persecution of Egyptian religious
places and practices seems to have reached a pitch, with bishops, monks and
their abbots, village gangs, and occasionally (as at late-6th-century Philae)
even armies acting to purify the landscape from a demonic heathenism. The
histories 162
destruction of the Sarapeum of Alexandria in 389 ce by Christian mobs and
soldiers (under a bishop’s direction) may itself have triggered further, local
destructive acts by monks around Egypt. Most evidence for the continuation of
local cults through the 5th century appears in the legends of Coptic saints,
which celebrate these cults’ extirpation. The 5th through 7th centuries also
see the religious resettlement of Egyptian temples with churches and monasteries.
Whether the archaic holiness of these structures is maintained by virtue
of these acts of reconsecration or not, the temples’ physical importance in
the landscape certainly reemerges in Christian institutional guise; and certain
graffiti, incised crosses, or image desecration in the temples suggest that the
temples were still believed to carry some ambivalent power. Shrines with cults
to Coptic saints of often murky historicity proliferate from the 5th century, offering
Christians a new sacred landscape and sense of local religious identity
through processions, the recitation of martyrs’ legends, the magical services of
shrine attendants, and even the development of ancient oracular services at
these shrines: incubation, written responses, private consultation. In such ways
many of the practical elements of Egyptian religion become reformulated in
Christian idiom.
Occasionally Egyptian mythological ideas are transmitted past the 4th century
as well, as in some Coptic magical texts of the 7th and 8th centuries.
Coptic apocryphal texts preserved images of the underworld based on ancient
mortuary traditions; and some Coptic martyrologies, read aloud at feast days,
depicted a sacred geography based on the martyr’s dismembered body that distantly
recalled images of Egypt integrated through the body parts of Osiris. But
the preservation of non-Christian ideas most publicly in the Coptic period involved
Hellenistic rather than Egyptian motifs: the Greek heroes and gods on
Coptic textiles, for example.
Over the Ptolemaic, Roman, and Coptic periods, then, we see the swelling
and centralization of Egyptian religious institutions; then their decline from
economic causes; and finally their persecution—dismantled or scattered—on
Christian grounds. The elaborate priestly literary production, temple
dramaturgy, and skilled artistic workshops that together supported the complex
mythologies of Isis, Horus, Re, Amun, Osiris, and Seth, which we typically
equate with Egyptian religion, all fell victim to historical vicissitudes. But
the more practical elements of Egyptian religious tradition—from the gestures
at domestic altars to the visits made to oracle sites and even to priests’ creative
reformulation of ritual traditions—continued in local or regional form well after
the official establishment of Christianity; and Coptic Christianity itself
maintained many of these elements.
bibl.: Roger Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993). Heike Behlmer, “Ancient
Egyptian Survivals in Coptic Literature: An Overview,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature:
History and Forms (ed. Antonio Loprieno; Leiden, 1996), 567–90. Alan K. Bowman,
Egypt after the Pharaohs (Berkeley, 1986). Françoise Dunand and Christiane
Zivie-Coche, Dieux et hommes en Égypte, 3000 av. J.-C.–395 apr. J.-C.: Anthropologie
163 egypt
religieuse (Paris, 1991). Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: An Historical Approach
to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge, 1986). David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman
Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, 1998). P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria
(2 vols.; Oxford, 1972). Dorothy J. Thompson, Memphis under the Ptolemies
(Princeton, 1988).
d.f.
histories 164
Mesopotamia
Paul-Alain Beaulieu
The earliest detailed evidence for organized religious beliefs in the lands
of southern Iraq (Sumer and Akkad, later Babylonia) comes from Eridu and
Uruk. During the protohistorical period, these two sites, the earliest urban centers
of Sumer, grew around cultic compounds that are already clear prototypes
of later Mesopotamian temples. Created shortly after the invention of writing,
the archaic texts from Uruk (ca. 3300–3100 bce) shed light on the organization
of the cult at the threshold of history. Many of them can be identified as
offering lists to various forms of the goddess Inanna, including “Morning
Inanna” and “Evening Inanna,” the two manifestations of the planet Venus as
morning and evening star. The art of the period provides compelling evidence
that Uruk was ruled by a charismatic figure who acted as intermediary between
the community and the city goddess. This ruler was probably a priest-king, denoted
by the Sumerian word en, which in fact appears several times in the archaic
texts from Uruk.
The basic graphic and visual concepts stressing the essential nature of deities
as separate from the world of mortals crystallized at a very early date. The divine
determinative that precedes names of gods and goddesses in the writing
system already appears in the archaic texts from Uruk and is universally used
by the beginning of the 3rd millennium. Similarly, the horned headdress, which
first appears in the iconography of deities during the Early Dynastic period, becomes
the obligatory marker of divine status in the art by the middle of the 3rd
millennium. Although Mesopotamian religion was always strongly anthropomorphic,
gods could also be represented by an emblematic animal, whether
real or imaginary, or a symbol, which could be a standard, a cult object, or
even a completely abstract form. Some scholars espousing evolutionist views
have claimed that there was a general historical tendency toward anthropomorphism
from a more primitive stage of abstract or symbolic representation.
The extant documentation, however, clearly indicates that all modes of divine
representations existed side by side from earliest times. Indeed, during the
Uruk period purely anthropomorphic representations of Inanna existed alongside
symbolic ones, including on the famous Uruk Vase, which depicts the goddess
in human form, then with her standard, and possibly even with her emblematic
animal, the lion. The preference for one mode of representation or the
other in a particular place or period was mainly due to fashion or to the rise of
new theological currents. During the Ur III period, for instance, cylinder seals
attest to a strong predominance of anthropomorphic representations, while
symbols and standards become more common during the ensuing Old Babylonian
period and even more so during the late periods.
During the early periods, each town and village worshiped local deities—
many of them fertility-goddesses—who ensured the prosperity of the community,
while the most important members of the pantheon reigned supreme in
the major political and cultural centers, such as the moon-god Nanna-Suen at
Ur, the sun-god utu at Larsa, the mother-goddess Ninhursag in Kesh, and the
healing-goddess Nin-Isinna at Isin. The god Enlil of Nippur presided over the
entire pantheon like a remote ancestral figure, owing his prominence to the
role of his city as religious and cultural capital of Sumer. By the middle of the
3rd millennium, Enlil had clearly overshadowed other gods who filled a similar
role, notably the sky-god An, at home in Uruk, and the god of subterranean
waters Enki (later also known as Ea), the patron deity of Eridu.
Such a bewildering multiplicity of divine figures needed to be explained and
ordered hierarchically. This favored the rise of theological reflection among the
literate and priestly classes. The earliest such documents occur in the form of
lists of gods from the site of Fara and date to the Early Dynastic I period (ca.
2900–2700 bce). That contemporary fragments of these same lists were found
at Abu Salabikh, Ur, and Uruk proves that they were not ad hoc creations reflecting
the local pantheon, but compositions preserving a tradition already
common to all Sumer. Their arrangement is either hierarchical or lexical. Both
principles occur in the great list from Fara (SF1), which begins with An, Enlil,
Inanna, Enki, and six other great gods, followed by a long list of goddesses
with names formed with the initial element nin (lady, mistress). Lists of gods
remained one of the most productive theological genres throughout the entire
life span of Mesopotamian civilization. Sumerian hymns from the 3rd and
early 2nd millennia are also an important theological source. Prominent in this
respect is the collection of Sumerian temple hymns. The standard edition includes
forty-two hymns, each of them a miniature theological treatise dedicated
to one of the major temples of Sumer and Akkad. Such hymns have distant
forerunners at Abu Salabikh.
Many distinctive traits developed by Mesopotamian religion during the
early periods lasted until that religion’s end: the concept of deities as the real
rulers of the community served by a host of priestly attendants, the corresponding
view of the temple as a princely residence where the divine rulers
hold court, the representation of gods by anthropomorphic statues brought to
life by incantations and complex rituals of animation, and the system of food
offerings redistributed to the priests and temple personnel after ritual presentation
to the gods. Some hymns were still sung in the temples a thousand years
histories 166
after their composition, and administrative documents from temple archives
show that many festivals and cultic events occurred at the same time during the
calendar year in 2000 bce as they did in 500 bce. Although new gods were occasionally
introduced and the divine hierarchy reorganized, local deities generally
retained the same attributes and survived the passing of centuries. Similarly
the overall pantheon preserved its essential characteristics, with political
changes being reflected mostly by the rise of new gods.
The most important catalyst for change was the intrusion of the political in
the religious sphere. It is highly probable that the earliest rulers of the Sumerian
city-states cumulated in their hands both secular and religious power. This
type of kingship is represented by the en, the Uruk priest-king of the archaic
period. During the Early Dynastic period, however, a more secular concept of
rulership emerged, expressed by the titles ensi(k) (prince) and lugal (king),
while the en-ship and its female equivalents became purely religious offices.
The ensi(k) was basically the temporal ruler of the Sumerian city-state, where
the land was viewed as the personal property of the god, the city ruler being
only the administrator of those domains. The lugal represents a more personal
and dictatorial type of leadership and is generally thought to have been
at home originally in the north, where according to legend it had descended
from heaven to Kish at the beginning of history, after the deluge. With the rise
of large territorial states ruled by a lugal, such as the Sargonic and Ur III empires
of the second half of the 3rd millennium, and the demotion of the ensi(k)
to the rank of city governor, nominations of princesses of the ruling family to
high priestly offices in major cities of Sumer and Akkad became a tool of political
control that survived well into the Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods.
The loss of the priestly function of the ruler and the increasing power wielded
by him eventually led to the deification of kings. This was initiated by NaramSin
of Akkad, was revived later by Shulgi, and then followed by the kings of
the Isin-Larsa period until it died out during the First Dynasty of Babylon. The
king’s divine status was expressed mainly by the prefixing of the divine determinative
to his name, the wearing of a horned headdress in art, and the composition
of hymns extolling his divine parentage and supernatural powers.
Another important aspect of political intrusion in the religious sphere was
the new symbolization of the state in the organization of the pantheon. With
the rise of larger states, the gods of the capital, especially its patron deity, were
often raised to a higher station reflecting the political prominence of their
home. During the Sargonic period, for instance, the goddess Inanna/Ishtar enjoyed
great prominence in the empire mainly because of her status as goddess
of Akkad, the capital of Sargon and his successors, and this certainly explains
why the native tradition attributed to his daughter Enheduanna two Sumerian
hymns of great beauty and complexity to that goddess. Later in the Ur III period,
the old city god of Ur, Nanna-Suen, was similarly exalted. He became the
“firstborn son of Enlil,” the head of the pantheon, in order to justify Ur’s hegemony
over Sumer and Akkad, and the composition of new hymns and myths
was encouraged by kings Ur-Nammu and Shulgi to propagate this new theological
concept. The most obvious, far-reaching, and lasting case of political in-
167 mesopotamia
trusion occurred under the First Dynasty of Babylon (1894–1595 bce), when
the city god Marduk, previously a deity of no great importance except locally,
was propelled to the summit of the pantheon and given the same powers as the
god Enlil, the EnlilÄtu (Enlil-ship).
Another important aspect of Mesopotamian religion during the early periods
is the emergence of a synthesis of Sumerian and Semitic (Akkadian) religion.
This process was certainly well under way even before the Sargonic
period, when it comes into full view. Some Sumerian deities were syncretized
with the Semitic gods who shared attributes with them. This was an easy process
for astral and nature deities. In this manner the Sumerian sun-god utu,
worshiped at Larsa, was equated with the Semitic sun-god Shamash of Sippar,
and Inanna of Uruk was identified with the Semitic Ishtar, also a Venus goddess
worshiped primarily at Akkad. Generally speaking, however, the Semitic
Akkadians adopted most of the Sumerian deities without any modification, although
they occasionally Akkadianized their names. The Sumerian sky-god An
became Anum and was provided with a wife named Antum, but such gods as
Ningirsu, Ninurta, Nin-Isinna, Gula, and countless others were adopted as
such. Conversely, some purely Semitic deities with no Sumerian equivalents entered
the common Mesopotamian pantheon. In this category one may include
such minor gods as Ishum, Shullat, and Hanish.
By and large it must be stressed that the basic structure and ideology of
Mesopotamian religion was largely Sumerian in origin. As we move northward
and westward, on the other hand, Sumerian influence wanes as the Semitic or
local component becomes more prominent. One important center was the
northern city of Asshur, where the local god of the same name, unknown in the
south, was identified as the numen loci of the city. Various writings of the city
and divine name in Old Assyrian documents indicate that the concepts of a city
Asshur and a god Assur were interchangeable, from which it follows that the
god Assur was originally the deified city or the location where it was built. In
the south the prologue of the Code of Hammurabi sums up the official pantheon
of Mesopotamia at the time when the Sumero-Akkadian synthesis has
given birth to a distinctive Babylonian culture that will dominate Mesopotamia
for the rest of its history. The gods Anu and Enlil have selected Babylon to
be the seat of monarchy and “rule the four quarters” and its god Marduk, now
promoted to the status of son of Enki/Ea, to lead humankind. Then follows a
list of the great cult centers of Hammurabi’s kingdom in a theological order
which, significantly, still acknowledges Nippur and its god Enlil as preeminent,
followed by Eridu and Enki/Ea (the father of Marduk), Babylon and Marduk,
Ur and Nanna-Suen, and so on. The local theologies listed in this prologue will
last until the late periods, with the important exception of the city of Borsippa,
where the god Tutu, a form of Marduk, will be replaced by Nabu in the latter
part of the 2nd millennium.
The Kassite kings, who by the middle of the 15th century bce had unified
Babylonia under their rule, appear to have especially favored the cult of the
histories 168
gods of Nippur, the ancient religious and cultural capital of Sumer. The religious
buildings of their new capital Dur-Kurigalzu were all consecrated to
Enlil and Ninlil, the ruling divine pair of Nippur, and to Ninurta and Gula,
their son and daughter-in-law. It has been suggested that the aspect of Enlil as a
mountain-god, which is often depicted in the iconography of that period,
strongly appealed to the Kassites, who very probably originated from the
Zagros Mountains east of Babylonia. With the exception of Suqamuna and
Sumaliya, the protectors of their ruling house, the Kassites did little to impose
the worship of their own deities.
During the Middle Babylonian period the worship of the personal god
reached full maturity. The insistence on the intimate relation between worshiper
and god favored the blossoming of a pervasive notion of sin, while the
anxiety created by the frequent absence of divine response and support led to a
growing awareness of the remoteness of the gods and unfathomableness of
their will. These developments are evidenced by the proliferation of prayers
in personal names (e.g., Sin-karabi-ishme, The god Sin heard my prayer) and
on legends of cylinder seals and the composition of theodicies in which the
figure of the pious sufferer appears in the forefront. Transcendental concepts
of the divine are also reflected in the increasing popularity of symbolic representation
of gods, especially on kudurrus (large polished stones, often used
as boundary markers). The Middle Babylonian period witnessed important
scholarly activity in the field of religion. Theological thinking is exemplified by
the massive list of gods entitled An = Anum. Divination, magic, and medicine
are introduced in the canon of scribal schools, while intellectual life becomes
gradually dominated by specialists of these disciplines, whose outlook will
shape religious expression and thought at the higher level until the end of
Mesopotamian civilization.
In the middle of the 12th century, the Kassite Dynasty gave way to the Second
Dynasty of Isin, whose rule culminated in the exaltation of Marduk, the
city god of Babylon. The rise of Marduk began in the time of the First Dynasty
of Babylon, when he was granted the EnlilÄtu (power of Enlil [i.e., leadership])
over the gods. Under Kassite rule the cult of Marduk grew in importance,
partly because of the continued political and cultural centrality of Babylon.
The dramatic decline of Nippur during the transition to Isin II—evidenced by
archeological surveys of the site—may have materially signaled the end of
Enlil’s supremacy. It was probably on the return to Babylon of the statue of
Marduk—captured during a raid by Isin II monarch Nebuchadnezzar I (1125–
1104 bce) against neighboring Elam—that a theological reform was launched
that resulted in the exaltation of Marduk, who assimilated the powers and attributes
of Enlil and his son Ninurta. An inscription of King Simbar-Shipak
(1025–1008 bce) in which Marduk and Enlil are treated as the same god, provides
evidence for the successful completion of this reform by the turn of the
millennium.
By the 13th century, capturing the gods of the enemy had become a component
of the process of war and conquest. Concomitantly, the belief developed
that the ravages of war were caused by the anger of the gods at their own land,
169 mesopotamia
and that the gods summoned the enemy to destroy it. Spoliation of the statue
of the national god symbolized the anger of the deity, abandoning the land and
people to their fates. The Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 bce) already
articulates this idea, depicting the wrath of all the city gods of Babylonia toward
the Kassite King Kashtiliash. The literature describing the return of the
statue of Marduk from Elam to Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I
represents the first full-fledged expression of this theology of divine anger and
retribution.
The reign of Nebuchadnezzar I also seems the most probable historical setting
for the composition of Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation. This
long text describes the battle waged by Marduk against the primeval forces of
chaos led by the female monster Tiamat, out of whose dismembered body he
creates the world after his victory over her. Marduk is then crowned “king of
the gods” by the divine assembly, and the epic ends with a long hymnic passage
praising the god under his fifty names. Because of its methodic character, its description
of the world from chaotic beginnings (creation was not ex nihilo) and
its slow evolution through generations of primeval gods, its account of the creation
of humankind, its eschatological projection into a future forever ruled by
Marduk keeping Tiamat’s evil forces in check, and its closing enjoinment to
propagate the study of Marduk’s names, Enuma Elish comes closer to being a
systematic creed than any other text from Mesopotamia and thus constitutes a
milestone in the history of religious thought.
The first three centuries of the 1st millennium are very poorly documented in
Babylonia. One important text from that period is the sun-god tablet of King
Nabu-apla-iddina (9th century bce), which contains the earliest evidence for
the mÂs pî (washing of the mouth) ritual to transubstantiate the divine presence
into the cultic image. The last great mythological composition, the myth of
Erra and Isum, was created probably in the 8th century by the scholar Kabtiili-Marduk.
It portrays Marduk as an exhausted and powerless ruler, unable to
stop the destructions wrought in his realm by the god Erra. The text is a theological
reflection on the chaos into which Babylonia had sunk by the first half
of the 8th century.
By the 14th century, Assyria had completed its transformation from a citystate
into a territorial state, the mÀt Aššur (land of the god Assur). The king
then extended his duties from vice-regent of the city Asshur to vice-regent of
the land of Assyria, which he was now responsible for enlarging on behalf of
the god. Repeated attempts to control Babylonia resulted in an influx of Babylonian
learning, including the cult of Marduk, into Assyria. As in Babylonia we
also see the emergence of a more transcendental concept of the deity, exemplified
in the iconographic record by the altar of Tukulti-Ninurta I, which depicts
the king twice in the same scene, standing and then kneeling in prayer before
the altar and symbol of the god Nusku.
In spite of increased Babylonian influence, Assyria preserved some of its religious
distinctiveness. The god Assur retained his original aspect of a mysterious
and distant god—quite unlike that of the ubiquitous and solicitous Babylohistories
170
nian demiurge—which made him closer to the true character of Anu and Enlil,
the ancient rulers of the Mesopotamian pantheon now displaced by younger
gods. The palace decoration of Assurnasirpal II (883–859 bce) and his son
Shalmaneser III (858–824 bce) at Kalhu, with its extensive and repetitive depiction
of the king in various sacral functions and of the sacred tree tended by
protective genii, underlines the distinctive role of the Assyrian ruler as high
priest, intermediary between god and humankind, and mystical maintainer of
the fertility and cosmic equilibrium of the land of Assyria.
With the gradual transformation of Assyria into a world-state during the
Neo-Assyrian period, the need arose for a supreme god reflecting the unity and
universalism of the empire. During the reign of Adad-nirari III (810–783 bce),
the god Nabu, who had reached great prominence in Babylonia by the 9th
century, seemed to fulfill this function in some circles: “Trust in the god Nabu,
do not trust in another god!” proclaims an inscription of the governor of
Kalhu dedicated to the king and his mother Shammu-ramat (Semiramis). It is
nevertheless the god Assur who ultimately became the focus of this imperial
monolatry, which culminated in the theological reforms of Sennacherib (704–
681 bce), who equated Assur with the old primeval god Ansar, the logogram
an.šár then becoming the official writing of the god until the end of the empire
in 612–610 bce. From the reign of his son Esarhaddon (680–669 bce)
comes the most extensive evidence for the excessive popularity of divination,
especially astrology, at the court. The library amassed by his grandson
Assurbanipal (668–630 bce) remains to this day our single most important
source of Assyrian and Babylonian religious texts (rituals, incantations,
prayers, myths) for the late periods, although other libraries from that period
have also yielded rich material (Asshur, Sultantepe, Kalhu).
The Neo-Babylonian Dynasty (626–539 bce) brought the cults of Marduk
and his son Nabu into imperial prominence. The identity of the two gods is
proclaimed in the coronation hymn of Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 bce), who
launched a vast program of restoration of temples and cults all over Babylonia.
In Babylon the ziggurat Etemenanki and the temple Esagil, both dedicated to
Marduk, were rebuilt on a grand scale to reflect their new status as the navel of
a vast empire. With Nabonidus (556–539 bce) the need for a more impersonal
and distant imperial deity arose once again, as earlier in the Neo-Assyrian period,
this time focusing on the moon-god Sin. Under his reign the religious
antiquarianism that characterizes this entire era reached a new climax, best
exemplified by the consecration of his daughter as high priestess of the moongod
at Ur, an institution that had long fallen into oblivion.
The archives of the Eanna of Uruk, the temple of the goddess Ishtar
(ca. 8,000 texts), and of the Ebabbar of Sippar, the sanctuary of the sun-god
Shamash (ca. 35,000 texts), allow us to study the local pantheons of these
Neo-Babylonian cities and the material aspects of their cult. Babylonian religion,
emblematized in Judeo-Christian consciousness as mere irrational “idol
worship,” is there revealed in its daily routine. The main temple is the earthly
abode of the city’s tutelary gods and their retinue, all represented by anthropo-
171 mesopotamia
morphic images served by numerous attendants, while secondary gods reside
in the small sanctuaries located in the city and its satellite towns. Administrative
texts detail the lavish offerings presented to the gods, the magnificence of
their attire, the flurry of ritual activities surrounding them. This overwhelming
evidence for the predominance of anthropomorphic worship of the gods stands
in marked contrast to the iconography of that period—largely known from
stamp and cylinder seals—in which deities are almost always depicted by their
symbols.
With Babylon’s fall to King Cyrus the Great of Persia, a new phase began
with Mesopotamia as a mere province in a succession of far-flung multinational
empires. Although the native religious institutions no longer benefited
from royal patronage, there is ample archeological and epigraphic evidence
that during most of the Achaemenid and Seleucid periods the traditional temples
with their old gods and rituals remained the focus of civic and religious life
and that their priesthood retained its elite status. With the Parthian conquest of
Mesopotamia at the end of the 2nd century bce, however, there is a drastic
change. Cuneiform documentation disappears everywhere, except in Babylon,
where the traditional religion appears to have survived somewhat longer, and
as we reach the beginning of the common era archeological evidence for the
abandonment of the old temples can be gathered from many sites. Religion in
Mesopotamia then became increasingly syncretistic, a mixture of Assyrian,
Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Aramean, and Jewish elements, and when the
Sasanian Dynasty took over in the 3rd century ce the old religion was all but
extinct. At the beginning of the 6th century ce, the Neoplatonist philosopher
Damascius still accurately quotes the genealogy of primeval gods found at the
beginning of the Babylonian epic of creation, but this was a final testimony to a
now-vanished civilization.
bibl.: Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia:
An Illustrated Dictionary (Austin, 1992). Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient
Mesopotamia (Chicago, 2001). Édouard Dhorme, Les religions de Babylonie et
d’Assyrie (Paris, 1945). Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of
Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven, 1976). A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia:
Portrait of a Dead Civilization (rev. ed.; Chicago, 1977), chap. 4.
histories 172
Syria and Canaan
David P. Wright
The historical study of the religion of ancient Syria and Canaan (SyroCanaanite,
Syro-Palestinian, Northwest Semitic religion) is made difficult by
the lack of documentary and material evidence from which to construct a clear
and continuous image of religious ideas and practices. The textual evidence
from the first three millennia bce gives a general idea of the main ideas and
their development of Northwest Semitic religion.
The earliest substantial sources pertaining to Syro-Canaanite religion come
from finds at the ancient site of Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh), located halfway
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates River in Syria. It was a significant
city-state in the 24th century bce. Although few of the two thousand
complete or fragmentary texts discovered there pertain directly to religious
matters and although the interpretation of the texts is still in flux, some basic
features of Eblaite religion have emerged. About forty deities are mentioned in
the tablets. A core of West Semitic deities is observable: Dagan, Hadda (the
thunderer or storm-god; later Hadad), El, Belatu (the lady), Ashtar, Suinu
(moon-god), utu (sun-god), Kabkab (star), Kamish (later Chemosh), Malik,
Rasap (later Rashpu/Reshep). The four city gates were named after the gods
be, Baal, Rasap, and utu. The first two are probably to be identified as Dagan
and Hadda, respectively, which shows the prominence of these deities.
The texts indicate that Ebla had several temples devoted to various gods that
housed the statues of the deities. Some texts speak of the quantity of silver
or gold used to make such statues. Animals as well as bread, beer, wine, and
oil were offered to the gods. Objects of precious materials were also devoted
to the deities. In addition, special feasts for different gods were distributed
throughout the year. Some of these celebrations included processions parading
the deity’s statue. Besides the high liturgy of the temples and feasts, many incantations
sought to bind demonic evil and to oppose serpents and scorpions.
Details about Northwest Semitic religion after the time of Ebla are lacking
for almost a thousand years. Part of this gap is filled by evidence from the
theophoric personal names borne by Amorites. The Amorites were pastoral
groups attested at the end of the third and the beginning of the 2nd millennium
bce whose homeland appears to have been northwest of Mari along the middle
Euphrates and lower Khabur rivers and in the surrounding steppe areas. While
Amorite names cannot be counted on to indicate the specific religious propensity
of the bearer, they can in a general way reflect the gods venerated near the
time when they appear. The list of gods has resonances with the earlier Eblaite
pantheon. The Amorite names from Mari around 1800 bce, for example,
show a frequent appearance of the gods Hadda, El, Dagan, and Lim (also attested
earlier at Ebla). Amorite names are also found with Anat, Samas (later
Shamash, the sun-god), Rasap, and perhaps Ashtar. The epithet or name Baal
also appears in many names. The Ur III Amorite names from a few centuries
earlier do not reflect as many West Semitic deities, but there are many with El
and a few with Hadda.
Documentation of Northwest Semitic religion is much more abundant in the
latter half of the 2nd millennium bce. The major sources from this time are the
texts and material finds from Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), near the Mediterranean
coast in Syria, and from surrounding areas. More than one thousand
documents, dating to around the 13th century and written in Ugaritic, the native
language of the region, have been unearthed. Because of the quantity of
tablets, the breadth of genres, and their antiquity, this is presently the most important
single corpus for the study of Northwest Semitic religion.
The main distinction in genres is between the narratives (myths and legends)
and texts that describe or prescribe actual ritual practice (incantations,
prayers, hymns, votive texts, god lists, festival catalogues, sacrificial lists, ritual
prescriptions or descriptions). These two groups provide different kinds of
information about Ugaritic religion. The longest narratives are the Baal myth
cycle (KTU 1.1–6), a series of stories telling of Baal’s rise in authority among
the gods, and the stories of Aqhat (1.14–16) and Kirta (1.17–19), legends
about childless patriarchal figures whom the gods bless with offspring. These
stories are valuable for their insight into the context and motivation for various
religious activities, such as religious feasting, sacrifice, prayer, temple
building, funerary ritual, cursing, blessing, and healing. They explain the relationship
between various gods, including conflicts between them, and reflect
views about the gods’ personalities. These texts also reflect on the nature of
life, such as the importance of children, the immortality of the gods, and the
mortality of humans. Because the religious practices described in the Aqhat
and Kirta texts do not entirely agree with texts that describe actual ritual practice,
they may reflect popular customs or customs of earlier times.
The texts pertaining to actual ritual practice reveal other dimensions of
Ugaritic religion. The texts listing offerings to various gods and other lists of
deities mention many more gods (probably more than one hundred) than do
the narrative texts, and they show some variation in the order of the gods from
one text to the next. The Sacrifice of Sapan (CAT 1.148) is a chief example of a
royal sacrificial text. The occasion was one of about twenty “feasts of the
histories 174
king” (dbú mlk; cf. CAT 1.91). The text is essentially a list of sacrifices. The
gods that appear at the head of the list are ilib (god-father, perhaps a dynastic
deity), El, Dagan, and several Baal deities. Other major deities mentioned include
Athirat, Sapan, Kothar, Shapsh, Yarikh, Anat, Rashp, and Yamm.
Other ritual texts are connected with the royal cult. One custom they illuminate
is the revering of the dynasty’s deceased kings. The kings were thought to
live on as the rapaÛÄma, associated with the underworld. They were incorporated
quite fully into myth, ritual, and the standard theology of Ugarit. These
dead kings were invoked alongside the main gods of the kingdom. They bring
blessings to the nation and its people, and they are given offerings, with the
other main gods (KTU 1.39, 48, 105, 106). KTU 1.108 may be a ritual celebrating
the deification of the dead king. The beginning of the text can be read:
“Lo! the rapÛu [singular of rapaÛÄma], the eternal king, has been established,”
referring to the dead king. Another text—perhaps a funeral liturgy—appears
to treat the descent of the recently deceased king Niqmaddu to the netherworld
(1.161). The rapaÛÄma are invoked, offerings are made, and well-being is proclaimed
for the new king and the kingdom.
Sacrifices and festivals were often for the benefit of the community or nation.
A rather long text (KTU 1.40; cf. 1.84, 121, 122, 54) offers perspectives on sin
and atonement (npy, sweeping away) for sin. At least two sheep and two donkeys,
designated for “justification” (mšr), are offered for the sins of the men
and women of Ugarit, the royal couple, and others, no matter what sin they
may have committed.
Apart from sacrifice, humans made contact with the deities through prayer.
A liturgy for the month ibÚlt (KTU 1.119) prescribes the offering of sacrifices to
Baal and other gods over a number of days. At the end it prescribes a prayer
when the city is under attack: “O Baal, drive away the strong one from our
gates . . . O Baal, we shall consecrate a bull [to you], we shall fulfill a vow. . . .
We shall ascend to Baal’s sanctuary, we shall walk the paths of Baal’s temple.”
The result is that Baal will hear the prayer and ward off the enemy. The gods
spoke to humans in dreams and symbolically through divination, specifically,
through features present in animal innards, birth abnormalities, and astrological
phenomena. A text giving instructions about curing a sick child may indicate
that a cultic official of some sort was responsible for announcing an extended
oracle (KTU 1.124; cf. 1.104). This curing of a sick child brings to
mind other incantations against various evils, such as snakebite, demons, or
the Evil Eye (KTU 1.100, 169, 96, respectively).
Excavations at Emar, located on the west side of the Euphrates where it
takes its northward bend in Syria, have produced about 400 texts pertaining to
religious matters and dating between 1340 and 1190 bce. Most of these were
found in a temple supervised by a diviner (LÚhal). This diviner apparently was
a cultic overseer of the larger region, and cultic practice proceeded rather independently
of the monarchy. The documents include four major festival texts.
The seven-day zukru rite was celebrated on the year’s first new moon. It was
performed for Emar’s chief deity Dagan, whose main center of worship was in
175 syria and canaan
the middle Euphrates area. A main feature is a procession in which the god was
taken outside the city. He passed between sacred stones anointed with oil and
blood. These stones represented deities, constituting a council of the gods, as it
were. The text includes a list of Emar’s gods, nearly ninety lines long. Another
festival is for the installation of the nin.dingir, a priestess, in the temple service
of the storm-god. This rite takes nine days and includes rites that transfer
the woman from her father’s domain to the temple. A third festival, lasting
eight days, is for the installation of the mašÛartu (another priestess) of Ashtart
of Battle. Many of the activities take place at night, and the ritual is implicitly
concerned with the idea of battle. Finally, many texts deal with kissu festivals
for various deities. The one for Dagan lasted three days. These apparently are
performed to acknowledge and honor the various deities.
There is some evidence that the people at Emar revered their dead ancestors
by making offerings to them. This responsibility may be spelled out in legal
documents, and a liturgy in the month of Abu may describe some of the offerings
made to them. There is no clear evidence, however, that these ancestors
were considered gods.
The fragmentary Hittite Elkunirsa myth (Hoffner 1998: 90–92), from the
13th century bce, likely derives from a West Semitic original. It tells how the
goddess Ashertu (= Athirat) asked the storm-god (= Baal) to sleep with her.
He refused and told Elkunirsa, the husband of Ashertu. Elkunirsa is a Hittite
transliteration of the West Semitic epithet of El, *qÃnÁÛarË- (creator/possessor
of the earth) (e.g., KAI A iii 18). Baal disgraces her at Elkunirsa’s instigation by
killing dozens of her children. After a break in the text, Elkunirsa tells Ashertu
to take Baal captive, but Anat-Astarte, Baal’s sister, warns Baal. Nonetheless,
Baal is injured and has to be magically healed and purified.
The religious tradition of the Phoenicians, the Northwest Semitic people
whose homeland was on the Lebanon coast, begins to be firmly documented
early in the 1st millennium bce, although its roots go back into the 2nd millennium.
Most of the Phoenician sources are dedicatory or building inscriptions
that contain little information about religion. Some later non-Phoenician
sources (e.g., the Hebrew Bible and classical, Hellenistic, and Christian writers)
also contain information on Phoenician religion. The texts from the
different cities in the Phoenician homeland reveal that each city had its own
pantheon, continuing the tradition of particular gods being associated with
particular cities. Two gods, a male and female pair, headed the pantheon of
each city. The chief gods of Byblos were Baal-Shamem (perhaps identifiable
with earlier Baal/Hadda) and Baalat (Lady of Byblos, perhaps identifiable with
Anat) (KAI 4–7, 10); the chief gods of Sidon were Eshmun and Astarte (biblical
Ashtoreth) (13–14); and the chief gods of Tyre were Melqart (the Tyrian
form of Baal) and Astarte (see Esarhaddon’s treaty with Tyre; ANET 533–34).
Later classical tradition identified these with various Greek gods (e.g., Astarte
= Aphrodite; Eshmun = Asclepius). Other gods were revered in each of the
cities. The texts also reflect the Syro-Canaanite belief in a collectivity or assembly
of gods (KAI 4). Phoenician religious ideas were carried throughout the
histories 176
Mediterranean area and are found in Phoenician and Punic (i.e., the Phoenician
language tradition of the Carthaginian Empire from the 5th century bce
on) inscriptions on the island and coastal sites.
Religious ideas were part of the royal ideology. A king may be described as
legitimate “before the holy gods” (KAI 4). The gods make the kings rulers
(10). Some kings were also priests (13), and some queens were also priestesses
(14). Kings were responsible for building or rebuilding temples (14). Inscriptions
on coffins of kings or officials show a concern about proper burial and respect
for the dead (1, 10, 13–14, 30). The Tabnit inscription (13) describes
opening the king’s coffin as “an abomination of Astarte.” Curses by the gods
are often invoked against one who would open a sarcophagus, remove the
body, or efface the accompanying inscription. These curses involve the destruction
of one’s posterity, not receiving a resting place with the shades (the rpÛm,
which are either the ghosts of all the dead or of the kings specifically, like the
rapaÛÄma at Ugarit), and not receiving proper burial. They imply a view of the
afterlife where the dead are relatively inactive and where this life is the time of
activity, reward, and punishment.
The tariffs speak of offerings and festivals. One text (KAI 37) lists expenditures
for new moon festivals during two different months paid to officials and
workers, such as the leader(?) of the new moon festival, masons, doorkeepers,
singers, sacrificers, bakers, builders, and others. New moon and full moon festivals
are mentioned in KAI 43. The 3rd-century bce Marseilles Tariff (69; cf.
74–75), apparently originally made at Carthage and transported to France as
ship ballast, describes animals used in different offerings in the temple of BaalSaphon,
a divine name known from Ugarit.
Many of the inscriptions are found in connection with objects devoted to the
gods in fulfillment of a vow, as an offering to induce the god to bless the giver
or as part of a building project. These objects include such things as statues of
the giver (KAI 5–6, 43; Gibson 1982: 29), ornaments (KAI 25), maces (38), altars
(43), walls (7), and various building structures (10). The gift of a throne to
Astarte, flanked by two griffins (17), has been compared to the biblical ark of
YHWH, mounted with two cherubim, which was considered a type of throne
for that deity.
Child sacrifice was also practiced at times as part of Phoenician and Punic
religion, especially at Carthage. Two inscriptions from Malta in the 6th century
may be the earliest documentary evidence of the practice (KAI 61 A–B).
The stelae were set up to Baal-Hammon (who became the chief god at
Carthage; his consort was Tanit), the god generally associated with child sacrifice.
This god appears to have been native to Phoenicia (KAI 24; Gibson 1982:
31) and later brought to Carthage, where he became the chief god (and identified
with classical Cronus).
Roughly contemporary with early Phoenician texts are texts that provide
data about the religion of the Arameans, the Northwest Semitic people of the
area of ancient Syria. These sources are relatively meager, consisting mainly of
royal building or dedicatory inscriptions from the 9th and 8th centuries bce.
177 syria and canaan
The chief deity of the Arameans was Hadad, the “thunderer” or storm-god,
who can be identified with Baal (KAI 214, 222). Other chief deities included
El, Shemesh (the sun-god), and Resheph (214). The inscription of Barhadad
(201) found north of Aleppo from about 860 bce venerates Melqart, a Phoenician
deity. The inscription, in fact, follows a Phoenician model. Barhadad
would have, nevertheless, officially worshiped Hadad.
The sparse inscriptions reflect the communication between deities and humans.
The gods hear a king’s prayer (KAI 201), and they communicate back to
him. The Zakir (or Zakkur) Inscription describes how the king implored and
received Baal-Shmayn’s help against attacking enemies: “I lifted my hands to
Baal-Sh[may]n; Baal-Shmay[n] answered me; Baal-Shmayn [spoke] to me by
means of seers [Ézyn] and prophets [Úddn]; Baal-Shmayn [said to me]: ‘Do not
fear, for I have made you [king, and I will stan]d with you, and I will deliver
you.’” This presupposes a rather elaborate way of ascertaining the divine will,
with prophetic specialists and interpreters.
The texts show the intertwining of theology in royal ideology. The gods are
the powers that make people kings and save them from enemies (KAI 202,
214). They bless the kings and fulfill their requests (214–17). They call upon
kings to perform certain tasks (214). They enforce treaties made by kings
(222–24). Aramean religion was taken up by foreigners who came to rule in
the area (214–15). The Panammu text inscribed on a statue of Hadad (214) appears
to refer to the veneration of dead kings, similar to the veneration of the
rapaÛÄma at Ugarit. It says that the person who sacrifices at the statue of
Hadad is to “remember the ghost [nbš] of Panammu with [Ha]dad” by saying,
“May [the gho]st of Panammu [eat] with you [Hadad], and may the [gh]ost of
Panammu dri[nk] with you.” Here the dead king receives sustenance along
with the chief god.
Although the Aramaic texts say little about sacrifice, the Panammu text says
that sacrifice was considered a meal given to the gods. The kings also give concrete
objects to the gods. For example, Barhadad gives a statue of himself as a
vow offering to Melqart (KAI 201). Other ritual practices included the enactment
of analogical curses in a treaty ceremony. The Sefire Inscriptions (222–
24), partly dependent upon Mesopotamian treaty forms, list hyperbolic descriptive
curses to befall one who breaks the treaty stipulations. Then it lists
simile curses that indicate that they were performed by the participants. For
example, one clause says, “Just as this wax is burned with fire, so shall M[atiel]
be burned [with fi]re.”
The religion of Israel or the Hebrew Bible is another well-documented religious
tradition of the 1st millennium bce. It is important to realize that, although
several cultural influences are discernable in Israelite/biblical religion, it
is in the main an outgrowth of and part of Syro-Canaanite religion. The institutions
and phenomena of temple, priesthood, sacrifice, sacrificial system, and
prophecy are all Northwest Semitic in character. Even monotheistic Israelite
monotheism may be seen as having a foundation in West Semitic religious notions,
especially that where a city or national group recognized one deity as a
histories 178
chief among others. The Hebrew Bible retains the notion of multiple supernatural
beings subordinate to and appearing in council with the chief god (1 Kings
22.19–23; Isa. 6.1–10). The Israelite god YHWH was given the attributes of
Northwest Semitic gods and was identified, for example, as El.
Other traditions are less well attested in the 1st millennium. Only two
important texts and traditions require mention here. The Mesha Inscription
(ca. 850 bce) is the major source of information about Moabite religion. It
may have been written to celebrate the building of a shrine (or high place, bmt)
to the chief Moabite god Chemosh, known already at Ebla and in the placename
Carchemish. The text describes the ritual slaughter of enemies in battle
(Érm) in dedication to the deity, also a biblical practice. Mesha places “before
Chemosh” the “implements of YHWH” that he takes as booty. According to
the Bible, Mesha sacrificed his son so that his god would save him from Israelite
attack (2 Kings 3.27). Finally, the Mesha Inscription may imply an institutional
means of conveying the divine word (prophecy?) when it says that
Chemosh spoke to Mesha.
The other text is the difficult and fragmentary inscription from Deir Allah
(about 700 bce, found on the east side of the middle course of the Jordan
River), written in a unique Northwest Semitic dialect (with similarities to Aramaic;
see Hackett 1980; Levine 2000: 241–75). It tells of a vision of Balaam
son of Beor, who was “seer of the gods” (cf. Num. 22–24). The gods visit
Balaam at night in council, of whom El is chief. They tell him, and Balaam tells
the people, that the gods will punish the land with darkness for the unnatural
(i.e., socially inverted) behavior of people and animals. The second part of the
text is hard to understand and may be independent of the first. It has been suggested,
however, that it may deal with offering a child sacrifice in response to
the gods’ punishment in the first part of the text.
Syro-Canaanite religion can be best summed up as a belief in a group of deities
or supernatural beings that were immanent in the natural world, although
generally hidden from human view. Their powers were manifested through
natural phenomena and in political and military acts of the rulers or kings
whom they chose and supported. The gods and humans related in a master-servant
relationship. The gods provided blessing and support to the people, and
the people were expected to serve the deities, with various gifts and lavish
praise. Offending the deities could anger them and bring catastrophe to humans.
In large part, these religious ideas were a metaphorical construction
from social and political relationships in the human world. This tradition is the
heritage of modern Judaism and Christianity, whose theologies today continue
to reflect aspects of Syro-Canaanite religion.
bibl.: Mark W. Chavalas (ed.), Emar: The History, Religion, and Culture of a Syrian
Town in the Late Bronze Age (Bethesda, Md.: CDL, 1996). J. Andrew Dearman (ed.),
Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab (Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology
and Biblical Studies 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press/ASOR, 1989). Daniel E. Fleming,
Time at Emar: The Cultic Calendar and the Rituals from the Diviner’s House
179 syria and canaan
(Mesopotamian Civilizations 11; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000). Jonas
Greenfield, “Aspects of Aramean Religion,” in Ancient Israelite Religion (ed. Patrick D.
Miller Jr., Paul D. Hanson, and S. Dean McBride; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 67–78.
Jo Ann Hackett, Balaam Text from Deir ‘Alla (Harvard Semitic Monographs 31; Chico,
Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980). Baruch Levine, Numbers 21–36 (Anchor Bible 4A; New
York: Doubleday, 2000). Glenn E. Markoe, Phoenicians (Peoples of the Past; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000). Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Canaanite Religion
according to the Liturgical Texts of Ugarit (trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson; Bethesda, Md.:
CDL, 1999). Robert R. Stieglitz, “Ebla and the Gods of Canaan,” in Eblaitica: Essays
on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language (ed. Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A.
Rendsburg; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 2.79–89.
histories 180
Israel
John J. Collins
The religion of ancient Israel is known primarily from the Hebrew Bible,
but archeological discoveries, as well as critical examination of the biblical
text, suggest a different history of its development.
The biblical account
According to the Bible, Abraham came from Mesopotamia at some time in the
2nd millennium bce and lived a seminomadic life in the land later known as Israel.
He built altars in various places and worshiped the god El in various manifestations.
In the fourth generation, his descendants went down to Egypt and
were enslaved there, but escaped miraculously in the exodus under the leadership
of Moses. Moses had already encountered the god of his forefathers on a
mountain in Midian, south of Israel, under a new name, YHWH. In a revelation
at Mount Sinai, this god gave Moses a code of laws that became the basis
of a covenant. Israel was obligated to serve YHWH alone and to obey strict
ethical and ritual commandments. After the death of Moses, the Israelites invaded
the land of Israel and slaughtered its Canaanite inhabitants. With the
rise of a monarchy (about 1000 bce) the Mosaic religion was contaminated
with customs and cults from the surrounding peoples. When the kingdom divided
in two after the death of King Solomon, pagan influence was especially
strong in the northern kingdom (Israel). Various prophets railed against the
worship of deities other than YHWH. After the northern kingdom was destroyed
by the Assyrians (722 bce), the southern kingdom of Judah underwent
a reform in the reign of King Josiah (621 bce) and restored the observance of
the law of Moses. This kingdom was brought to an end by the Babylonians in
586 bce, and large numbers were deported to Babylon. Some fifty years later,
however, the exiles were allowed to return and restore the religion of Moses in
Judah.
Critical reconstruction
The consensus of archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century is that
the early Israelites evolved within the land and culture of Canaan. There is
no archeological evidence that they came from either Mesopotamia or Egypt.
If the story of the exodus has a historical basis, it can account for only a small
segment of the Israelite population. The god El, worshiped by Abraham and
later identified with YHWH, was the high god of the Canaanite pantheon. It
is clear from the Bible that many Israelites worshiped the Canaanite god Baal,
who was YHWH’s archrival. The theophanies of YHWH in the Bible (e.g., on
Mount Sinai) are described in language that is very similar to descriptions
of Baal in the Ugaritic texts. The biblical insistence that Israel serve only
YHWH is highly unusual in the ancient world. Some scholars have supposed
that it was influenced by the example of the 14th-century Egyptian pharaoh
Akhenaten, who tried to suppress the worship of deities other than the sun-god
Aten. There are some points of affinity between YHWH and Aten in the Bible,
most notably in Ps. 104, which has many parallels to the Egyptian Hymn to
Aten. But solar imagery is relatively rare in the Bible. YHWH is far more often
depicted as a storm-god, in accordance with Canaanite imagery.
The earliest depictions of YHWH in the Hebrew Bible associate him with
the region of Midian south of Israel. It may be that his cult was brought northward
to Israel by people who had escaped slavery in Egypt, or it may have been
spread by Midianite traders. In Israel, however, YHWH was no longer worshiped
primarily as a storm-god, but as the god who brought the people Israel
into existence. In northern Israel, his role was celebrated chiefly in connection
with the exodus from Egypt. In contrast, the exodus became central to the Jerusalem
cult only in the reform of Josiah in the 7th century bce. The Jerusalem
cult centered on the kingship of YHWH, which was reflected on earth in the
rule of the Davidic Dynasty. YHWH had promised David that one of his sons
would always sit on the throne in Jerusalem (2 Sam. 7). The Jerusalem temple
was regarded as “the holy habitation of the Most High” (Ps. 46.4 [= 46.5
Hebrew]). The presence of YHWH in his temple ensured the protection of
the city.
One of the distinctive features of Israelite religion in the biblical account is
the absence of goddess worship. It now appears, however, that the goddess
Asherah was worshiped widely, both in Israel and in Judah. An inscription
from the 8th century bce in a tomb at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron, south of
Jerusalem, reads, “May Uriyahu be blessed by YHWH, from his enemies he
has saved him by his Asherah.” Another inscription from Kuntillet Ajrud, a
stopover for caravans in the Sinai desert, has a blessing formula, ending with
the words “by YHWH of Samaria and his Asherah.” (Samaria was the capital
of the northern kingdom of Israel.) Some scholars deny that Asherah is the
name of a goddess in these inscriptions, since the possessive pronoun is not
usually used with a proper name. They suggest that the reference is to a
histories 182
wooden image of some kind, a pole or tree, that is mentioned some forty times
in the Hebrew Bible. But the wooden image was a symbol of the goddess, and
so the inscriptions testify to the worship of Asherah in any case. Moreover, numerous
figurines of a nude female figure, presumably a fertility-goddess, have
been found by archeologists all over Israel and Judah. We also know that a
goddess called Anatyahu (YHWH’s Anat) was worshiped by a Jewish community
in Elephantine in southern Egypt in the 5th century bce. The Bible records
that “the queen of heaven” was worshiped in Judah at the time of the Babylonian
crisis in the early 6th century bce (Jer. 7.18; 44.18).
The Bible does not deny that the people of Israel and Judah worshiped deities
other than YHWH, including goddesses. It represents that worship, however,
as violation of a covenant that had been formulated by Moses at the beginning
of Israel’s history. Scholars are divided, however, as to the antiquity of
the Mosaic covenant. It finds its clearest expression in the Book of Deuteronomy,
which was formulated at the time of King Josiah’s reform in the late 7th
century bce. The 8th-century prophets (Amos, Hosea) presuppose that the exodus
was being celebrated in northern Israel. The prophets clearly assume that
the delivery from Egypt entailed obligations for the Israelites, but it is clear that
most people did not share that view. Whether the prophets based their preaching
on ancient traditions about a covenant or contributed to the development
of the covenant idea is hard to decide. In any case, it is clear that during the period
of the two kingdoms (approximately 922–722 bce) only a small minority
of Israelites restricted their worship to YHWH alone.
The phenomenon of prophecy was known throughout the ancient Near
East, but the corpus of biblical prophecy has no parallel in the ancient world.
There were hundreds of prophets in Israel and Judah at any given time. Most
of these lent their support to the policies of the kings and to popular views.
The prophets whose oracles are preserved in the Bible are exceptional. Not
only do they flout popular opinion by railing against the worship of deities
other than YHWH, but they also hold both king and people accountable to a
strict moral standard. They are particularly outspoken on the subject of social
justice and the abuse of the poor. They are also scathing on what they perceive
as the abuse of cultic worship. For most people, the worship of a god was
expressed through prayer and the offering of sacrifices. The more valuable the
offering, the greater the devotion of the worshiper was assumed to be. Human
sacrifice was practiced on occasion, even by kings. The prophets argued that
all such gestures were empty if they did not lead to the practice of justice. “I
hate, I despise your feasts,” said Amos (5.21). “For I desire steadfast love and
not sacrifice,” said Hosea (6.6), “the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.”
It is not clear whether these prophets thought that there should be no
sacrificial cult. Such a view would have been extraordinary in the ancient
world. But at least they thought that the cult as practiced was counterproductive.
It gave people illusory confidence that they were serving God when in fact
they were not.
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Deuteronomic reform
The religion of Israel was transformed by the reform of King Josiah in 621 bce
(2 Kings 22–23). The central element in this reform was the centralization of
the cult of YHWH. Henceforth no sacrifices were to be offered outside the Jerusalem
temple. Josiah’s troops tore down other altars that existed around the
country. The worship of Canaanite deities (Baal, Asherah) was suppressed, and
the place where human sacrifices were offered was destroyed. But even legitimate
offerings to YHWH were no longer allowed outside Jerusalem. This reform
was authorized by a “book of the law” allegedly found in the Jerusalem
temple. This book evidently corresponded to some form of the Book of Deuteronomy.
(See especially Deut. 12, which demands that sacrifice be restricted to
one site, which YHWH would choose.) While this book purported to contain
the laws of Moses, its formulation is influenced by the language and concepts
of Assyrian treaties of the 7th century bce, and it cannot have been composed
before that time.
Josiah’s reform laid the basis for great changes in the worship of YHWH. If
sacrifice could be offered only in Jerusalem, then people who lived at a distance
from the city could make offerings only on special occasions. The Jerusalem
temple retained its importance, although Deuteronomic theology downplayed
the presence of YHWH by saying that he made his name to dwell there. Since
Jerusalem was now the only place of cultic worship, the temple was arguably
more important than ever. New importance, however, was attached to “the
book of the law.” In earlier times, law (Torah) was taught orally by priests or
was passed on by judges and elders in the gates of the cities. Now it was written
in a book. Consequently, scribes became very important. These were the
people who could read and write and who controlled what was actually contained
in the book. Modern scholars hold that the book of the law was expanded
several times in the century after Josiah’s reforms. Even in antiquity,
however, people were aware that scribes tampered with sacred writings. Less
than a generation after Josiah’s reform, the prophet Jeremiah complained bitterly:
“How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the lord is with us’?
But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie” (Jer. 8.8).
Josiah’s reforms were not immediately successful. He himself met an early
death at the hands of the Egyptians in 609 bce. The prophets Jeremiah and
Ezekiel claimed that worship of other deities was widespread during the Babylonian
crisis at the beginning of the 6th century. But the long-term impact of
the reforms was ensured by the Babylonian exile. The exiles could not take
their temple to Babylon, but they could take the book of the law. From this
time forward, large numbers of people of Judean descent lived outside their native
land. (This phenomenon is called the Diaspora.) Consequently Judaism developed
as a religion that was independent of its geographical location. This
development was greatly facilitated by the book of the law. Eventually, the synagogue
(a house of prayer and study) and other community events would rehistories
184
place the temple as the focus of the religious life of most Jews. This development
would not be complete for several centuries, but its root was already
present in the Babylonian exile.
Second Temple period
The Jerusalem temple was rebuilt approximately fifty years after its destruction.
Life and religion in the period of the Second Temple, however, were different
from what they had been before.
There was no longer a king in Jerusalem. Immediately after the restoration,
authority was shared by a governor and the high priest. Later, the high priest
was de facto ruler under the foreign overlord. While the high priests were often
quite worldly, their prominence guaranteed that the temple cult was a focal
point of Jewish religious life.
The concept of a normative “book of the law” had been introduced by
Josiah. During the exile, or in the following century, this Torah was expanded
to include the foundational traditions about the patriarchs and the exodus
and also to incorporate extensive priestly traditions. The priestly code, typified
by the Book of Leviticus, was concerned with ritual matters, such as regulations
for sacrifices, and also with issues of purity. Many of these laws may have
been quite old, but they became much more prominent in the Second Temple
period. Matters that had primarily concerned priests at an earlier time were
now deemed to be binding on all Jews. After the Babylonian exile, some distinctive
(though not all unique) observances came increasingly to define Judaism.
These included the observance of the sabbath, the circumcision of male
children, dietary laws that forbade the eating of pork among other things, and
the prohibition of marriage with non-Jews (Gentiles).
The impact of the priestly legislation is seen most clearly in the reform of
Ezra, which should probably be dated to 458 bce. Ezra was authorized by the
Persian king to implement the law of “the God of heaven” in Jerusalem (Ezra
1.2), in accordance with a Persian policy of codifying local laws and enforcing
them. (Ezra is sometimes regarded as the final editor of the Torah or Pentateuch,
but this is uncertain.) He was horrified to discover that Jewish men, descendants
of the exiles, had married women from outside the community, so
that “the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands” (9.2). Ezra
insisted that they divorce the foreign women and send them away, with their
children. Underlying this action was the concern for the preservation of a pure
and distinct community, which could be eroded by assimilation to the neighboring
peoples. It was by such means that Judaism preserved its identity, while
neighboring peoples (Moabites, Edomites, etc.) gradually disappeared from
history.
Not all Judeans conformed to Ezra’s strict interpretation of the Torah. Other
writings of the Second Temple period (Nehemiah, Malachi) complain of lax
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observance and widespread abuses. Ezra represents one tendency in Second
Temple Judaism that would become increasingly prominent in the Hellenistic
period. But there was considerable diversity in Judaism throughout this
period.
One source of diversity lay in different responses to neighboring cultures.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek culture exercised a great
fascination for many people in the Near East. In the 2nd century bce, some
people in Jerusalem set about promoting Greek culture in Jerusalem, with a
view to breaking down the separation of Jew and Gentile. According to 2
Maccabees, this led to neglect of the temple cult, and some people even went so
far as to disguise the marks of their circumcision. The motives of the reformers
were not entirely idealistic. The leaders, Jason and Menelaus, outbid each
other for the high priesthood and eventually engaged in civil war. At that point
the king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, intervened and attempted to suppress by
force the observance of the traditional law. The religious persecution that resulted
was a rare phenomenon in antiquity, and there is no consensus as to the
king’s motivation. The persecution led to the Maccabean revolt, which resulted
in the establishment of a native Jewish kingship under the Hasmonean Dynasty,
which lasted for a century. The Hasmonean kings also acted as high
priests, despite severe criticism from some parties.
The conflict in the Maccabean era is often depicted as a clash between Judaism
and Hellenism, as if Hellenistic customs were incompatible with Jewish religion.
This is a misconception. The revolt was not provoked by the introduction
of Greek customs (typified by the building of a gymnasium) but by the
persecution of people who observed the Torah by having their children circumcised
and refusing to eat pork. The Hasmoneans embraced Greek customs in
many ways, even while forcing some conquered people to be circumcised.
Moreover, while the Maccabees fought to defend the right of Jews to observe
their traditional laws, they themselves were willing to make an exception to the
law, by fighting on the sabbath. They were not, then, strict purists in the matter
of legal observance.
After the Maccabean revolt, however, we see the rise of sectarian movements
devoted to the strict observance of the Torah. The most influential of these
were the Pharisees, who attached great importance to oral tradition, which
specified how the law should be interpreted. The name Pharisee means “separated”
and reflects their tendency to eat apart from less-observant Jews. A stillstricter
form of Judaism is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran, in writings
that are usually attributed to the Essenes. These people went further than
the Pharisees in separating themselves from the rest of Judaism, and they appear
to have been bitter enemies of the Pharisees, although they shared many
of the same concerns. Many of the reasons that led to the separation of the
Essenes from the rest of Judaism had to do with purity, but they also seem to
have had a different calendar, which made participation in the temple cult im-
possible.
Not all Jews of this era were preoccupied with purity, however. The Sadduhistories
186
cees rejected the oral Torah, and with it the stricter interpretations of the Pharisees,
and continued to observe a more-traditional form of Judaism, centered on
the temple cult. Jews in the Diaspora, especially in Egypt, paid remarkably
little attention to purity issues, if we may judge by the writings that have survived.
These writings enter into an extensive dialogue with Greek traditions
and sometimes present Judaism as a philosophical school, analogous to the
Stoics or the Platonists (so especially Philo of Alexandria, in the 1st century
ce). To a great degree, they emphasize the common ground shared by Jews
and Gentiles, but there remain some characteristic positions that set Jews
apart. Most fundamental of these is the rejection of idolatry and the insistence
that only the one God should be worshiped. Jewish authors typically inveigh
against homosexuality, which was widespread in the Hellenistic world. Only
rarely, however, do they mention the Jewish dietary laws, and when they do
they provide an allegorical interpretation to suggest that the laws are really
about the practice of virtue. We know from Philo that some Jews thought it
sufficient to pursue the allegorical meaning of these laws. Philo himself insisted
that they should also be observed in their literal sense. These writings, however,
may reflect a rather rarified, intellectual, stratum of Jewish society. Greek
and Latin authors who comment on Judaism typically emphasize its distinctive
aspects: circumcision, sabbath observance, the dietary laws. It is likely, then,
that most Jews continued to observe the traditional practices, despite the attempts
of people such as Philo to reinterpret the religion in philosophical
terms.
One other aspect of Second Temple Judaism should be noted: the development
of apocalypticism. The apocalyptic writings first appear in the Hellenistic
period, especially around the time of the Maccabean revolt. They might be described
as prophecy in a new key. They are not attributed to their actual authors,
but to ancient figures such as Enoch and Daniel, who allegedly received
revelations in visions or in the course of guided tours of otherworldly regions.
The revelations include many mysteries of the heavenly world, but also concern
the end of history and the judgment of the dead.
The apocalyptic writings are important for several reasons. It is here that we
first encounter a clear belief in the judgment of the individual dead in Jewish
tradition. (Another form of this belief developed separately a little later in the
Greek-speaking Diaspora, in connection with the philosophical idea of the immortality
of the soul.) The idea that the end of history can be predicted had
long-lasting and fateful consequences in Western history and gave rise to numerous
millenarian movements. Apocalyptic expectations played a major role
in the development of early Christianity. In the context of Second Temple Judaism,
apocalyptic writings were often associated with sectarian movements,
which claimed to have a special revelation, above and beyond the Torah of
Moses. The community of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the Essenes) has often been
called an apocalyptic community, with considerable justification, as it too
claimed to have special revelations, which concerned both the heavenly world
and the end of history.
187 israel
Rabbinic Judaism
Second Temple Judaism came to a disastrous end in the late 1st and early 2nd
centuries ce in the course of three revolts against Roman rule. The first, in 66–
70 ce, ended in the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the great unifying
symbol of Judaism, which has never been rebuilt. The second, in the years
115–18 ce, took place in Egypt and ended in the virtual annihilation of the
Jewish community there. The third, in 132–35 ce, led by Bar Kochba, whom
some people took for a messiah, was something of an aftershock. Any hopes
that Jews might have had of regaining their independence had been dashed decisively
in the earlier revolts.
The survival of Judaism as a religious way of life was due primarily to
groups of rabbis in Galilee and Babylonia who devoted themselves to the study
and elaboration of the scriptures. They accepted a limited canon of writings,
which we now know as the Hebrew Bible. (This canon may have been held by
the Pharisees before 70 ce, but the first references to a fixed number of writings
come from the last decade of the 1st century ce.) The rabbinic canon included
no apocalyptic writings except the Book of Daniel, although some others, such
as the books of Enoch and Jubilees, appear to have enjoyed authority with the
Dead Sea sect. Neither did the rabbis preserve numerous writings that survived
in Greek and Latin translations and are now found in the Apocrypha, although
some, such as 1 Maccabees and the Book of Ben Sira, were originally composed
in Hebrew. Much of the religious diversity that characterized Second
Temple Judaism was lost and survived only in translations preserved by Christians
or in the scrolls hidden in caves by the Dead Sea.
The deliberations of the rabbis were eventually codified in the Mishnah (late
2nd century ce) and in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, some centuries
later. These are primarily legal expositions of the Torah, but they are not legalistic
in the narrow sense. They preserve the debates among the rabbis and often
include dissenting opinions. The kind of religion they represent has been well
described as “covenantal nomism”: the law is understood in the context of the
whole relationship between God and Israel, not just as a measuring stick for individual
performance. While rabbinic Judaism always has its starting point in
the Torah, there is plenty of room for imagination and for the preservation of
tradition in the biblical commentaries or midrashim, compiled between the 4th
and 12th centuries ce. Even the mythological traditions associated with apocalyptic
literature survived and reappear centuries later in the midrashim and in
the mystical literature (Hekhalot). The main achievement of rabbinic Judaism,
however, was to construct a body of commentary on the Torah that defined Judaism
as a way of life that has endured down to the present day.
bibl.: R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period (2 vols.;
Louisville: Westminster, 1994). F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1973). P. D. Miller, The Religion of Ancient Israel
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000). E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief,
63 bce–66 ce (Philadelphia: Trinity, 1992).
histories 188
Anatolia: Hittites
David P. Wright
Hittite religion is a blend of diverse cultural streams. While it includes
features from the immigrant Indo-European peoples linguistically attested
by the Hittite language, its main foundation consists of Hattian traditions,
that is, of the people living in central Anatolia prior to the arrival of the
Indo-Europeans. Furthermore, over time, it adopted beliefs and practices from
Hurrian (the people of north Mesopotamia and Syria) as well as AkkadoSumerian
and Syrian religion. This amalgam is richly attested in the thousands
of documents found at Bogazköy, Turkey, the site of Hattusha, the ancient
Hittite capital. A large percentage of the six hundred plus individual works discovered
pertain directly or indirectly to religious matters. The relevant genres
include myths, hymns, prayers, festival prescriptions, rituals, divination texts,
treaties, cultic inventories, and other administrative texts. Most of the texts
date to the latest period of Hittite history (the Hittite Empire or New Kingdom,
ca. 1350–1200 bce), though there are many texts from the earlier periods
(the so-called Middle Kingdom, ca. 1400–1350; and the Old Kingdom, ca.
1650–1400). This allows scholars to determine with some confidence the development
of religious ideas and institutions. The textual evidence is complemented
by archeological data, including the remains of temples, pictorial reliefs
(especially at the YazÕlÕkaya shrine), seals, divine statues and symbols, and
cult objects.
The Hittite pantheon grew in complexity over time, owing to the contributions
from various cultural traditions. The Hittites were aware of the ethnic origin
of their deities and provided them at times with worship in their native
languages (Hattic, Hurrian, Luwian, Palaic, and Akkadian). The Hattian basis
of the religious system is seen in the Old Hittite pantheon, which retained
many Hattian deities. These include a storm-god (Taru), a sun-goddess (the
“Sun-goddess of Arinna,” later identified as Wurusemu), a sun-god (Estan),
Inar (Hittite Inara), Telipinu (a vegetation-god), Halmasuit (a throne-goddess),
Wurunkatte (a war-god), plus many other, lesser deities. The storm-god (called
the Storm-god of Hatti) and the sun-goddess of Arinna presided as a divine
pair over the pantheon. The prominence of a sun-goddess may be partly a reflection
of a long-standing Anatolian tradition of a female fertility-goddess or
mother-goddess, which is attested four millennia earlier at Çatal Höyük (south
central Anatolia) and in the 1st millennium in Phrygia and Lycia. One early
Hittite god was Sius, god of heaven and light, a term later used as the general
Hittite word for god. This is cognate with Indo-European *diÁu-s, which is
found in the Greek word Zeus and Latin deus (god).
The Hittite pantheon grew by the addition of Hurrian as well as
Mesopotamian deities (sometimes in Hurrian guise), especially starting around
1400 bce (the time of Tudkhaliya II and his wife Nikkalmati, whose name
is Hurrian) and mainly as a result of the campaigns of Shuppiluliuma I (ca.
1344–1322) into southern lands under Hurrian influence, including Syria. The
main imported Hurrian gods included Teshub (the chief storm-god), Hepat
(consort of Teshub), Kumarbi (a grain and fertility deity, also associated with
the underworld), Sauska (a Hurrian Ishtar), and Simegi (sun-god). Hurrianized
Mesopotamian gods who entered the pantheon include Ea, Damkina, Anu,
and Enlil. In many cases borrowing was syncretistic. For example, Teshub
was equated with the Storm-god of Hatti and Hepat with the sun-goddess of
Arinna. Pudukhepa, wife of Hattushili III (ca. 1267–1237) and a priestess from
the Hurrian-influenced land of Kizzuwatna, south of the Hittite homeland, explicitly
makes the latter identification at the beginning of a prayer: “O Sungoddess
of Arinna, you are queen of all the lands. In the land of Hatti you go
by the name of the Sun-goddess of Arinna, but in the land which you made cedar,
you go by the name Hepat” (CTH 384; KUB 21.27 1.3–6; cf. ANET 393).
Treaties from the time of Shuppiluliuma I onward provide the most extensive
list of deities and reflect a tendency toward theological systematization.
The treaties show a fixed order in the deities, starting with the sun-god of
heaven and the Sun-goddess of Arinna. These are followed by various stormgods
of various cult centers (e.g., Hattusha, Nerik, Samuha), followed in turn
by various other groups of gods, including Babylonian gods, local deities, netherworld
deities, and natural phenomena (mountains, rivers, springs). Despite
the move toward a systematic listing of the gods, it was not complete. Some
significant deities are missing, including the chief Storm-god of Hatti, whom
one might expect to appear at the top of the list in association with the sungoddess
of Arinna. The inclusion of local pantheons in such lists shows that
their maintenance was partly responsible for the multiplication of the Hittite
gods. From about this time in Hittite history we begin to see the concept of
“the thousand gods of Hatti,” an indication of the compound nature of the
pantheon (the actual number of known divine names is just over six hundred).
The complexity of the Hittite pantheon at this period can be seen in the Prayer
of Muwattalli II (ca. 1295–1272; CTH 381; cf. Singer 1996), which contains
the longest list of deities in any single text (140 gods). Further systematization
of the pantheon came with the development of male and female series (kalutis),
mainly employed in the distribution of offerings. This bifurcated series is visuhistories
190
ally attested in the parade of deities carved into rock walls of the main chamber
of the YazÕlÕkaya shrine. The reliefs date from the time of Tudkhaliya IV (ca.
1227–1209) and reflect the highly Hurrianized form of Hittite religion. The female
gods are led by Hepat, and the male gods by Teshub. These two chief deities
meet face to face.
Just as the pantheon derives in large part from Hattian and Hurrian sources,
so too Hittite myths mainly derive from these two cultural sources, though
there is a handful of myths with Hittite origins (the Tale of Kanes and Zalpa
and the Tale of Appu). Both Hattian and Hurrian myths are, in general, concerned
with negative and positive effects of deities on the cosmos. But they otherwise
have distinct characteristics. The Hattian myths are generally simple
and less artistic than the Hurrian myths, and they have connections with ritual
performances or festivals. These include the Illuyanka myth, which is connected
with the spring purulli festival. One version of this story tells how Inara,
with the help of a human named Hupasiya, defeats a serpent who had defeated
the storm-god. Many other myths deal with the disappearance of deities, such
as Telipinu, the storm-god, the sun-god, and the moon-god. These myths are
generally part of a ritual scheme in which offerings are made, often with the accompaniment
of magical motifs and techniques, in order to find, appease, and
return the deities. The mythical portions of these texts often describe the destructive
effects of the gods’ disappearance upon the land and the felicitous
consequences of their return.
The Hurrian myths became part of Hittite culture mainly as part of the influx
of Hurrian religious ideas from the Middle Kingdom and afterward. These
are more artistic in character than the Hattian myths and are called songs. The
Kumarbi Cycle of tales includes the Song of Kumarbi (also known as the Theogony
or Kingship in Heaven), Song of the god lamma, Song of Silver, Song of
Hedammu, and Song of Ullikummi. These myths describe the struggle for divine
kingship between Kumarbi and Teshub, whom Kumarbi gave birth to as
the result of biting off and swallowing the testicles of Anu, his older royal adversary.
The stories are similar to the Ugaritic cycle of Baal myths, which describes
Baal’s struggle for divine power, and the Akkadian Enuma Elish, which
describes Marduk’s struggle for supremacy among the Babylonian gods. Indeed,
Hurrian tradition appears indebted to Mesopotamian tradition for the
idea of a theogony with successive generations of gods. Another myth-related
text is the Song of Release, which exists in Hittite translation alongside the
Hurrian (the Hurrian text may go back to a Syrian original). It begins with
praise of Teshub, Allani (in Hittite called the sun-goddess of the underworld),
and the Syrian goddess Ishhara. It also contains a series of ethical parables in
the wisdom genre, a description of a feast for Teshub in the underworld, and
Teshub’s ordering the release of debts in Ebla (related to the Mesopotamian
and biblical custom of releasing debts).
The gods were represented by images or by symbols, such as standing stones.
Their images and symbols were generally housed in numerous temples throughout
the kingdom. Temples were not just religious institutions, but integral
191 anatolia: hittites
parts of the economy because they employed a large number of people and
held land. Temples contained storerooms for foods, valuables, and archived
documents. In the capital city Hattusha several temples, large and small, have
been discovered. The largest is devoted to the storm-god and contains a dual
chamber for him and his consort the Sun-goddess of Arinna. Being the abode
of the deities, the temples were to be kept pure. Priests, including the king during
festivals, and other visitors were required to purify themselves before entering
the sacred precincts. Certain animals could pollute the temple. For example,
the Instructions for Temple Officials warn, “For you, let the place of
broken bread be swept and sprinkled [i.e., purified]. Let not a pig or dog cross
the threshold!” (CTH 264; KUB 13.4 3.59–60; cf. ANET 207–10). A bit later
it warns kitchen personnel: “If the implements of wood and implements of
fired clay which you hold—if a pig or dog ever approach [them], but the
kitchen official does not throw them away [and] he gives to the god to eat from
an unclean [vessel], then to him the gods will give excrement and urine to eat
and drink” (3.64–68). Guards were posted to keep out such animals and unauthorized
individuals.
A unique type of shrine is found at YazÕlÕkaya, three-quarters of a mile
northeast of Bogazköy. It operated as a sanctuary from before the Old Kingdom
and may have been considered sacred in part because of a spring that
flowed there. It gained particular prominence late in Hittite history under
Tudkhaliya IV. The area consists basically of a rocky structure with crevices or
open-air passages between rock walls. A temple was built in front of this natural
maze. Reliefs carved on the walls of the passageways celebrate the gods as
well as, implicitly, Tudkhaliya’s kingship (his figure is found three times in the
sculptures). The purpose of this shrine is not known, although it may have
been used in the annual festivals. Some suggest that it was used specifically in
new year ceremonies or that it was the mortuary temple of Tudkhaliya.
Offerings were mainly made to the gods at temples. These consisted of
foods, for example, meats, breads, grain preparations, honey, oil, fermented
drinks. As in most cases throughout the ancient Near East, offerings were a
meal presented to the deities, to thank and praise them, to induce them to perform
certain actions for the offerer’s benefit, or to appease their wrath. This
system operated on the analogy of feasting and offering gifts to a political superior
to elicit his or her favor. The Instructions to Temple Officials make this
metaphor clear: “Are the minds of man and the gods somehow different? No!
Even here [in regard to their respective meals]? No! The[ir] minds are the same.
When a servant stands up before his master he is washed and wears clean
clothing, [then] either he gives him [the master] [something] to eat, or he gives
him something to drink. Then when he, his master, eats [and] drinks, he is relieved
in his mind” (KUB 13 1.21–26; ANET 207).
Killing the animal and manipulating its blood were generally unimportant in
Hittite sacrifice, as opposed to biblical custom. Theories of sacrifice that focus
on the killing of the animal as the central act or even a significant act therefore
do not seem to help explain its meaning among the Hittites. Nevertheless,
histories 192
blood was occasionally offered to chthonic deities. Blood was also used for
purification, such as to cleanse a temple and divine image (CTH 481; KUB
29.4 4.38–40) and apparently a new birth stool (CTH 476; KBo 5.1 1.25–26).
Festivals were occasions when offerings were made in great number. The importance
of festivals can be partly seen in their making up the largest group of
texts discovered at Bogazköy. Unfortunately we do not have a text that lays
out the liturgical calendar systematically. The texts generally describe individual
festivals. The main festivals were the an.taÆ.šum (Festival of the Crocus
Plant) in the spring and the nutarriyashas (Festival of Haste [?]) in the autumn.
The former lasted thirty-eight days, and the latter lasted more than twentyone.
Other major festivals include the purulli (in the spring), the ki.lam (season
unknown, perhaps autumn), and the (h)isuwas (a late addition to the liturgy
from Hurrian influence). The king, as chief priest, presided in the main
festivals. Part of his responsibility included making procession to various local
shrines at which ceremonies were held, as well as traveling to the several
shrines in various cities to make offerings to the local gods. While the king’s attention
to cultic matters may appear to us to have been excessive, the purpose
of the festivals was no doubt political in nature. By maintaining the various
cults in the kingdom, the king shored up the unity of the kingdom and engendered
support for his rule. Apart from offerings, festivals included purification
rites to ensure the fitness of the king and other participants. They were also occasions
for entertainment, including music and even competitive races and
other athletic events. All of these activities helped secure the gods’ attention,
continuing presence, and favor.
The Hittite corpus contains a rather large number of rituals performed as occasion
required. Several of these come from the later period and are of Hurrian
and Luwian (another Indo-European people closely related to the Hittites) origin,
mediated via the southern Luwian-populated province of Kizzuwatna,
near Syria. The patients treated in these rites ranged from the king, queen,
and the royal house down to unspecified individuals. Some of these rites were
performed at the main transitions in life: birth, puberty, and death. Others
sought to remove evils of various sorts, including uncleanness (papratar), sorcery
(alwanzatar), curse (hurtais), oath (lingais), blood/murder (eshar), evil
tongue (idalus lalas), sin (wastul), plague, various sicknesses and infirmities,
and also malevolent supernatural beings (including the ghosts of the dead).
Various means, usually symbolic, were used to remove these evils. Evils may
be transferred to other objects or entities, and these may then be further disposed
of or sent away in scapegoat fashion, sometimes with the accompanying
notion that they are being banished to the underworld. According to one text,
when a plague breaks out after a battle, one is to dress a foreign prisoner in the
Hittite king’s clothing and send the prisoner back to the enemy country as an
“offering” to the attacking deity, to divert wrath from the Hittite country. The
king or his representative says to the prisoner: “If some male god of the enemy
land has caused this plague, behold, to him I have given the decorated man as a
substitute. At his head this o[ne is gr]eat, at the heart this one is great, at the
193 anatolia: hittites
member this o[ne is gre]at. You, male god, be appeased with th[is dec]orated
man. But to the king, the [leaders], the ar[my, and the] land of Hatti, tur[n
yourself fai]thfully. . . . Let this prisoner b[ear] the plague and carry [it] ba[ck
into the land of the enemy]” (CTH 407; KBo 15.1 1.14–21). Evils may also be
placed on animals, providing interesting parallels to the biblical scapegoat ritual
(Lev. 16). Other means of getting rid of evil include concretizing the evils
by representing them with colored threads, certain types of clothing, or other
objects. When these are removed, the evil is removed. The evils may also be
purged by ritual “detergents,” that is, by water, wine, clay, plants, flours, salt,
blood, fire, and various mixtures.
An almost ubiquitous feature of Hittite ritual, found to some extent in other
Near Eastern ritual, is the use of analogy. For example, in the ritual of
Anniwiyani, which is performed to attract and appease a protecting deity, nine
pebbles are heated. Anniwiyani, the female practitioner (the Old Woman),
cools them off by pouring beer on them, saying: “Just as these have quenched
their thirst, so you, protective god . . . , quench your thirst. For you let anger,
wrath, and animosity vanish” (CTH 393 4.1–4). The analogy need not be dramatically
enacted in every case. It may involve only reference to a natural or
empirical fact that is brought to bear on the patient’s situation. Analogy may
be used not just to remedy evils, but also to impart blessing. An Old Woman
ritual practitioner, Tunnawiya, grabs hold of the horn of a cow and says: “Sungod,
my lord, just as this cow is fertile, and [is] in a fertile pen, and keeps filling
the pen with bulls [and] cows, indeed, in the same way may the offerer be fertile!
May she in the same way fill [her] house with sons [and] daughters” (CTH
409; KUB 7.53 4.8–13).
The maintenance of the many temples and the performance of the severalday
and multiday festivals required an elaborate body of temple personnel.
Functionally and conceptually, the highest priestly figure was the king, who
presided at the main festivals and was responsible otherwise for maintaining
good relations with the gods and securing their favor for the people and land at
large. The primary priest was the LÚsanga (priest). Other priestly functionaries
included the LÚgudu12 ([anointed] priest) and the priestess MUNUSama.dingir
(mother of the god). In addition, many cultic functionaries served at the temple:
cooks, cupbearers, people who set out offerings, musicians, singers, people
who cleaned, and those who cared for temple animals. The rituals of crisis performed
for individuals employed a different set of practitioners. The performers
of these rites are often mentioned by name. Often the performer is a female
designated with the title “Old Woman” (perhaps meaning “Wise Woman”;
Sumerian MUNUSu.gi = Hittite hasawas). Other participants in such rites include
the LÚa.zu (physician), the LÚhal (seer), and the LÚmušen.dù (observer
of birds).
Rituals of crisis may also include incantations and prayers. These spoken
elements are relatively brief. The Hittite corpus also contains several texts
that consist of lengthy prayers, sometimes with accompanying ritual description
or prescription (CTH 371–89). These texts are virtually all spoken by the
king or other members of the royal family and mostly date from the New Kinghistories
194
dom (e.g., the prayers by Queen Pudukhepa and King Muwattalli II). Another
group of informative prayers is the Plague Prayers of Murshili II (ca. 1321–
1295). In one prayer, the king petitions the gods to alleviate a plague that had
been raging in the land since the end of the reign of his father, Shuppiluliuma I.
He speaks of how his previous prayers for healing were ineffectual. He consequently
inquired by oracle to find out why the gods were angry, the presupposition
being that the plague was the result of divine anger. The oracles determined
that offerings to a certain god had not been properly made and that a
treaty oath made to the Storm-god of Hatti had been broken. Murshili promised
to make proper offerings to appease the various deities angered. In addition
to prayer texts, Hittite vocabulary contained its own terms for types of
prayers, found in colophons or in the body of the texts themselves: mugawar,
a petition for the god to attend to the plight of the one praying, often with
an evocation ritual to attract the deity; arkuwar, a prayer defending against
charges of wrongdoing; walliyatar, a hymn or prayer of praise; and wekuwar, a
request or petition. The different genres may be mixed in any given prayer.
While humans spoke to the gods directly, the gods made their will known indirectly.
A chief method was through dreams. These could come unexpectedly
or be prepared for ritually or requested from the deities. In the prayer of
Murshili II to relieve the plague, he asks the storm-god to send him a dream
advising him of any other satisfaction he must provide to insure that he is making
proper amends. External phenomena were also thought to convey the
will of the gods. Heavenly occurrences, the behavior of birds or water snakes,
birth defects, the drift of incense smoke, the disposition of oil on water, and
the physical character of the liver, heart, gall bladder, and intestines of animals
were examined and interpreted to discover divine intent. The Hittites also
used a lot oracle (the kin oracle), which may have been used in a gamelike
fashion, to reveal the divine mind. As they did with respect to other cultural
features, the Hittites borrowed some of their oracular techniques from the
Mesopotamian world via Hurrian influence and even had their own editions of
Babylonian divination texts. Since the divination techniques generally produced
yes/no answers, the Hittites employed a series of oracular inquiries in order
to arrive at a specific answer to a question. A good example of this is found
in the text that recounts how Murshili II overcame the effects of a disability
(perhaps a stroke) that resulted in his not being able to speak easily. After a
dream, which may have aggravated his condition, he consulted a series of oracles
to determine what he should do. The first oracle indicated that the stormgod
of Manuzziya was responsible. A second oracle determined that he should
give this god a substitute ox. A third oracle indicated that he should send the
offering to the town of Kummanni, located just south of the main land of Hatti
(CTH 486; see translation by Gary Beckman in Frantz-Szabó 1995: 2010).
Finally, most of what we know about the Hittite view of death concerns the
king and royal family. At death the king “became a god,” that is, a sius. This
may mean that he became identified in some way, or entered into association
with, the Indo-European deity Sius. One text preserves a fourteen-day funerary
rite for the king (CTH 450; Otten 18–91; detailed summary in Haas 1995:
195 anatolia: hittites
2024–27). The text begins by stating the circumstance for the ritual: “When a
great calamity [lit., sin, šalliš waštaiš] occurs in Hattusha.” This calamity is the
king’s death. On the third day the king is apparently cremated, a custom probably
of Hurrian origin. On the sixth day his burned bones, which had earlier
been wrapped in linen, were taken to a mausoleum or tomb called the “stone
house.” Offerings were presented to the deceased king and to the gods at various
points. Other performances appear to symbolically outfit the dead with
what he needs in the next life and to appease any anger he may have toward
those who remain alive. The conception seems to be that life after death continues
in a way similar to life during mortality. It is not entirely clear whether
the ghost of the deceased was thought to live in the netherworld, the area under
the physical earth. The netherworld figured significantly in the Hittite cosmological
picture. Caves, springs, dug pits, and tombs provided passageways
to the underworld. The sun traversed the sky during the day and crossed the
underworld at night and therefore was the chief god of the netherworld. The
netherworld (or the deep sea) was also conceptually the place where impurities
were banished through elimination rituals. The ghosts of the kings could have
resided here. Some have suggested that their habitation was in the west, where
the sun entered the underworld.
bibl.: Gary Beckman, Hittite Birth Rituals (Studien zu den Boèazköy-Texten 29;
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983). Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts (Society of
Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World 7; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).
Gabriella Frantz-Szabó, “Hittite Witchcraft, Magic, and Divination,” in Civilizations
of the Ancient Near East (ed. Jack M. Sasson; New York: Scribner, 1995), 3.2007–19.
O. R. Gurney, Some Aspects of Hittite Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977). Volkert Haas, “Death and the Afterlife in Hittite Thought,” in Civilizations
of the Ancient Near East (ed. Jack M. Sasson; New York: Scribner, 1995), 3.2021–30.
Volkert Haas and Gernot Wilhelm, Hurritische und luwische Riten aus Kizzuwatna
(Hurritologische Studien 1; Alter Orient und Altes Testament Sonderreihe 3; Kevelaer:
Butzon & Bercker/Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1974). Harry A. Hoffner
Jr., Hittite Myths (2nd ed.; Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient
World 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998). Theo van den Hout, The Purity of Kingship:
An Edition of CTH 569 and Related Hittite Oracle Inquiries of Tuthaliya IV
(Documenta et monumenta orientis antiqui 25; Leiden: Brill, 1998). Alexei Kassian,
Andrej Korolëv, and Andrej Sidel’tsev, Hittite Funerary Ritual šalliš waštaiš (Alter
Orient und Altes Testament 288; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2002). Jörg Klinger,
Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der hattischen Kultschicht (Studien zu den
Boèazköy-Texten 37; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996). R. Lebrun, Hymnes et prières
hittites (Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre d’Histoire de Religions, 1980). Itamar Singer,
Muwatalli’s Prayer to the Assembly of Gods through the Storm-God of Lightning
(CTH 381) (Atlanta: Scholars Press/ASOR, 1996). David P. Wright, “Analogical in Biblical
and Hittite Ritual,” in Religionsgeschichtliche Beziehungen zwischen Kleinasien,
Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament (ed. B. Janowski, K. Koch, and G. Wilhelm;
Orbis biblicus et orientalis 129; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1993), 473–506. David P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination
Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (Society of Biblical Literature
Dissertation Series 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987).
histories 196
Iran
William Malandra and Michael Stausberg
In antiquity the Iranian cultural sphere extended over a large part of western
Asia, far exceeding the borders of the modern state. It included the modern
states of Iran, Afghanistan, western regions of Pakistan, the “republics” of the
old Soviet central Asia, and areas within the Caucuses—all of them places
where related dialects of the common Iranian language group were spoken and
where many cultural and religious institutions were shared. Other peripheral
areas came under strong Iranian influence at various times. Median, Persian,
and Parthian dynasties extended their empires westward into the ancient Near
East, the eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt and northward into Azerbaijan
and Armenia. Commerce encouraged the expansion of Iranians along the trade
routes to China. The Iranians living within such geographic diversity were not
a monolithic people. The languages they spoke, although related, were often
quite distinct from one another. For example, the Iranian Scythians (Saka) in
central Asia spoke languages and carried out ways of life far different than Iranians
living in the southwest on the borders of Mesopotamia.
Any historical study is limited by the nature and extent of the sources. This
means that there are often long temporal and broad geographical gaps. There
are subjects about which we would like to know more or at least something;
yet the sources may be silent. Because we cannot interrogate the creators of
the source material, we are frequently in the dark as to what something means.
As one example, much of the collection of sacred poetry composed by
Zarathustra is so obscure in its language and conceptual framework that we
cannot always achieve a secure understanding of what the prophet wished to
communicate. As another example, although we have the rich iconography of
Achaemenid imperial art, no verbal testimony links an icon to its symbolic referent.
While art and architectural remains provide some source material for religion,
by far the most important sources are literary. Among the latter may be
distinguished indigenous Iranian sources and foreign ones. The latter are predominantly
Greek and Latin, with occasional references in Aramaic, Hebrew,
and Neo-Babylonian. They all should be approached with caution. With the
exception of lists of theophoric names in Elamite, all indigenous sources are in
Iranian languages.
The most ancient Iranian literary sources are the inscriptions of the
Achaemenid kings in Old Persian and the sacred texts of the Zoroastrian religion
composed in the Avestan language. The inscriptions are easily dated to the
6th and 5th centuries bce, to the reigns of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. Although
they serve the propagandistic ends of the rulers, they are rich in materials
related to religion. The corpus of Zoroastrian texts known as the Avesta is a
heterogeneous collection whose components were composed at various times
and in various genres. Among them the most ancient are the five Gathas or
songs attributed to Zarathustra, which comprise a total of seventeen chapters.
Unfortunately no one knows when he lived. Some scholars place him at or just
prior to the rise of Cyrus the Great (6th century bce), while many prefer an
earlier time between 1200 and 1000, and yet others seek an even earlier date.
The large collection of hymns, the Yashts, which honor the deities, contains
much material that may well be as ancient as the Gathas, yet the Yashts have
been thoroughly edited by redactors who probably worked long after the fall
of the Achaemenid Empire. The same may be said about the Yasna, a part of
the Avesta which was, and is to this day, recited during the performance of the
ritual of the same name. Another significant text is the Widewdad (Vendidad)
which, for the most part, contains instruction on a variety of matters pertaining
to questions of purity and pollution; parts of it seem to have been composed
in the Arsacid period, as the Greek system of spatial measurement is presupposed.
If we regard the Avesta as reflecting a period of antiquity that more
or less ended with the conquest of Iran by Alexander of Macedon, it, together
with the inscriptions, comprises almost all the source material for the most ancient
forms of Iranian religion.
In the very extended period between Alexander and the 9th century ce, we
have few extensive sources. Of the Sassanid inscriptions, the long inscription of
the high priest Kirder is particularly important. But, apart from coin legends
(especially those of the Kushans), minor inscriptions, and graffiti, nothing is
preserved in significant volume until the renaissance of literary activity in the
9th century, after the coming of Islam to Iran. During this century, Zoroastrian
scholars sought to preserve as much Sassanid learning as they could, and what
they produced, for the most part, were digests, some very long, of older texts
composed in the Pahlavi language. The main problem for the student of Iranian
religion is how to sort out historical layers in these texts, for they quote
extensively from Sassanid texts which themselves may be translations of lost
Avestan texts or else contain more-ancient materials of unclear provenance.
One could also include Manicheism in this survey, since Manichean sources in
Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian contain a great deal of material borrowed
from Iranian (and other) religious traditions. It follows from the foregoing
survey of the sources for ancient Iranian religion that the largest part of
what we know is mediated by Zoroastrianism.
histories 198
During the middle of the 2nd millennium bce there was a gradual migration
of nomadic or seminomadic peoples from the steppes into the eastern Mediterranean,
the Near East, the Iranian plateau, and the Indian subcontinent. These
peoples spoke languages belonging to the Indo-European family. Within that
broad family of related languages were two closely related groups collectively
identified by linguists as Indo-Iranian. As the name implies, one group settled
in India (but also Anatolia and part of the Near East), the other in greater Iran.
Not only in language but also in culture and religious ideology did they share
a common heritage. Central to both was the sacrificial worship (Old Indic
yajñá, Old Iranian yasna) of the gods (Old Indic devá, Avestan daÁwa, Old
Persian daiwa, proto-Indo-European deiwó-s) in which an essential element
was the preparation of the sacred drink (Old Indic sóma, Avestan haoma, Old
Persian haumd). They worshiped deities, some of whom bore the same or
nearly identical names, for example, Mitra/Mithra, Vayu/Wayu, Tvastar/
Thworeshtar, and some of whom represented common concepts of divine
functions, for example, Indra/Werethragna (Warrior), Prthivi/Spenta Armaiti
(Earth), Agni/Atar (Fire). The most ancient Indian texts, the Vedas, are extremely
important for the study of Iranian religion, as they contain a volume
and richness of material far beyond what survived in Iran. Nevertheless, both
branches of the family exhibit such divergent evolution that they cannot simply
be superimposed upon each other.
At the head of the Iranian pantheon stood Ahura Mazda. He was a creator
(dÀtar) in the sense that he exercised dominion over creation in establishing
order and putting (dÀ-) everything in its proper place. The actual crafting of
the creation was the work of the demiurge, Thworeshtar (Craftsman). Ahura
Mazda’s consort was the Earth, known by the name Spenta Armaiti, although
he seems to have had other wives, the Ahuranis (wives of Ahura). Ahura
Mazda had a particular connection to the cosmic principle of order and truth
called Rta (Avestan aša, Old Persian arta), and, like the supreme Vedic god
Varuna, was a source of insight into truth for poets, the divinely inspired creators
of sacred hymns. Two male deities were closely associated with Ahura
Mazda. One was Rashnu (Judge), who had a limited judicial function, analogous
to that exercised by Varuna, in serving as the divine judge presiding over
the oaths sworn by humans. The other was Mithra. While Mithra was a complex
deity, the essence of his being was that he was foremost the god Covenant.
That is, he presided over all treaties between nations and covenants between
people. The image of him as a mighty warrior riding in his chariot full of weapons
reflects his ability to enforce the sanctity of covenants. As a warrior he
shares much in common with another powerful deity: Werethragna (Victory),
whose name etymologically means “the smashing of resistance.” As such he
embodied the ideal of the Iranian warrior who was capable of smashing the defenses
of all enemies. Warriors invoked both Mithra and Werethragna as they
went into battle, yet when it came to the exercise of legitimate temporal power
and the success of the ruler in wielding that power, two other forces came into
play. The Iranians developed a unique concept of an impersonal force called
199 iran
Xwarnah, conceived as a fiery presence that attached itself to legitimate rulers,
but remained unseizable by illegitimate usurpers. Without this royal glory one
could not hope to hold power. Whereas Xwarnah was an impersonal power,
victory to the legitimate ruler and righteous warrior was granted by a goddess,
Aredwi Sura Anahita. Like Athena and Ishtar, she dispensed success in arms.
The cosmos was basically three-tiered, consisting of earth, atmosphere, and
heaven. The earth was divided into six concentric continents (karšwar) surrounding
the central continent, Xwainiratha, where aryana waÁjah (the Iranian
Expanse) is located. At the center of the earth was the cosmic mountain, Hara
Berezaiti, the Elburz, which acted as the axis mundi. At its southern flank was
the sacred Wouru-kasha sea, in the middle of which grew the Tree of Life. Over
the earth and expanse of sky arched the stone vault of heaven (asman), beyond
which was the realm of the Infinite Lights (anagra raocah), the heavenly abode
called the Best Existence (wahišta ahu), and the House of Song (garÃ-nmÀna).
Below the earth was the realm of Infinite Darkness (anagra temah). The entire
earth rested upon and was surrounded by the waters of chaos. Fresh water
flowed down Hara in the river goddess Aredwi Sura (Strong Moist), into the
Wouru-kasha, and from it the various rivers of the world flowed, accumulating
pollutants in their courses to the salt sea, called Puitika (Filterer), from which
the hydrological cycle repeated itself.
As far as one can reconstruct on the basis of Pahlavi sources, the temporal
dimension of the cosmos was a system of four world ages, analogous to the
yuga system of ancient India and the four metallic ages of Greece, with each
lasting three thousand years. One can guess that there was degradation of
the cosmos over the course of the ages and that a complete cycle would have
ended with a cataclysm and subsequent creation that renewed the cycle, although
in its present form the cycle has been thoroughly transformed into a
myth of creation, a battle of good and evil, with the final triumph of the good
and establishment of the eternal kingdom of God, Ohrmazd. The yearly cycle
was punctuated by various sacred festivals, which probably varied from region
to region. The most important was the spring festival celebrating the New Year
(Pahlavi NÃg RÃz), preceded by a liminal time marking the return of the spirits
of the dead, the frawašis.
The ancient Iranian cultic practices seem to have been very similar to those
referred to in the Vedic literature. Men with special training were required,
and, as at later periods, the priestly functions may have been hereditary. The
presiding priest was the zaotar (Old Indic hótar) (the one who offers libations)
and was attended by various functionaries. Another functional title,
athaurwan (cf. Old Indic átharvan), became the name for the sacerdotal caste,
though originally it may have designated those priests charged with the care of
the sacred fire, Àtar, both the element and a deity. Worship of the deities was
ritually performed through the yasna. Originally this was a complex ritual that
involved the offering of a victim (food) and the sacred haoma (drink). Modeled
on rites of hospitality, the yasna was an elaborate festive meal to which a deity
or deities were invited as honored guests. The deity was offered food and drink
and was entertained through the recitation of poetry created for the occasion
histories 200
to magnify the divine guest(s). The poet was called a máthrÀn (cf. Old Indic
mantrín), that is, one who creates sacred poetry (máthra). The Yashts of the
Avesta are collections of such poetry. Since hospitality is part of the complex
social interaction of gift exchange, the yasna placed the deities under an obligation
to present the host with a gift. Thus, beyond the general desire to maintain
favorable relations with the powers controlling the world, the sacrificer could
hope for specific boons.
Our picture of ancient Iranian religion is colored by the prophet Zarathustra
(Zoroaster). His specific dates and place of activity are unknown, though we
may say with imprecision that he lived between the 12th and 6th centuries bce
somewhere in the northeastern Iranian cultural sphere. We assume that his
religious milieu was that sketched above. He was both a zaotar and a mathran.
The only reliable biographical information about him is contained in his
Gathas, preserved by the oral tradition, of which he was a part, for centuries
and then continued to the present in oral and written priestly transmission.
Zarathustra had a particularly close relationship with Ahura Mazda,
from whom he received revelatory visions (daÁnÀ). His vision, expressed in the
Gathas, included a radical transformation of traditional beliefs. In place of
the pantheon he elevated Ahura Mazda to a position of supremacy that approaches
monotheism and surrounded him with a group of abstract entities,
the Amesha Spentas, all of whom perpetuate key concepts of Iranian religion
as hypostases of Ahura Mazda. At the heart of the vision, however, was an ethical
dualism that saw the principles of aša (Old Persian arta, Old Indic ãtá),
Truth, and druj (Old Persian dranga, Old Indic dróha), Falsehood, in fundamental
opposition. In Zarathustra’s thought dualism is not primordial, as it
appears in later Sassanid theology, but arose out of the right and wrong choices
made by twin spirits, who stand in paradigmatic relationship to human beings
in the exercise of free will. As a result, the world could be divided between the
followers of Truth (ašawan-; cf. Old Persian artÀwan, Old Indic ãtåvarn) and
the followers of the Lie (drugwant). His dualistic theology also led to the polarization
of the traditional classes of deities, the ahuras and the daÁwas. A zaotar,
Zarathustra was concerned with proper cultic practice, especially the proscription
of violence upon the sacrificial victim as carried out by the daiwic priests.
He may have modified the haoma cult, but certainly did not ban it. Finally,
Zarathustra articulated the kernel of the idea of a savior figure, the Saoshyant,
who would arrive in the future to redeem the world. (Further on Zarathustra
and his religious innovations, see the Appendix to this essay.)
The history of Iranian religion after Zarathustra is very difficult to reconstruct.
In the course of his ministry in eastern Iran, he converted a local ruler
(kawi) named Wishtaspa, who became his patron and protector. For convenience
scholars call the religion of the prophet Zarathustrianism or
Zoroastrianism. We can only assume that the religious community that
Zarathustra founded continued and thrived after his death. With the consolidation
of greater Iran under the Achaemenids, his religion, into whatever form
it had evolved, made its way to western Iran. There it encountered forms of
Iranian religion different not only from itself, but also from non-Zarathustrian
201 iran
religions of the East. In particular, there was the politically entrenched priestly
caste of the Magi who, according to Herodotus (1.132), presided at all religious
ceremonies, at which they recited “theogonies,” presumably Yasht-like
hymns. There is no consensus among scholars over the question of whether the
early great kings, Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, were influenced by Zarathustrianism.
They certainly believed in the absolute supremacy of Ahura Mazda and probably
in the dichotomy of ahura/daiwa. But, beyond that all is speculation. Neither
the Achaemenids themselves nor Herodotus mention Zarathustra, and
Gathic quotations that some see in the inscriptions may merely reflect phrases
common to the shared (Indo-)Iranian poetic diction.
In any case, what emerges during the Achaemenid period is an eclectic Iranian
religion, called by scholars Zoroastrianism, which contains elements of
Zarathustrianism, apocryphal legends of the prophet, a full pantheon of deities
almost entirely absent from the Gathas, an overriding concern over purity and
pollution, the establishment of fire temples. Curiously, the extant Avesta remains
thoroughly eastern Iranian in its geographic and linguistic orientation.
One assumes that radical concessions to traditional beliefs had already taken
place after Zarathustra’s death and before Zoroastrianism became pan-Ira-
nian.
After the conquest by Alexander, Iran fell under the superficial influence
of Hellenism. Apart from fragmentary evidence it is difficult to formulate a
cohesive history from Alexander to the foundation of the Sassanid Dynasty in
the 3rd century ce. The Pahlavi books hint at a Zoroastrian revival under
Vologases I (ca. 51–80 ce) in which some sort of collection and codification of
the Avesta took place. Kushan coins of the same period from the northeast
show a pantheon of Iranian deities. From Gandhara Mahayana, Buddhism
gained strength throughout the region, traveling along the trade routes to
China. Jews, Christians, and eventually Manicheans also entered the religious
mix. With the founding of the Sassanid Dynasty around 224 ce under
Ardashir, there was a revival of Iranian nationalism that consciously harkened
back to the glory of the Old Persian Empire. Part of this was the creation of a
centralized Zoroastrian ecclesiastical structure that was inseparable from the
royal authority of the state. After an initial struggle over the patronage of
Shapuhr I (240–72 ce), the high priest Kirder overcame his rival Mani and established
Zoroastrianism (dÁn mazdÁsn) throughout the empire, while persecuting
religious minorities. Zoroastrianism remained the state religion until the
Arab-Islamic conquest in the latter part of the 7th century ce.
w.w.m.
Appendix: Zoroastrianism
The name Zoroastrianism is a product of modern colonial discourse. It goes
back to a Greek rendering (Zoroastres) of the Iranian name Zarathustra, which
histories 202
refers to the key individual, the founder, or prophet of this religion. The designations
of the religion found in most premodern primary sources, on the other
hand, draw attention either to the (supposed) quality of the religion—the
“pure/good religion”—or to the name of its dominant male divinity, Ahura
Mazda. This is an ancient Iranian (Avestan) term that can be rendered either as
“the Wise Lord” or as “Lord Wisdom.”
Together both names—Zarathustra and Ahura Mazda—occur in the Gathas.
These are five hymns that are often assumed to be part of the oldest layer of the
corpus of ritual texts written in Avestan, an ancient Iranian language. Many
scholars nowadays believe that the Gathas were composed by Zarathustra
himself, whereas others argue that Zarathustra as a person belongs to the
realm of myth. While many linguists distinguish between two or even more historical
layers of the Avestan language—Old and Young Avestan—others reject
that distinction, opting instead for a distinction between Gathic and Standard
Avestan.
There is disagreement about virtually everything in the study of
Zoroastrianism, not the least on the question of origins. There are dozens of
theories, mostly mere speculative assumptions, about the homeland of the religion
(or of its prophet), generally held to be somewhere east of what is modern
Iran. It is not clear when Zarathustra lived (if there ever was such a person).
While some scholars argue that he must have lived in remote antiquity, even
going back as far as 1700 bce, some place him in the 6th or 5th century bce,
whereas the majority puts the date around 1000 bce. Some later Zoroastrian
texts in Middle and New Persian recount “biographies” of Zarathustra. These
biographies focus on his miraculous birth and childhood, his divine revelations
and encounters, and his eventually successful campaign at the court of a king.
Whatever their origin, the Gathas came to be orally transmitted in ritual
contexts. Although many translations of the Gathas are available, most of
them disagree about fundamental issues, and the Gathas are still obscure in
many ways. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that one finds in the Gathas
whatever one may be looking for. By way of example, Zoroastrian scholars
have “discovered” such modern ideas as gender equality, ecology, and human
rights in the Gathas. To the eyes of many modern Zoroastrians, especially in
Iran and the West, the Gathas are the normative model of religious scripture,
while the later (or Standard) Avestan texts containing more-straightforward
material of praise to the divinities and divine prescriptions are disregarded as
secondary elaborations.
The issues of monotheism and dualism are a major concern of both modern
Western orientalists and Zoroastrian theologians. These often (erroneously)
have been presented as an either-or argument. It can easily be understood that
modern Zoroastrians living in a world dominated by Christian and Islamic
patterns have insisted on their religion being regarded as a pure monotheism;
and for many scholars monotheism has served as a bridge linking Zoroastrian
and Jewish religious history. (Some scholars hold that Zoroastrianism had a
profound influence on Jewish traditions.) In the Avestan texts, however, one
203 iran
can easily find support for monotheist, dualist, and polytheist interpretations.
Whereas monotheism, dualism, and polytheism are different sets of classification
in Western thought, no such distinctions seem to have existed in the Avestan
mentality. To stretch things into a schematic pattern: Ahura Mazda—the
most powerful of the gods, who set the creation into place and motion, together
with the other male and female divinities and divine beings, most prominently
the Amesha Spentas (Bountiful Immortals), a group that came to consist
of six divinities closely allied to or created by Ahura Mazda and thought to
represent moral virtues and cosmic elements (such as fire, water, earth, etc.)—is
held to be actively involved in a continuous struggle against impure demons
and demonic agents of varying degrees of power. Humanity is involved in this
struggle in a number of ways. Ideally, humankind is expected to support the divinities
by properly performing rituals and by a virtuous conduct of life implementing
truth, purity, the right measure, and god-given order, the latter also
containing submission to elders and gender rules. While females play an important
role in that struggle, they are assumed to be more easily affected by demonic
forces and thus need to be held under tight male, patriarchal control.
From the Achaemenian period onward in Iran, similar forms of dualist rhetoric
were also employed in order to foster political claims for legitimacy, loyalty,
and empire.
According to more systematic accounts transmitted in the Middle Persian
(Pahlavi) books, the struggle between the forces of good and evil evolved out of
an original opposition between Ohrmazd (i.e., Ahura Mazda) and his main
adversary Ahriman (i.e., Angra Mainyu) in the early stages of the history of
creation, which then had obtained two dimensions: a spiritual, invisible, metaempirical
level (menog) and an equally good material, tangible, empirical level
(getig). The Zoroastrian version of dualism, monotheism, and polytheism is
thus closely linked to a vision of cosmic history. Events culminate in a process
often referred to as frašgird, the final transfiguration of the cosmos, when
the forces of evil (and hence dualism) will be eliminated. This process is instigated
by the arrival of a future hero who is regarded as a posthumous son of
Zarathustra.
The climax of cosmic history can be expressed in terms of a final ordeal or a
final judgment. In a way, this can be regarded both as the culmination and a reversal
of the eschatological judgment that each and every human being is expected
to face after death. The number of merits and sins that each person has
gathered in the course of his or her life are held to be decisive for the progress
of the soul on its journey, which may lead to paradise, hell, or a place in between.
Probably, fear of hell and the promise of heaven were major factors
promoting religious commitment and ritual practice.
At least starting from the reign of the Achaemenians (6th to 4th centuries
bce), Zoroastrianism was the dominant set of religious traditions in pre-Islamic
Iranian history. The link between the religion and the land of Iran has
been given particular importance, especially since the Sassanian period (3rd to
7th centuries ce). Recent scholarship draws attention to many—partly local,
histories 204
popular, and lay—varieties of the traditions, while premodern written Zoroastrian
sources as products of male, priestly, and partly local discourse draw only
a partial picture of religious practices and mentalities. In the aftermath of the
Arabic invasion of Iran, groups of Zoroastrians have relocated to western India,
where they are known as Parsis (derived from the name Persia). Nowadays,
Zoroastrianism has around 125,000 adherents, mostly in India, Iran,
and North America.
m.st.
bibl.: Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism (3 vols.; Leiden, 1975–91). Albert
de Jong, Traditions of the Magi (Leiden, 1997). The Cambridge History of Iran (ed.
I. Gershevitch; Cambridge, 1985), 2.640–97. Michael Stausberg, Die Religion
Zarathushtras: Geschichte, Gegenwart, Rituale (3 vols.; Stuttgart, 2002–2003).
205 iran
Minoan and Mycenaean
Civilizations
Nanno Marinatos
Minoan Religion
Minoan culture flourished on the island of Crete from the 3rd to the 1st millennium
bce and from the 2nd millennium onward as a palatial society. At
that time, its writing system, its religious symbols, and its material culture
spread beyond the boundaries of Crete to encompass most of the islands of the
Aegean and the southern part of mainland Greece. Scholars debate whether
this spread of Minoan art, writing, and religion was only superficial and indicates
nothing more than trade connections or whether it reveals the network of
an empire. Whatever the case, the ubiquity of Minoan religious symbols is certainly
a result of power, perhaps even colonialism.
The basic mythology and theology of Minoan religion cannot be reconstructed
on the basis of texts. Such literary documents as have been left behind,
consisting of clay tablets inscribed in a language we call Linear A, are inaccessible
because the writing system is only partially understood and the language itself
is unknown. This leaves us with only archeological remains and images;
still, they yield a great deal of information.
Contemporary ideas about the Minoans go back to Sir Arthur Evans, who
excavated the palace of Knossos on Crete during the first decades of the 20th
century. Many of his observations were keen and have stood the test of time;
others need revision. One of the fallacies introduced by Evans into Minoan religion
is the dominant role of a Great Minoan Mother Goddess, with its concomitant
matriarchal society. A close scrutiny of the iconography of the numerous
extant rings and seals shows that the Minoan pantheon consisted of
several deities, among whom a youthful male god armed with a spear features
prominently. On a ring imprint found at Chania, a god is shown towering over
a town (Fig. 1). The hierarchy and relationship of gods within the pantheon is
difficult to decode from the images alone. On a ring impression from Knossos
(Fig 2.), the dominant deity is female, flanked by lions. She faces a male who is
probably a god rather than a worshiper. They may be a divine couple. On a
wall painting from the island of Thera (modern Santorini), a seated goddess receives
an offering of saffron from young girls.
Evans also overemphasized fertility as a central concern of Minoan cult, and
he characterized Minoan religious mentality as conceptually primitive; these
ideas were further developed in the middle of the 20th century by A. W. Persson
and the sober and systematic M. P. Nilsson. The unfortunate consequence
of this is that Minoan religion is still classified as primitive.
In reality, Minoan religion was the religion of a sophisticated and urbanized
palatial culture with a complex social hierarchy. It was not dominated by fertility
any more than any religion of the past or present has been, and it addressed
gender identity, rites of passage, and death. It is reasonable to assume that both
the organization and the rituals, even the mythology, resembled the religions of
Near Eastern palatial civilizations.
The palaces seem to have been at the core of a religious system that can be
termed theocratic. On the Knossos seal impression (Fig. 2), the palace is depicted
behind a goddess. It is multitiered and topped by “horns of consecration.”
Evans recognized that the horns were a symbol of sacred authority as
well as political power. The diffusion of this symbol outside Crete testifies to
the function of Minoan emblems as carriers of ideology.
207 minoan and mycenaean civilizations
Figure 1
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
There are no temples in Minoan Crete, although buildings associated with
cult have been found on mountaintops (“peak sanctuaries”). They were apparently
controlled by the palaces, but the varying quality of the votives shows
that common people and rural folk congregated there. Typical offerings are
statuettes of humans and animals, libation vessels, and portable offering tables.
The fall of the palatial system in Crete sometime after 1400 bce caused some
changes in the archeological record of religion. Rooms with benches and statues
make their appearance, which structurally resemble shrines both on mainland
Greece and in Syria and Palestine. Many terra-cotta statues of goddesses
date to this era; they stood on the benches, and offerings were made to them.
Mycenaean religion
The inhabitants of Greece during the 2nd millennium bce are called
Mycenaeans after the famous and impressive citadel of Mycenae, which was
excavated by Heinrich Schliemann at the end of the 19th century. Many similar
citadels existed in Greece, and there is enough homogeneity among them
that we are justified to speak of a Mycenaean culture. Mycenaean religion
shares many symbols with Minoan religion, from the period of the Shaft Graves
in the 16th century bce to the end of its existence. For example, Mycenaean
palaces were also topped by horns. One generally assumes that the borrowing
of symbols of authority demonstrates that the Mycenaean palaces took over
the enHtire theocratic Minoan system and adapted it to their culture. We also
suspect that there were dynastic links. After the 14th century bce, the Mycenaean
writing system, Linear B (most probably a derivative of Minoan Linhistories
208
Figure 2
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
ear A), is also found on Crete. The decipherment of this system revealed its language
as an early form of Greek; its syllabic structure, however, cannot have
been intrinsic to Greek, because the numerous consonant clusters that are
characteristic of Greek translate rather clumsily into Linear B.
There were other differences, as well, between the two cultures. Mycenaean
palaces included a megaron, a large central rectangular room with a hearth
in the center where offerings were made; only one palace on Crete, that of
Galatas, contained a hearth. Apart from the megaron in the palaces, modest
bench sanctuaries are found within the citadels and the towns. On the benches
of these small shrines were found terra-cotta figures of varying sizes; normally
there was a hearth in the center, showing that offerings took place there as
well. The bench sanctuary seems to have been a prevalent type throughout the
Aegean and the Levant in the 13th and 12th centuries bce. Sanctuaries existed
outside the Mycenaean palaces as well, on mountaintops (as on a hill near
Epidaurus) and within settlements. Recently such a settlement sanctuary has
been excavated on the peninsula of Methana (Saronic Gulf). Its main feature
was a hearth and the usual benches. Typical offerings in all Mycenaean sanctuaries
are terra-cotta figurines of varying sizes.
Linear B tablets of the 13th century bce, found in Thebes and Pylos on the
mainland and in Chania and Knossos on Crete, attest that the Mycenaeans had
an elaborate pantheon. These tablets were clay scrapbooks that survived decomposition
because they were accidentally burned when the palaces were
destroyed. The tablets record offerings to various gods, the titles of religious
officials, and the dispensation of various goods to diverse sanctuaries. Among
the gods mentioned are Poseidon, Zeus, Dionysus (attested only on Crete),
and Marineus. Goddesses named include Potnija, Ifimedia, Diwija, and Posidaeja
—the latter two being the female equivalents of Zeus and Poseidon, respectively.
Many names correspond closely to those of the later Greek gods of the 1st
millennium. Yet, the danger of projecting the Greek religious system backward
onto the Mycenaean world must be resisted; some divine names are unattested
later, while prominent Greek gods, such as Apollo and Aphrodite, seem to be
absent. Minoan and Mycenaean theocracies can be understood best as a subcategory
of Near Eastern theocracies. The archeological evidence suggests that
the Minoan and Mycenaean religions, despite their differences, had many common
elements: palace-centered cults, absence of temples, hearths, and animal
bones attesting to banqueting. Neither foreshadows the Greek polis religion.
bibl.: Robin Hägg, “Mycenaean Religion: The Helladic and the Minoan Components,”
in Linear B: A 1984 Survey (ed. Anna Morpurgo-Davies and Yves Duhoux;
Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1985), 203–25. Nanno Marinatos, Minoan Religion: Ritual,
Image, and Symbol (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993). Helène
Whittaker, Mycenaean Cult Buildings: A Study of Their Architecture and Function in
the Context of the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean (Monographs from the Norwegian
Institute at Athens; Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1997).
209 minoan and mycenaean civilizations
Greece
Jon Mikalson
For the student of antiquity, Greek religion seems, like Athena from the
head of Zeus, to spring forth suddenly, mature, and fully developed. And it
does so in the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod, commonly dated by scholars
to the mid- to late-8th century bce. In these poems appear most of the fundamental
features of Greek religion as we know them from later sources: polytheism;
anthropomorphism; the names, functions, and iconography of individual
gods; the forms, language, rituals, and occasions of sacrifices, prayers, and
dedications; the nature and forms of sanctuaries, altars, cult statues, and temples;
the nature and role of priests and priestesses; the rituals and purposes of
oath taking; divine concern with the guest/host relationship (xenia); and the
forms and occasions of divination by seers, bird augury, omens, oracles, and
dreams.
These elements of Greek religion are treated in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry
with such familiarity and consistency that one may assume that they had already
become conventional in this oral epic tradition. Moreover, if we view
this “epic” religion retrospectively in terms of what we know of later practiced
Greek religion from nonpoetic sources, it would appear that even this early
epic religion had already been subjected to considerable patterning, simplification
in some areas, expansion in others, and, in general terms, to a process of
Panhellenization. For example, the poet-singers selected and featured a few
from the hundreds of gods worshiped throughout Greece. They then largely
stripped the chosen few of their local identities and of many of the epithets and
peculiarities of ritual, cult, and even mythology that they would have had in
the individual cities in which they were originally worshiped. And, by expansion,
the poets constructed for the chosen few personal histories and an elaborate
Olympian family structure—with the result best exemplified in Hesiod’s
Theogony. And it is in this sense that Herodotus, who had no notion of an oral
epic tradition prior to these poets, could say that Hesiod and Homer “created a
divine genealogy for Greeks, gave their epithets to the gods, distributed their
offices and their skills, and marked out their outward appearances” (2.53.2).
The deities favored by the poetic tradition, now freed from limitations and
particularities of their local cults, could serve—within the poetic tradition—as
gods for all Greek audiences. Rituals in the epics were similarly stylized. The
ritual sequence for the sacrifice of a cow is firmly set in the Homeric tradition:
the gilding of the horns, the barley-corn preliminary offering, the ritual throat
cutting, the butchering, the burning of the thigh pieces on the altar, the eating
of the vital organs, the cooking, and the feast. But we know from later sources
that many major variations were possible, depending on the occasion, the deity,
and local traditions. In sacrifice, as in other rituals, the epic tradition selected
or created one ritual set, generalized it, and made it into a set scene.
We must assume a period of maturation for this “epic” portrayal of Greek
religion, to be measured perhaps in centuries. And that would bring us back to
the Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1125 to ca. 700 bce) at least, perhaps even to the end
of the Mycenaean age. And, second, if the development of epic religion is
somewhat as I have described, then the relationship of the Greek religion
known from the Homeric epics to practiced religion of Homeric or later times
is very complex. Homeric religion would ultimately derive from practiced cult
and would preserve many of its features, but it would also differ from it in
some major elements. And so the religion that springs upon us in such a full,
complete, and appealing form in the 8th-century bce epics is a religion significantly
different from that practiced by the Greek peoples of that or any
time. And, to further complicate the issue, the epics enjoyed such popularity
among the Greeks that they, in turn, could influence local cults and certainly
shaped later literary and artistic representations and philosophical discussions
of what was considered to be Greek religion.
If we attempt to look beyond the Homeric period, to the prehistory of Greek
religion, some isolated details emerge, enough to suggest that some defining
elements of Greek religion do in fact reach back to the Mycenaean period.
Zeus alone of the gods is unmistakably Indo-European, etymologically linked
with the Roman Jupiter and the Dyaus pitar of the Rig Veda. Some aristocratic
Greeks claimed genealogies that went back to a divine ancestor in the 16th
century bce. And the Linear B tablets from Knossos, Mycenae, Chania, and
Pylos (all probably from about 1200 bce) contain the familiar names of Zeus,
Athena, Poseidon, Hera, Hermes, and Dionysus intermixed with deities unfamiliar
to us. For the Dark Ages, there has been considerable speculation about
what archeological finds at scattered places may or may not reveal about
change or continuity in Greek religious concepts and about the social and political
meaning of the placing and design of sanctuaries and the changing types
of dedications. Much of this discussion attempts to place religion in the equally
theoretical models for the social and political development of the early citystate.
The sites are few, the interpretations of finds often uncertain, and the theories
many and strongly contested.
Archeological finds do, however, indicate a sharp increase in religious buildings
and dedications at the end of the Dark Ages. As one example among many
possible, 10 apparently religious dedications from Olympia are dated to the
11th and 10th centuries bce, 21 to the 9th century, and 837 to the 8th century.
211 greece
Monumental temples begin to appear only in the second half of the 8th century,
with that of Hera on Samos, of Apollo at Eretria, and those of Artemis
and Hera on Delos. Perhaps the earliest surviving cult statues—seemingly distinct
from the usual votive dedications—come from Dreros on Crete, about
700 bce. Religion shared in the renaissance of Greek culture in the 8th century,
and it is noteworthy that many of the elements appearing first in the archeological
record then—temples, demarcated sanctuaries, altars, dedications, and
cult statues—are also well-established features in the Iliad and Odyssey. This
may suggest that what appears in the archeological record at this time had antecedents—how
far back it is impossible to know—in more-perishable materials
such as wood and mud-brick. But it is unmistakable that the most distinctive
features of Greek religion take their definitive form—in both literature and
material remains—as part of the 8th-century bce renaissance.
Pollution and purification
The Greek concept of pollution—an impure state resulting from murder, sexual
intercourse, childbirth, or contact with the dead, negatively affecting relations
with the divine world and requiring purification by time or through rituals—is
at best latently apparent in concerns for physical “cleanliness” before
ritual activities and the exclusion of murderers from society in Homeric epic
and in the injunctions of Hesiod’s Works and Days. Ritual purification for
murder is first unmistakably attested in literature in Achilles’ purification in the
Aethiopis (mid-7th century bce[?]). The concept that the dead cause pollution
of the sacred is first documented in Pisistratus’s exclusion of tombs from areas
even overlooking Apollo’s sanctuary on Delos in the mid-6th century. Both
presume preexisting traditions, and the question remains open whether purification
rituals did not exist in Homeric times or were, for some reason, suppressed
by the epic poets. Whenever introduced, pollution remained a live issue
until the end of the Hellenistic period and beyond, with only pollution concerning
murder apparently beginning to lose some of its efficacy in the 4th
century bce.
Heroes
Heroes, individuals who received public cult after their deaths, form a second
class of deities in the Greek tradition, and the first cults of named heroes date
to the end of the 8th century and are associated with Homeric heroes, the
best examples being those of Menelaus and Helen near Sparta. Hero cults
have been claimed for a few 10th- and 9th-century sites, and some scholars
see traces of them in the Iliad (e.g., 2.546–51). But the real development of
these cults is in the period 750–650 bce, a movement perhaps influenced by
the increasing spread and popularity of the Homeric epics. Many, perhaps
histories 212
most, such cults were not, however, devoted to Homeric heroes, and some
cultic heroes and heroines even remained nameless. It is unknown whether
these cults were antecedents, by-products, or parallel developments with the
cults of the Homeric heroes. Some heroes were linked with Olympian deities,
as Erechtheus with Athena at Athens, Hyacinthus with Apollo at Sparta, and
Pelops with Zeus at Olympia, and in some cases the hero may have been established
first. Hero cults were highly localized, closely bound to the presumed
tomb of the hero, and a hero’s cult could be moved only by the transfer of
his bones. A few heroes such as Heracles and Asclepius broke local boundaries
and became Panhellenic, usually in the process becoming assimilated
to gods in cult and ritual. Once established, these hero cults persisted throughout
antiquity. In classical times occasional individuals, such as the “tyrant
slayers” Harmodius and Aristogeiton in Athens or the athlete Cleomedes of
Astypalaea, were given such cults, usually for outstandingly beneficial or fearsome
actions. Heroes might be benefactors, but theirs was still a cult of the
dead, and about many of them, particularly the old ones, lingered an atmosphere
of fear and uncanniness—well reflected in the cult that Sophocles creates
for Oedipus at Athens in his Oedipus at Colonus.
Polis religion
It is not until the mid-6th century that we have sufficient historical, archeological,
and epigraphical records to develop a sense of the underlying structure of
state religion in a Greek polis, and that polis is Athens. We find cults in the
urban center: that of Athena Polias, patroness of the city, associated with the
hero Erechtheus in her temple on the Acropolis; that of Athena Nike with her
altar, also on the Acropolis; that of Dionysus with the very beginnings of tragedy,
now or soon to be situated in the Dionysus sanctuary and theater on the
south slope of the Acropolis; in the “old city” southwest of the Acropolis, a
sanctuary of Apollo with ties to Delphi and, under construction, a major temple
of Zeus Olympios. In the developing new Agora northwest of the Acropolis
was placed the altar of the twelve gods, at the imagined geographical center of
Athens. In the Agora were also sanctuaries of Zeus Soter/Eleutherios and of
Apollo Patroös, the putative ancestor of Athenians and all Ionian Greeks.
Some cults in the rural areas of Athens were now assuming statewide importance,
for example, the cult of Artemis Brauronia in the township Brauron and
that of Demeter at Eleusis with its annual Mysteries, and there are indications
of the state laying claim to these by building subsidiary sanctuaries of each on
or near the Acropolis. And, after the establishment of democracy in 508/507
bce, ten from one hundred local heroes were selected by the Delphic Oracle to
give their names and protection to each of the ten tribes into which the Athenian
polity was now divided. Part of the democratizing process was to bring
into the state administrative structure the 139 individual townships (demes)
that made up Athens, and later calendars and records of their sacrifices and festivals
suggest that already in the 6th century rural demes had, for their resi-
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dents, a rich program of religious activities. Some centered on local gods and
heroes, others mirrored the cults of state deities.
Festivals
In the 6th century, statewide religious festivals (heortai) are introduced or elaborated
in Athens. Among them, the Panathenaia for Athena and the City
Dionysia included processions, sacrifices, hymns, and dances. Athena’s festival
featured a variety of athletic, equestrian, and musical competitions, and at the
City Dionysia competitions in dithyrambic poetry, tragedy, and, later, comedy
were held. Only citizens could fully participate in most such festivals, but the
Panathenaia was truly Panathenian, with designated roles for male and female
citizens of different ages, resident aliens, and even slaves. Such festivals, ranging
over several days, combined communal worship of the deity with the pleasures
of holiday feasting and the entertainment that the games offered, and
they remained a feature of Greek religion throughout antiquity.
Priests
In these times and for centuries to come, most religious (in contrast to financial)
matters of individual cults, even those of the state on the Acropolis, remained
largely in the control of aristocratic families, with the priesthood of the
cult passed from generation to generation within each family. Except at major
religious centers such as Delphi and Eleusis, a Greek priest served part time,
on occasions of sacrifices and festivals, with some responsibility for cult affairs,
but possessing no esoteric religious knowledge and not subject to special restrictions
on his daily life. In democratic Athens, priests of new cults were
selected by lot for annual terms, and in several Asia Minor Greek cities
priesthoods were auctioned off annually. Greek religion is distinguished by a
lack of a central authority based on either a canonical text or a professional
priesthood. State supervision, when it existed, consisted largely of lay committees
overseeing the financial affairs of individual cults, of the legislative assembly
approving the introduction of new cults, and of the courts prosecuting
cases of impiety.
Diversity
We have the most knowledge about Athens, but the particular alignment of deities
and their functions at Athens cannot serve as a model for all states.
Epigraphical and historical evidence indicates that, in matters small and large,
religion developed in various different ways in other Greek cities. On Naxos,
for example, the patron deity of the state was Dionysus, not Athena, and the
histories 214
Naxians would have had a quite different religious calendar featuring somewhat
different kinds of festivals at different times of the year. Rare was the cult,
such as that of Demeter Thesmophoros, that was practiced in much the same
form by all Greeks. As ethnic, cultural, political, and economic conditions varied
from city to city over the centuries reaching back to the Dark Ages, so too,
in these relatively isolated little countries, the specific deities worshiped, the rituals
of this worship, and the functions of these deities came to differ, or, perhaps
better, original differences were maintained.
The local nature and diverse functions of Greek deities are often revealed by
the epithets attached to their names. The Athenian Artemis Brauronia (of the
deme Brauron) differed in major respects from Artemis Ephesia (of Ephesus) in
cult, function, and appearance. In Athens, Zeus Ktesios (of the stores) was represented
in the storeroom of each house as a pot wrapped in wool, but Zeus
Eleutherios/Soter had a state sanctuary and statue in the Agora and protected
the “freedom” of the city as a whole. Sanctuaries of Zeus Katabaites (coming
down) marked spots hit by lightning, and Zeus Meilichios, a chthonic figure,
was pictured as a bearded snake. Each was worshiped as a distinct deity at a
separate place and time and with a separate function and ritual. How they each
became associated with Zeus in Athens is unknown, but for Zeus and all Greek
deities the epithet often reveals more than the Homeric name about their cults
and functions.
Relationships between human and divine
To judge by prayers and dedications, what the Greeks sought from their gods,
in general terms, was fertility of crops, animals, and selves; economic prosperity;
good health; and safety of self, family, and country. These purposes were
accomplished by establishing with the deities a relationship based on charis. A
charis was a “favor” that was expected to be repaid, and the mutual exchange
of favors or gifts is at the heart of successful human / divine relationships. This
is a subtler and more complex relationship—based on aristocratic rather than
mercantile values—than the formula do ut des (I give so that you may give), often
used to describe this relationship, implies. The model for the relationship
of a human to a god is that of a good subject to a beneficent king, a relationship
in which “gifts” of very different types and values might be exchanged
for a variety of purposes. The gifts that the Greek gods give are successes in
those areas listed above. The gifts that humans give include sanctuaries, sacrifices,
dedications, hymns, and dances. These gifts are intended to reflect the
“honor” (timÁ), not “love” or “fear,” in which the humans hold these deities
for the power they have and for the gifts they give. The gods, in turn, “rejoice”
(chairein) in these honoring gifts. These gifts of humans are, in addition,
“adornment” (kosmos) for the deities and their sanctuaries, and much of the
finest Greek art, architecture, and poetry results from the Greek inclination to
make their gifts to the gods beautiful.
215 greece
In epic and tragedy, the relationships between humans and gods are often
fractured, by gross impieties on the human side or by capricious and unjust behavior
on the divine side. In everyday life, however, the Greeks seem remarkably
confident that a good relationship between humans and gods is the normal
situation, interrupted only temporarily by occasions of pollution or minor
religious oversights, both of which can be corrected by rituals or additional
gifts acknowledging the worth of the deity. The foundation myths of cults usually
stress two elements: the power of the deity and the specific benefit that
the god, of his or her own accord, is offering to humans, for Apollo of Delphi
the oracle, for Dionysus of Thebes wine, and for Eleusinian Demeter grain.
And in return, the gods expect “honor” in the form of cult. Some etiological
myths, as for Artemis, put more stress on the dangerous side of the deity who,
when offended, demands cultic acts as appeasement. But in both cases the humans,
through cult, establish and maintain with the deity a mutually beneficial
relationship based on charis and timÁ. And, finally, a human’s relationships
with the deities worshiped in life are severed by death. Apart from a few mythical
figures of massive impiety, individuals were neither rewarded nor punished
in the afterlife for religious behavior in this life. If such rewards and punishments
did not fall on individuals during their lifetimes, they fell on their descendants,
if on anyone. The hundreds of surviving Greek epitaphs suggest that
the Greeks expected little of the afterlife, but the concept of a blessed afterlife
was known to some: initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries were said to have
“sweeter hopes concerning the end of life and all eternity,” and from the 6th
century on, some private cults, associated with the historical Pythagoras and
the legendary Orpheus, promised to their devotees a more blessed afterlife as a
reward for following prescribed behavior in this life. It is unknown, however,
how widely such beliefs about the afterlife were held.
Transmission, transformation, and conservation
From about the mid-8th to the early 6th century bce, the “old” Greek cities
sent throughout the Mediterranean colonies of their own citizens, and these
colonies then often sent out colonies of their own. These colonists, for example,
Corinthians to Syracuse in Sicily and Therans (themselves colonists of
Sparta) to Cyrene in North Africa, initially transplanted some cults and festivals
from their homelands in their new cities, and this was the prime cause of
the spread of Greek religion throughout the Aegean and Mediterranean areas.
But in the move some elements changed. Some cults, especially those of heroes
and of deities with connections to local springs and such things, could not be
transferred from the motherland. In place of the hero cults of their homelands,
the colonists established hero cults of their founders. The colonists also encountered
in their new lands indigenous cults, some of which they brought into
the pantheon of their new state, such as the hero cult of the Argonaut Idmon at
Herakleia Pontika. After their own period of development, the cults of a colhistories
216
ony would come to differ in significant ways from those of the motherland.
And so we have, even at this early stage, two types of state religion: that long
established in the “old” Greek cities, with a multitude of well-entrenched
heroes, local cults, and Olympian deities, and that in colonies, perhaps initially
with fewer cults but surely more open to innovation and integration with indigenous
cults.
Once established, the religious structures, particularly in the old cities, appear
remarkably resistant to change. In part, this was due to a high degree of
religious conservatism, often expressed in the necessity to worship the gods “in
the ancestral ways.” These ancestral ways would be in part preserved by the
aristocratic families that controlled these cults and, for the state, from Solon’s
time in Athens, in official calendars of religious activities and sacred laws, often
inscribed in stone. Contributing to this stability was the characteristic that
deities and cults were not closely identified with one economic or social, or political
faction within the city and hence were remarkably unaffected by economic
and political tribulations that most Greek cities experienced. The priests
and priestesses of most cults were aristocrats, but these same cults provided
benefits, not only good relations with the divine world but also banquets and
games, to the whole citizenry. And the costs of these benefits were paid sometimes
by the wealthy, sometimes from the state treasury. Each citizen group
thus benefited in some significant way, and hence the cults remained outside
the clashes among these groups.
The greatest physical danger to religious cults came from outside the citystate,
from foreign invaders such as the Persians Darius and Xerxes in the early
5th century and Philip V of Macedon in the 2nd century bce. Darius promised
revenge on Greek sanctuaries for the Greek burning of the temple of Kubaba in
Sardis in 498, and for the next eighteen years he and his successor Xerxes ravaged
and burned all Greek sanctuaries that came under the control of their armies,
including most of the sanctuaries in Asia Minor, many of those in central
Greece, and, of course, all those of Athens. In 200 bce, the Macedonian king
Philip V ravaged the Athenian countryside as he had other areas in Greece, apparently
destroying beyond repair the hundreds, perhaps thousands of sanctuaries
there. Within two generations of the Persian Wars most of the Greek
sanctuaries had been rebuilt, often with considerably greater splendor. Times
were, however, much worse in 2nd century bce Greece, and the sanctuaries destroyed
by Philip V disappear from the historical and epigraphical record.
Many have seen a threat to the foundations of Greek religion in the speculations
concerning religion in the late 6th and 5th centuries by the pre-Socratic
philosophers such as Xenophanes and the Sophists such as Prodicus. They and
their successors in philosophy offered criticisms of the gods in terms of morality,
proposed euhemeristic or other theories about the origins of gods, and theorized
new types of deities more abstracted from human life. One could also
include here the criticisms of deities found in Athenian tragedy (as in Euripides’
Hippolytus and The Trojan Women) and old comedy (e.g., Aristophanes’
Birds). But these criticisms of both philosophy and literature were directed al-
217 greece
most solely against the gods of Homeric epic and rarely if ever touched the
gods and rites of local cult. There is no indication from the historical evidence
for practiced cult in Athens that family, local, or state cults suffered any loss of
attention or support as a result.
The changes we see in classical and early Hellenistic Greek religion are incremental
and not revolutionary. Cities with extensive trading interests often set
up small sanctuaries in other countries for their own traveling or temporarily
resident citizens to use, as the Samians did of their Hera in the Egyptian trading
center of Naucratis, or as the Athenians allowed the Thracians to do
in Piraeus for their goddess Bendis. In the late 5th and the 4th centuries,
Asclepius, who offered new and welcome means of physical healing, was imported
from Epidaurus into many cities, among them Athens in 420 bce, just
five years after the end of the plague that had devastated Athens. And a few
new hero cults were created, as we have seen. In a typical Greek city the pantheon
thus grew, but very slightly and very slowly, without any apparent neglect
of preexisting cults.
The rise and dominance of the Macedonian kings, beginning with Philip II
and Alexander the Great in the mid-4th century bce and continuing with the
line of their successors in Macedonia, Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt, brought major
changes to the Greek world, and religion in the Hellenistic period reflected
some of these changes. These Macedonian monarchs patronized Greek religious
centers and in most of the hundreds of cities under their control received
divine honors, with cults, priests, statues, and often elaborate festivals in their
names. Through these cults the individual cities could express their gratitude
for the favors large and small that these new kings, almost greater than human
to their contemporaries, bestowed. These new cults did not displace, but apparently
were added to or linked to existing cults and festivals. The Ptolemies,
Alexander’s successors in Egypt, seem most systematically to have manipulated
cult for political purposes, with the Hellenization of the indigenous Sarapis to
unify their subjects of Greek, Macedonian, and Egyptian origin and then with
the exportation of this deity to international centers.
Foreign cults
So long as Greek citizens were bound to their cities, religion for individuals
and cities remained quite stable. But the social, economic, military, and political
conditions under Macedonian and then Roman domination broke down
national barriers and caused or allowed the movement and temporary or permanent
relocation of many Greeks throughout the Aegean and Mediterranean
areas. As traders, sailors, mercenary soldiers, governmental officials, performing
artists, and refugees, Greeks were exposed to and participated in “foreign”
cults, either cults of other Greek cities or, more commonly, Egyptian, Syrian,
and other non-Greek cults—cults of peoples who now too were moving freely
around the Mediterranean world. Delos, which became a major international
histories 218
trading center after 167/166 bce, epitomizes this development. Apollo’s island
was soon filled with a bewildering variety of Egyptian, Syrian, Anatolian,
local Greek, and Roman cults, and Delos provides extensive epigraphical evidence
of Greeks of many cities now participating and officiating in Egyptian
cults, Syrians in Greek cults, and Romans in cults of all nationalities. International
centers such as Delos and the new cities founded by Macedonian kings
with heterogeneous populations, such as Antioch, became the melting pots for
Greek religion, breaking down distinctions between Greek and foreign deities
and rituals and between nationalities of worshipers. In these cities Greek deities
were assimilated to foreign deities (what is often called syncretism), foreign
deities were given Greek names, and foreign cult structures were adopted by
some Greek cults. As traveling and emigrant Greeks returned to their home cities,
they brought with them their new deities, and these were gradually added
to the pantheon of their homelands. Again, the “old” Greek cities of the mainland
seem most resistant to the changes, but Greek cities in Asia Minor, physically
closer to the homelands of these “new” foreign cults and more open to influences
from indigenous peoples, appear more readily and completely to have
accepted the new mix of foreign cults that came to characterize late Hellenistic
and Greco-Roman religion.
bibl.: W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). F. Graf, “Religion und
Mythologie im Zusammenhang mit Homer: Forschung und Ausblick,” in Zweihundert
Jahre Homer-Forschung (ed. J. Latacz; Stuttgart/Leipzig, 1991), 331–62. J. D.
Mikalson, Religion in Hellenistic Athens (Berkeley, 1998). M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte
der griechischen Religion (2 vols.; 2nd/3rd ed.; Munich, 1961–67).
219 greece
Etruria
Olivier de Cazanove
Etruria is, geographically, the region of Italy that lies between the
Tyrrhenian Sea to the west, the Apuan Alps to the north, and the river Tiber to
the east and south. On the left bank of the river lie Umbria, Sabine territory,
and Latium. Within this boundary—but also, to some extent, in adjacent areas
temporarily under Etruscan influence, the Po Plain and Campania—there developed,
starting in the archaic period, a group of flourishing city-states. These
were independent, but linked by a common cultural identity cemented among
other things by a shared language. Etruscan is a non-Indo-European language
whose interpretation still poses serious problems. It is clearly distinguished not
only from Latin (and related dialects, such as Faliscan) but also from the three
“Sabellic” languages, South Picenian, Umbrian, and Oscan. All these local languages
disappeared once Italy was incorporated by Rome (between the Social
War in the early 1st century bce and the Principate of Augustus). But the military
submission of Etruria (as of the rest of Italy) to Rome had been achieved
long before Tarquinia, Veii, and Volsinii (Orvieto) were decisively defeated in
the period 273–264 bce, at the same time as Rome extended its power over
south Italy (capture of Tarentum, 272 bce).
The history of Etruria, and especially its religion, presents formidable problems
of analysis for modern scholars. There is no surviving Etruscan literature.
We are therefore dependent on Roman authors who wrote after (sometimes
long after) Etruria had come under Roman control. As a result they possibly
committed anachronisms or even outright errors. Their accounts were strongly
influenced by various factors in Rome’s relations with Etruria, among other
things by the tradition of Etruscan kings of Rome. Partly as a result of this,
the Romans themselves projected the origin of many of their own religious institutions
onto the Etruscans, while at the same time also presenting Etruscan
religion and culture as significantly different from their own. Etruscans, for
example, were often assumed to have particular expertise in divination, and
the Etruscan diviners known as haruspices were still being consulted by the
Romans for specialized divinatory advice far into the period of the Roman
Empire.
Modern studies of Etruscan religion have for a long time been dominated
by the idea that it was a religion not so much “of the book,” but “of books”:
libri haruspicini, libri fulgurales, and libri rituals—that is, books of haruspicy,
which concerned the practice of divination by the examination of entrails;
books concerning the religious interpretation of lightning; and books concerning
religious ceremonies. This disciplina Etrusca (Etruscan discipline or
Etruscan religious science) comprised the systematic account of techniques of
divination and of the interpretation of different kinds of divine signs. It was
supposed to originate from divine revelation, brought to humankind by the
mythical infant Tages, who emerged from the furrow of a plowed field in the
territory of the Etruscan town Tarquinia; he was preternaturally wise and, although
newborn, had a paradoxically elderly appearance. However, we now
possess only fragments of the disciplina Etrusca, mostly summaries or later
elaborations given by Roman writers, and modern scholars have tried to reconstruct
these books. In the past, scholars often tried to make links between
them and what was known of divination in the ancient Near East, an idea
based on the theory (suggested by the Greek historian Herodotus, but now
largely abandoned) that the origin of the Etruscans went back to Lydia, in Asia
Minor. They also tried to elucidate the fragmentary textual evidence through
visual images and material objects—for example, a famous bronze mirror with
an engraved design showing the prophet Chalcas (= Greek Calchas) examining
the liver of an animal or the bronze model of a liver from Piacenza, which
is of relatively late date (2nd to 1st century bce) but seems to summarize the
traditional knowledge of the Etruscan haruspices (one side of the model marks
forty sections of the liver, each containing the name of a divinity).
This line of research, which has been intensively investigated for more than a
century, does not seem likely, for the moment, to produce any radically new insights,
since there is little possibility of new literary evidence. There are a few
major epigraphical texts. Most significant, longest, and most frequently cited
are the so-called Capua Tile and the wrapping of the Zagreb mummy: the
Capua Tile comprises some sixty lines of text inscribed on terra-cotta, found at
Capua in south Italy and probably dating to the first half of the 5th century
bce; the mummy wrapping, now in the collection of the Zagreb Museum, in
Croatia, was made out of an Etruscan linen book (liber linteus), most likely of
the 3rd or 2nd century bce, which was cut into strips and reused in the 1st century
bce or ce to wrap an Egyptian mummy. Recent advances in the decipherment
of the Etruscan language has helped our understanding of both these
texts, but there is still no definitive interpretation. It is generally agreed that
both the Capua Tile and the Zagreb mummy wrapping contain Etruscan religious
calendars, including details of prescribed offerings, but there are still
many uncertainties about their precise translation and significance. There is
221 etruria
also evidence of numerous Etruscan images (relief sculptures, mirrors, tomb
paintings) representing gods and myths; but these can be tricky to interpret because
they appear largely to follow Greek iconographic conventions.
Future advances in our knowledge of Etruscan religion are most likely to
come from archeology. There is increasing interest in the physical settings in
which religious cult took place. This approach has the advantage of pinning
down rituals and divinities to spatial contexts and of showing that they cannot
be understood outside the city (and its territory) whose identity they helped
to define. It follows from this that there is no single Etruscan religion, but a
multiplicity of Etruscan religions, each one belonging to its own community:
Caere, Tarquinia, Vulci, Veii, and so on. True, various “federal” cults linked
the different cities, such as the sanctuary of Voltumna (“the principal deity of
Etruria” according to the Roman writer Varro) in the territory of Volsinii,
which also served as the setting for the annual assembly of the various Etruscan
peoples (sometimes referred to as the “twelve peoples of Etruria”). And
the same major divine figures were certainly to be found in various cities
(Tinia [identified as the equivalent of Roman Jupiter], Uni-Juno, TuranVenus)—the
names of some clearly betraying traces of borrowing from the
Greek world (Aritmi-Artemis, Charun-Charon) or from the Italic (MenrvaMinerva).
But they also appear to have had a distinctive role in each of the
cities where they were worshiped. Graffiti on vases, for example, refer to
Fufluns Pachies Velclthi (Fufluns Bacchius of Vulci): these give the god Fufluns
a Greek epithet, defining him as Dionysus, the master of the thiasos; but the
reference to the city, Velclthi, also ties the god to that particular location.
Important recent work is also being carried out in the excavation or the reexamination
of major sanctuaries that put a particular monumental stamp
on the urban spaces of Etruria and the territories of the cities with a characteristic
form of monumental religious building—notably the great “Tuscan” temples
with three cellae (cult chambers), later codified in Vitruvius’s typology
of architecture. But at the same time, some of these sanctuaries were widely
attended by people who came from every part of the Mediterranean world and
its different religious traditions: Greeks from Ionia and Aegina at Gravisca,
the Greek emporion (port of trade) at Gravisca, Carthaginians at Pyrgi, the
emporion at Caere. The cultural complexity is illustrated by the Carthaginians
calling the patron deity of Pyrgi “Astarte,” the Etruscans “Uni,” and Greek
sources “Leucothea” or “Eileithyia.” The archeological investigation of the
sanctuaries and cemeteries of Etruria—the layout of temples, altars and associated
structures, iconography, the distribution of votive offerings, analysis of
bone remains—has brought advances in our understanding of public and private
ritual (although the evidence has sometimes been overinterpreted).
The state of the evidence and recent directions in research are similar if we
turn to the religion of the other early Italic peoples on the peninsula of Italy
outside Rome. Here too there can be no question of reducing the many different
systems into one single religion. Of course, there were similarities between
them (especially in the case of adjacent areas where cultures were in general
histories 222
closely related); but they also had their own distinct and independent characteristics.
A striking illustration of this independence, from the Roman perspective,
is found in Rome’s official refusal to consult the oracle of Fortuna at
Praeneste (only twenty-three miles from Rome) until 241 bce; that would have
meant having recourse to a “foreign” oracle.
The literary sources (which are rarely earlier than the reign of the first Roman
emperor Augustus, 31 bce–14 ce) tend to reflect the distorting view of
Greeks and Romans on the native cults of Italy; these writers almost always reduce
indigenous religion to a series of natural curiosities—the sulfurous waters
of the sanctuary of the goddess Mefitis at Ampsanctus in Hirpine country in
southern Italy; or the “floating island” of Aquae Cutiliae in Sabine territory,
consecrated to the deity “Victory.” This represents very much the point of view
of ancient travelers (“tourists” might almost be the best term) or of learned antiquarians;
one thinks, for example, of the Roman poet Ovid participating in
the traditional procession in honor of Juno in the country of the Falisci, between
Etruria and Sabine territory (Amores 3.13).
Inscriptions give rather more information on rituals and the structure of local
pantheons: the seven tablets from Gubbio (ancient Iguvium), commonly
known as the Iguvine Tables, written in Umbrian between 200 and 70 bce; the
bronze tablet, written in Oscan, “of the enclosed garden [hurz])” of Kerres
(Ceres) near Agnone in Samnium; the fifty-eight votive inscriptions from a
cult site of Mefitis at Rossano di Vaglio in Lucania, which flourished between
the mid-4th century bce and the 1st century bce or ce—all of these reveal
hierarchized systems of divine power, in which divinities were defined, one
against the other, in a complicated and sometimes obscure series of epithets.
We find, for example, at Agnone a “Cererian” Hercules and at Rossano a
“Mefitanian” Mamers (= Mars); presumably these two major Italic divinities,
Hercules and Mamers, were here the “guests” of Ceres and Mefitis, and so
in some senses subordinated to the titular deity of the sanctuary. But some formulations
are even more complicated. At Gubbio, among the twenty-nine divinities
cited, are two, Prestota and Torsa, defined as “Cerfian of Martian
Cerfus.” This expression links them to the god Cerfus and indirectly to Mars—
although it is hard now to unravel what exactly this double dependence entails.
The Iguvine Tables also document a set of rituals (taking the auspices, sacrifice)
that took place usually at the gates of the city on behalf of either the community
as a whole (touta) or the Brotherhood of the Atiedii (often compared to
the Arval Brethren at Rome).
As in Etruria, the excavation of sanctuaries has multiplied our knowledge of
the religious systems. Cult places were often open to the sky, as in the paved
courtyard closed off by a long altar at Rossano di Vaglio. Major temples were
built, in Samnium for example, notably at Pietrabbondante; but these were a
relatively late phenomenon, occurring between the second Punic War and the
Social War (late 3rd to early 1st century bce). After the Social War, when most
of Italy was incorporated within the Roman state, some elements of the cults
of the erstwhile Italic allies of Rome survived in the towns (municipia) and col-
223 etruria
onies of Italy—although restricted and controlled both politically and religiously.
“What we used to call ‘municipal cults’ [municipalia sacra],” noted the
Roman writer Festus, “are those that the peoples concerned used always to
practice, before receiving Roman citizenship, and which the [sc. Roman]
pontifices wanted them to continue to observe and practice in the traditional
way.” It was at this price that the cults of independent Italy enjoyed a sort of
survival. But in fact they had become Roman.
bibl.: O. de Cazanove, “La penisola italiana prima della conquista romana,” in Storia
dell’Italia religiosa, vol. 1: L’antichità e il medioevo (ed. A. Vauchez; Rome/Bari, 1993),
9–39. G. Colonna (ed.), Santuari d’Etruria (Milan, 1985). F. Gaultier and D. Briquel
(eds.), Les plus religieux des hommes: État de la recheche sur la religion étrusque (Actes
du colloque international, Paris 1992) (Paris, 1997). J.-R. Jannot, Devins, dieux et
démons: Regards sur la religion de l’Étrurie antique (Paris, 1998). A. Prosdocimi, “Le
religioni degli Italici,” in Italia: Omnium terrarum parens (Milan, 1989), 477–545. G.
Radke, Die Götter Altitaliens (2nd ed.; Münster, 1979). H. Rix, Sabellische Texte (Heidelberg,
2002).
histories 224
Rome
John North
Rome and the development of its empire
In the centuries before the lifetime of Julius Caesar (100–44 bce), what we
now call Italy was a patchwork of different languages, cultures, and traditions.
When Rome was founded, perhaps nine centuries before Caesar’s birth, the
first inhabitants of the site shared a common language and cultural tradition
with just a handful of similar communities (we should say villages) in part of
what we now call Latium. Around them, both at the time and for at least three
centuries afterward, there were more powerful and numerous groups in central
Italy: tribes speaking Oscan (a language related to Latin but distinct) to the
east and south, Etruscans to the north, Greeks in new cities founded in the
south and Sicily from the 8th and 7th centuries bce onward. The history of
Rome’s early development and expansion was scarcely recorded at the time,
and all but the barest outlines had been long forgotten when Roman history
began to be written up in the 2nd century bce, although Greek historians had
noticed the rise of this new power in the west in the previous century.
We can reconstruct, with a good deal of help from the archeology of the region
and from a handful of surviving documents, some of the key turning
points. By the 6th century bce, Rome was a substantial power with a developed
urban center and contacts widely spread through Italy and beyond. In
common with other parts of Italy, the Romans abolished their original system
of kingship and by the 5th century bce were being ruled through officials
elected for annual terms of office. This is the system called “the Republic,”
which lasted until the 1st century bce. It allowed all citizens to have a limited
say in decision-making, although its working was dominated by an oligarchy,
largely hereditary, drawn from rich and powerful family groups. By the early
3rd century bce, the Romans had established a highly successful military system
and were in control of a large Italian empire, including south and much of
central Italy, though not yet the Po Valley. At this stage, they were sending col-
onies—newly created cities—into many parts of Italy, but other areas were still
self-governing, maintaining their own traditions and obliged only to provide
troops to fight in Rome’s ever-increasing wars.
The Roman Empire, as we think of it today, was created in a long series
of wars with Carthage in North Africa, with the great kingdoms of the Hellenistic
world, and with the local peoples of Spain. By the time of Caesar’s birth,
Roman power, sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, was established around
much of the Mediterranean and deep into Asia Minor. In an astonishing period
of sustained aggression from about 70 bce until the turn of the era, Rome
came to control militarily and to impose methodical government over the
whole of western, central, and eastern Europe and the Near and Middle East as
far as Syria and Iraq. Three men dominated this history of expansion: Caesar’s
great rival Pompey, who imposed Roman rule in much of the East (66–61 bce);
Caesar himself, who campaigned in France (58–49 bce); and his adopted son
Caesar Octavianus, who took the title Augustus, whom we think of as the first
emperor of Rome, and who supervised the pushing of Roman boundaries to
the Rhine and the Danube.
So far, the story is one of ruthless and highly successful imperialism. For the
historian of Roman religion this tale of triumph and expansion from humble
beginnings creates major problems. First, our knowledge of the early stages of
the history is hopelessly inadequate, since our sources of information come
from hundreds of years later than the religious situation we are trying to reconstruct;
second, as the empire expands from Latium to Italy and from Italy to
the greater part of the ancient world, the impact on the nature of Roman society,
on their cultural inheritance, and even on their identity as Romans is profound.
To take the most obvious example, the population of the city of Rome
evidently expanded dramatically in the last three centuries bce; processions
and rituals that once would have been known to all citizens must have been
virtually inaccessible to many by the time that Rome had a million inhabitants.
We can find areas of continuity and trace the sequence of changes to a limited
extent. But, all too often, theories depend on an a priori decision as to what
should be thought traditionally Roman and what should not, about which
scholars have continuing debates and divisions.
A further complication is implied by the political transformation that accompanied
the growth of the empire. The republican system was believed to
have lasted since the late 6th century bce, though much changed in the course
of centuries; but the last century bce saw not only an unprecedented rate of expansion,
but also the rise of increasingly severe conflict and divisions within
the ruling oligarchy. The system had always depended on the leading men accepting
restraints on their ambition, but the men of the 1st century were no
longer willing to limit their desire for money, power, and fame. The result was
civil conflict and the emergence, in the end, of a single dominant family led by a
single dominant ruler. Augustus sought to veil this dominance by operating
through republican traditions and powers. But historians, both ancient and
modern, have treated the result as a monarchy and have called Augustus and
histories 226
his successors “emperors,” with the result that the word empire came to mean
both the vast territories over whom the Romans had come to rule and the new
regime in Rome that had replaced the old Republic.
The city and its gods
The gods and goddesses of Rome, like those of many other cities of the ancient
world, were closely identified with the life of the city. This local divine role
seems not to have been compromised in the eyes of ancient people by the existence
of the worship of the same gods and goddesses in other cities near and
far, sometimes by allies, sometimes by enemies. So Jupiter, Mars, and Juno
were worshiped under those or similar names very widely throughout Italy;
but that did not stop the Romans from treating them as their own. They participated,
almost like divine citizens, in the life of the city and all its activities.
They were consulted before actions; they sent messages and warnings; they received
honors and sacrifices in the event of successes; they had spaces in the
city devoted to them; and their images attended processions and games.
There were many channels through which communications could pass between
deities and humans, and much ritual activity was determined by these
channels. Some messages were sought from the gods by divination, originally
from the flight of birds, later from a variety of techniques, including the study
of the entrails of sacrificed animals and lightning in the sky; others came unbidden,
as when extraordinary happenings were reported from Roman territory
(the birth of monsters, groanings from the earth, flashings in the sky), taken as
signs from the gods and dealt with regularly by ritual action on priestly advice.
The authorities also sought the advice of prophetic books preserved by a special
priestly college, whose task was to consult the books and recommend action,
sometimes to appease established deities, sometimes to introduce new
ones. Messages are passed from humans to gods by prayer (which usually goes
with sacrifice) and vows, which specify ritual or gifts in return for divine support.
Surviving records of dedications made in gratitude for the fulfillment of
such vows leave no doubt about the enduring importance of these transactions
throughout the Roman world.
In some respects at least, the religious situation of pagan Rome strikes a
modern observer as familiar enough. Holy places had to be consecrated and
cared for. Texts for prayers and vows had to be carefully preserved and pronounced.
Processions were made through the streets, and divine images were
paraded from their temples on special occasions. Prophetic texts were preserved
and consulted for advice. The divine beings were conceived of as concerned
about human welfare and powerful enough to intervene on behalf of
their loyal worshipers. Inherited rituals were respected in the case of birth,
marriage, and death within the family. Other aspects, although still practiced
in some parts of the world today, would be regarded as deeply “alien” by much
modern opinion: the central rite consisted of the killing of animals. This was
227 rome
not a simple ceremony—complex rules determined the nature of the victim for
a particular god or goddess, and the sequence of events consisted of procession,
sanctification of the victim, prayer, killing, and cooking, leading to a feast
for the participants.
On closer examination, however, the differences from almost any modern
religion seem to become more profound. The religious identity of a Roman
was precisely to be a Roman and to worship the gods of Rome. There was no
option of losing this identity or replacing it by becoming a member of some
other religion. There were no other religions in competition for the adherence
of Roman citizens, nor could they be members of anything corresponding to a
“church,” to which a citizen might or might not belong. There were various
kinds of religious groupings, some open to particular areas or professions,
many dedicated to a particular god or goddess. Individuals must have made
choices according to their ranks, needs, or preferences; but such choices were
within the religious life accepted by the city and caused no problem as to loyalty
to the city. In other words, religion did not constitute an autonomous area
with the city’s life. In the same way, the priests, of whom there were many
types, did not represent a rival source of authority to that of the state or its officials.
It can be argued plausibly that the same institution in Rome—the Senate,
whose members were all who had held annual offices in the past—was the
highest authority on religious and nonreligious issues alike, although they respected
the advice of the priests.
At all dates for which we have any substantial knowledge, the religious life
of the Romans was deeply implicated with their political life. This is a feature
of which they were themselves aware, at least in the later republican period.
Cicero (the great orator and writer on politics; born 106 bce) is even proud of
it. He himself and his great contemporaries were not just politicians (and,
many of them, warriors) but also priests, members of the powerful groups that
supervised the different aspects of public and to some extent private religious
observance. The state maintained a complicated ritual program, consisting
partly of an annual fixed cycle of festivals, partly of rituals to mark specific occasions
in public life, and partly of an elaborate system for the consultation of
the gods and goddesses of the city before any action was taken. It followed that
almost all actions, in civilian as well as in military life, were perceived as involving
divine as well as human agents. The priests were responsible for the supervision
of the ritual; they did not themselves carry out most of it, but characteristically
they dictated the formulas, adjudicated if there were any problems,
and were consulted after the event if there was any challenge to the validity.
Modern interpretations have sometimes emphasized this aspect of public life
in Rome and argued, consequently, that religion had been reduced to the level
of a tool in the hands of the politicians, who found it useful long after they had
ceased to put their faith in its claims; during earlier periods, they imply, the
Romans would have been genuinely pious and not abused religious rules in
this way. In fact, there is no independent evidence for the supposed period of
either piety or cynicism, and almost certainly, the whole interpretation rests on
a misunderstanding of the fundamental relationships. So far as Romans were
histories 228
concerned, there was no question of choosing between religious objectives and
political objectives, between church interests and state interests; most activities
were involved with rituals of some kind, and their validity was automatically
wrapped up with religious issues.
Another negative perception is that the religion described above was a public
ritual system, which ignored or destroyed the needs of individuals for “real”
religious experience. Previous scholars reacted to this state of affairs either by
vilifying the whole religion as impoverished or by assuming that private religious
needs were satisfied in private or family cults about which we know very
little. The strong version of this second position is to say that all religions must
cater to individual emotional needs; where there are no records of the means
used, we must assume that the records are defective. There can, in fact, be little
doubt that our knowledge of the religion of the Romans is partial and concentrates
on the affairs of the state and public institutions. But forcing all religions
into the same mold ignores the possibility that different societies can operate in
profoundly different ways. “They must have been like us” is not a good principle
for writing religious history.
Origins and development of the Roman religious system
Our understanding of the whole Roman religious system is essentially derived
from information about its character in the 2nd and 1st centuries bce and the
1st century ce, from writers of the late Republic and early imperial periods. To
a limited extent, we can be confident in projecting this picture backward in
time to earlier periods: the names of gods, rituals, festivals, priests, and so on
were seen by the Romans as of the greatest antiquity, and we know that they
were sedulous in preserving all the details they could of their religious formulas
and rituals. But over the course of centuries we also know that the society of
Rome and its physical appearance were radically transformed. However conservative
they sought to be about the details, religion must have changed as the
life of the Romans changed.
In some respects it is quite clear how such changes might have come about.
Given the close connection between the religious order and the political system,
it must always have been likely that political changes would produce religious
consequences. Thinking along these lines, it can be seen that the religious
system of the later republican period echoed the political system in having
no sharply established focus of consistent authority. Religious decisions were
split between the Senate and the priestly colleges; and, although the colleges
had senior members, they acted in important matters as a corporation; no
priest was normally in more than one college, so an accumulation of authority
was difficult if not impossible. But once the position of emperor was established
by Augustus and his successors, then the emperor began to acquire an irresistible
concentration of religious authority; he became pontifex maximus
(senior priest of the college of pontifices), held all the other priesthoods as well,
and combined these with an unprecedented degree of political authority, both
229 rome
formal and informal. The image of the emperor sacrificing to the gods becomes
the most common representation of religious action, the key expression of the
relationship of humans to the divine.
When we try to go back to still earlier periods, rational speculation becomes
difficult. It is a possibility, although no more, that at this early stage religion
was a more separate area of life than in later periods, and consequently the religious
personnel were more professionally dedicated to their religious tasks
than were Caesar and his contemporaries. On the other hand, we have little
understanding of the real character of the early monarchy of Rome, and it is
also possible that the kings combined in themselves authority over all areas of
life and that the priests were no more than their religious advisers on their particular
areas of expertise. But it seems that, when the monarchy was abolished,
the king’s ritual role was handed on to a priest known as the King of Sacrifices
(rex sacrorum), who was far from being a high priest. Meanwhile the various
colleges of priests continued to be autonomous, keeping their own rules and records
and making decisions according to their own traditions within their own
defined area of concern. The state intervened only to widen their membership.
One subject on which we do have a good deal of information over the republican
years is the regular practice of importing new cults and new rituals
from outside the city—from elsewhere in Italy, from Greek cities, and later still
from Asia Minor. The importations were triggered by a wide range of circumstances,
but often by vows taken in the face of defeat or disaster or by recommendations
from the priests. New cults were also sometimes created internally
by recognizing as a deity what had previously been seen as a quality—Hope,
Honor, Piety. For the Romans themselves, these innovations seem not to have
been seen as problematic: they themselves recognized deities without number
and were willing enough to worship and honor still more. The long-established
custom perhaps throws light on a contentious area, namely, their willingness to
add more deities still in the form of their own emperors.
Within the city of Rome itself, this custom of deification took place after the
emperor’s death and only when the Senate approved the transition from human
to divine honors, so that emperors whom the senators disliked (Caligula,
Nero, Domitian) never achieved the status at all. Outside Rome, no such reticence
applied. The living emperors received temples, sacrifices, festivals, and
priests exactly as the old gods and goddesses did, although their role stayed
consistently in the public sphere and they never received vows or dedications
from individuals, as did their divine predecessors. The cult was not standardized
through the empire, though it must have been encouraged from the center.
But everywhere it provided dignified roles for prominent local dignitaries, who
both formed a link between Rome and the cities and also gained high status in
the eyes of their fellow citizens at home.
It is important to remember that the overwhelming majority of the empire’s
inhabitants, not just Greeks and Romans but most of the original peoples of
the whole area, were (in modern terms) polytheists, who were willing enough
to accept the mutual identity of their gods and goddesses. In many ways, this
provided great advantages for the empire: those who moved from one area to
histories 230
another found beliefs and rituals they could understand; it could be assumed
that “the gods” were the patrons of all the peoples of the empire, although
called by different names in different areas; the worship of the emperor could
be accepted everywhere in terms of the local cult practice, without raising too
much conflict. There was of course one locality that provided a famous exception:
the cult violated the religious principles of the Jews.
Religions in the Roman Empire
As we turn from the story of the Romans and their city to that of the empire
that the Romans created, it becomes harder still to agree on the right material
for a historical analysis, let alone on the main lines of religious development.
But it is at least clear that profound changes in the whole nature of religious
life occurred between the lifetime of Caesar and that of Augustine in the 4th
and 5th centuries ce. By this later date, individuals (sometimes with their
whole family) could choose from radically different religious groups to which
they might adhere: orthodox Christians, other Christians considered heretical
by the orthodox, Manicheans, Jews, pagans, and so on. They could and did
identify themselves by their religion as well as by their city or their family, in a
way that earlier centuries would not have understood at all. In terms of religious
history, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of this change in the location
of religion in society and in the lives of individuals.
One effect of the change was to introduce a new level of hostility and conflict
into the relationships of the adherents of the different systems. The most obvious
and celebrated sign of this hostility within the Roman Empire was the persecution
of Christians by the authorities both of Rome itself and of the cities
of the eastern and western provinces. There had been a great deal of strife between
the Greek and Jewish inhabitants of the cities of the eastern provinces
in the Hellenistic period and the early years of Roman rule; but this, although
it certainly had its religious aspects, was essentially intercommunal conflict
within a city, not the attempt to eliminate a particular religious form. Moreover,
the Jews were recognized as an ethnic group, and this explained why they
would have different religious values, profoundly eccentric to pagan eyes, but
at least inherited and not adopted. Christians were often pagans choosing to
abandon the true religion and hence deeply suspect.
It is important, however, not to exaggerate this element of conflict. The persecutions
were occasional and local, their memory being preserved for the
most part by the Christians themselves in the promotion of their new cults of
martyrs. General persecution throughout the empire was attempted for only
two quite brief periods during the second half of the 3rd century ce. For most
of the time, through most of the empire, pagans and Christians occupied the
same cities peaceably enough. We know of families that included both pagan
and Christian members; we find Christian and pagan places of worship close
together. The official position of the emperors of the 2nd century ce was
normally to take no inquisitorial action, but act only if there were complaints
231 rome
from pagan informers. There was no toleration in principle, but little action in
practice.
There is no doubt about the importance of this process of religious change,
but little agreement as to its origins, although it is clear that the existence of the
empire between 200 bce and 200 ce must have been a factor giving conditions
of relative tranquility and ease of travel throughout the Mediterranean area
and also deep into central Europe and the Near and Middle East. Whether it
was easy to move around, it is clear that much movement of population did
take place and that the cities of the whole empire came to consist not just of locally
based communities, but mixtures of different kinds; in many cases, their
religious cults and practices traveled together with these mobile groups. We
find Greek communities in the west, Egyptian communities and Jewish communities
everywhere. The Romans promoted this process themselves, first, by
importing and subsequently freeing very large numbers of slaves from all over
the eastern world; second, they both exported Roman citizens into the provinces
and gave the rights of citizenship to members, especially influential members,
of the local elites. Later still, citizenship was conferred on free people
throughout the empire.
The coexistence of these different ethnic groups certainly led to a religious
life of rich variety in many parts of the empire, and the evidence proves not
only that a wide range of cults existed, but also that individuals joined them
on the basis of religious preferences and a desire for particular kinds of experience.
Thus the Egyptian cult of Isis spread far outside Egypt; the cult of
Mithras, perhaps from Persia, but heavily adapted to Western tastes, became
widespread in frontier areas of the empire; non-Jews attached themselves to
Jewish practices although there was little encouragement from the Jewish authorities
to do so. Much of this movement would have consisted of pagans
joining groups within the boundaries of paganism and attracted little or no resistance
from the authorities, though we do sometimes hear strong disapproval
from conservative Roman commentators, particularly when women become
the devotees.
These developments must have provided the context within which profound
religious changes came about. The outcome is also reasonably clear: by the end
of the 3rd century ce, many sharply defined religious options were in existence,
which differed deeply from one another in the ideas and value systems they advocated
and in their whole conception of the place of human beings in the
cosmos. There were still practicing pagans throughout the Roman world, as
there continued to be for many generations; but increasingly they were forced
to defend their position by argument and by resistance to Christian and other
rival claims. It was a struggle for which pagan religious life had given little
preparation.
bibl.: Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (2 vols.; Cambridge,
1998).
histories 232
Early Christianity
Harold W. Attridge
Amutation in ancient religiosity, Christianity began as a revitalization
movement within Judaism. The movement was inspired by the preaching
of an itinerant charismatic, Jesus of Nazareth, who proclaimed the “reign of
God” as a future reality anticipated by his own healing, exorcism, and provocative
teaching. His claims about his own status in that reign of God remain unclear.
It is highly unlikely that he claimed to be divine, as his followers would
later assert. He probably did understand himself in prophetic terms, as a divine
emissary, but not without irony. He may have spoken of his role allusively,
with images such as “Son of Man” from the Hebrew scriptures (Dan. 7.13).
His teaching utilized images from daily life in Galilee, farmers sowing, mustard
seeds growing, householders entertaining, parents dealing with problem children,
a Samaritan helping a stranger. Such images combined with injunctions
to nonviolence, and a practice of openness with conventionally defined “sinners.”
The use of language of divine kingship involved at least an implicit
threat to the current political and social order. When such preaching was coupled
with a dramatic prophetic gesture, for example, the “cleansing” of the
temple of Jerusalem (Mark 11), Roman authorities reacted forcefully.
After Jesus’s crucifixion, his followers experienced him triumphant over death,
raised from the netherworld, and enthroned at God’s right hand. Expectations
of the imminent reign of God grounded new readings of Israelite scripture and
the formation of new social groups. Inspired by prophetic visions (Isa. 42.6;
43.6–9), some disciples hoped that scattered Israelites would be reassembled,
in the company of people from all nations, to worship Israel’s God. Followers
of Jesus recruited adherents to this vision from non-Israelites throughout the
eastern Mediterranean. Jesus’s shameful death remained a scandal, but followers
explained it as a sacrifice for the sins of humankind (Rom. 3.25), the vehicle
for the inauguration of a “new covenant” between God and humanity
(Heb. 8–10).
The missionary success of Saul of Tarsus, who also bore the Roman name
Paul, provoked a crisis over conditions of membership within the movement. A
conference of leading disciples in Jerusalem around 49 ce confirmed Paul’s essential
claim that non-Israelites could join the messianic fellowship without
undertaking the covenantal sign of circumcision (Acts 15; Gal. 2). The presence
of Gentiles within Christianity continued to increase, until by the 2nd century
they came to dominate the movement.
During the 50s, Paul and his collaborators continued evangelizing in Asia
Minor, Macedonia, and Achaea and planned further work in Rome and Spain
(Rom. 15.24). Paul called his new communities the ekklÁsia, a traditional term
for the popular “assembly” in a Greek polis and for the people of Israel (Deut.
4.10; 18.16). Neither political expediency nor genetic affinity united Paul’s
communities, but the conviction that they possessed a new pneuma (spirit) that
transformed the present and offered a foretaste of future bliss (Rom. 8). Emissaries
(2 Cor. 8–9) bearing letters knit together the scattered and sometimes
fractious Christian communities. Paul’s own letters, probably collected by the
late 1st century, eventually formed an important part of Christian scriptures.
Despite the Jerusalem Council, controversy over entry requirements continued.
Paul argued for the equality of Jews and Gentiles because both needed rescue
from the power of sin, to which God responded by a gracious act of justification
(Rom. 3–7). Paul strove to bridge the divide through a monetary
collection from his Gentile congregants for Jerusalem’s “poor” (1 Cor. 16; 2
Cor. 8–9; Rom. 15.25–27). The fate of Paul’s offering is unknown, but he himself
was arrested, sent to Rome, and executed under Nero in the early 60s.
At Paul’s death, Christianity consisted of small, mainly urban communities,
organized in the households of well-to-do patrons. Members celebrated the
memory of the death and resurrection of Jesus at communal meals, enhanced
with various spiritual displays (1 Cor. 12–14). Set liturgical forms and hierarchical
organization were yet to emerge.
Two sets of events marked the end of the movement’s first phase. The deaths
of leading apostles such as Paul and Peter, who was also, according to tradition,
martyred in Rome under Nero, signaled the passing of the founding generation.
The Jewish revolt against Rome, begun in 66 and culminating with the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70, eliminated the Christian presence in Israel’s ancient
symbolic center.
The late 1st century saw the emergence of new literary forms. The first apostolic
generation had preached a gospel of “good news” about the new era inaugurated
by Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. These traditions now coalesced
into narratives combining images of Jesus as wonderworker and
teacher with accounts of his noble death and divinely engineered triumph over
death. Three such narratives are closely related. The Gospel according to
Mark, probably composed around the time of the Jewish revolt, reflects that
period’s tension, while it admonishes disciples to follow Jesus’s way to the
cross. The Gospel according to Matthew, probably from the 80s, insists on the
ongoing validity of the Torah and portrays the person of Peter as its authoritative
interpreter. The Gospel according to Luke, probably written in the 90s
histories 234
along with the Acts of the Apostles, portrays a compassionate Jesus, preaching
repentance and forgiveness. Both Matthew and Luke evidence rivalry from
leaders of Jewish communities, which probably intensified in the postrevolt period.
The last gospel eventually included in the Christian canon, the Gospel according
to John, probably achieved its final form around the turn of the century.
Even more than Matthew and Luke, it displays an extreme animosity
toward Jewish rivals, while trying to inspire a deeper understanding of the significance
of Jesus as the incarnate Word of God who fulfills all that temple and
Torah promised.
In the late 1st and early 2nd centuries, Christians composed other forms of
the “good news.” These texts include collections of sayings of Jesus (such as
the Gospel of Thomas) and apocalyptic visions (such as the canonical Book of
Revelation, which tells of the ultimate defeat of satanic powers by the Lion of
Judah/Slain Lamb), all of which respond to pressures being placed on followers
of the Jewish Messiah in the late 1st century. This literary tradition continued
in the 2nd century with Shepherd of Hermas and many other “revelations” of
eschatological and heavenly realities. Other Christians imitated the work of
the previous generation and produced didactic exercises in the names of revered
apostles (Didache) or romances recounting the missionary adventures of
various apostles (Acts of Peter, Acts of Paul and Thecla).
New organizational forms accompanied the literary creativity. The loose associations
of house churches of the earliest communities organized into local
and regional assemblies, under various forms of leadership. Councils of elders
(presbyteroi) were the norm in many areas in the late 1st century. By the early
2nd century, one of the elders, designated bishop or overseer (episkopos), began
to take on special leadership functions. The trend first becomes apparent in
the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in Rome under the emperor Trajan
around 110. On his way to battle the beasts, Ignatius composed a series of letters
to communities in Asia Minor and Greece, emphasizing the importance of
episcopal authority, as well as belief in the incarnation of Christ.
The institution of the monarchical episcopacy came more slowly to important
sites such as Rome. The First Epistle of Clement attests to the situation of
the late 1st century. Written around the end of the century from Rome to Corinth
to resolve a local dispute, it appears to be the work of a Roman presbyteral
council, perhaps recorded by its secretary or convener. Although not yet
committed to episcopal leadership, the letter offers an early indication of the
claims of the Roman community to broader leadership. It also presages later
developments by describing the leadership of the Roman community in Jewish
sacerdotal terms (1 Clement 40).
While hierarchical organization dominated in some locales, looser organizational
principles obtained elsewhere. Little evidence survives from Christian
communities in Egypt in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries, but later documents
suggest that Christians there developed a variation on the “house
church” model attested in Pauline communities. What apparently emerged, at
least in the urban environment of Alexandria, were small “study circles.” Un-
235 early christianity
der the guidance of a spiritual master, these groups, like their Platonic and Hermetic
counterparts, engaged in the interpretation of texts and comparison of
their own traditions with other religious and philosophical sources. Out of
such groups emerged, in the mid- to late 2nd century, the phenomenon known
as Gnosticism, led by charismatic teachers such as Basilides and Valentinus.
Their disciples formed groups with distinctive interpretations of received traditions,
both from scripture and the early stages of the Jesus movement.
Gnostics would eventually pose challenges to Christian self-definition, but
the first major figure who convulsed the 2nd-century Christian world was
Marcion. A successful merchant from Pontus, in the north of Asia Minor,
he came to Rome in the late 130s, made a significant benefaction to the community,
but was soon expelled on dogmatic grounds. Marcion advocated recognizing
one authoritative source for Christian teaching, a collection of the
letters of Paul and the Gospel of Luke, duly expurgated of problematic
“Judaizing” additions. This first “canon” of scripture supported a theology
sharply differentiating the loving God of Jesus from the merely just, and thus
inferior, God of the Old Testament. The rejection of Marcion’s position guaranteed
that Christians would continue to revere the God of Israel as Creator
and Redeemer and would continue to read Israel’s scriptures as revelatory.
As Christians emerged from obscurity, they encountered opposition and occasional
persecution, attested in the correspondence between Pliny the Younger
and the emperor Trajan, while the former served as governor of Bithynia in
northern Asia Minor. While Trajan approved Pliny’s policy of executing recalcitrant
Christians, the governor’s testimony shows that there was not a settled
official policy on the matter and that Christianity was beginning to have a
larger social impact.
While governors such as Pliny took sporadic action against Christians, some
members of the community offered apologetic responses. In Rome, Justin (a
teacher martyred in 165), Tatian (his pupil), Theophilus of Antioch, and others
published tracts refuting various charges, for example, of incest (men and
women exchanging “kisses of peace” in darkened rooms by night) and cannibalism
(devotees consuming Christ’s “body and blood”). On the offensive,
they excoriated the immorality of traditional Greek and Roman mythologies
with their stories of lascivious and sensual deities.
Apologists also reveal Christian practice in the mid-2nd century. Thus Justin
describes (Apology 1.59–61) the weekly meetings of his community with their
readings of scripture and eucharistic celebrations. His report indicates that the
rudiments of the central Christian ritual were in place. Yet ritual practice did
not develop at the same pace in all quarters. The Didache, a document from
Syria dating probably from the late 1st or early 2nd century, records a “eucharist”
that lacks elements later considered essential: the remembrance of Christ’s
death and presence in the elements of the meal.
By the end of the 2nd century, Christianity had been sown from the western
Mediterranean, through Gaul, Italy, North Africa, Asia Minor, Syria (including
the hinterland of Edessa and Nisibis), and Mesopotamia. Christians had
histories 236
even traveled as far away as the Malabar coast of India, which missionaries
had already visited when a teacher from Alexandria, Pantaenus, made the journey
in the late 2nd century (Eusebius, Church History 5.10). Some of these
early non-Greek Christian communities have left only scattered traces. Others
were more influential. Syrian Christians, for example, composed the exuberant
Odes of Solomon and developed a rigorously ascetical practice, evident, for instance,
in the Acts of Thomas.
As Christianity expanded, it adapted in various ways to the ambient culture.
In the process it began to deal with the reality that sin remained within the
community of the saved. A 2nd-century visionary text from Rome, the Shepherd
of Hermas, calls the community to renewed moral vigor, but holds out the
promise of forgiveness, at least once, for serious sinners such as adulterers. Not
all Christians were so lax. As some moved toward accommodation, movements
arose to return the church to the purity of its origins. Montanism, a rekindling
of apocalyptic prophecy in Asia Minor in the last half of the 2nd century,
was precisely such a reaction. While hoping for a literal fulfillment of
eschatological hopes, it also insisted on the moral rigor of the movement. If
some Christians laid the foundations for a penitential system, others, such as
the North African polemicist Tertullian, found the rigorism of the “new prophecy”
of Montanism attractive and denounced lax confreres. Disputes between
rigorist and accommodating forms of Christianity would mark much of the
3rd century and, in 4th-century North Africa, would lead to the division between
Donatists and Catholics.
In the first two centuries, forms of organization and ritual practice exhibited
considerable local variation. While Christians generally negotiated the boundaries
of their communities and the requirements of membership, debates about
the intellectual content of the faith continued. Troublesome questions about
the nature of Jesus and his relationship to the God of Israel continued. Apologists
explored ways of explaining the mediatorial role of Jesus, developing the
category of the Logos (Word) found in the Fourth Gospel. Thus, as the ordinary
human word has two forms, in the mind (endiathetos) and on the lips
(prophorikos), so the Word of God has two forms: in the mind of God and in
the person of Jesus. This description of Christ’s significance dominated Christian
theological discourse for the next three centuries, and theologians wrestled
with the strengths and weaknesses of the image.
Equally troubling were questions about the nature of the godhead itself and
the structure and fate of the cosmos. One set of answers came from the “gnostic”
teachers, who explored mythical accounts of the origin of evil in divine
complexity. Their work combined radically literal readings of Jewish scriptures
and elaborate metaphysical schemes at least partially inspired by Platonic
cosmologies. The result was a distinction between an inferior god of creation,
the Demiurge, equivalent to YHWH of the Old Testament, and a transcendent
spiritual entity, sometimes named the Silent Depth, from whom emanated the
revealing Wisdom or Logos that briefly inhabited Jesus. Their writings, such as
the Valentinian Gospel of Truth, which was found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt
237 early christianity
in 1945, also offered a powerful vision of what Jesus came to do, namely to
awaken in all the spark of divinity sown into matter by a primordial fault in
the godhead itself. Once awoken, that spark would find its way back to its
transcendent source, with little need of episcopal supervision or sacramental
practice. Thinkers of this sort united their metaphysics with a distinctive interpretation
of scripture, particularly the cosmogony of Genesis. Their literal
reading found evidence of a vengeful and ignorant deity inimical to human
welfare. Salvation lay not through that Demiurge, but by escaping his realm.
The theological construal of Christianity offered by such gnostic teachers
met resistance from thinkers who defended both the God of Israel, the moral
law, and the contemporary ecclesiastical organization that taught it. Irenaeus
of Lyons attempted a refutation of gnostic teachers in a massive heresiological
work, Against Heresies. In addition to mocking denunciations of particular
claims of Valentinians and others, Irenaeus articulated an influential vision of
orthodox Christianity. For him, the normative scriptures, of both Old and
New Testaments, correctly interpreted by bishops whose succession guaranteed
their authority, grounded the life of faith. That episcopally guaranteed
faith came to expression in creedal form, the “rule of faith.”
Other heresiologists followed Irenaeus, including Hippolytus, an early-3rdcentury
teacher who formed a rigorist schismatic faction within the Roman
church. The most significant intellectual of 3rd-century Christianity was undoubtedly
Origen. Born in Alexandria in the late 2nd century, he gained
prominence as a catechist preparing neophytes for baptism. After tensions
arose with his bishop, he moved to Caesarea in Palestine, in 230. Enormously
prolific, Origen wrote many tracts on exegetical, apologetic, and dogmatic
issues, although his masterpiece was a major work of systematic theology, the
De principiis or On First Principles. The work matched the comprehensive
sweep of the imaginative systems of the 2nd-century gnostics, although it rejected
their controversial claims about the relationship between the God of creation
and the transcendent God of salvation. Like the gnostics, Origen’s work
was steeped in the Platonic tradition, and some of his platonizing moves, his
flirting with metempsychosis, for example, would later elicit criticism.
Despite the apologists’ efforts, 2nd- and 3rd-century Christians remained on
the periphery of society. Accounts celebrating their heroic deaths (Martyrdom
of Polycarp, from around 155; Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, early 3rd
century) braced others to follow in their footsteps but also reinforced their
sense of alienation. The political crisis of the mid-3rd century created more
martyrs. The first empire-wide persecution under the emperor Decius (251)
tried to solve the “Christian problem” by systematically suppressing the movement.
Although intense, the persecution was relatively short. Subsequent sporadic
attempts at suppression culminated in the persecution under Diocletian
and Galerius, rulers of the eastern half of the empire in the first decade of the
4th century. Persecution ended with the death of Galerius. The subsequent
Edict of Milan of 313, issued by the two Augusti, Constantine and Licinius,
guaranteed the freedom of Christians to assemble and worship without fear.
histories 238
Constantine’s victory over Licinius in 324 inaugurated the ascendancy of the
Christian church as an instrument in the administration of the empire, Shortly
after his assumption of supreme authority, Constantine summoned a synod of
bishops at Nicea to resolve a festering dispute over the nature of Christ. Although
not immediately successful, the council laid the foundation for later orthodoxy.
More importantly perhaps, it inaugurated the process of unification
of political and religious forces, leading to Christianity’s eventual establishment
as the empire’s formal religion under Theodosius (379–95).
The 4th century marked a period of consolidation, after considerable controversy,
of doctrine and organizational form, the fixation of scripture, and the
elaboration of liturgical expression. From that point onward Christianity was
not simply one religious force among many, but the dominant religious force of
the late antique world.
bibl.: W. H. C. Frend, The Early Church, from the Beginnings to 461 (London: SCM,
2003). Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament (2 vols.; New York: Walter
De Gruyter, 1995–2000). Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D.
100–400 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
239 early christianity
Epilogue
Bruce Lincoln
Acertain tension is manifest in the preceding articles of this volume,
in which extremely knowledgeable specialists address issues of enormous complexity
with a maximum of efficiency and economy. Being both learned and
scrupulous, they struggle to select a few choice examples from the countless
possibilities available to them, after which they are forced to abbreviate and
simplify even these. Toward the end of their articles, as they move to summarize,
generalize, and distill, they suffer once more as they sacrifice diversity, nuance,
complexity, and prudent qualifications on the conjoined altars of the Big
Picture and the Short Article. Sic semper est with encyclopedias, even the
sainted Pauly-Wissowa. The problem is more acute still for one charged (or
cursed) with writing the final article: summary of summaries, epitome of epitomes,
thinnest, blandest, most superficial, most simplistic, and therefore inevitably—also,
quite rightly—most open to objection.
Admittedly insuperable difficulties can be liberating, however, since one is
free to err in the manner of one’s choosing, all possible approaches being
wrong. Accordingly, I will frame the following discussion with two broad sets
of questions. First, what do we mean by “the ancient world”? What constitutes
the ancient and separates it from that which follows (a category I will, for the
sake of convenience and provocation, call the “post-ancient”)? Second, what
forms does religion take and what roles does it play in the ancient? In the postancient?
And how do changes in the religious contribute to the change from
one era to the other?
As an initial attempt to engage these questions—one that is admittedly inadequate
and destined for further refinement—let me advance the proposition
that “the ancient” is that situation in which religion is not one system of culture
coexisting among many others, but occupies the central position and plays
a unique role—informing, inflecting, integrating, stabilizing, even at times controlling
and determining all others (a position that has had some currency at
least since Fustel de Coulanges 1864). Such a formulation carries a Hegelian
danger, of course, threatening to turn into its opposite. For were religion to
be found everywhere, there would be no borders to delimit and define it. Indeed,
its very ubiquity might render it unrecognizable, rather like “culture” or
life itself. That many, perhaps most ancient languages have no term to match
the semantics of English “religion” (Latin is only a partial exception) lends
support to this suspicion. It also raises the possibility that the emergence of
the term and category “religion” is itself a product of the cultural transformation
effected by the Reformation and Enlightenment, making this concept a
particularly anachronistic instrument for understanding the situation of the
premodern (compare the discussions of W. C. Smith 1963 and Asad 1993).
Although this argument has the merit of making us cautious, it errs by way
of overstatement. To say that nothing in antiquity was free of religion—not
war, disease, erotic love, science, the arts, poetry, or the state; not the landscape,
the family, the meat on the table, or the fire on the hearth—is to say not
that everything “was” religious, only that religious concerns were a part of all
else, and a part that remains—to us, at least—analytically recognizable. Proceeding
thus, we might theorize “the ancient” as that situation where, to
cite just a few examples, one treats toothache by reciting the account of creation,
reads the organs of sacrificial victims before waging battle, secures the
verity of speech acts with sacred oaths, and conducts international diplomacy
through appeals to mythic genealogy (Pritchard 1969, 100–101; Cicero, On
Divination 1.95; Hesiod, Theogony 782–806; Herodotus 7.150, e.g.).
Scholars have often worked with such a model, although often it remains
subtextual and implicit (Loew 1967, Eliade 1954, Frankfort 1948). Correlated
with this model (whether as consequence or motive is hard to tell) is an understanding
that “the ancient” ended with a “Greek miracle” that anticipated
the Enlightenment by breaking with myth, tradition, and puerile superstition
to achieve a critical view of religion (Nestle 1940, Cornford 1912, Vernant
1982). Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Socrates are often singled out in this respect
and accorded particular credit. Closer reading, however, makes clear that
these thinkers were hardly critics of religion as such, but only critics of specific
forms. Thus, for all that Xenophanes chided Homer and Hesiod for telling
scandalous tales about the gods, and notwithstanding his sly suggestion that
cattle imagined gods in bovine form, he also maintained, apropos of proper etiquette
at drinking parties: “It is fitting, above all, for men of good cheer to
hymn the god with well-spoken mythoi and pure logoi, having poured libations
and prayed to be able to accomplish just things” (Xenophanes, DK
21B11 and 21B112; 21B15, cf. 21B16; 21B1, ll. 13–16). He made clear in the
same passage, which represents the longest excerpt we have of his work, his
concern that religion should promote decorum, well-being, grace, and harmony.
As a negative complement, he did maintain “there is nothing useful” in
beliefs that promote violent disorders (stasias sphedanas), but this is hardly a
critique of religion per se (ll. 21–23).
Similarly, Socrates claimed to have grounded his incessant critical activity on
an oracle received from the Delphic Pythia, and he took pains to assure the
epilogue 242
jury that tried him for impiety (asebÁia) that he was incapable of this offense,
since a personal daimÃn supervised his conduct and he always heeded this
deity’s advice (Plato, Apology 20e–23c, 40a–c). Plato’s valuation of reasoned
knowledge (epistÁmÁ) over faith (pistis) and opinion (doxa) also involved less
criticism of religion than is normally supposed. Thus, he maintained that the
philosophical disposition which makes it possible for a very small elite to acquire
such knowledge is itself the product of postmortem experiences before
the soul’s reincarnation. In that heavenly realm, ultimate reality is revealed
to all, but its true nature is remembered only by those who have cultivated exceptional
powers of self-control by their prior training and askÁsis (Plato,
Phaedrus 246d–249d, Republic 614b–621d). Ultimately, Plato’s epistemology
is inseparable from his theory of the soul and its fate (psychology in the most
literal sense and eschatology), also his metaphysics and soteriology. In a word,
his philosophy incorporates and depends on religion, albeit a form of religion
that eschews civic cult, while drawing on dissident strains of speculation current
among Orphics, Pythagoreans, and others.
“The ancient” does break down, of course, but it does so gradually, not
through any “miracle” (itself a surprisingly religious trope, as is that of “genius,”
which often attends it). Earlier, to characterize “the ancient,” I cited
a set of examples that gestured toward medicine (the Babylonian toothache
charm), warfare (Roman divination before battle), law (Greek oaths), and diplomacy
(Persian use of genealogies to court potential allies). Change, however,
can be seen in all these domains, as when epilepsy (“the sacred disease”) is
said to derive from natural causes and when generals repeat divinatory consultations
until they get the results they want or proceed in defiance of the readings
(Hippocratic corpus, On the Sacred Disease; Cicero, On Divination 2.52).
The same shift toward a “post-ancient” less thoroughly encompassed by religion
can be perceived when statements are secured by signing a contract,
rather than swearing an oath; or when threats and bribes, rather than invocations
of shared ancestors, are used to enlist allies (Thucydides 5.89). Such
changes come piecemeal, however, so that antiquity ends—if the model we are
currently entertaining permits us to conclude that it ends at all—only in fits
and starts. Indeed, the model allows the view that “the ancient” reasserts itself
(or simply persists) whenever oaths are sworn in a court of law, wherever
prayers are said for the sick or for soldiers in battle, and whenever nations
make common cause on the basis of shared beliefs.
Our first attempt sought to resolve all problems at once by identifying “the
ancient” with the omnipresence of religion, while paying no attention to complexities
internal to the latter term. The result was a critical instrument too
blunt for the Gordian knot. It is time to back up and seek a sharper blade.
Elsewhere, in quite a different context, I have sought to define religion as a
polythetic entity involving at least four domains: (1) a discourse whose concerns
transcend the human, temporal, and contingent, and that claims for itself
243 epilogue
a similarly transcendent status; (2) a set of practices whose goal is to produce a
proper world and/or proper human subjects, as defined by the religious discourse
to which these practices are connected; (3) a community whose members
construct their identity with reference to a religious discourse and its attendant
practices; (4) an institution that regulates discourse, practices, and
community, reproducing them over time and modifying them as necessary,
while asserting their eternal validity and transcendent value (Lincoln 2003: 5–
7). Accordingly, I would suggest that the transition from ancient to post-ancient
might better be studied with reference to these four variables, rather than
to the one that is their sum and product, “religion” tout court.
As a starting point, one might observe that the most authoritative discourses
of antiquity tended to be acts of speech that understood—and represented—themselves
to be inspired. Not simply human utterances, these were
pronouncements in which some divine agency was felt to be at work, speaking
through select human instruments and channels. Mantic, oracular, and prophetic
speech regularly enjoyed such status, as did royal proclamations and poetic
performance. Poetry was extraordinarily important, and the reasons for
this must be assessed from two complementary perspectives, technological and
ideological. Prior to the emergence of alphabetic script and the consequent
spread of literacy, poetry was the most effective technique of memory. Any
proposition or narrative that could be put in poetic language was thereby rendered
more memorable than in any other linguistic form and therefore more
likely to be transmitted across space and time. Such encoding was reserved for
those cultural contents that were (or better: were judged and became, as a result
of this judgment) most important. Reflecting and compounding this practical
advantage was the claim of divine status that poets regularly made for
themselves and their art. As Hesiod put it, the very breath with which he
spoke—the material substance of his speech—was placed in his lungs by the
Muses themselves, who were daughters of Zeus and Memory (MnemosynÁ)
(Hesiod, Theogony 31–32: enepneusan de moi audÁn thespin). The Delphic
Pythia, by contrast, gave oracles only in trance, when possessed by Apollo. The
proof that the god spoke through her came not only from the state of her body
and visage, but also because she spoke in perfect hexameters (Plutarch, On the
Obsolescence of Oracles). Similar constructions of poetic discourse as sacred
and of poets as “masters of truth” (Detienne 1996) are to be found among the
Hebrew prophets, Vedic seers, Roman sibyls, and the hymns attributed to
Zarathustra (Kugel 1990).
With the spread of literacy and alphabetic script, written prose gradually
displaced oral poetry as the most effective mnemonic technique, and widespread
cultural changes followed (Havelock 1963, Goody 1987, Ong 1982). In
the realm of religion, sacred books came to enjoy higher status than did inspired
utterances. Growing awareness that the latter might not be what they
claimed and were open to manipulation by their human agents also served to
undercut their authority. This authority might be preserved, however, when the
utterances in question were textualized and reconstituted as revealed scripture,
as in the case of the biblical prophets and the Sibylline books.
epilogue 244
So bibliocentric (initially in the broad, and later in the narrow sense) did religious
discourse become that the danger emerged of excess production and
oversupply. To control this danger, priestly bodies assumed the power to impose
limits through canon formation and the closure of prophecy, sometimes
with the backing of state power, as when Augustus had the Sibylline Books collected,
purged of suspicious content, and placed in the temple of his patron deity,
where they were kept under lock and key, accessible only to authorized
priests (Suetonius, Augustus 31.1). Similar processes, if less dramatic and under
less direct state control, elsewhere produced restricted bodies of scripture
that were invested with authoritative status. Energies were directed toward the
interpretation of these texts rather than the production of new ones. Reading
rather than speaking became the privileged moment of religious discourse, and
innovation no longer came through the claim of inspiration, but through the
practice of shrewd hermeneutics. To put it in slightly different terms, as Jeremiah
yielded to the rabbis, John the Baptist to the Church Fathers, Muhammad
to the qadis and ulama, one can see not only Weber’s routinization of charisma,
but also the historic shift from a prophetic ethos associated with orality
to the scholarly ethos of the text.
Religious practices also changed significantly from the ancient to the postancient.
Two sorts of practice fell into relative desuetude, both of which purported
to mediate between the sacred and profane in direct, material fashion.
The first of these was a whole complex of behaviors involving the statues of deities.
Most commonly, the presence of such statues in temples constituted the
sanctuaries as the site of a god’s residence on earth, thereby cementing the relation
of a specific city and people to a specific deity. Thus, to cite but one example,
the statue of Marduk in the temple Esagila at Babylon marked the city as
this god’s special domain and the god as this city’s patron, also as the dominant
member of the pantheon when the city’s power expanded. For as was true with
other Mesopotamian cities, when the Babylonians were victorious in warfare,
they often captured (the statues of) other cities’ deities as tokens of subordination
and risked similar capture of their own god should they in turn be conquered.
The priests of this temple were charged with the care, feeding, decoration,
and worship of Marduk’s resident statue, which is to say his virtual,
palpable presence. This was not mere servitude, however, since deity and people
were engaged in an ongoing mutually beneficial exchange. The flow of
benefits to humanity was particularly dramatized at the Akitu (New Year) festival,
when the king clasped the hands of Marduk’s image and thereby had his
legitimacy and power renewed by the god himself, with consequences for the
prosperity of the land and people:
[Marduk], exalted among the gods,
[Who dwells in the temple Esag]il, who creates the laws,
[Who . . .] to the great gods,
[. . .] I praise your heroism.
245 epilogue
[May] your heart [be sympathetic] to whoever seizes your hands.
“Temple Program for the New Year’s Festival at Babylon,” ll. 396–400, trans. A.
Sachs, in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 334
Other peoples developed different practices. Sometimes access to the statues
was restricted to the priesthood or its high-ranking members. Sometimes worshippers
were permitted to make contact by entering an inner sanctum of the
temple where the statue/deity was housed. In other cases, images were brought
forth to outer chambers on festal occasions or even paraded through the streets
of the city. Some of the statues represented benevolent, nurturing deities who
brought blessings to their people; others were demanding and jealous figures,
who threatened those they found inadequately devoted or attentive. But in all
instances, these blocks of material substance were the site where relations between
the human and the divine were transacted, the point of conjuncture between
sacred and profane.
At least equal in importance was the practice of sacrifice, the most common
and also the most significant form of ritual among virtually all ancient peoples.
Countless theories of sacrifice have been offered (W. R. Smith 1889, Hubert
and Mauss 1964, Burkert 1983, Thieme 1957, Detienne and Vernant 1989,
Girard 1977, Grottanelli 1999) and the practice itself could be infinitely varied
in its performance. Ordinarily, it involved the immolation of an animal or vegetable
offering (much more rarely a human victim), the spiritual portion of
which was believed to pass to the divine, while the material portion became the
basis of a feast enjoyed by the human performers, with the gods as their honored
guests, thereby restoring a commensality lost in the mythic primordium.
All details of the performance could be invested with symbolic content—for instance,
the division of the victim’s body might provide analysis of the categoric
distinctions between divine, human, and animal levels of existence (Vernant
1989, Grottanelli and Parise 1988)—or the ritual might replicate events recounted
in cosmogonic myth that homologize the body to the world as microcosm
to macrocosm (Lincoln 1986). Sacrifice also provided a means to invest
bloody and violent acts with sacral significance and avoid the charge that one
killed just to obtain food. Rather, one assumed the burden and awesome responsibility
of caring for the gods and the cosmos, which meant performing
each minute part of the action in perfectly controlled, symbolically appropriate
fashion. Preparation of the feast and disposal of the remains, no less than actual
dispatch of the victim, were subject to the same regulation and scrutiny,
since all aspects of sacrificial ritual were “good to think” and therefore subject
to symbolic elaboration.
Destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce made it impossible for the priests
of Israel to continue their performance of sacrifice. The resulting reorganization
of cult and thought led to the emergence of that which we know as Judaism(s).
In other traditions, no such dramatic events were responsible, but over
time sacrifice and the use of statues ceased to form the center of ritual practice,
and material mediations of every sort diminished in their import. They were
epilogue 246
displaced—although never completely—by practices that relocated the prime
site of interest and action inside the human subject. Prayer; the cultivation of
certain valorized dispositions, sentiments, and states of being; the habit of
monitoring one’s progress toward these ethical and existential ideals; and reporting
flaws and slips to spiritual advisors, while submitting to their guidance
and discipline, became privileged aspects of religious practice with the move
toward the post-ancient.
Clearly, these developments correlated with shifts in the nature of religious
community. In the ancient, religion was a shared concern of groups existing at
familial, civic, ethnic, and national levels of integration. The collective identity
of such groups was strongly overdetermined, being based simultaneously on
territory, language, polity, kinship, and laws, as well as the religion that members
held in common and that, in turn, held them. One’s neighbors were thus
one’s fellow citizens and also one’s co-religionists, who spoke the same language,
shared the same norms, celebrated the same festivals, and worshiped at
the same altars, seeking favor of the same gods for the group of which they
were all a part. The post-ancient, by contrast, saw the emergence of communities
based primarily—and also most explicitly and emphatically—on religious
considerations, integrating persons who might be divided by geography, language,
culture, or citizenship.
This development had begun as early as the 6th century bce with the Pythagoreans.
Among its contributing factors was the formation of great empires that
brought disparate populations into a single political entity and tax structure,
but left subject peoples only very imperfectly integrated by religion and culture.
At the same time, expanded trade and improved communications permitted
relatively wide circulation of religious tenets, texts, and teachers, all of
which gradually refashioned themselves in broader, less localized idioms as
they engaged—and absorbed feedback from—a disparate international audience
(Grottanelli 1982). At times, imperial powers sought to introduce aspects
of their native religion to the provinces, or at least to the elite strata therein
(e.g., Seleucid policy at the time of the Maccabean revolt). At other times, the
imperial center imported religious forms from the periphery as a conscious policy
(e.g., the Roman evocatio ritual that appropriated gods of conquered enemies);
as a means to indulge growing taste for the exotic (e.g., the introduction
of Isis and Cybele at Rome); or as part of the backwash that inevitably accompanies
conquest (e.g., Mithraism). The diaspora of various groups (such as
the Magi and the Jews) and the proselytizing activities of others (the missions
recounted in the Acts of the Apostles and related apocrypha) also contributed
to the de-territorialization of religious community characteristic of the
post-ancient.
In contrast to older groups focused on a specific temple, city, cult place, or
sacred locale, which they served and from which they took their identity, the
increasingly international, multiethnic, and geographically dispersed popula-
247 epilogue
tion of post-ancient religious communities was held together not only by
shared symbols, beliefs, and practices, but also by itinerant leaders and mobile
texts such as the epistles of the New Testament, the polemic exchanges among
Church Fathers, the corpora assembled at Qumran and Nag Hammadi, or the
rabbinic responsa. Inclusion or exclusion in such amorphous communities was
not ascribed by birth in a given place, lineage, or social stratum, but was elective.
One joined by conversion, that is, by accepting the beliefs, practices, texts,
and leadership that constituted the group and were central to their self-understanding.
The promise of salvation provided a prime inducement to convert
and the conviction that one’s faith offered salvation to others (whose contributions
would sustain and renew the group) provided a prime motive to proselytize.
Soteriological concerns thus figured prominently in the life of post-ancient
religions, whose members sought—and promised others—escape from a world
they experienced as hostile, bewildering, and finite to an alternative realm of
eternal bliss. Such escape was prefigured by the move from one social group,
identity, and set of loyalties to another: abandoning one’s family, for instance,
to join one’s new brothers-and-sisters-in-Christ (Matthew 10.37, Luke 14.26).
This shift further correlates to a change from “locative” worldviews concerned
with the proper emplacement of all things and persons (since being-in-place is
what renders them sacred) to “utopian” orientations that valorize mobility as
transcendence and liberation (J. Z. Smith 1978).
One final point about religious community in the post-ancient context: In
groups that made shared beliefs and practices their chief criteria of inclusion,
deviation from these had serious consequences and could provoke not only
debate and discussion, but also power struggles and schism. Accordingly, issues
of heterodoxy and orthodoxy, heteropraxy and orthopraxy, heresy and
heresiology all rose to prominence, along with the institutional means to frame
and resolve them—and also to enforce the hierarchic elevation of victors over
vanquished.
This brings us to institutions. In the ancient, specifically religious institutions—
priesthoods, temples, cult sites, and so on—were typically subordinate to institutions
of the state, be these civic, national, or imperial, democratic, oligarchic,
or royal. Smaller and weaker than their political counterparts, religious institutions
served and were dependent on them for protection, financial support, and
personnel. As examples, consider Athenian interest in Eleusis, the temples of
the Acropolis, and the Panathenaea; the haoma sacrifices at Persepolis (Bowman
1970); or the integration of priestly and magisterial offices in the Roman
cursus honorum. Only in a very few cases, where religious institutions possessed
extraordinary prestige and authority such that they attracted an international
clientele and rich contributions, were they able to sustain themselves and
achieve a situation of relative autonomy. Delphi is the paradigmatic case,
alongside only a handful of others.
In the post-ancient, some religious institutions such as the rabbinate attained
epilogue 248
a certain measure of autonomy from the states to which they were subject, but
from which they maintained a cautious distance. In other situations—Byzantium
and the Islamic caliphate, in particular—religious and political organizations
and concerns interpenetrated each other so thoroughly as practically to
merge. The most dramatic development, however, occurred in the West, where
events beginning with the conversion of Constantine and the Edict of Milan
(313 ce) produced a centralized, well-staffed and well-funded, hierarchic religious
establishment that became the senior partner in the collaborations of
church and state subsequent to the fall of Rome (476 ce). In all these forms
and locales, however, religious bodies secured considerable control over such
vital arenas of activity as education (general and professional), social welfare
(charity and counseling), record keeping, rites of passage (the crucial moments
of subject and family formation), and moral scrutiny and control (through
preaching, confession, absolution, and pastoral care). Gradually, they perfected
the ability to extract revenue from the faithful through a variety of
mechanisms. Thus, in addition to contributions (tithing, zakkat) that were often
voluntary in name only, bequests intended to secure salvation were also an
important source of income, as was commerce in spiritual goods and services
of varied sorts: blessings, indulgences, relics, charms, mystic knowledge, magic
formulas, and so forth.
As ancient religion gave way to post-ancient, a discourse based on canonic
corpora of sacred texts displaced inspired performances of sacred verse; practices
of prayer, contemplation, and self-perfection displaced mediations
through sacrifice and statues of the deity; de-territorialized elective communities
constructed on the basis of religious adherence displaced multi-stranded
groups within which ties of geography, politics, kinship, culture, and religion
were all isomorphic and mutually reinforcing; and institutions that, with some
exceptions, had better funding, a wider range of activities, and more autonomy
from the state displaced their weaker, more localized predecessors.
Although these sweeping generalizations call for extended treatment that
would attend to the nuances and particularities of a thousand specific cases,
the constraints of a concluding article point in the opposite direction, toward a
summation whose oversimplifications serve chiefly to prompt objections, further
inquiry, and debate. And so, here it is: The transition yields Christianity.
Or, to put it a bit more cautiously, the ancient ends and the post-ancient begins
with Christianity(ies), Judaism(s), and Islam(s), with the westernmost form of
Christianity as the extreme case.
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251 epilogue
Contributors
Jan Assmann, University of Heidelberg
Harold W. Attridge, Divinity School, Yale University
Mary Beard, Faculty of Classics and Newnham College, Cambridge University
Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard
University
Jan Bremmer, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen
Olivier de Cazanove, Department of Ancient History, University of Paris I
John J. Collins, Divinity School, Yale University
David Frankfurter, Religious Studies Program, Department of History, University of New
Hampshire
Fritz Graf, Department of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University
Sarah Iles Johnston, Department of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University
Bruce Lincoln, Divinity School, University of Chicago
William Malandra, Department of Asian Studies, University of Texas
Nanno Marinatos, Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, University of Illinois
at Chicago
Jon Mikalson, Department of Classics, University of Virginia
John North, Department of Ancient History, University College London
Eckart Otto, Institut für Alttestamentliche Theologie, University of Munich
John Scheid, Collège de France, Paris
Michael Stausberg, Department of the History of Religions, University of Bergen
David P. Wright, Department of Near Easter and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
Index
Aaron, 140
Abraham, 181
Abydos, 161
Accius, 38
Achaemenids, 94, 172, 197, 198, 201, 202,
204
Acts of Thomas, 237
Adad-nirari III, 171
Adapa, myth of, 62–63
Aeschylus, 90; Agamemnon, 73; Choephoroi,
73
Agdistis, 8
Agriculture, and city-states, 6
Ahriman. See Angra Mainyu/Ahriman (Zoroastrian
evil spirit)
Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd (Iranian deity), 203;
and cosmic sin, 80; and cosmos, 62, 200;
and creation, 199; early belief in, 202; and
history, 66, 67; and monotheism vs. polytheism,
204
Akhenaten, 18, 24, 27, 28–29, 158, 182
Akitu (Mesopotamian festival), 37
Akkadian (language), 24–25, 47
Akkadians, 165, 166, 167, 168
Alexander the Great, 218
Alexandria, 113–114, 115, 161, 235–236
Amarna, 158
Amarna Letters, 6
Amesha Spentas (Beneficent Immortals), 204
Amulet, 139, 141, 146. See also Magic
Amun (Egyptian deity), 160
Amun-Re (Egyptian deity), 18, 23, 59, 157,
158
An (Mesopotamian deity), 166, 168
Anat (Ugaritic deity), 9, 10, 55
Anatolia: flood story in, 48; and history, 20;
Hittites in, 5; law in, 94; and magic, 150;
myth in, 53; and Syria-Canaan, 189. See
also Hittites; Hurrians
Anatyahu (deity), 183
Ancestry, 125, 176
Angra Mainyu/Ahriman (Zoroastrian evil
spirit), 62, 66, 67, 80, 204
Animals: and Hittites, 34, 192; in Mesopotamia,
165, 166; and pollution, 72; Roman,
227–228; in scapegoat ritual, 34, 36; SyroCanaanite,
173. See also Sacrifice
Annals of Assurbanipal, 73
Ansar (Mesopotamian deity), 171
Anthropocentrism, 20, 22–23
Anthropomorphism, 20, 165–166, 172
Antum (Mesopotamian deity), 168
Anu (Hittite deity), 49, 61
Anu (Mesopotamian deity), 55, 168, 171, 190
Anubis (Egyptian deity), 162
Anum (Mesopotamian deity), 168
Aphrodite/Venus, 8, 54, 140, 145, 160, 208
Apocalypse, 65, 67, 68–69, 80, 187, 235, 237
Apocalypse of Asclepius, 69–70
Apollo (Greek deity), vii, x, xi, 9, 51, 118,
208, 213
Apopis (Egyptian deity), 18
Appu, Tale of, 53, 54
Apsu (Mesopotamian deity), 60
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, 3, 104–105, 148
Aqhat, story of, 54, 174
Aramaic, 178
Arameans, 177–178
Aristarchus of Samos, 64
Aristophanes, 217
Aristotle, 61, 62, 79, 96
Artemis (Greek deity, Roman Diana), 8, 71,
117, 121
Arval Brothers, 131, 133, 137
Asclepius/Aesculapius, 9, 118, 123, 213
Ashella, prescription of, 33–34
Asherah (Syro-Canaanite deity), 182–183
Asshur (Mesopotamian city), 168, 170
Assur (Assyrian deity), 10, 87, 168, 170–171
Assur (Mesopotamian deity), 168
Assurbanipal, 26, 171
Assurbanipal II, 171
Assyria, 4, 86, 87, 170–171, 181, 184
Astarte (Canaanite deity), 6, 11, 160
Astarte (Phoenician deity), 176, 177
Astrology, 63, 139, 171
Astronomy, 63, 64
Aten (Egyptian deity), 182
Athena (Greek deity, Roman Minerva), 4, 52,
213
Athena Nike, 213
Athens: and Bendis, 117; and Eleusinian mysteries,
100; and morality, 90, 95; and myth,
52; pluralism in, 116, 117; and polis religion,
213; secrecy in, 108
Atrahasis, Myth of, 48, 50, 60, 71
Attalids of Pergamum, 4
Attis, 8, 103
Atum (Egyptian deity), 59, 60
Augustine of Hippo, 83, 231
Augustus, 226, 229–230, 245
Avesta, 198, 201
Avestan (language), 198, 203
Azazel, 35, 76
Ba, concept of, 158, 159
Baal (Syro-Canaanite deity), 10, 175, 176
Baal (Ugaritic deity), 9, 49, 55, 60
Baalat (Phoenician deity), 176
Baal Cycle, 47, 49, 53, 174
Baal-Hammon (Phoenician deity), 177
Baal-Saphon (Phoenician deity), 177
Baal-Shamem (Phoenician deity), 176
Baal-Shmayn (Syro-Canaanite deity), 178
Babylon/Babylonia, 5; cosmos in, 18, 19, 52,
63; creation myth of, 50, 52, 53, 60; and
divination, 19; eschatology in, 68; evidence
from, 165; festivals in, 37; and Hittites, 190;
and Judah, 181; justice in, 86, 89; Kassite
kings of, 168–169; law in, 87; and New
Year, 40, 42– 43, 52, 53; and offense of
gods, 74; possession in, 41; purification in,
41; and Sumero-Akkadian synthesis, 168;
and Varro’s tripartite theology, 18; writing
in, 131
Bacchus, cult of, 101–103, 105, 106, 107,
109, 115, 118. See also Dionysus
Bahman Yasht, 67, 68
Balaam, vision of, 179
Bar Kochba revolt, 188
Bastet (Egyptian deity), 40
Bendis (Thracian deity), 6, 117, 218
Beneficent Immortals. See Amesha Spentas
(Beneficent Immortals)
Berossus, 69
Bes (Egyptian deity), 161, 162
Bible (Hebrew): anthropocentrism of, 22–23;
creation in, 50, 61–62; development of, 188;
and Egypt, 61; and Enuma Elish, 88; eschatology
in, 68; flood story in, 48; foreign
gods in, 6; and history, 21, 46, 66, 181; human
purpose in, 88; and judgment after
death, 85; justice in, 30–31; and law, 95;
magic in, 140; mediator in, 78; monotheism
in, 29; monster in, 60, 65; morality in, 85,
86, 87; Phoenicians in, 176–177; pollution
in, 73; scapegoat ritual in, 34–35; and SyriaCanaan,
178–179; and time, 65; as traditional
stories, 47; writing of, 133. See also
Judaism; New Testament
Birth: and pollution, 72; and purity, 41
Bishops, 235, 238
Blood: and Hittites, 192–193; and pollution,
76; and purity, 41
Bogazköy, 189, 192, 193
Book of Enoch, 80
Borgeaud, Philippe, 103
Bountiful Immortals. See Amesha Spentas
(Beneficent Immortals)
Burial. See Funerary activity
Burkert, Walter, 33, 42
Byblos, 176
Calendar: of city-states, 6; Greek, 35; Hittite,
193; Roman, 127, 130, 131. See also Festi-
vals
Canopus, 161
Capua Tile, 221
Carchemish, 7, 8
Carthage, 116, 117, 123
Castor, 116, 117
Çatal Höyük, 8, 190
Celsus, 28
Cemetery, 222. See also Death; Funerary activity
Ceres (Greco-Roman deity), 118, 119
Chaeremon, 161
Chaldean Oracles, 109
Chemosh (Syro-Canaanite deity), 179
Christianity: in Alexandria, 235–236; apocalyptic,
65, 68–69, 235, 237; atonement in,
77; bishops in, 235, 238; and canon, 29;
and cosmology, 61–62, 64, 65; development
of, 233–239; and Egypt, 159, 161, 162–163,
235; eschatology in, 81, 237; Gentiles in,
234; God in, 75; and Greeks, 57, 236; history
in, 21; house-church in, 235; Jerusalem
Council of, 234; and Judaism, 125, 187,
233, 236, 237, 238; literature of, 234–235;
and magic, 140, 141, 149; and Marcion,
236; monotheism in, 11; morality in, 96–97,
236, 237; mystery as term in, 109–110; and
mystery cults, 109; and orality, 134–135;
and paganism, 231, 232; persecution of, 82,
124–125, 238; and philosophy, 125; and
Plato, 61–62, 237; and pluralism, 112; and
politics, 238; presbyter in, 235; purity in,
41, 79; rituals in, 236, 238; and Romans,
121, 122, 124–125, 231–232, 233, 236; and
index 256
sacrifice, 81; salvation in, 82, 96–97, 109;
secrecy in, 108; and self-definition, 124; Sibylline
Oracles, 67; sin in, 75, 77, 81–83,
237; and writing, 133, 134–135
Cicero: To Atticus, 127; Dream of Scipio, 64
Circumcision, 186, 187
Citizen: Egyptian, 156–157; and law, 94, 95;
Roman, 112, 120, 121
City-state, 6; Greek, 36, 208, 211, 213–214;
of Mesopotamia, 4; and pluralism, 112–
113; and religion, 213–214
Claudius Ptolemy, 64
Cnaeus Flavius, 127, 128, 130, 132, 138
Code of Hammurabi, 93, 94, 168
Colophon, 8
Constantine, 125, 238, 239
Coptic, 162, 163
Cosmos/cosmology, 59–70; and Akhenaten,
28–29; Babylonian, 18, 19, 52, 63; and
Christianity, 61–62, 64, 65; and divination,
18, 19; Egyptian, 18–19, 62, 64, 156, 157,
158; geocentric, 64; in Gnosticism, 65;
Greek, 18, 63–65; heliocentric, 64; Hittite,
196; Iranian, 200; Jewish, 63, 64, 65; and
magic, 148–149; Mesopotamian, 18, 165;
and nature, 19; and New Year festivals, 37–
38; in Plato, 61–62; Roman, 18; and sin,
79–83; Sumerian, 19; as term, 59–70; and
Varro’s tripartite theology, 18–19; Zoroastrian,
62, 204
Cosmotheism, 29
Creation: and apocalypse, 69; Babylonian, 50,
52, 53, 60; Egyptian, 59–60; Greek, 18, 61–
62; Jewish, 50, 61–62; Mesopotamian, 50,
52, 53, 60, 170; time and history in, 65–68.
See also Cosmos/cosmology
Crime, 73, 77
Crocus festival (Hittite), 193
Croesus, vii, x, xi
Cronus (Greek deity), 38, 48, 61
Cult: assimilation in, 11–13; Egyptian, 155–
156, 159–160; Greek, 104– 105, 212, 214–
215, 216–217; and myth, 56; and offense of
gods, 74; and politics, 19; and Varro’s tripartite
theology, 18; in Zoroastrianism, 201
Culture, 142, 144
Curse, 132, 143–144, 178
Curse on Agade, 21
Curse tablet, 146, 147–148, 149, 151
Cybele/Magna Mater, 7–9, 8, 103, 118, 125
Cyprian, On the Lapsed, 82
Cyrus the Great, x, xi, 4, 172, 198, 202
Dagan (Syro-Canaanite deity), 175–176
Dalmatia, 124
Damascius, 172
Damkina (Mesopotamian deity), 190
Daniel, Robert, 151
Darius I, 198, 202, 217
David, King of Israel, 139, 145, 182
Day of Atonement. See Yom Kippur (Jewish
Day of Atonement)
Dead Sea Scrolls, 62, 80, 81, 186, 187
Death: and Bacchic mysteries, 102; in Egypt,
155, 157; and Eleusinian mysteries, 99, 100;
and Etruscans, 222; and Greeks, 64, 216;
and Hittites, 195–196; and immortality, 64;
judgment after, 85, 187; life after, 99, 102,
107, 216; and mystery cults, 107; and pollution,
72–73; and purity, 41; in
Zoroastrianism, 204
Decius, 136
Defixio, 143. See also Curse
Deir Allah, 179
Deir el-Bahri, 161
Delos, 51, 72, 218–219
Delphi, 51, 213; oracle at, vii, 216
Demeter, 10, 99, 100, 101, 104, 105, 117,
123, 160
Demetrius Poliorcetes, 118
Demiurge, 237, 238
Democracy, 128, 131, 132, 213. See also Poli-
tics
Demons: amulets against, 146; and magic,
139, 140, 141, 145, 147; Syro-Canaanite,
173. See also Gods
Deucalion, 50, 65
Diana. See Artemis (Greek deity, Roman Di-
ana)
Didache, 235, 236
DikÁ, 85
Diodorus Siculus, 105
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 12; Roman Antiquities,
56
Dionysus, 10; and Athens, 213; and Bacchus,
101, 102–103, 105, 106, 107; and
interpretatio, 10; and Mycenaeans, 208; and
Naxos, 214; and Zeus, 102, 103. See also
Bacchus, cult of
Dioscuri, 160
Disease: amulets against, 146; and Greeks, 35;
and Hittites, 193–194, 195; and pollution,
72, 75; and scapegoat ritual, 34, 36
Dis Pater, 117
Divination: in Babylonia, 19; and cosmos, 18,
19; Egyptian, 156; Etruscan, 220–221;
Hittite, 195; Mesopotamian, 131, 171; Roman,
116, 227; in Sumer, 19. See also Ritual
Donatism, 237
Dreams, 195
Dumézil, Georges, 46
Dumuzi, 8
Durkheim, Émile, 52
Dur-Kurigalzu, 169
Ea (Babylonian deity), 9
Ea (Hittite deity), 61
Ea (Mesopotamian deity), 51, 190. See also
Enki (Mesopotamian deity, Akkadian Ea)
Ebla, 38, 76, 173, 174
257 index
Ecstatics, 14, 102
Edfu, 159, 161
Egypt: anthropocentrism of, 22–23, 24; Ba
concept in, 158, 159; and Bible, 61; and
Christianity, 159, 161, 162–163, 235; citizens
of, 156–157; classical period in, 155–
158; cosmic sin in, 80; cosmos in, 18–19,
62, 64, 156, 157; creation myth of, 59–60;
cult in, 155–156, 159–160; death in, 21,
155, 157; disaster in, 21; divination in, 156;
empire of, 158; eschatology in, 69–70, 161;
festivals of, 157; funerary activity in, 155,
157, 161; gods’ name in, 157; gods of, 9,
18–19, 20, 21, 22–24, 25, 26–27, 91–92,
155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162; and
Greeks, 159, 160; heaven in, 157; and Hellenistic
culture, 160; henotheism in, 23, 24;
history of, 155–164; hyphenation of gods in,
25; immortality in, 21; individual biography
in, 158; isolation of, 5, 9–10; and Judaism,
53, 61, 115, 155, 182, 184, 187, 188; and
judgment after death, 21, 85; justice in, 30,
91–92, 93–94, 155; kings of, 88, 92, 93, 94,
156, 157; language in, 142, 162; law in, 88;
literacy in, 129; and maÚat, 60, 65, 84, 88,
89, 91, 93, 94, 155, 157; magic in, 142,
147, 149, 150, 157, 160, 162; and Mesopotamia,
156; monotheism in, 18, 23, 24, 27,
28–29, 158; and morality, 84, 88–89, 91–
92, 93–94, 155; mysticism in, 109; myths
of, 47, 59–60, 157; nature in, 156; and
netherworld, 62, 155, 156, 157; New Kingdom
of, 158; offerings in, 155–156; oracles
in, 161; order in, 18, 156; personal piety in,
91, 158; and pluralism, 113, 114; politics in,
92, 156–157, 158, 161, 218; pollution in,
73; polytheism in, 23; priests in, 106, 159,
161, 162; processions in, 40; Ptolemaic,
159–160, 218; purification in, 75; and reciprocity,
84; ritual in, 18–19, 33, 41–42; and
Romans, 122, 159, 160–163, 232; sacrifice
in, 155; secrecy in, 108; society of, 156–157;
temples in, 159, 160–161, 162, 163; and
theodicy, 158; and theosophy, 161;
Thutmosid Dynasty, 158; and unity of gods
in, 26–27; and Varro’s tripartite theology,
18; wisdom literature of, 23; women in, 40;
writing in, 6, 129, 131, 135, 137
Egyptian Book of the Dead, 85
El (Canaanite deity), 182
El (Syro-Canaanite deity), 54, 60, 178
El (Ugaritic deity), 49
Eleusinian mysteries, 99–101, 105–106, 107,
109, 119, 216
Eleusis, 99
Elkunirsa myth, 176
Emar, 175
Emperor, 122
Empire, 4–5. See also Politics
en (priest-king), 165, 167
Enki (Mesopotamian deity, Akkadian Ea), 55,
166. See also Ea (Mesopotamian deity)
Enlil (Mesopotamian deity), 10, 21, 71, 166,
168, 169, 171, 190
Ennius, Quintus, 120; Annales, 56
I Enoch, 68, 69
ensi(k) (prince), 167
Enuma Elish, 26, 42–43, 48, 50, 61; and Bible,
88; composition of, 170; creation in, 50, 60;
and eschatology, 68; and Hittite myths, 191;
humans as servants to gods in, 87; time in,
65
Ephesus, 122
Epic of Release, 37–38
Epicureans, 96
Erechtheus, 213
Eridu, 165
Erinyes, 73
Erra (Mesopotamian deity), 170
Erra and Isum, myth of, 170
Esagil temple, 171
Esarhaddon, 171
Eschatology, 65, 68–70; Christian, 81, 237;
Egyptian, 69–70, 161; in Judaism, 92;
Mesopotamian, 170; in Zoroastrianism, 204
Eshmun (Phoenician deity), 176
Essenes, 186, 187
Estan (Hittite deity), 189
Etana, myth of, 62–63
Etrusca disciplina, 221
Etruscans: and death, 222; divination by, 220–
221; gods of, 223; and Greeks, 56, 223;
Herodotus on, 221; history in, 66; religious
history of, 220–224; and Romans, 112, 116,
220, 223–224, 225; sanctuaries of, 222; visual
representations of, 221, 222
Euripides: Andromache, 90; Bacchae, 101;
Helen, 90; Hippolytus, 72, 217; Orestes, 73;
The Trojan Women, 217
Eusebius, 237
Evans, Sir Arthur, 206, 207
Evil: and Hittites, 193–194; in
Zoroastrianism, 62. See also Morality
Ezra, 185, 186
4 Ezra, 68, 80
Family, Roman, 229. See also Ancestry
Faraone, Christopher, 143
Fayyum, 161
Feronia, 117, 121
Fertility, 51, 166, 207
Festivals: Babylonian, 37; carnivalesque, 38; of
city-states, 6; Egyptian, 157; at Emar, 175–
176; Greek, 214; Hittite, 192, 193; Iranian,
200; Mesopotamian, 167; Phoenician, 177;
Roman, 127, 130, 131, 228; SyroCanaanite,
175–176. See also Calendar; Ritual;
specific festivals
index 258
Ficino, Marsilio, 149
First Epistle of Clement, 235
Flood, story of, 48, 50
Fontenelle, Bernard de, 46
Food: and magic, 147; Roman, 228; and sacrifice,
13, 14
Fortuna, 223
Frazer, Sir James, 51, 148, 149; Golden
Bough, 141
Fulvius Nobilior, 120
Funerary activity: Egyptian, 155, 157, 161;
and pollution, 72–73
Gaea (Greek deity), 48, 49
Gathas, of Zarathustra, 198, 201, 202, 203
Gaul, 123, 124
Geb (Egyptian deity), 48, 158
Germania, 123
Gilgamesh Epic, 8, 47, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 62
Gnosticism, 65, 82, 236, 237–238
Gods: anthropocentric, 20, 22–23; anthropomorphic,
20, 165–166; appeasement of, 71,
77–78; of city-states, 6; and conquest, 10–
11; as creators, 18; desertion of, 74; Egyptian,
9, 18–19, 20, 21, 22–24, 25, 26–27,
91–92, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161,
162; Etruscan, 223; fettering of, 38; foreign,
4, 6, 9, 218, 230; Greek, 7, 18, 25–26, 63,
119–120, 211, 218, 236; Hattian, 189;
Hittite, 9, 189–191, 195–196; hyphenation
of, 25–26; immortality of, 53–54; Indian,
199; and interpretatio, 9–10, 24–25; intervention
of, 20, 65, 85; and Judaism, 6, 182–
183; in Linear B, 208, 211; and magic, 140,
141, 142, 143, 145, 148, 149; Mesopotamian,
26, 65, 87, 92–93, 165, 166, 167,
168, 169–171; migration of, 7–9; Minoan,
206–207; morality of, 85, 91, 92–93, 95,
216, 217; Mycenaean, 208; offense to, 71,
74–75; and politics, 74; and pollution, 73–
74; and reciprocity, 84; Roman, 4, 7, 18, 71,
116, 119–121, 227–229, 236; royal court
of, 18; Syro-Canaanite, 173, 174, 175, 176,
177, 178, 179; transcendent, 29; unity of,
26–27; Zoroastrian, 201. See also Monotheism;
Myth; Polytheism; Theodicy; YHWH
(God of Israel); specific divinities
Goodman, M. D., 133, 134
Goody, Jack: The Domestication of the Savage
Mind, 130; “The Consequences of Literacy,”
129–130
Gospel of Thomas, 235
Gospel of Truth, 82, 237
Graf, Fritz, 102, 148
Greeks: and afterlife, 216; in Alexandria, 114,
115; astronomy of, 64; and Bendis, 218; calendar
of, 35; and Christianity, 57, 236; and
class, 89; colonies of, 56, 216–217; and cosmos,
18, 63–65; and creation, 61–62; and
cult practice, 104–105, 212, 214–215, 216–
217; and death, 64, 216; and disaster, 21;
and disease, 35; and do ut des formula, 215;
and Egypt, 159, 160; and empire, 90–91;
and Etruscans, 56, 223; and fate, 21; festivals
of, 214; and flood story, 48; and foreign
gods, 218; and foreign trade, 217; gods of,
7, 18, 25–26, 63, 119–120, 211, 236; hero
cults of, 212–213, 216–217; and history, 20,
66; and Hittites, 35; and honor, 89, 90, 91;
human relationship to deities, 215–216; and
hyphenation of gods, 25–26; and Jews, 231;
and Judaism, 186, 187; and judgment after
death, 85; and justice, 89–90; and law, 94,
95; and literacy, 128; and magic, 140, 141,
145, 146, 147, 149, 150; and morality, 78–
79, 84, 89–91, 95–97, 216, 217, 236; and
Mycenaeans, 208; myths of, 45–46, 47, 56–
57, 61–62; and non-Greeks, 90, 95; and offense
to gods, 75; offerings by, 215, 216; oracles
of, 216; and paganism, 30; Persian attack
on, 217; and pharmakos ritual, 35, 76;
philosophy of, 57, 217; and pluralism, 113,
114; polis religion of, 208, 213–214; and
politics, 91; and pollution, 73, 79, 211;
priests of, 214; private rituals vs. public, 33;
and purification, 35, 36, 75, 78–79, 211;
and purity, 41; religious history of, 210–
219; and revenge, 89–90; rituals of, 33, 35–
36, 76, 117–119, 211; and role reversal, 38;
and Romans, 56, 116, 118, 119–120, 122,
124, 218, 232; sacrifice by, 39, 40, 51, 91,
211; and scapegoat ritual, 35–36; society of,
213–214, 215; and state, 90; and syncretism,
219; and Syria, 35; temples of, 51,
211, 217; and theosophy, 161; and time,
200; tragedy of, 217; and Varro’s tripartite
theology, 17; visual representations of, 56;
and world, 69; and writing, 7, 131, 135,
137. See also Hellenistic culture
Gressmann, Hugo, 47
Gula (Mesopotamian deity), 169
Güterbock, Hans Gustav, 47
Hadad (Syro-Canaanite deity), 178
Hades (Greek and Roman deity), 99, 101
Halmasuit (Hittite deity), 189
Hammurabi, 92, 93, 94, 168
Harpocrates (Egyptian deity), 160, 161
Harpocration, 35
Harrison, Jane Ellen, 42, 51–52
Haruspex/haruspices, 221
Hasmonean dynasty, 114, 115, 186
Hathor/Sekhmet (Egyptian deity), 71
Hatti/Hattian tradition, 189, 191
Hattusha, 55, 189, 192
Healing. See Disease
Heaven, 62, 157. See also Netherworld
Hecataeus, 53
259 index
Hecate (Greek deity), 118, 160
Hedammu (Hittite deity), 49
Hekhalot mystics, 109
Heliopolis, 23, 59
Helios, 27
Hell, 204. See also Netherworld
Helladius, 35
Hellenistic culture: apocalypse in, 69; cosmology
of, 64–65; and Egypt, 160; history in,
66, 67; and interpretatio, 25; and Judaism,
124; and law, 95; and pluralism, 114; purification
in, 79; and religious change, 218;
and Romans, 119–120, 124; world in, 69;
and Zoroastrianism, 202. See also Greeks
Henotheism, 23, 24. See also Monotheism
Hepat (Hittite deity), 10, 190
Heracleides Ponticus, 65
Heracles, 213
Heraclitus, 57
Hercules, 116, 117, 118, 119–120
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 46, 47
Heredity. See Ancestry
Hermes, 137
Hermes Trismegistus, 148, 161
Hermeticism, 135, 161
Hermopolis, 59
Herodotus: Bacchic mysteries in, 101; empires
in, 68; on Etruscans, 221; on Greek religion,
210; and interpretatio, 9, 10, 12; on Isis,
104; on Magi, 202; and panhellenization,
210; processions in, 40
Hesiod: cosmology in, 63; history in, 66, 67;
and interpretatio, 9; justice in, 89–90; morality
in, 95; myth in, 47, 48–49;
panhellenization of, 210, 211; succession
myth in, 48–49; Theogony, 9, 48–49, 50, 53,
61, 62; Works and Days, 61, 62, 66, 211;
written text of, 130
Heyne, Gottlieb Christian, 45–46, 47
Hippocratic corpus, 41, 79
Hippolytus, 82
History: in Bible, 21, 46, 66, 181; cyclic view
of, 65; in Egypt, 20, 157–158; and Judaism,
21, 22, 66, 67; and myth, 53–54, 56; and
Romans, 20, 66; theologization of, 20–24;
and time, 65–68; and writing, 128; and
YHWH, 53
Hittites: and animals, 34, 192; and assimilation,
10–11; and Babylonia, 190; and blood,
192–193; calendar of, 193; and cosmos,
196; and death, 195–196; and disease, 193–
194, 195; divination by, 195; and dreams,
195; and Euma Elish, 191; and evil, 193–
194; festivals of, 37, 38, 192, 193; gods of,
9, 189–191, 195–196; and Greeks, 35; and
healing, 195; and human-divine relationship,
54; incantations of, 194; and Judaism,
192, 194; kings of, 192, 193, 194, 195; laws
of, 94; and Mesopotamia, 190, 195; myths
of, 51, 55–56, 61, 191; and nature, 195;
netherworld of, 193–194, 196; New Year
celebration of, 37, 38; offerings of, 192,
193, 196; and politics, 193; and pollution,
192; prayers of, 194–195; priests of, 192,
193, 194; and purification, 75, 193; religious
development of, 189–196; and ritual,
33–35, 36, 76, 77, 192–196; rule of, 5; and
scapegoat, 33–35, 36, 77, 194; temples of,
191–192, 193, 194; visual representations
of, 192; and women, 34. See also Anatolia
Homer: cosmology in, 63; criticism of, 218;
gods in, 65–66; and hero cults, 212, 213; Iliad,
8, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 211; morality in,
95; Odyssey, 41, 53, 55, 56, 211;
panhellenization of, 210, 211; and purification,
75; written text of, 130
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 8
Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 13, 51
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 99, 100
Hooke, Samuel H., 51
Horus (Egyptian deity), 18, 157, 162
Hurrians, 37, 38, 55, 146, 189, 190, 191, 193,
195. See also Anatolia
Hyakinthia (Greek festival), 40
Hymns, Mesopotamian, 166–167. See also
Gathas, of Zarathustra
Hystaspes, Oracles of, 67, 69
Iamblichus, 79, 161
Iao, 27. See also YHWH (God of Israel)
Iberia, 123, 124
Iconography. See Visual representation
Idolatry, 29–30, 74–75
Ignatius of Antioch, 235
Iguvine Tablets, 223
Illness. See Disease
Illuyanka (Anatolian dragon), 49
Images. See Visual representation
Immortality, 64, 79
Inanna (Mesopotamian deity, Akkadian
Ishtar), 8, 11, 168; appeasement of, 77; and
Gilgamesh, 54; hymns to, 165; and politics,
167; representations of, 165, 166
Inara (Hittite deity), 189
Incantation, 166, 194
India, 199, 200, 237
Indo-Europeans, viii, 46
Instruction for Merikare, 22, 23
Iran: apocalypse in, 69; cosmos in, 200; covenant
in, 199; festivals of, 200; law in, 94; religious
history of, 197–205; ritual in, 200–
201; sacrifice in, 199. See also
Zoroastrianism
Ishtar. See Inanna (Mesopotamian deity, Akkadian
Ishtar)
Isis (Egyptian deity), 6, 161, 162; in Apuleius, 3,
104–105; and Demeter, 104, 105, 160; and
Greeks, 104–105; and Hellenistic culture,
160; and interpretatio, 10; myth of, 53; and
Romans, 121, 232; and self-definition, 124
index 260
Isocrates, 90, 120
Italic peoples, 112, 116, 120–121
Jason (Greek hero), 140, 145
Jerusalem: and reforms of Josiah, 182, 184;
under Roman rule, 123; temple in, 22, 182,
184–185, 188
Jesus: celebration of, 234; identity of, 233; and
magic, 140; and Marcion, 236; nature of,
237; and sin, 81–82; and writing, 134
Jewish Wars, 114
Jews: in Egypt, 115; and Greeks, 231; and
Romans, 121, 122, 123, 231, 232, 234. See
also Bible (Hebrew); Judaism
John of Damascus, Orations, 134
Josephus, The Jewish War, 133
Josiah, King of Judah, 22, 181, 182, 183, 184
Judah, kingdom of: and Babylonia, 181;
Josiah’s reform of, 181; morality of God in,
92; morality of state in, 88
Judaism: apocalypse in, 65, 67, 68–69, 80; and
Asherah, 182–183; and Assyria, 184; astrology
in, 63; blood in, 75; and Canaan, 181,
182; and canon, 29; and chaos dragon, 65;
and Christianity, 125, 187, 233; circumcision
in, 186, 187; community in, 89; cosmic
sin in, 80–81; cosmos in, 61–62, 63, 64, 65;
critique of cult in, 78; diet in, 186, 187; and
Egypt, 53, 61, 155, 182, 184, 187, 188; eschatology
in, 92; and goddess worship, 182–
183; gods in, 6; and Greeks, 186, 187; and
Hellenistic culture, 124; and history, 21, 22,
66, 67; and Hittites, 192, 194; idolatry in,
74–75; immortality in, 21, 187; and judgment
after death, 187; justice in, 30–31, 55,
183; king in, 35, 181; magic in, 139–140,
141, 144, 146, 150; menstruation in, 75;
and Mesopotamia, 181, 182; monotheism
in, 11, 15, 21–22, 29, 53, 155, 178, 182,
183, 184, 187; morality in, 30, 78, 183; morality
of state in, 88; murder in, 77; netherworld
in, 63; offerings in, 76; and orality,
134; paganism in, 30, 182–183; and Persia,
185; and Plato, 61–62; and Platonism, 187;
and pluralism, 113, 114; and pollution, 72–
73, 74, 80; polytheism in, 179; priests in,
35, 178; prophecy in, 181, 183, 187;
purification in, 41, 75, 76, 79; purity in, 41,
186; and rabbis, 188; and reform of Ezra,
185, 186; religious history of, 181–188; ritual
in, 33, 34–35, 76, 185, 187; sacrifice in,
76, 89, 178, 183, 246; scapegoat ritual in,
34–35, 76; scribes in, 184; secrecy in, 108;
and self-definition, 124; sexuality in, 187;
Sibylline Oracles, 67; sin in, 35, 77–78; society
of, 50; and Syria-Canaan, 178–179; temples
in, 178; and Varro, 28; women in, 75;
world in, 69; and writing, 133–134, 135,
136–137. See also Bible (Hebrew); YHWH
(God of Israel)
Judea, 94–95, 115
Judgment (after death), 204
Julia Domna, 6
Julius Caesar, 9, 225, 226
Juno Caelestis (Carthaginian deity), 116, 123
Juno Sospita, 117, 121
Jupiter (Roman deity), 4, 18. See also Zeus
(Greek deity)
Justice, 30–31, 84, 86; Egyptian, 30, 91–92,
155; Jewish, 30–31, 155, 183;
Mesopotamian, 86; in Plato, 96. See also
Theodicy
Karnak, 159
Keret, story of, 53, 54
Kesh, 166
ki.lam festival (Hittite), 193
King: Aramean, 178; Assyrian, 171; Egyptian,
88, 92, 93, 94, 155, 156, 157; Hittite, 192,
193, 194, 195; in Judaism, 35, 181;
Mesopotamian, 88, 93, 94, 165, 167; in
New Year festival, 37, 39; Phoenician, 177;
in polytheism, 18; Syro-Canaanite, 175;
Ugaritic, 175
Kirder, 198, 202
Kirta Epic, 174
Kom Ombo, 159
Kore, 99, 100
Kronia (Greek festival), 38, 42, 52
Kubaba, 7–8
Kuhn, Adalbert, 46
Kumarbi (Hittite deity), 8, 47, 190, 191
Kumarbi Cycle, 47, 48, 49, 53, 55, 61, 191
Kybebe, 7, 8
Kysis, 159
Lactantius, 67, 69
Lane-Fox, Robin, 134
Larsa, 166, 168
Latin League, 113
Law, 85, 86, 87, 94–95; Egyptian, 88; Iranian,
94; written, 127
Lesses, Rebecca, 150
Libation: and Eleusinian mysteries, 100; and
transfer and assimilation, 12–13. See also
Ritual
Linear A, 206
Linear B, 208, 211
Literacy, 128–129, 131, 134, 136, 166, 244.
See also Writing
Livius Andronicus, 55
Livy, 36, 118, 127
Lucian, Philopseudes, 145
Lugulbanda, 54
Luhmann, Niklaus, 15
Lycurgus, Lament of Leocrates, 85
MaÚat, concept of. See Egypt, maÚat
Maat (Egyptian deity), 60, 85
Maccabean revolt, 186, 187
261 index
Macedonian kings, 218, 219
Macrobius, Saturnalia, 27
Magi, 202
Magic, 139–152; Anatolian, 150; and Bible
(Hebrew), 140; and Christianity, 140, 141,
149; definitions of, 139–142; Egyptian, 142,
147, 149, 150, 157, 160, 162; Greek, 140,
141, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150; Hurrian, 146;
and Jesus, 140; in Judaism, 139–140, 141,
144, 146; Mesopotamian, 144; in New Testament,
140; in Plato, 142–143; Roman,
150; and YHWH, 139, 140. See also Witch-
craft
Magna Mater. See Cybele/Magna Mater
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 51, 142
Maltomini, Franco, 151
Mandulis (Egyptian deity), 160
Manicheism, 82, 198, 231
Marcion, 236
Marcionites, 82
Marduk (Mesopotamian deity): anger of, 170;
appeasement of, 77; and Babylonian New
Year, 42, 43; and creation, 18, 52, 60; and
Enlil, 168; and politics, 167, 169, 171; and
society, 50; and Tiamat, 49, 52, 87, 170;
and time, 65; and unity of gods, 26; visual
representation of, 245
Matar Kubileiya, 9
Matronalia (Roman festival), 38
Mazdaism. See Zoroastrianism
Medicine/healing. See Disease
Melqart (Phoenician deity), 176, 178
Memphis, 59, 161
Men, 149
Menouthis, 161
Mesopotamia: animals in, 165, 166; anthropomorphism
in, 172; astrology in, 171; citystates
of, 4; cosmos in, 18, 62, 63, 165; and
creation, 170; disaster in, 21; divination in,
131, 171; and Egypt, 156; eschatology in,
170; festivals of, 167; flood story in, 48;
gods of, 21, 26, 65, 87, 92–93, 165, 166,
167, 168, 169–171; history in, 20–21; history
of, 165–172; and Hittites, 190, 195;
human-divine relationship in, 53, 54, 60,
87, 165; and Hurrians, 191, 195; hymns in,
166–167; immortality in, 21; incantations
in, 166; and Judaism, 181, 182; justice in,
86; kings of, 88, 93, 94, 165, 167; magic in,
144; morality in, 92–93; mysticism in, 109;
myths of, 47, 60; and netherworld, 62; offerings
in, 166, 172; personal god in, 21,
169; politics in, 167–168, 171; pollution in,
73, 75; prayer in, 108; priest-king of, 165,
167; priests in, 106, 165, 166; ritual in, 166;
secrecy in, 108; symbols in, 165–166, 169;
temples in, 165, 166–167, 171–172;
theodicy in, 169; and Varro’s tripartite theology,
18; visual representation in, 165, 166,
172; witchcraft in, 149; writing in, 6, 131
Messiah, 235
Meter, cult of, 103, 105, 107
Metternich Stele, 140
Midian, 181, 182
Minerva. See Athena (Greek deity, Roman Mi-
nerva)
Minoans, 5, 7, 206–207
Mishnah, 34, 134
Mithra/Mihr (Iranian deity), 199
Mithras (Roman deity), 103–104, 106, 109,
113, 122, 232
Moab, 74, 179
Monotheism, 17, 24–31, 53; in Christianity,
11; Egyptian, 18, 23, 24, 27; Jewish, 11, 15,
21–22, 29, 53, 155, 178, 182, 183, 184,
187; and morality, 85; and paganism, 30; of
perspective, 23; in Zoroastrianism, 201,
203, 204. See also Gods; Henotheism
Montanism, 237
Morality, 84–91; and Bacchic mysteries, 102;
Christian, 96–97, 236, 237; Egyptian, 84,
88–89, 91–92, 93–94, 155; of gods, 85, 91,
92, 95, 217; Greek, 78–79, 84, 89–91, 95–
97, 216, 217, 236; Jewish, 30, 78, 183; and
magic, 141; in Mesopotamian, 92–93; and
paganism, 30; and philosophy, 95–97; Roman,
236; Zoroastrian, 201, 203, 204. See
also Crime; Evil; Justice; Theodicy
Moses, 140, 181
Mot (Syro-Canaanite deity), 60
Müller, Max, 46
Muses (Greek deities), 119–120
Mycenae, 5, 7, 207–209, 211
Mystery cults, 98–111, 106, 109, 113
Mysticism, 109, 142
Myth, 45–58; anthropogonal, 50–51; creation,
52, 53; creation of, 49–50; and cult, 56; diffusion
of, 47, 48; Egyptian, 47, 59–60, 157;
fertility, 51; Greek, 45–46, 47, 56–57; and
history, 53–54, 56; Hittite, 51, 55–56, 61,
191; Hurrian, 191; and Judaism, 50; and literature,
55; Mesopotamian, 47, 60; and oral
storytelling, 47; polytheistic, 19–20; and ritual,
42–43, 51–53, 56; and society, 20, 50;
of succession, 48–49; Sumerian, 47; SyroCanaanite,
60; as term, 45, 54, 56–57;
transmission of, 52, 55; and Varro’s tripartite
theology, 18. See also Gods
Nabonidus, 171
Nabu (Mesopotamian deity), 171
Nanna-Suen (Mesopotamian deity), 166, 167
Naram-Sin, 21
Nature, 19, 156, 195. See also Cosmos/cos-
mology
Naxos, 214–215
Near East, 46–47
Nebuchadnezzar I, 169, 170
Nebuchadnezzar II, 171
Nemesis, 118
index 262
Neo-Hittite kingdoms, 4–5
Neoplatonism, 79, 148, 149
Nergal (Mesopotamian deity), 73–74
Nergal and Ereshkigal, story of, 55
Netherworld: Egyptian, 62, 155, 156, 157;
Hittite, 193–194, 196; Jewish, 63;
Mesopotamian, 62; Zoroastrian, 204
New Testament: apocalypse in, 68–69; developing
canon of, 234–235; magic in, 140; sin
in, 81; and writing, 134, 135. See also Bible
(Hebrew); Christianity
New Year, 37–39; Babylonian, 40, 42–43, 52,
53; and creation myths, 52, 53; Greek, 38;
Hittite, 37, 38; Roman, 38; social order in,
37–38, 39, 40
Nicea, synod of, 239
Nilsson, M. P., 207
Ningurta (Mesopotamian deity), 169
Ninhursagak (Mesopotamian deity, Akkadian
Belet-ili, Mami, Mama), 166
Nin-Isinna (Mesopotamian deity), 166
Ninlil (Mesopotamian deity), 169
Ninurta (Mesopotamian deity), 169
Nippur, 166, 168, 169
Nonae Capratinae, 38
Novatian, 82
Numa Pompilius, 54, 56
Nut (Egyptian deity), 48, 64, 158
Odes of Solomon, 237
Offerings: in Egypt, 155–156; Greek, 215,
216; Hittite, 192, 193, 196; Mesopotamian,
166, 172; Minoan, 207; Mycenaean, 208;
Phoenician, 177. See also Sacrifice
Ohrmazd. See Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd (Iranian
deity)
Olympia, 19, 211–212
Oracles: comparing, vii; Egyptian, 161; and
gods, 244; Greek, vii, x, xi, 216; and orality,
135; and supreme god, 27; and writing, 135
Oracles of Hystaspes, 67, 69
Orality, 47, 48, 128, 129, 130, 134–135, 136,
244. See also Literacy; Writing
Order, 18, 156
Origen, On First Principles, 238
Orpheus: cult of, 79, 135, 216; and writing,
137–138
Osiris (Egyptian deity), 10, 53, 105
Ovid, 223; Fasti, 54; Metamorphoses, 11–12,
48, 50
Paganism, 29–30, 30, 182–183, 231, 232
Pahlavi books, 202
Palace, 207, 208
Panathenaea (Greek festival), 40, 52
Parilia (Roman festival), 53
Paris, 54
Parthenon, 52
Parthia, 172
Paul, St., 81, 83, 134, 233–234
Pausanias, 12, 120
Persephone, 99, 100, 101, 103, 106, 117, 123
Persians, 4; and apocalypse, 69; attack on
Greeks, 217; isolation of, 5; and Judaism,
185; and law, 94; and Satan, 62. See also
Iran
Person, A. W., 207
Petbe (Egyptian deity), 161
Peter, St., 234
Phaeton, 65
Pharaoh. See King
Philae, 159
Philip II, 218
Philo of Alexandria, 79, 187
Philo of Byblos, 49
Philosophy: and Christianity, 125; Greek, 61,
63–64, 95–97, 217; and morality, 95–97;
pre-Socratic, 63, 217; spiritual development
in, 109. See also individual philosophers
Phoenicians, 4, 176–177. See also Syria-
Canaan
Phrygians, 7, 9
Piacenza liver, 221
Pindar, 140
Plato, 45; and Christianity, 61–62, 237; cosmos
in, 61–62, 63–64; Critias, 137; critical
perspective of, 242–243; Euthyphro, 73;
Gorgias, 90; immortality in, 79; on justice,
90, 96; and laws, 96; magic in, 142–143;
morality in, 96; mystery as term in, 109;
mystery cults in, 107, 109; and myth, 57;
nomos in, 96; and Origen, 238; Phaedo, 79;
Phaedrus, 137; and pollution, 73, 79;
purification in, 79; Republic, 90; Timaeus,
61–62, 63–64; and time, 65; world in, 69;
and writing, 137
Platonism, 187
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 143
Pliny the Younger, 135–136, 236
Plutarch, 54, 67; On Isis and Osiris, 28, 105;
Life of Theseus, 45
Politics: and Babylonian myth, 60; and Christianity,
238; and cults, 19; Egyptian, 92,
156–157, 158, 161, 218; Greek, 91; Hittite,
193; and interpretatio, 25; and literacy, 129;
Mesopotamian, 167–168, 169, 171; and offense
of gods, 74; and pluralism, 114, 115;
Roman, 225–227, 228–230; and writing,
127–128. See also Empire; State
Pollution: and animals, 72; and birth, 18; and
blood, 76; and burial, 72–73; and death,
72–73; defined, 72; from disease, 72, 75; in
Egypt, 73; and gods, 73–74; and Greeks, 73,
79, 211; and Hittites, 192; in Judaism, 72–
73, 74, 80; in Mesopotamia, 73, 75; and
murder, 73; and objective defilement, 71; in
Plato, 79; and priests, 72; and ritual, 72;
and sacred, 72; and sexuality, 72, 73–74;
and temples, 72. See also Purification; Purity
Pollux, 116, 117
263 index
Polytheism, 17–24, 53, 85, 107, 179, 204,
230–231. See also Gods
Porphyry, 28, 79
Poseidon (Greek deity), 208
Praeneste, oracle at, 135, 223
Prayer: changing attitudes toward, 247;
Hittite, 194–195; and magic, 141, 143, 144;
Mesopotamian, 108; Roman, 227; Ugaritic,
175
Prayer of Muwattalli II, 190
Presbyter, 235
Pre-Socratics, 63, 217
Priestesses, Phoenician, 177
Priests: Assyrian, 171; Egyptian, 106, 159,
161, 162; Greek, 214; Hittite, 192, 193,
194; and insurrection, 115; Jewish, 35, 178;
and magic, 141; Mesopotamian, 106, 165,
166; Phoenician, 177; and pollution, 72;
Roman, 135, 227, 228, 230
Pritchard, James B., 47
Processions, 39–41; Egyptian, 40; Roman, 39,
40–41, 116, 227. See also Ritual
Prometheus, 50–51, 137
Prophecy/prophets: Jewish, 181, 183, 187; Roman,
227; and transfer and assimilation, 14;
and writing, 134
Prudentius, Peristephanon, 103
Ptah (Egyptian deity), 59, 60
Ptahhotep, 86–87
Ptolemaic kings, 4, 159–160, 218
Puhvel, Jan, 46
Purification: in Babylon, 41; Egyptian, 75;
Greek, 35, 36, 75, 78–79, 211; in Hellenistic
culture, 79; Hittite, 75, 193; in Homer, 75;
Jewish, 41, 75, 76, 79; rituals for, 41. See
also Pollution
Purity: and birth, 41; and blood, 41; and
Christianity, 41, 79; and death, 41; and
Greeks, 41; in Judaism, 41, 186; and
Romans, 41; and sexuality, 41. See also Pol-
lution
Pythagoras, 64
Pythagoreans, 79, 120, 216, 247
Qingu (Babylonian deity), 60
Queen, 177
Qumran community, 186
Rabbis: and Judaism, 188; and magic, 150; on
pollution, 80; on sin, 80
Re (Egyptian deity), 18, 59, 62, 155, 157, 158
Re-Atum (Egyptian deity), 59
Reincarnation, 102
Resheph (Syro-Canaanite deity), 178
Resurrection, 69
Rhea (Greek deity), 7, 48
Rites of passage, and mystery cults, 105–106,
108, 109
Ritual, 32–44; and curses, 143; of disposal,
76; Egyptian, 18–19, 33, 41–42; Greek, 33,
117–119, 211; Hittite, 192–193, 193–196;
Iranian, 200–201; in Judaism, 185, 187;
magic, 146, 147; Mesopotamian, 166; mystery
cults, 100–107; and myth, 42–43, 51–
53, 56; and pollution, 72; purification, 41;
Roman, 227, 228, 229; scapegoat, 13, 33–
36, 41, 43, 76, 77, 194; Syro-Canaanite,
174–175; transfer and assimilation of, 12–
13; and writing, 133, 136; Zoroastrian, 204.
See also Divination; Festivals; Libation; Processions;
Sacrifice
Romans: in Africa, 122, 123; and animals,
227–228; appeasement of gods, 77; Arval
Brothers, 131, 133, 137; associations of,
112, 125; and auspices, 116; and Bacchic
mysteries, 109, 115; calendar of, 127, 130,
131; and Carthage, 123; and Christianity,
121, 122, 124–125, 231–232, 236; citizenship
of, 112, 120, 121; colonies of, 4, 112,
120–121; cosmos in, 18; divination by, 116,
227; and Egypt, 122, 159, 160–163, 232;
emperor cult of, 122, 230; empire of, 3–4,
114, 119–120, 121, 122, 230–232; and
Etruscans, 112, 116, 220, 223–224, 225;
and family, 229; festivals of, 127, 130, 131,
228; and food, 228; and foreign gods, 4, 6,
9, 230; gods of, 4, 7, 18, 71, 116, 119–121,
227–229, 236; and Greeks, 56, 116, 118,
119–120, 124, 218, 232; Hellenization of,
119–120, 124; and history, 20, 66; identity
of, 228; and Isis, 121, 232; and Italic peoples,
112, 120–121; and Jews, 121, 122,
231, 232, 234; King of Sacrifices of, 230;
kings of, 230; and literacy, 128; and magic,
150; and morality, 236; mystery cults of,
106, 109; and offense of gods, 74; and pluralism,
112–125; politics of, 225–227, 228–
230; polytheism of, 230–231; prayers of,
227; priestly colleges of, 135, 227, 229, 230;
priests of, 228, 230; private practices by,
121, 229; processions of, 40–41, 227; and
prophecy, 227; and purity, 41; religious history
of, 225–232; rituals of, 33, 36, 227,
228, 229; and role reversal, 38; sacrifice by,
227–228; scapegoat ritual of, 36; senate of,
228, 229, 230; and state, 228, 229; triumphal
processions of, 39, 116; and Varro’s tripartite
theology, 18; visual representations
of, 227; vows of, 227; and writing, 135–136
Romulus, 53, 54, 118
Rosh Hashanah (Jewish festival), 53
Sacaea (Babylonian festival), 37
Sacrifice: changing attitudes toward, 246–247;
and Christianity, 81; Egyptian, 155; and
food, 13, 14; Greek, 39, 40, 51, 91, 211;
human, 177, 183; in Iran, 199; Jewish, 76,
89, 178, 183, 246; Roman, 227–228; Syroindex
264
Canaanite, 174–175; and transfer and assimilation,
13–14. See also Offerings; Ritual
Sacrifice of Sapan, 174
Sacrilege, 71
Saint, Christian, 162, 163
Salii, hymn of, 131, 132
Samnites, 114
Samothracian mysteries, 101, 106
Sanctuaries: Etruscan, 222; writing at, 135–
136. See also Temples
Sanhedrin, 123
Sarapis (Egyptian deity), 27, 115, 121, 159–
160, 218
Sargonid Dynasty, 21
Sasanid dynasty, 172, 198, 201, 202, 204
Satan, 62
Saturn, 38, 118, 123
Saturnalia (Roman festival), 38, 118
Sauska (Hittite deity), 190
Scapegoat ritual, 13, 33–36, 41, 43, 76, 77,
194
Schliemann, Heinrich, 207
Scribes, 48, 184
Secular Games, 118
Sefire Inscriptions, 178
Seleucid kings, 4, 37, 115, 172
Seneca, 28, 69
Sennacherib, 171
Servius, 27–28, 66, 67
Seth (Egyptian deity), 10, 18, 157
Sexuality: in Augustine, 83; and Bacchic mysteries,
101; and Cybele, 7, 8; in Judaism,
187; and magic, 150–151; and pollution,
72, 73–74; and purity, 41
Shalmaneser III, 171
Shamash (Mesopotamian deity), 168
Shapur I, 202
Shemesh (Syro-Canaanite deity), 178
Shimigi, 9
Shu (Egyptian deity), 158
Shulgi, 21, 167
Sibyl of Cumae, 135
Sibylline Oracles, 67, 103, 118, 245
Sidon, 176
Simegi (Hittite deity), 190
Sin: in Christianity, 75, 77, 81–83, 237; cosmic
power of, 79–83; in Egypt, 80; as insult to
deity, 71; in Judaism, 35, 77–78, 80–81; as
objective defilement, 71; and purification,
75–76; in scapegoat ritual, 36; SyroCanaanite,
175; in Zoroastrianism, 80
Sin (Mesopotamian deity), 171
Sippar, 168
Sobek (Egyptian deity), 160, 162
Society: changing attitudes toward, 247–248;
Egyptian, 156–157; Greek, 215; and
interpretatio, 25; Jewish, 50; and literacy,
129–130, 131; and morality, 84–85; and
mystery cults, 105–107, 109; and myth, 20,
50; and New Year festivals, 37–38, 39, 40;
and religious belonging, 113; shame, 84–85
Socrates, 242–243
Solomon, King of Israel, 6, 139, 140
Solon, 85
Sophists, 95, 217
Sophocles, 90; Antigone, 72; Oedipus at
Colonus, 213; Oedipus Tyrannus, 141
Sparta, 40, 90, 108
Spenta Armaiti (Iranian deity), 199
State: Egyptian, 157; morality of, 88; Roman,
228, 229; subordination to, 248–249. See
also Politics
Steiner, D. Tarn, 137
Stoics/Stoicism, 27–28, 63–64, 65, 69, 96
Storm-god of Hatti (Hittite deity), 189–190,
195
Sukkot (Jewish festival), 52–53
Sumer, 166; and Babylonia, 168; cosmos in,
19; and divination, 19; evidence from, 165;
hymns of, 166; and interpretatio, 24–25;
myths of, 47; politics in, 167; and pollution,
73
Sumerian (language), 47
Summo-Deism, 18
Sun-goddess of Arinna (Hittite deity), 10, 189,
192
Sun-god of heaven (Hittite deity), 190
Symbols, 165–166, 169
Synagogue, 122, 184
Syncretism, 10, 25, 219
Syria, 35, 114
Syria-Canaan: and Anatolia, 189; animals in,
173; and Bible, 178–179; creation in, 60;
demons in, 173; festivals in, 175–176; flood
story of, 48; gods of, 173, 174, 175, 176,
177, 178, 179; history of, 173–180; and Judaism,
181, 182; king in, 175; myths of, 60;
sacrifice in, 174–175; sin in, 175; temples in,
173
Tages, 221
Talmud, 81. See also Bible (Hebrew)
Tambiah, Stanley, 143
Taru (Hittite deity), 189
Tefnut (Egyptian deity), 158
Teiresias, 141
Telipinu (Hittite deity), 51, 55, 189
Temples: Egyptian, 159, 160–161, 162, 163;
Greek, 51, 211, 217; Hittite, 191–192, 193,
194; Jewish, 22, 178, 182, 184–185, 188;
Mesopotamian, 165, 166–167, 171–172;
Phoenician, 177; and pollution, 72; SyroCanaanite,
173; writing at, 135–136; Zoroastrian,
202. See also Sanctuaries
Tertullian, 82
Teshub (Hittite deity), 11, 37, 49, 61, 190,
191
Testament of Solomon, 139–140
265 index
Thebes, 59, 161
Theocritus, 145
Theodicy: Egyptian, 158; Mesopotamian, 169.
See also Gods; Justice; Morality; Theology
Theodosius, 239
Theology: cosmic, 17–18; tripartite, 17–20.
See also Gods; Myth; Theodicy
Theopompus, 67
Theosophy, 161
Theseus, 54
Thoth (Egyptian deity), 137, 142, 161, 162
Thracians, 218
Thworeshtar (Iranian deity), 199
Tiamat (Mesopotamian deity), 48, 49, 52, 60,
87, 170
Tiamisu (Hittite deity), 49
Time, 65–68, 200
Titans, 38, 48, 61, 103
Titus, 133
Torah, 30–31, 184, 185, 187. See also Bible
(Hebrew)
Tripartite Tractate, 82
Triptolemus, 10
Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, 74, 170
Tutu (Egyptian deity), 161, 162
Tylor, Sir E. B., Primitive Culture, 141
Typhon, 48, 49, 61
Ugarit, 5, 53, 54, 174–175
Ullikummi, 8, 49, 61
Ulluyanka, 61
Uni-Astarte (Carthaginian deity), 116
Ur, 21, 166
Ur-Nammu, 167
Uruk, 165, 166, 167
Uruk Vase, 166
Utnapishtim, 62
utu (Mesopotamian god, Akkadian Shamsh),
166, 168
Valentinus, 236, 237, 238
Varro, Marcus Terentius, 28, 157; Antiquitates
rerum divinarum, 17–18
Vedas, 199, 200
Venus. See Aphrodite/Venus
Vergil, 67; Aeneid, 48, 66, 68; Eclogue, 68
Versnel, H. S., 42
Vespasian, 133
Visual representation: changing attitudes toward,
245–246; Etruscan, 221, 222; Greek,
56; Hittite, 192; and magic, 147–149;
Mesopotamian, 165, 166, 172; Roman,
227; and transfer and assimilation, 13, 14
Voegelin, Eric, 18
Votives, 177. See also Offerings
Vows, 227
Watt, Ian, “The Consequences of Literacy,”
129–130
Weber, Max, 15
West Semitic languages, 47
Widewdad (Vendidad), 198
Wissowa, Georg, 116
Witchcraft, 149, 150. See also Magic
Women: Egyptian, 40; Hittite, 34; Jewish, 75;
and magic, 149–151; and scapegoat ritual,
34; in Zoroastrianism, 204
Writing, 6–7, 127–138, 165, 244–245. See
also Literacy; Orality
Wurunkatte (Hittite deity), 189
Wurusemu (Hattic deity), 189
Xenophanes, 57, 95, 130, 217, 242
Xerxes, 198, 202, 217
Yamm (Syro-Canaanite deity), 60
Yashts, 198, 201
Yasna, 198
Yazilikaya, sanctuary of, 189, 191, 192
YHWH (God of Israel): alliance with, 21; and
Anatyahu, 183; appeasement of, 77–78; and
Asherah, 182–183; and Aten, 182; covenant
with, 181, 183; and El, 182; and history, 21,
22, 53, 66; humans as representatives of, 88;
and law, 94–95; and magic, 139, 140; morality
of, 92; as Northwest Semitic god, 179;
offense to, 74–75; and paganism, 30; and reforms
of Josiah, 184; roles of, 182; and
scapegoat ritual, 35; sole worship of, 184;
and succession myth, 49; as supreme god,
27; Varro on, 28. See also Judaism
Yom Kippur (Jewish Day of Atonement), 34,
76
Zagreb mummy wrappings, 221
Zakir/Zakkur Inscription, 178
Zarathustra (Zoroaster), 202–203; beliefs of,
201; and history, 67; poetry of, 197. See also
Zoroastrianism
Zeus (Greek deity), 18, 27, 49, 50, 61, 99,
102, 103, 208, 213. See also Jupiter
Zoroastrianism, 202–205; apocalypse in, 69;
canon in, 29; cosmos in, 62, 80, 204; critique
of cult in, 78; cult in, 201; death in,
204; dualism in, 201, 203, 204; eschatology
in, 204; evil in, 62; gods in, 201; and Hellenistic
culture, 202; hell in, 204; history in,
66–67; human beings in, 204; judgment after
death in, 204; monotheism in, 201, 203,
204; morality in, 201, 203, 204; polytheism
of, 204; ritual in, 204; sin in, 80; temples in,
202; women in, 204. See also Iran;
Zarathustra (Zoroaster)
index 266