Images of Mithra

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippa Adrych ◽  
Robert Bracey ◽  
Dominic Dalglish ◽  
Stefanie Lenk ◽  
Rachel Wood
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
History Of Use ◽  
Historical Accounts

Images of Mithra begins with the seemingly simple question: what’s in a name? With a history of use extending back to Vedic texts of the second millennium BC, derivations of the name Mithra appear in the Roman Empire, across Sasanian Persia, and in the Kushan Empire of southern Afghanistan and northern India during the first millennium AD. Even today, this name has a place in Yazidi and Zoroastrian religion. But what connection have Mihr in Persia, Miiro in Kushan Bactria, and Mithras in the Roman Empire to one another? Over the course of the volume, specialists in the material culture of these diverse regions explore appearances of the name Mithra from six distinct locations in antiquity. In a subversion of the usual historical process, the authors begin not from an assessment of texts, but by placing images of Mithra at the heart of their analysis. Careful consideration of each example’s own context, situating it in the broader scheme of religious traditions and ongoing cultural interactions, is key to this discussion. Such an approach opens up a host of potential comparisons and interpretations that are often sidelined in historical accounts. What Images of Mithra offers is a fresh approach to figures that we identify as ‘gods’, and the ways in which they were labelled and depicted in the ancient world. Through an emphasis on material culture, a more nuanced understanding of the processes of religious formation is proposed in what is but the first part of the Visual Conversations series.

A Dictionary of Sikh Studies

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pashaura Singh
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
South Asian Studies ◽  
Northern India ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Over 350 entries This new dictionary provides accessible definitions of the terms that the growing number of students of Sikhism will encounter. It covers beliefs, practices, festivals, sacred sites, and principal languages, as well as the social and religious processes through which Sikhism has evolved. A major focus is the teachings of the founder of Sikhism, Gurū Nānak, and doctrinal developments under subsequent Gurūs. Incorporating the 500-year history of Sikhism, from its birth in northern India to its more recent spread around the world, it covers the interplay between the Sikh tradition and other religious traditions, including Hindu and Sufi. It is an invaluable first reference for students and teachers of Sikhism, religious studies, South Asian studies, philosophy, and the related disciplines of history, sociology, and anthropology, as well as for all practising Sikhs and anyone with an interest in Sikh religion and culture.

R.E.C.A.M. Notes and Studies No. 5 A Roman Family in Phrygia

1979 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 13-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Accounts

The history of Roman and Italian businessmen in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and especially in Asia, during the first century B.C. is a familiar one. There is ample evidence of many kinds for their emigration and activities after the formation of the province of Asia, interrupted by the hegemony of Mithridates, but resumed on a larger scale after he had been driven back from Asia into Pontus. This evidence can be placed into two broad categories. First, there are allusions in the contemporary literature, inscriptions and historical accounts of the period which provide direct information about individuals and families active in the province. Then there is the evidence of inscriptions of the Imperial period, especially the second and third centuries AD., which reveal both established settlements of resident Romans in the cities and an extraordinary number of families with Roman and Italian names, which could clearly trace their origins back to the Republican period of emigration and settlement. Opportunities to study particular families or groups of emigrants at both periods are unfortunately rare, since usually one or the other category of evidence is lacking. Although the record is far from complete, and it is necessary to rely more on conjecture than one would wish, the object of this study is to investigate one such emigrant family, the Sestullii, whose presence in Asia is attested both in Republican literary sources and in Imperial inscriptions. It is clearly impossible to write a continuous history of the gens, or even to reconstruct its stemma in outline, especially since there is a notably large gap in our knowledge between ca 50 B.C. and A.D. 150, a two hundred year span from which only a single relevant inscription survives, but the family name is so rare that it can reasonably be assumed that all its bearers are related to one another in some way. It must be stressed that this assumption underlies the whole reconstruction offered here.

scholarly journals What Comes to an End When a “Religion” Comes to an “End”? Reflections on a Historiographical Trope and Ancient Mediterranean History of Religion

Numen ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 204-229
Author(s):  
Jörg Rüpke
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Mediterranean History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Dimensions

Abstract This article argues that the neglect of narratives about the end of religious traditions is due to a complex entanglement of our positions as historical narrators and specifics of the sources for histories of religions, that is of emic and academic narrators. Typically, academic histories are not only based on emic narratives, but also tend to accept their conceptual frameworks with regard to the unities of description. It will be shown that such an entanglement has consequences for the neglect of the end of religious practices or groups. Against this background an analytical grid for change and discontinuation of different dimensions of “religion” will be offered and exemplified in an analysis of the “end of Paganism” in the late ancient Roman Empire. The most problematic implications of such narratives, the article will argue, are assumptions about the coherence of the religious protagonists brought center-stage.

scholarly journals Successful Paranoia: Friedrich Kittler, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and the History of Science

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-131
Author(s):  
Henning Schmidgen
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Media History ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Hermann Von Helmholtz ◽  
Friedrich Kittler ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer ◽  
History Of The University ◽  
The Media ◽  
Historical Accounts

With studies like Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich A. Kittler contributed significantly to transforming the history of media into a vital field of inquiry. This essay undertakes to more precisely characterize Kittler’s historiographical approach. When we look back on his early contributions to studies of the relationship between literature, madness and truth – among others, his doctoral dissertation on the Swiss poet and writer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer – what strikes us is the significance that Jacques Lacan’s structuralist psychoanalysis had in shaping the orientation of Kittler’s later studies. His intensive engagement with Lacan galvanized Kittler’s concern with the question of sex and/or gender in the evolution of the humanities as well as his concern with the media history of the university. At the same time, Kittler’s reliance on Lacan led him to a kind of history that is interested above all in the internal logic of discourse. As we see, for instance, in Kittler’s anecdotic treatment of 19th-century physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, this historiography does not involve any original research in archives and/or museums. Rather, it builds upon existing historical accounts and focuses its analyses on the issue of symbolic structures. Instead of investigating the history of the material culture of science and technology, what is thereby ultimately reinforced is a philosophical idealism in which knowledge and paranoia become superimposed in and by means of an ‘original syntax’ (Lacan).

Antiquarian Transformations in Historical Scholarship

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Rosemary Sweet
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Architectural Analysis ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Accounts

One of the most impressive aspects of A Polite and Commercial People is Paul Langford’s skilful synthesis of a bewildering array of lesser known authors and publications to tap into opinion and sentiment on social, economic, political, and cultural questions, including the remarkable popularity of works of antiquarianism (as well as history) amongst eighteenth-century readers. The progress of manners, a thematic undercurrent throughout the book, allowed eighteenth-century antiquaries such as John Brand and Joseph Strutt to look back upon the manners and customs of the past as the expressions of different social mores, characteristic of ruder, less polished times. Through innovative interdisciplinary research which combined written and visual sources, material culture and architectural analysis, this interest developed into historical accounts of manners and customs, sports and pastimes, which documented the everyday practices of the English people from the time of the Roman conquest onwards: it offered in effect a history of the domestic life of the English people. The historicization of domesticity or everyday life was notably elaborated upon in historical novels by antiquarian-minded writers such as Walter Scott (who had himself worked on Strutt’s failed novel Queenhoo Hall), Harrison Ainsworth, and Bulwer Lytton. Rather than focusing upon novels, however, this chapter analyses how ‘domesticity’ and ‘domestic life’, particularly of the middling sorts, became categories of antiquarian and historical research from the later eighteenth century through to the mid-nineteenth century and in the process provided a social history of the mores and lifestyle of Britain’s polite and commercial classes.

The Ptolemaic and Roman periods

2020 ◽  
pp. 743-760
Author(s):  
Khaled Essam Ismail
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues

This chapter aims to highlight some of the key issues concerning the interpretation of historical and cultural sources for Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, from Alexander’s arrival until the establishment of Christianity. The coverage includes religion, material culture and the distinctive relationship between Egypt and the Roman Empire, and there is some discussion of the long neglect of excavations at Ptolemaic and Roman sites in past years. Key data highlighted in this chapter include the primary Ptolemaic and Roman languages and texts ((hieroglyphic, demotic, Greek and Latin), as well as the archaeology and history of major sites such as Alexandria, Memphis and Naukratis.

The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Law

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Vernacular Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modes Of Life

The foundation of Hindu law is the voluminous textual tradition called Dharmaśāstra, the expert tradition on dharma. This book seeks to delineate the historical development of Dharmaśāstra, even though the tradition presented dharma as timeless and ahistorical. The volume establishes the importance of law for the history and study of Hinduism by providing interpretive descriptions of all the major topics of Hindu dharma according to this tradition. First, two broad introductions to the historical development of the textual sources of Hindu law suggest new ways to understand both the original texts (smṛti) and the later commentaries and digests. Next, groundbreaking research into the origin of the householder (gṛhastha), who is at the center of the Dharmaśāstric enterprise, provides new insights into both the origin of this genre and many of its topics, such as the āśrama system and married household life. The book devotes its central chapters to each of the major topics of Dharmaśāstra: epistemology of dharma, caste and social class, orders of life, rites of passage, Vedic student and graduate, marriage, children, inheritance, women, daily duties, food, gifting, funeral and ancestral offerings, impurity and purification, ascetic modes of life, dharma during emergencies, king, punishment, legal procedure, titles of law, penances, vows, pilgrimage, images, and temples. The final chapters then explore both the reception of Dharmaśāstra in other religious traditions, both Hindu and Buddhist, and the relevance of Dharmaśāstra to studies of critical concepts in religious studies—the body, emotions, material culture, subjectivity, animal studies, and vernacular culture.

Contextualising ‘Sin’ in Chinese Culture: A Historian's Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Hsu
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
Practice Perspective ◽  
History Of

Is the Christian teaching on sin a ‘stumbling block’ to Chinese accepting Christianity? This paper critiques the notion that Chinese have difficulty comprehending ‘sin’ because of the culture's long-standing belief in the humanistic potential for self-perfection without any reference to the divine. This view of Chinese culture has been too narrow and does not account for the fact that Chinese religious traditions have always had at their disposal a wide variety of resources to comprehend the Christian concept of sin. Incorporating a history-of-practice perspective can contribute to a more productive balance between the representation of Chinese culture and its actual practice and avoid the current tendency to posit Western theology against a narrowly constructed and idealised version of Chinese culture that is severed from both historical and present-day realities.

Imperialism, Power, and Identity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Mattingly
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Sexual Relations ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

Despite what history has taught us about imperialism's destructive effects on colonial societies, many classicists continue to emphasize disproportionately the civilizing and assimilative nature of the Roman Empire and to hold a generally favorable view of Rome's impact on its subject peoples. This book boldly challenges this view using insights from postcolonial studies of modern empires to offer a more nuanced understanding of Roman imperialism. Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, the book focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of empire varied enormously. It examines the nature of power in Rome and the means by which the Roman state exploited the natural, mercantile, and human resources within its frontiers. The book draws on the author's own archaeological work in Britain, Jordan, and North Africa and covers a broad range of topics, including sexual relations and violence; census-taking and taxation; mining and pollution; land and labor; and art and iconography. The book shows how the lives of those under Rome's dominion were challenged, enhanced, or destroyed by the empire's power, and in doing so he redefines the meaning and significance of Rome in today's debates about globalization, power, and empire. This book advances a new agenda for classical studies, one that views Roman rule from the perspective of the ruled and not just the rulers. A new preface reflects on some of the reactions prompted by the initial publication of the book.

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