Redefining the Sacred. Religious Architecture and Text in the Near East and Egypt, 1000 BC - AD 300

Elizabeth Frood, Rubina Raja (eds). Pages: 260 p. Illustrations:57 b/w, 9 col., 1 tables b/w. Language(s):English, German, French. Publication Year:2014. Brepols. ISBN: 978-2-503-54104-4. Hardback --- SUMMARY This launch volume of the series Contextualising the Sacred explores the changing social, religious, and political meanings of sacred space in the ancient Near East through bringing together the work of leading scholars of ancient history, Assyriology, classical archaeology, Egyptology and philology. Redefining the Sacred originates in an international European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop of the same name held at the University of Oxford in 2009 , and is the launch volume for the series Contextualising the Sacred. It comprises eight studies written by leading scholars, each of whom investigates aspects of the diverse and changing meanings of sacred environments in the Near East and Egypt from c. 1000 BC to AD 300. This was a time of dramatic social, political, and religious transformation in the region, and religious architecture, which was central to ancient environments, is a productive interpretive lens through which implications of these changes can be examined across cultural borders. Analysis of the development of urban, sub-urban, and extra-urban sanctuaries, as well as the written sources associated with them, shows how the religious identities of individuals, groups, and societies were shaped, transformed, and interconnected. By bringing together ancient historians, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, archaeologists, and philologists, the volume highlights the immense potential of diachronic studies of sacred space, which the series will take forward. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Material Culture and Religious Identity in the Ancient Near East and Egypt ELIZABETH FROOD and RUBINA RAJA Contextualizing the Sacred JOACHIM GANZERT Regional Perspectives Sacred Topography of the Empire: Inscribing Social Order into the Cosmic Order BEATE PONGRATZ -LEISTEN Phoenician Sacred Places in the Mediterranean BÄRBEL MORSTADT Designing the Sacred in early Ptolemaic Times: A Continuum of Concepts FILIP COPPENS Places, Communities, and Individuals The KTMW Stele from Zincirli: Syro-Hittite Mortuary Cult and Urban Social Networks VIRGINIA RIMMER HERRMANN Temple and City in Hellenistic Uruk: Sacred Space and the Transformation of Late Babylonian Society HEATHER D. BAKER Continuity, Discontinuity, and Change in the Religious Life of Southern Syria in the Roman Period ACHIM LICHTENBERGER The Imperial Office and the Church in Ephrem the Syrian VOLKER MENZE Index.…