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Paper short abstract:

During the second millennium BCE, the Ancient Near East perfection the treaty, a bureaucratic practice firmly linked to religious and ritual behaviors. This tool, suited for political, religious, and social agreements between parts, will be analyzed in the case of CTH 51.

Paper long abstract:

During the second millennium, the Ancient Near East perfectioned a bureaucratic practice firmly linked to religious and ritual behaviors. This practice is embedded in treaty-making, both in international and domestic environments. It is generically addressed as “oath” or “treaty”, because the range of words used during this timeframe, they are varied and point to slight differences. Nevertheless, the oath making process is well established, producing a tool which is both material and non-material. The deposition of the tablets in front of the gods and the ritual involved show the materiality behind the practice, while the speech and the text (including curses and blessings) show the connection to non-materiality. The call upon the gods, a crucial element of the oath, is deeply connected to the agency and efficacy of the practice, especially in a world that perceived the divine as rooted in every aspect of life, visible or invisible. To better understand this practice, I will present the case of CTH 51, also called the “Mittani treaty”. Redacted during the 14th century BCE, this is an international treaty that regulated the new alliance and peace between the Hittites of king Suppiluliuma and and Mittanians of King Šattiwaza. This text shows how the oath is used as a tool for political, religious, and social agreements between parts, and how this is codified in a specific practice that was able to accommodate different ancient near eastern cultures.

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Through the analysis of some elements of the grave goods from tomb 43 in the Buffaloreccia necropolis in Caere (Cerveteri), the paper investigates the evidence of an Etruscan cleromantic technique from the 6th century BC.

Paper long abstract:

Tomb 43 of the Buffaloreccia necropolis in Caere presents a very articulated funerary context. It consists of the inhumation burial of three female deceased, and the deposition of a young man in his twenties; he was incinerated and contained in a bucchero crater with a filter lid, that lied between the neck and shoulder of one of the three deceased. Eight tokens discovered in the tomb seem to refer to the divinatory practice of lithobolia. The deceased, possibly belonging to the same family, seem to have a connection with the oracular sphere and with the chthonic and katachthonic world, in particular with Acheloos, as shown by two balsam jars with his effigy placed on the chests of two of the deceased. It is perhaps no coincidence that the image of the superhuman agent is attested in the territory of Caere in the sanctuary of Sant’Antonio, which appears to have an oracular vocation.

In tomb 43, the presence of a specially made crater and tokens alludes to divinatory practices in which both the tokens and the crater can be considered instruments of communication with supernatural agents. It is possible to speculate that at least one of the three women inhumed in the burial performed mantic practices and that she was skilled in communicating with the superhuman. Based on archaeological and iconographical data as well ascomparisons with ancient sources, this work aims to investigate evidence of an Etruscan divination technique attested in the 6th century BC.

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Potters and painters of attic wine vessels and roman campana reliefs visualized the phallos as vital element of Dionysian celebrations. I aim to focus on aspects of instrumentalization and communication regarding these depictions as well as of the image-objects within the performed rituals.

Paper long abstract:

From archaic times onwards artificial phalloi were produced on the occasion of Dionysian celebrations. Within the processions they were visible objects that heralded the festivities and accompanied the advent of the god. Aristophanes emphasised the role of the phallos to establish and maintain the peaceful relationships between human communities and the divine. The characters of his play “Acharnians” celebrated the peace treaty with a vivid phallephoria. Through the intoned procession song, the Dionysian companion Phales (the enlivened phallos) was invited to join the drinking and feasting.

Additionally, within Graeco-Roman imagery the autonomous phallos was often visualized as specific (f)actor of Dionysian rituals. Complemented by satyrs and maenads these festive acts were placed in the divine realm. In archaic and early classical times, the scenes were ecstatic and the phallos repeatedly appeared as enlivened creature. Whereas the images of late republican and early imperial times visualized the phallos as relatively small object with no obvious signs of enlivenment. By contrasting scenes of phallephoria and the unveiling of the phallos on attic vase paintings and the roman campana reliefs, I intend to focus on the imaginations and discourse of the potters and painters. They reflected on and communicated essential elements of some Dionysian celebrations, which they also very likely attended. Moreover, they produced the wine vessels and terracotta reliefs to be viewed and used within Dionysian contexts. Wine consumption played a major part in the celebrations and the vessels were important tools through which the Dionysian power was channelled. The reliefs on the other hand were most likely made to decorate the architecture of sanctuaries. Both image-objects could enhance the atmosphere during the celebrations and acted as visible reminder of performed rituals for both the mortal community and the divine addressees.

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Paper short abstract:

Based on Graeco-Roman sources, this paper focuses on the various ritual practices that aim at obtaining prophetic responses and that have been attributed to the soothsayer Manto.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses those passages, taken from Graeco-Roman authors, that concern the prophetess Manto. This research deepens the dynamics of the mythical connotation of her character, whose foundation acts are mostly related to the art of prophecy. Various documents show that her prophetic powers and ritual performances involve different aspects that vary according to their context. In Greek sources, she is the daughter of the prophet Tiresias and in turn the mother of the seer Mopsus. She practices the art of 'mantike' in Delphi and, in many respects, she is linked to Apollo's oracle. Differently from the Greek sources, in a passage from Seneca's Oedipus (290-383), Manto performs a ritual sacrifice and examines the entrails. Seneca attributes to her the powers of a haruspex. Later, in the same tragedy, Manto and her father Tiresias perform a necromantic ritual, evoking the shadow of Laius (390-657). A similar necromantic ritual occurs in Statius' Thebaid (4.406-645) where Manto indulges into necromancy to summon Laius and the souls of other dead Argives and those of the Thebans. Therefore, this study aims to identify and analyse Manto's ritual techniques of communication with the superhuman, distinguishing them from Greek to Roman sources.

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Paper short abstract:

The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the use of various ritual communication techniques on the Republican stage in order to draw conclusions about the dialogue with supernatural beings.

Paper long abstract:

The genre of comedies represents a unique source to study ritual practices in the Roman Republic. Historians can rarely draw on any other literary sources than Drama in the period of the early as well as the middle Roman Republic to get a picture of ritual practices of Roman society. If we look behind the fictional and constructional nature of the comedies, I will argue that the analysis of the performative aspects of Roman comedy can open a new perspective on the role and status of ritual practices. The methodological challenge of my paper is to find a conceptual framework for the diverse forms of both direct and indirect communication with the supernatural performed on the republican stage. Based on the example of Terence's comedies, I will show that, in terms of ritual practices, his six comedies (most of which have been preserved in their entirety) differ significantly from those of his predecessors. While Plautus incorporates rituals on the level of performance as practical action, Terence rarely performs this. Nevertheless, I will argue that rituals still represented an integral part of Roman comedy, even if in some cases (as in Terence) they were expressed only at the level of (verbal) communication between actors. Therefore, the analysis of dialogues and monologues can help us to see these communicative practices as a special method of performing rituals. Developing this idea, I will argue that Terence's comedies, not less than those of Plautus, made use of ritual practices. Based on this analysis, I will propose to consider rituals reflected in Roman comedy as a valuable source of knowledge of social conventions regarding techniques of communication with the supernatural in the Roman Republic.

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Paper short abstract:

We will take into consideration two facets of the use of verbena in the Roman ritual: first, its role in the fetial sanction of a treaty (as recounted in Livius I, 24) and then its significance in the syntagm tauri verbenaeque attested in Festus 494L.

Paper long abstract:

A well-known passage by Livius (I, 24) refers the actions to be accomplished before a treaty is sanctioned. The first one consists in the fetial priest asking the king to present the sagmina; this had to be pura, localized in the arx and there harvested by the fetial as graminis herba pura and, finally, it is defined as verbena and was used to touch the head and the hair of the future pater patratus. The semantic field shows a specialization from the general to the particular that we aim to define both from the chronological and the ritual point of view, taking into consideration the whole Livian passage.

In the Roman rite there is a pair of liba (strues and ferctum/fertum) made up by two 'things' that are not specific per se but they express a category inside a wider genus. This not casual ideological feature emerges also in a lemma by Festus (494L): Tauri verbenaeque in comentario sacrorum significat ficta farinacea. This passage confirms the relevance of a pair; in this case the action consists in fingere two products made of flour. Starting from some morphological notations, such as the plural and the asyndeton construction, and taking into consideration Festus 114L (ex farina in hominum figura) and Varro LL VII, 44 (Argei fiunt e scirpeis), we will propose an interpretation for the second element of the pair, verbenae.

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Paper short abstract:

Curse tablets facilitated communication between humans and the superhuman. There was variation between tablets and yet an overall similarity. This paper will look at how different individuals modified the tradition of creating a curse to facilitate their own, personal, communication with powers.

Paper long abstract:

The creation of curse tablets as a form of communication between the mortal sphere and that of otherworldly power is attested across a large chronological and geographical scope. Within this scope there is a huge variation in style and content in these inscriptions. Some, such as those which belong to the prayer-for-justice category use a supplicatory tone to almost plead with the gods for help. Others, such as the erotic spells, are much more demanding in tone and almost seem to expect the outcome of the curse to arise from the correct following of the ritual of creation and deposition rather than as a result of the invoked powers’ goodwill.

However, all of our surviving tablets are still all ultimately recognisable as curse tablets, even those more unusual examples from the Fountain of Anna Perenna in Rome. Therefore we have a shared conception of the creation of curse tablets as an accepted and reasonable means of communicating with otherworldly powers. There were formulae which were repeated in examples across centuries and in locations as varied as Greece and Britain.

This paper will use examples from across the chronological and geographical spread of curse tablet creation to address the ways in which curse tablets were simultaneously extremely personal inscriptions, which allowed individuals a means to communicate with external powers in various times of need, and yet also represented a wide-ranging practice with formulaic elements and a shared sense of how a curse tablet should be formed. Contrasts will also be drawn between the practice of developing a personal relationship with these superhuman powers and other less personal methods of interacting with the divine, for instance the use, or lack of use, of reciprocity in these interactions.

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Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the structure of religious dedications in the local languages of the Western Mediterranean and see if the elements that appear in them follow fixed structures or are completely different between these cultures.

Paper long abstract:

There were various techniques to communicate with the divinities in the Ancient World and one of them was the use of epigraphy. Inscriptions were used by the Western Mediterranean communities to address their gods with the intention of making offerings and asking them for their help. However, not all these cultures developed religious inscriptions in the same way and we are able to find an enormous variety of objects, types of inscriptions, and the formulae used in these texts between these different epigraphic cultures, and even within the same cultures in relatively close sites.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the structure of religious dedications in the local languages of the Western Mediterranean, studying for it the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and Italy with languages such as Oscan, Umbrian, Venetic, Gaulish, and Lusitanian. We will point out what elements are part of this repertoire and if they are following fixed structures or if each culture and region develops its inscriptions in a different way. Do the theonyms head the dedications as they do in Rome? Does the donor´s name always appear in the texts? Are the names of the gods always mentioned in religious inscriptions dedicated to them? Do they use standardized offering formulas such as what we see with uotum soluit libens merito in Latin? Is the offered object indicated in the text or is it understood that they are the inscribed objects themselves?

We will try to answer all these questions to understand the techniques used by these communities to address their gods and analyze if there was any strategy in order to make dedications effective when communicating with the divine.

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This paper aims to study the onomastic formula Iuppiter Optumus Maxumus as a ritual technology derived from an archaic Latin formula of Jupiter in the innermost areas of the Iberian Peninsula.

Paper long abstract:

In antiquity, there were different onomastic techniques of communication with the divine. Within the Iberian Peninsula, the native inhabitants of some rural and peri-urban areas in the Roman provinces of Lusitania and part of the Tarraconensis oft applied the formula Iuppiter Optumus Maxumus in their religious dedications. This epigraphic designation for Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the Roman invocation par excellence, emerged under its archaising Latin form during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD in rural Hispania on different religious media, long after such formulation had ceased to be usual in Rome to become an exception. The use of this archaizing formula in ritual contexts may reflect two different circumstances: it could be a conscious revival developed by local elites for their own interests, or it could be a regional phonetic singularity, perpetuated by the population of the rural areas from northern Lusitania and Gallaecia, which were the areas less affected by Roman municipalization. Through the study of the devotees and the context in which this formula is used, the aim of this work is to determine whether the technological use of the epithets Optumus Maxumus responds to a regional linguistic variable that affects the ritual praxis and coexists with the more standardised invocations to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or whether this appellation and its variants bear witness to an epichoric ritual technique that was developed along the transformation of the epigraphic practices, conducted by local elites as an attempt to adapt their traditional religiosity to a new Roman environment.

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This paper explores Rufinus’ appropriation of the sanctuary of Panóias through the introduction of Isis and Serapis and the technological development that the rituals performed at the site underwent. It also argues that Rufinus imposed a hierarchy between “his” gods and the local divinities.

Paper long abstract:

In Roman religion, the most exemplary form of divine appropriation was the ritual of evocatio–a military practice through which a foreign god was summoned, asked to leave the city that was under his/her protection and promised a new home and cult at Rome. Archaeological and epigraphical sources attest however that, in the Roman Empire, divine appropriation was not limited to the ritual of evocatio. Striking in this regard is the case of the rock sanctuary of Panóias where, in the late 2nd and mid-3rd century AD, the senator Gaius Calpurnius Rufinus imposed a new set of gods, namely Isis and Serapis. Their introduction in a place that, notably, had long been active before Rufinus’ arrival is far from being random. The inscriptions that the site has yielded attest to how Rufinus’ introduction of Isis and Serapis was not only masked under the façade of a religious respect that needed to honour even the local gods, but it was also coupled with a technological development of the rituals destined first to “his” gods and then to the local divinities. The deliberate establishment of a hierarchy within the rituals themselves is evinced by the textual preferences and ordination of the gods’ appellatives/theonyms that suggest that what we have at play here is a competition between Rufinus’ gods and the local divinities, the numina Lapitearum. Thus, the ordination of the gods and their specific appellatives/theonyms, as I will additionally argue, imposed a hierarchy both among gods and between their divine nature–an imposition that was possible due to the “abstractness” of the word numen, as opposed to deus, which in turn facilitated Rufinus’ appropriation of the sanctuary and, by extension, the technological development of the rituals.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper studies how the places where religious and magical rituals aiming to contact with the supernatural and the divine occur, are transformed into intermediate spaces that permit the approximation of the two spheres.

Paper long abstract:

The successful communication between human and supernatural beings or forces was a complicated procedure involving many parameters. One of the greatest importance was the place where these encounters occurred and although there are various types of ritual practices aiming to establish a connection between the two spheres, they have something in common: the creation of an intermediate- or transitional- place, in the natural space, that could work as a sheltered meeting point. In this paper, I will present some religious and magical rituals, emphasising and analysing the way in which the transformation of the place into a space in-between the two spheres is achieved and how essential is this transformation for the manifestation or even the revelation of the supernatural.

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Paper short abstract:

The subject of the reflections undertaken in this paper is the techniques developed by Philo of Alexandria for establishing a relationship with God. The paper also distinguishes elements in Philo's thought that coincide with the theology of the mystical phenomenon of the ,,dark night” of the soul.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of the paper is to present techniques for establishing a relationship with God through self-exploration and self-improvement developed by Philo of Alexandria. Philo saw the possibility of man’s union with God through cognition. As man becomes spiritualised, through the agency of the Logos, he can attain rational cognition through which union with God is achieved. However, since the knowledge of God, according to Philo, is at the same time only possible for pure spirits, man, in order to achieve union with the personal God, must make the effort to purify himself and climb to a high degree of spirituality. This is done on the way of perfecting the intellect through contemplation, practising virtues and asceticism, and being obedient to the commandments and will of God. In order to be able to constantly correct what is wrong in him, man must strive for constant self-exploration, thoroughly recognise his weaknesses and shortcomings and then make efforts to eliminate them. As part of his reflections, Philo also proposes more concrete techniques for achieving self-exploration and self-improvement. These are developed in the course of the paper. The paper also draws parallels between Philo’s thought and the theology of the experience ,,dark night” of the soul. In the case of the ,,dark night”, the aim is also to purify the human being and to enable him or her to finally unite with God in love. On the way to achieving this, man must pass through a series of stages of thorough self-exploration so that, in order to be purified, he can break with the false constructs of his perception of himself, the world and God, as well as with the incumbent excessive attachments to the world of matter. This also takes place through a great deal of spiritual and physical discomfort and renunciation.

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Paper short abstract:

Egyptian hagiography abounds with private encounters of monastic heroes with angels and saints of the past. The paper investigates the fasting and scriptural recitation as formal prerequisites of such visits as presented in hagiographic literature from Egypt written in Greek and Coptic.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of a heavenly ascent and revelatory discourse with the divine constitutes the backbone of Jewish, early Christian and Gnostic apocalyptic narratives. In these texts, an initiator is always a supernatural agent, and a human protagonist remains passive and receptive. Egyptian monasticism was highly suspicious of personal revelations (since the Devil can easily take the shape of Christ) and literature containing revelatory narratives.

It does not mean monks did not crave personal contact with the supernatural world or did not produce stories about such meetings. Quite the contrary was true. Egyptian hagiography abounds with private encounters of monastic heroes with angels, saints of the past and even Christ.

Interestingly the mechanism of such meetings is different than in revelatory discourses. In these stories, the divine descends onto the earth, not the saint goes up to the heavens. Moreover, the visit of an angel or Old Testament prophet might be induced by the monk, who plays a much more active role than in traditional apocalyptic narratives.

The monks used at least two techniques to make superhuman agents descend and converse on equal terms. These two are (prolonged and strict) fasting and attentive recitation of the memorized Scriptures. My paper investigates these technical prerequisites of such visits as presented in hagiographic literature from Egypt written in Greek and Coptic. Even when imaginative, the accounts of visits from heaven represent the shared convictions about the ultimate effectiveness of fast and recitation that encouraged monks to steadfastness in ascetical exercises.