About the Book
With contributions spanning from the Neolithic Age to the Iron Age, this book offers important insights into the religions and ritual practices in ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern communities through the lenses of their material remains.
The book begins with a theoretical introduction to the concept of material religion and features editor introductions to each of its six parts, which tackle the following themes: the human body; religious architecture; the written word; sacred images; the spirituality of animals; and the sacred role of the landscape. Illustrated with over 100 images, chapters provide insight into every element of religion and materiality, from the largest building to the smallest amulet. This is a benchmark work for further studies on material religion in the ancient Near East and Egypt.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, Nicola Laneri (University of Catania, Italy) and Sharon R. Steadman (SUNY Cortland, USA)
Part I: Material Religion
1. Chance and Lived Religion: The Material Culture of Transforming Randomness into Purpose, David Morgan (Duke University, USA)
Part II: The Human Body
2. Material Religion and the Body in the Ancient Near East, Brenna Hassert (University College London, UK)
3. Jewelry as a Powerful Tool in the Ritual Discourse between Humans and the Supernatural in the Ancient Near East, Zuzanna Wygnanska (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)
4. Body Politic: Body-Objects and Necropolitics Past and Present, Melissa S. Cradic (Badé Museum of Biblical Archaeology at Pacific School of Religion, USA)
5. Behind the Cultic Statue: The Materiality of Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, Davide Nadali (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy) and Lorenzo Verderame (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)
6. Meanings and Practices in the Design of Objects: What Does Design Reveal about Experiences?, Michael S. Chen
7. The Brief but Spectacular Lives of Figurines in Hittite Ritual, Billie Jean Collins (Emory University, USA)
Part III: Architecture
8. Religious Life, Urban Fabric and Regeneration Processes in Mari During the Second Half of the Third Millennium BCE, Pascal Butterlin (Sorbonne University, France)
9. Sacred Space and Immigrant Identity in the Middle Bronze Age: The Case of Tell el Dab’a, Danielle Candelora (SUNY Cortland, USA)
10. Evidence for an Urartian Belief System: The Institutionalization of Religion in the Mountainous Eastern Anatolian Highland––The Case of Ayanis, Mehmet Isikli
11. The Price of Devotion: Costly Signals in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Architecture on the Anatolian Plateau, Sharon R. Steadman (SUNY Cortland, USA)
12. Building Temples in the Northern Levant, Stefania Mazzoni (University of Florence, Italy)
13. Sacred Architecture in Iron II Southern Levant, Ido Koch (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
Part IV: The Written Word
14. Scribes in the Temple: Materializing Missing Monuments in Mesopotamia, Jennifer C. Ross (Hood College, USA)
15. The Heraldry of Early Iranian Religion, Jacob Dahl
16. The Materials of Hittite Magic and Religion, Gregory McMahon (University of New Hampshire, USA)
17. Experiencing Ancient Egyptian the Book of the Dead: A Funerary Text Corpus as a Material Object, Christina Geisen (University of Cambridge, UK)
18. Pottery and Magic. A Glimpse into Late-Antique Mesopotamian Religious Tradition and its Materiality, Marco Moriggi
19. The Biblical Priestly Tradition as Material Religion: A Comparative Ancient Mediterranean Approach , Seth Sanders (University of California, Davis, USA)
Part V: The Animals
20. Man, Animal, and Gods: Animal Remains as Indicators of Beliefs in the Ancient Near East, Jwana Chahoud (CNRS, Lebanese University, Lebanon) and Emmanuelle Vila (Lebanese University, Lebanon)
21. Resting on Strong Shoulders: The Power of Animal Scapulae in the Near Eastern Neolithic, Nerissa Russell (Cornell University, USA)
22. Animals and Ideology in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B of the Southern Levant, Max Price (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) and Jaqcueline Meier
23. Sharing Animals: Animal Imagery as Late Antique Intercultural Dialogue, Marica Cassis, Sydney Burton, and Sanaz Safari
24. The Theriomorphic Images of the Hittite Gods, Stefano de Martino (University of Torino, Italy)
Part VI: The Landscape
25. Material Religion and the Perception of the Sacred Landscape in Ancient Mesopotamia, Anna Perdibon (Independent Scholar)
26. Imagining the Supernatural: The Landscape of Kura-Araxes Sacred Funerary Mounds, Nicola Laneri (University of Catania, Italy) and Chiara Pappalardo (University of Catania, Italy)
27. Cult Aspects of the Egyptian Desert, Laurel D. Hackley (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA)
28. Deconstructing the Shrine: An Essay in Understanding Desert Cult, Steven A. Rosen (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)
29. Maritime Viewscapes and the Material Religion of Levantine Seafarers, Aaron Brody (Pacific School of Religion, USA)
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Nicola Laneri is Director of the Museum of Archeology and Professor of Archeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Catania, Italy. He is also Director of the School of Religious Studies at CAMNES, Italy.
Sharon R. Steadman is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Rozanne Brooks Museum at SUNY Cortland, USA.
Review :
This original, ambitious, and fascinating handbook utilizes the archaeological and textual record to materialize ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian religious beliefs through the entangled and co-dependent elements of the human body, architecture, written word, animals, and landscape. The 35 contributors to this volume convincingly argue for the essential importance of a material approach for reconstructing the diverse forms of religiosity practiced over millennia by these ancient communities.
This volume will be an invaluable read for students and scholars interested in the ancient Near East and Egypt or the history and nature of religion more generally.
The volume as a whole is a stimulating contribution and we should be grateful to those who conceived and produced it.
