Exploring Ritual in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean: Performance, Texts, and Material Culture

“Ritual” is a key category in the religions of the Ancient Near East and the Aegean, as in all parts of the ancient world. However, it is also an extremely problematic one, that has sparked much debate in recent decades. There is little agreement among modern theorists of religion even on how the term “ritual” itself should be defined, and whether religion is necessarily part of it. The aim of this workshop is to explore the nature of ritual in ancient societies, looking at a number of key questions, including:

Evidence: what problems are posed by trying to reconstruct ancient rituals from the surviving sources - texts, iconography or material culture? Are textual and iconographic records always or ever an authentic or complete record of what was actually done?

Performance: how should we understand the notion of “performance” in the context of ritual? Does it always imply an audience? Does it imply communication, and of what sort? To what extent can rituals be said to approach the status of drama?

Interrituality: How are rituals related to each other? Do rituals refer to other rituals? In what ways are ritual patterns reflected or refracted in literary texts? To what extent do ritual-memes pass from one culture to another, and why?

Registration required to isaw@nyu.edu.

Program

9:30 Introduction - Ian Rutherford (ISAW/University of Reading) and Sam Mirelman (ISAW)

SESSION 1
9:40 Amir Gilan (Tel Aviv)
Performing Kingship: Rituals and Ideologies of Kingship in Hittite Anatolia (will participate via video-link)

10:15 Heather Baker (Vienna)
‘Go out, evil!’ The Mesopotamian house as a setting for ritual activity

10:50 Coffee Break

SESSION 2
11:15 Sam Mirelman (ISAW)
The Ritual Deposition of Figurines in Seventh Century Assur: Theory v. Practice, or Divergent Traditions?

11:50 Andrea Trameri (ISAW)
Ritual texts and ritual practice in the Hittite tradition: text transmission and composition aspects of the incantation CTH 446

12:25 Mark S. Smith (NYU)
Aspects of the Grammars of Ritual Texts/Rituals from Ugarit: Between Records and Performance

13:00 Lunch Break

SESSION 3
14:30 Mary Bachvarova (Willamette)
'I Sprinkle Barley before Your Donkeys, Your Horses': The Advent of the Horse in Mesopotamian invocations

15:05 William Bibee (Austin, Texas)
Near Eastern Influence on Greek Fumigation and Incense Ritual: Greek katharos, “pure, clean” ← Akkadian qatāru, “to fumigate”?”

15:40 Tea Break

SESSION 4
16:00 Ian Rutherford (ISAW and University of Reading)
Rituals between the Ancient Near East, Anatolia and the Aegean: Influence, Common Culture, Typology

16:35 Elena Chepel (University of Reading)
Stools and Chairs in Ancient Greek and Near Eastern Rituals

17:10 Fred Naiden (University of North Carolina)
Divine and Human Spectators in Greek and Near-Eastern Sacrifice

17:45 Concluding thoughts

There will be a reception folowing the event.

This is a public event.

To RSVP, please email isaw@nyu.edu.