British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
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BA PDF Symposium 200526 April 2005 AbstractsDr Ted Kaizer'Toponymic' Deities in the Roman Near EastIn the Roman period, many Near Eastern deities were named after a locality (e.g. Zeus of Baetocaece). It seems that, by using such confined epithets, worshippers deliberately applied a specific form of cultural identification to the inhabitants of their divine world. The widespread use of local names and titles fits in with the notion that Oriental gods and their cults ought to be interpreted first and foremost as conditioned by their direct local context. However, local forms of religion have to be studied in a unified manner alongside more general, supra-regional aspects of worship: a 'local' cult was, at the same time, a manifestation of religious patterns known from elsewhere. In any case, adherents to a 'local' god knew very well that his worship was not restricted to one particular place. Still, the linking of a deity with a specific locality could result in that locality's pre-eminence as a sacred centre in the deity's cult. By emphasizing connections between god and place, humans could claim a more intense bond with the divine. This growing local differentiation seems to have become a universal phenomenon in the region. From case studies, it will be shown how the Near Eastern evidence related to the cults of 'toponymic' deities can cast light on the way in which the societies of their worshippers were built up and conceived themselves. Dr Ted Kaizer is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford; he was an undergraduate at the State University of Leiden and completed his DPhil on Ancient History of the Near East at Brasenose College, Oxford. His current interests are social and religious history of the Near East in late Hellenistic and early Roman times. |