From the translator of the bestselling Poetic Edda (Hackett, 2015) comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature. Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members-including, among others, the dragon-slayer Sigurd, Brynhild the Valkyrie, and the Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok.

It is widely believed that the practice of ancient Egyptian religion ceased with the end of pharaonic culture and the rise of Christianity. However, an organised reconstruction and revival of the authentic practice of Egyptian, or Kemetic religion has been growing, almost undocumented, for nearly three decades. Profane Egyptologists is the first in-depth study of the now-global phenomenon of Kemeticism. Presenting key players in their own words, the book utilises extensive interviews to reveal a continuum of beliefs and practices spanning eight years of community growth. The existence of competing visions of Egypt, which employ ancient material and academic resources, questions the position of Egyptology as a gatekeeper of Egypt's past. Exploring these boundaries, the book highlights the politised and economic factors driving the discipline's self-conception. Could an historically self-imposed insular nature have harmed Egyptology as a field, and how could inclusive discussion help guard against further isolationism? Profane Egyptologists is both an Egyptological study of Kemeticism, and a critical study of the discipline of Egyptology itself. It will be of value to scholars and students of archaeology and Egyptology, cultural heritage, religion online, phenomenology, epistemology, pagan studies and ethnography, as well as Kemetics and devotees of Egyptian culture.

this work examines some of the major and less well known Greek sanctuaries from a new light. The traditional approach to Greek sanctuaries and especially temples has been descriptive. Much emphasis is commonly placed on architectural features but only rarely is there an attempt to look at the totality of functions that a Greek sanctuary might encompass. This collection of articles addresses the critical questions which related to the diverse purposes of the sanctuaries: what was their social function? and who were their clients? Regional links and variations are stressed, while some sanctuaries are shown to have had particular uses such as dining and initiation. Among the cults discussed are the Eleusinian mysteries for which a new reconstruction is proposed.

The Trojan War begins and ends with the sacrifice of a virgin princess. The gruesome killing of a woman must have captivated ancient people because the myth of the sacrificial virgin resonates powerfully in the arts of ancient Greece and Rome. Most scholars agree that the Greeks and Romans did not practice human sacrifice, so why then do the myths of virgin sacrifice appear persistently in art and literature for over a millennium? Virgin Sacrifice in Classical Art: Women, Agency, and the Trojan War seeks to answer this question. This book tells the stories of the sacrificial maidens in order to help the reader discover the meanings bound up in these myths for historical people. In exploring the representations of Iphigeneia and Polyxena in Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, this book offers a broader cultural history that reveals what people in the ancient world were seeking in these stories. The result is an interdisciplinary study that offers new interpretations on the meaning of the sacrificial virgin as a cultural and ideological construction. This is the first book-length study of virgin sacrifice in ancient art and the first to provide an interpretive framework within which to understand its imagery.

The late Platonist philosopher Damascius both resumed and rejuvenated the long Greek thinking about time. In distinguishing between different takes on time, by Plato, Aristotle and his Neoplatonist predecessors, Damascius offered novel perspectives on time, which can be seen as anticipating modern and contemporary theories, such as the distinction between the A and B series of McTaggart's analysis and presentism. The greatest merit of his philosophy of time, however, is his deep reflection on what it is for a living being to have its being in becoming3/4 as it happens with us human beings3/4 and how this relates to stillness, temporality and temporalization. Time is interpreted by Damascius not merely as a concomitant of the celestial motions, nor as an abstract entity existing in the human soul, but as a power of ordering, which is active at different levels. Damascius' time comprises the biological and the historical time but is also the time that pertains to the essence and the activity of heaven, in which there is neither past nor future. The present book explores the richness of Damascius' thought by going into the fundamental concepts of his philosophy of time: the indivisible now and the present time, the flowing now and the non-flowing now, the flowing time and the whole of time, in which past, present and future coincide. Damascius fully developed his thoughts about time in his treatise On Time, which is lost. The preserved fragments of this treatise are translated and annotated in an Appendix.

Winner of the Runciman Award Winner of the Charles J. Goodwin Award "Tells the story of how the Seleucid Empire revolutionized chronology by picking a Year One and counting from there, rather than starting a new count, as other states did, each time a new monarch was crowned...Fascinating." -Harper's In the aftermath of Alexander the Great's conquests, his successors, the Seleucid kings, ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia and Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. In 305 BCE, in a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, Seleucus I introduced a linear conception of time. Time would no longer restart with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years-continuous and irreversible-became the de facto measure of historical duration. This new temporality, propagated throughout the empire and identical to the system we use today, changed how people did business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger world. Some rebellious subjects, eager to resurrect their pre-Hellenic past, rejected this new approach and created apocalyptic time frames, predicting the total end of history. In this magisterial work, Paul Kosmin shows how the Seleucid Empire's invention of a new kind of time-and the rebellions against this worldview-had far reaching political and religious consequences, transforming the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future. "Without Paul Kosmin's meticulous investigation of what Seleucus achieved in creating his calendar without end we would never have been able to comprehend the traces of it that appear in late antiquity...A magisterial contribution to this hitherto obscure but clearly important restructuring of time in the ancient Mediterranean world." -G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books "With erudition, theoretical sophistication, and meticulous discussion of the sources, Paul Kosmin sheds new light on the meaning of time, memory, and identity in a multicultural setting." -Angelos Chaniotis, author of Age of Conquests

The object of this book, first published in 1928, is a study of the ways in which those who were once called 'primitives' conceive of their own individuality. The author inquires into the notions they possess of their life-principle, their soul, and their personality, often encountering that many peoples only had 'pre-notions' of such concepts.

First published in 1993. This is a new edition of Akhaenaten's boundary stelae, which now includes information about most of the boundary markers, the tablets were accompanied by statues of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and two of their daughters, all of which stood on low platforms that were raised above the level of the floor. In addition was the awareness that the statues at the site of Stela A were elevated to a greater degree than were the corresponding statues at other sites (insofar as this could be judged from published photographs). The evidence in the publication indicated, moreover, that Stela A, along with Stela B (some two miles south) were the latest of the boundary monuments to be inscribed, since both concluded with a colophon, dated to the end of Akhenaten's eighth regnal year, added to the standard text of the Later Proclamation found on these and other stelae of this series.

Light from the East collates letters between Hon. P. Arunachalam of the legislative council of Ceylon and Edward Carpenter, which expand on issues of the Gnanam or divine knowledge. Carpenter edited these letters for publication in 1927 as well as writing additional articles on issues such as desire, birth control and bisexuality in relation to the customs of Ceylon and religious laws of Hinduism to give the reader a broad insight into the religion. This title will be of interest to students of sociology, anthropology and religious studies.

What is so special about spring water? How are wells holy? Why are so many known for 'the healing of eyes'? The ancient holy wells of the British Isles are amongst the most beautiful and magical places anyone can visit. Often untouched by all but the most delicate hands, and located in some of the most secret nooks and crannies of the country, their stories evoke a lost world of pagan gods, healing forces, second sight and holy visions. This beautiful book, beautifully illustrated throughout by the author, tells the story of the holy waters of the British Isles through hand-picked examples. A useful gazetteer at the back of the book catalogues further rewarding sites to visit. WOODEN BOOKS are small but packed with information. "Fascinating" FINANCIAL TIMES. "Beautiful" LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Rich and Artful" THE LANCET. "Genuinely mind-expanding" FORTEAN TIMES. "Excellent" NEW SCIENTIST. "Stunning" NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.

Reading the Sacred Scriptures: From Oral Tradition to Written Documents and their Reception examines how the scriptures came to be written and how their authority has been constructed and reinforced over time. Highlighting the measures taken to safeguard the stability of oral accounts, this book demonstrates the care of religious communities to maintain with reverence their assembled parchments and scrolls. Written by leading experts in their fields, this collection chronicles the development of the scriptures from oral tradition to written documents and their reception. It features notable essays on the scriptures of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Daoism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Shinto, and Baha'i. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the belief systems of the featured religions. It offers an ideal starting point from which undergraduate and postgraduate religious studies students, teachers and lecturers can explore religious traditions from their historical beginnings.

The perfect companion for both the actual and armchair traveller to the Roman myths and the landscapes and ideas that shaped them

All roads lead to Rome. Sites and events throughout the ancient world provided Romans with a rich tapestry woven with the stories of their past. The city itself was a melting pot of peoples from across the Mediterranean and beyond, each bringing their myths and legends of heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses. Rome’s citizens wholeheartedly embraced these stories of kings consorting with river nymphs, a prophetic baby discovered in a field and the founding of Rome itself. Myths formed the backdrop to the rituals and customs of everyday life.

David Stuttard takes the reader on a tour of eighteen of the great sites of the ancient Roman world, following in the footsteps of Aeneas and his companions from Troy via Greece, North Africa and Sicily to Italy, and travelling with his descendants to Rome, while also enjoying an excursion into Tuscany and Latium to explore later legends. Each chapter begins with an evocative description of the site’s location and landscape, followed by its associated myths and stories, as well as any rituals performed there in antiquity. Drawing on the great works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, Ovid, Horace and Virgil, and with specially commissioned illustrations and information about key events and remains that can still be seen today, this is a fresh look at a subject of eternal fascination.

Cicero's philosophical works are now exciting renewed interest and more generous appreciation, in part because he provides vital evidence of the views of the (largely lost) Greek philosophers of the Hellenistic age, and partly because of the light he casts on the intellectual life of first-century Rome. Hellenistic philosophy has in recent years atrracted growing interest from academic philosophers in Europe and North America. The Nature of the Gods is a document of central significance in this area, for it presents a detailed account of the theologies of the Epicureans and of the Stoics, together with the critical objections to these doctrines raised by the Academic school. hen these Greek theories of deity are translated into the Roman context, a fascinating clash of ideologies results.

Numerous ancient texts describe human sacrifices and other forms of ritual killing: in 480 BC Themistocles sacrifices three Persian captives to Dionysus; human scapegoats called "pharmakoi" are expelled yearly from Greek cities and, according to some authors, they are killed. Many texts speak of human sacrifices performed regularly in the cult of the gods or during emergencies such as war and plague. Archaeologists have also frequently proposed human sacrifice as an explanation for their discoveries. If the archaeologists' interpretations and the claims in the ancient sources are accepted, they present a bloody and violent picture of the religious life of the Ancient Greeks, from the Bronze Age well into historical times. The author of this study, however, counsels caution. Following an examination of the written and archaeological evidence of ritual human killings, he argues that many of the archaeological findings are uncertain, and in many cases alternative explanations are possible.

Recent scholarship on ancient Judaism, finding only scattered references to messiahs in Hellenistic- and Roman-period texts, has generally concluded that the word ''messiah'' did not mean anything determinate in antiquity. Meanwhile, interpreters of Paul, faced with his several hundred uses of the Greek word for ''messiah, '' have concluded that christos in Paul does not bear its conventional sense. Against this curious consensus, Matthew V. Novenson argues in Christ among the Messiahs that all contemporary uses of such language, Paul's included, must be taken as evidence for its range of meaning. In other words, early Jewish messiah language is the kind of thing of which Paul's Christ language is an example.
Looking at the modern problem of Christ and Paul, Novenson shows how the scholarly discussion of christos in Paul has often been a cipher for other, more urgent interpretive disputes. He then traces the rise and fall of ''the messianic idea'' in Jewish studies and gives an alternative account of early Jewish messiah language: the convention worked because there existed both an accessible pool of linguistic resources and a community of competent language users. Whereas it is commonly objected that the normal rules for understanding christos do not apply in the case of Paul since he uses the word as a name rather than a title, Novenson shows that christos in Paul is neither a name nor a title but rather a Greek honorific, like Epiphanes or Augustus.
Focusing on several set phrases that have been taken as evidence that Paul either did or did not use christos in its conventional sense, Novenson concludes that the question cannot be settled at the level of formal grammar. Examining nine passages in which Paul comments on how he means the word christos, Novenson shows that they do all that we normally expect any text to do to count as a messiah text. Contrary to much recent research, he argues that Christ language in Paul is itself primary evidence for messiah language in ancient Judaism.

In this original and compelling collection, Nicoletta Arbia summons the voices of five classical women to recount their intimate stories, charting each woman's journey of renewal and personal growth. In retelling the stories of Persephone, Eurydice, Ariadne, Cassandra and Psyche, Arbia invites us to explore the puzzle of relationships and the pitfalls of vocation. Drawing on her long-standing interest in psychology, dreams, alchemy and spirituality, we hear each woman's story from her own point of view. We are taken on a passionate adventure in search of evolving consciousness, encompassing struggles with hidden Gods and the ravages of war; the resilience of the soul and the teachings of death; the challenges of coming of age and the lifelong task of balancing the feminine and masculine sides of our nature. This is a voice of wisdom that speaks vividly to us during difficult, transitional times. 'Quirky, original and drawn from a deep well of intuition and compassion.' John Glenday

This book addresses the influence of the imperial cult in first-century AD Asia Minor and its subsequent relevance to the reading of the New Testament. In particular, this work argues, through a contrapuntal reading of 1 Timothy 2: 1-7, that the early Christian community strongly resisted the Emperor's claim to be the "mediator" between the gods and humanity. In contrast to this claim, the author shows that 1 Timothy 2: 1-7 can be read as a polemic from a minority community, the Christian church in Ephesus, against the powerful voice of the Roman Empire in regard to divine mediation.

Understanding Greek Religion is one of the first attempts to fully examine any religion from a cognitivist perspective, applying methods and findings from the cognitive science of religion to the ancient Greek world. In this book, Jennifer Larson shows that many of the fundamentals of Greek religion, such as anthropomorphic gods, divinatory procedures, purity beliefs, reciprocity, and sympathetic magic arise naturally as by-products of normal human cognition. Drawing on evidence from across the ancient Greek world, Larson provides detailed coverage of Greek theology and local pantheons, rituals including processions, animal sacrifice and choral dance, and afterlife beliefs as they were expressed through hero worship and mystery cults. Eighteen in-depth essays illustrate the theoretical discussion with primary sources and include case studies of key cult inscriptions from Kyrene, Kos, and Miletos. This volume features maps, tables, and over twenty images to support and expand on the text, and will provide conceptual tools for understanding the actions and beliefs that constitute a religion. Additionally, Larson offers the first detailed discussion of cognition and memory in the transmission of Greek religious beliefs and rituals, as well as a glossary of terms and a bibliographical essay on the cognitive science of religion. Understanding Greek Religion is an essential resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of Greek culture and ancient Mediterranean religions.

The Dreams of Matthew 1:18-2:23: Tradition, Form, and Theological Investigation critically examines the five dream passages of Matthew 1:18-2:23 to demonstrate that Matthew employed dream narratives to defend allegations concerning Jesus' birth and to provide etiological reasons both for why Jesus went to Egypt and how Jesus happened to live in Nazareth. A diachronic survey of dream records in the Ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Second Temple writings reveals that dream narratives fall into two major categories: message dreams and symbolic dreams. Every dream carries a distinct narrative function according to the objectives of the user. Typically, symbolic dreams appear in epic-like literature, and message dreams appear in narratives such as historical and religious writings. The present analysis of the five dream accounts of Matthew 1:18-2:23 reveals that they fall into the message dream category. Each dream has at least one narrative function. In other words, Matthew does not merely record the dream experiences of the individuals but uses dreams to achieve his narrative objective.

This original, provocative study, first published in 1973, presents a new method of interpretation of mythology, and reveals the wide-ranging implications of this universal phenomenon for many disciplines. The volume begins with a sympathetic but critical examination of Levi-Strauss's interpretation of mythology. Professor Munz points out the deficiencies in structuralist interpretations, and takes Levi-Strauss's neglect of the historicity of all myths as a starting-point for an alternative approach to mythology. Myths, he argues, come in typological series. If the whole series is read forward to the most specific version, the myths will reveal their inherent meaning typologically.

This is the second volume of Sir E. A. Wallis Budge's narrative account of Ethiopian history, and continues the chronicle of the Kings of Abyssinia where the first volume ended: the death of Lebna Dengel in 1540. The list of kings ends with the Regent Ras Tafari, who still reigned at the time of first publication in 1928. Thereafter, the author devotes considerable attention to an overview of the cultural, social and political idiosyncrasies of the Ethiopian people: literature, spells and magic, architecture, ethnography, the alphabet, and a wide range of other engrossing topics. This material complements the narrative history, helping to situate the deeds of the kings and the fortunes of their people in a broader context.

First Published in 1984. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is the first of three volumes, first published in 1906, which explore the Egyptian theology of the afterlife. It contains the complete hieroglyphic text of the Book Am-Tuat, with translations and reproductions of all the illustrations. This text, at least in the form that we have it, was produced by the priests of Amen-Ra at Thebes, with the intention of demonstrating that their god was the overlord of all the gods, and the supreme power in the universe. The object of all the Books of the Other World was to provide the dead with a 'guide' or 'handbook,' containing a description of the regions through which their souls would have to pass on their way to the Kingdom of Osiris, and which would supply them with the words of power and magical names necessary for an unimpeded journey from this world to the next.