What’s in a Divine Name? Religious Systems and Human Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean

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What’s in a Divine Name?

Religious Systems and Human Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean

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• Edited by: Alaya Palamidis and Corinne Bonnet
• In collaboration with: Julie Bernini , Enrique Nieto Izquierdo and Lorena Pérez Yarza

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111326511

About this book

Open Access

Divine Names are a key component in the communication between humans and gods in Antiquity. Their complexity derives not only from the impressive number of onomastic elements available to describe and target specific divine powers, but also from their capacity to be combined within distinctive configurations of gods.

The volume collects 36 essays pertaining to many different contexts – Egypt, Anatolia, Levant, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome – which address the multiple functions and wide scope of divine onomastics. Scrutinized in a diachronic and comparative perspective, divine names shed light on how polytheisms and monotheisms work as complex systems of divine and human agents embedded in an historical framework. Names imply knowledge and play a decisive role in rituals; they move between cities and regions, and can be translated; they interact with images and reflect the intrinsic plurality of divine beings.

This vivid exploration of divine names pays attention to the balance between tradition and innovation, flexibility and constraints, to the material and conceptual parameters of onomastic practices, to cross-cultural contexts and local idiosyncrasies, in a word to human strategies for shaping the gods through their names.

Author / Editor information

Alaya Palamidis and Corinne Bonnet, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France.