Memory and Urban Religion in the Ancient World

This volume brings together scholars and researchers working on memory and religion in ancient urban environments. Chapters explore topics relating to religious traditions and memory, and the multifunctional roles of architectural and geographical sites, mythical figures and events, literary works and artefacts. Pagan religions were often less static and more open to new influences than previously understood. One of the factors that shape religion is how fundamental elements are remembered as valuable and therefore preservable for future generations. Memory, therefore, plays a pivotal role when - as seen in ancient Rome during late antiquity - a shift of religions takes place within communities. The significance of memory in ancient societies and how it was promoted, prompted, contested and even destroyed is discussed in detail. This volume, the first of its kind, will not only address the main cultures of the ancient world - Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome - but also look at urban religious culture and funerary belief , and how concepts of ethnic religion were adapted in new religious environments.

Preface: Memory, History, Forgetting - Smith / Introduction: Sites of Memory and the Emergence of Urban Religion - Bommas / 1. Marduk's Return: Assyrian Imperial Propaganda, Babylonian Cultural Memory and the akItu Festival of 668 BC - Nielsen / 2. The Cult of the Pharaoh in New Kingdom Egypt: Cultural Memory or State Ideology? - Heffernan / 3. Saints in the Caesareum: Remembering Temple Conversion in Late Antique Egypt - Westerfeld / 4. Sacred Memory in Republican Rome - Miano / 5. Keeping the Memory Alive: The Physical Continuity of the Ficus Ruminalis - Hunt / 6. Memory Shift: Reinventing the Mythology, 100 BC - AD 100 - Dowden / 7. Nights of Egeria: Juvenal's De Memoria Deorum - Larmour / 8. The Iseum Campense as a Memory Site - Bommas / 9. Isis in the Greco-Roman World: Cultural Memory and Imagination - Harrisson / 10. Cultural Memory and Roman Identity in the Hymns of Prudentius - Kuhlmann / Afterword - Harrisson and Roy / Index.