The Routledge companion to ecstatic experience in the ancient world / edited by Diana L. Stein, Sarah Kielt Costello and Karen Polinger Foster.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Stein, Diana L., editor.

Costello, Sarah Kielt, 1971- editor.

Foster, Karen Polinger, 1950- editor.

Series:

Routledge companions

Routledge handbooks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ecstasy--Mediterranean Region--History--To 1500.

Ecstasy.

Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience--Mediterranean Region--History--To 1500.

Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience.

Bronze age--Mediterranean Region.

Bronze age.

History.

Mediterranean Region--Religious life and customs--History--To 1500.

Mediterranean Region.

Genre:

Electronic books.

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations, color maps.

Other Title:

Companion to ecstatic experience in the ancient world

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022.

System Details:

text file

Biography/History:

Diana Stein, Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, specializes in seals and sealing practices in the ancient Near East. She has authored, co-authored and co-edited several volumes including Das Archiv des Šilwa-Teššup: The Cylinder Seal Impressions (1993); The Pula-hali Family Archives (2001); The Tablets from the Temple Precinct at Nuzi: Private Archives and Administrative Documents (2016); as well as numerous articles relating to Near Eastern chronology, mythology, iconography, material culture and ritual practice. Sarah Kielt Costello is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, USA. Her research areas include early Mesopotamian and Cypriot art and archaeology, as well as museum and heritage studies. She recently co-edited Object Biographies: Collaborative Approaches to Ancient Mediterranean Art (2021) and has written numerous articles and book chapters. She has worked on archaeological projects in Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, and Greece. Karen Polinger Foster (retired, Yale University, USA) specializes in the art of the Aegean, Egypt and the ancient Near East, about which she has written numerous books and articles. Her latest publications include A Mesopotamian Miscellany (2020) and Strange and Wonderful: Exotic Flora and Fauna in Image and Imagination (2020). She has served as the archaeological illustrator for projects in Egypt, Syria, Italy, and France.

Summary:

"For millennia, people have universally engaged in ecstatic experience as an essential element in ritual practice, spiritual belief and cultural identification. This volume offers the first systematic investigation of its myriad roles and manifestations in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The twenty-nine contributors represent a broad range of scholarly disciplines, seeking answers to fundamental questions regarding the patterns and commonalities of this vital aspect of the past. How was the experience construed and by what means was it achieved? Who was involved? Where and when were its rites carried out? How was it reflected in pictorial arts and written records? What was its relation to other components of the sociocultural compact? In proposing responses, the authors draw upon a wealth of original research in many fields, generating new perspectives and thought-provoking, often surprising, conclusions. With their abundant cross-cultural and cross-temporal references, the chapters mutually enrich each other and collectively deepen our understanding of ecstatic phenomena thousands of years ago. Another noteworthy feature of the book is its illustrative content, including commissioned reconstructions of ecstatic scenarios and pairings of works of Bronze Age and modern psychedelic art. Scholars, students and other readers interested in antiquity, comparative religion and the social and cognitive sciences will find much to explore in the fascinating realm of ecstatic experience in the ancient world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction / Diana L. Stein, Sarah Kielt Costello and Karen Polinger Foster

Contextualizing the study of ecstatic experience in ancient old world societies / Sarah Kielt Costello

Not only ecstasy : pouring new concepts into old vessels / Etzel Cardeña

From shamans to sorcerers : empirical models for defining ritual practices and ecstatic experience in ancient, medieval and modern societies / Michael J. Winkelman

Psychoactive plants in the ancient world : observations of an ethnobotanist / Giorgio Samorini

Ecstasy meets paleoethnobotany : botanical stimulants in ancient Inner Asia / Alison Betts

Caucasian cocktails : the early use of alcohol in 'the cradle of wine' / Stephen Batiuk

Mind-altering plants in Babylonian medical sources / Barbara Böck

Plant-based potions and ecstatic states in Hittite rituals / Rita Francia

Forbidden at Philae : proscription of aphrodisiac and psychoactive plants in Ptolemaic Egypt / Riccardo Andreozzi and Claudia Sarkady

The Ring-Kernos and psychotropic substances / David Ilan

Beer, beasts and bodies : shedding boundaries in bounded spaces / Anne Porter

Lament, spectacle and emotion in a ritual for Ishtar / Sam Mirelman

Writing for the dead, welcoming the solar-eye goddess and ecstatic expression in Egyptian religion / John Coleman Darnell

Altered states on prepalatial Crete / Emily Miller Bonney

Bodies in ecstasy : shamanic elements in Minoan religion / Christine Morris and Alan Peatfield

The Mycenaeans and ecstatic ritual experience / Susan Lupack

Emotional arousal, sensory deprivation and 'miraculous healing' in the cult of Asclepius / Olympia Panagiotidou

Ecstasy and initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries / Alice Clinch

Apolline and Dionysian ecstasy at Delphi / Yulia Ustinova

Communing with the spirits : funeral processions in ancient Rome / Maik Patzelt

Ecstatic experience and possession disorders in ancient Mesopotamia / Ulrike Steinert

Ghosts in and outside the machine : a phenomenology of intelligence, psychic possession and prophetic ecstasy in ancient Mesopotamia / John Z. Wee

Ecstatic speech in ancient Mesopotamia / Benjamin R. Foster

Ecstatic experience : the proto-theme of a Near Eastern glyptic language family / Diana L. Stein

Understanding the language of trees : ecstatic experience and interspecies communication in late Bronze Age Crete / Caroline J. Tully

Psychedelic art and ecstatic visions in the Aegean / Karen Polinger Foster

Sight as ecstatic experience in the ancient Mediterranean / Nassos Papalexandrou.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on December 22, 2021).

Other Format:

Print version: Routledge companion to ecstatic experience in the ancient world

ISBN:

9781003041610

1003041612

1000464768

9781000464733

1000464733

9781000464764

OCLC:

1252737109

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.