The book is a study of the Orphic Hymns, a collection of 87 Greek texts in hexameter addressed to various deities. These hymns are closely related to one another and seem to originate in Asia Minor during the first centuries of the Christian era. The great originality of this corpus is that a link can be traced between a set of beliefs, rituals, offerings and mysteries, and a group of believers. Surprisingly the Hymns has been generally neglected. Les etudes sur les Hymnes orphiques begins with a study of the genre. The Hymns are essentially composed of long lists...

This volume focuses on the headquarters of provincial cults and the principal features of the worship offered there on behalf of the province. Evidence for provincial centres survives in various forms of varying degress of reliability but, while no standard pattern emerges, it seems clear that every province established a permanent base that served similar cultic, administrative, recreational and ideological purposes. Traces of provincial worship are more fleeting but a rough picture can be reconstructed of priestly regalia and of the calendar, rites and associated liturgy and...

This work contains two parts. Part I constitutes a guide to the corpus of Greek sacred law and its contents. A discussion of the history of the corpus and the principles governing its composition is followed by a detailed review of its contents, in which the evidence is classified according to subject matter. Part II contains inscriptions published since the late 1960s from all around the Greek world excluding Cos and Asia Minor (checklists for these are appended). The text of each inscription is presented alongside restorations, epigraphical commentary, translation, and a comprehensive...

This book is an investigation into the sphere of production and use of two related bilingual magical handbooks found as part of a larger collection of magical and alchemical manuscripts around 1828 in the hills surrounding Luxor, Egypt. Both handbooks, dating to the Roman period, contain an assortment of recipes for magical rites in the Demotic and Greek language. The library which comprises these two handbooks is nowadays better known as the Theban Magical Library.
The book traces the social and cultural milieu of the composers, compilers and users of the extant spells through a...

For the Greek, Dionysos was a very important god: for individuals as well as for the community as a whole. As there are only a few written sources dating from before the 5th Century BC the many images of Dionysos on Greek vases may well offer a genuine approach to the meaning given by the ancient viewer. This book explores the earliest images followed by those on small vases for private use, on mixing bowls of the symposion, on amphoras, on later drinking cups and on archaic sculptures. It gives an overview of Dionysian iconography of the 5th Century BC as well as an overall interpretation....

This book is a collection of studies by scholars Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and early Christian religions on the topic of divination. Its topics range from necromancy to dice rolling, free-lance diviners to Delphi, and includes treatments from the Archaic period to Late Antiquity.

This study deals essentially with the knowledge of the Palestinian Rabbis concerning paganism in the days of Mishna and Talmud. The Late Professor Saul Lieberman wrote that "Many isolated items on idolatry and idol worshippers are scattered all over rabbinic literature. It would require a large volume to treat this topic." This valuable and exhaustive study proves methodically that the Rabbis had deeper knowledge about Syrian, Arabian, Anatolian and Graeco-Roman Pagan cults than is commonly believed. Clear, accessible and displaying considerable scholarship this work will undoubtedly provide...

Heirs to the Punic and Berber traditions, the North Africans, once conquered by the Romans and willing to show respect for their new masters' gods, did not want to forsake their beloved ancestral deities and solved this dilemma by giving Roman names to their traditional gods, who nevertheless kept most of their former natures. This phenomenon, known as interpretatio romana, resulted in an interpenetration of both religious universes, each being enriched in the process. Roman African gods thus conceal dual personalities within themselves, which this book tries to investigate through all...

This volume concludes the series with an apparatus. The list of Abbreviated Titles comprises all Abbreviations used throughout the four Parts while the Bibliography consolidates the books and articles cited in the four sets of References. The intention of the various Indices is to let the reader find his way about the text in one way or another whereas the main focus of the Addenda is on publications that were either earlier missed or, as in most cases, appeared too late to be included at the appropriate stage of the text. Lastly, the list of errata (underline, please) in the Corrigenda...

Interest in all kinds of interactions between Egypt and Rome has grown considerably over the last decade. This debate has not only altered our views on the impact of Rome on Alexandria and Egypt but also strongly put to the fore the reverse direction of this cultural interaction: Egyptian influences on the Roman world. It is this topic, Egypt in the Roman World, that was central to the IIIrd International Conference of Isis Studies, held in Leiden in May 2005. This book, a selection of the papers delivered at the conference, gives a clear overview of the debate as it has developed in...