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...