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| Anna-Katharina Rieger |
In antiquity, space as the natural and cultural environment of individuals and groups is embedded on the one hand in a globalised world due to trading networks, extending empires or warfare. On the other hand, mobility of persons in daily life as well as in a life cycle was limited and spatial experiences range on a micro-regional scale: Social, gender, age or economic and professional reasons might enhance (nomads, military, merchants, administrators, men, prime-aged) or diminishing (farmers, women, old/children) the range of activity that persons or groups had. In this dual context of the regional and the global character of experiences, the question of lived ancient religion comes into play in so far as the action range influences the religious activities and experiences a person or group could conduct and gain. Thus, the study aims at questioning the dichotomies of “regional/global”, “indigenous/Graeco-roman”, “sacred/profane” by focusing on the actual religious environment persons and groups could experience: Location, layout and architectural design as well as objects enlivening shared sacred spaces differed depending on the physical space people lived in and their group affiliation. Especially sacred places in the Roman Near East, in short a region of intraregional crossroads and religious variety, allows for investigating scales, range, mobility, appropriation and interaction by different agents in and of shared sacred spaces, embracing the impacts of spaces on persons and vice versa. The study approaches sacred contexts in the Roman Near East by crossing borders in terms of life styles and regions as well as by encompassing different material evidence, such as architecture, epigraphy, artifacts and landscape features, connectivity and the group specific relations, the places are embedded in. Religious activities and their spatial setting, handed over to group members or younger generations as customs form a religious body of imprinted memories, articulated in rituals, their interpretation, reassertion, amalgamation or situational transformation reflected in their materiality. In the physically distinguished regions of Kyrrhestike, Hauran (Syria) and Mount Hermon (Libanon/Israel/Syria), often looked at separately, the layout of shared sacred spaces, their material environment and the persons and social networks interacting in these places will be contextualized and compared in order to open up a perspective on how spaces as environment of religious life (from a single niche to sumptuous temples or open sacred spaces) were used situationally, how they were enlivened by objects, thus creating the setting and counterpart of any activity, and who frequented them, integrating to these spaces the ways of communication and experiences of ancient individuals as agents of religion.
The paper is planned as contribution to the volume Borders, edited by Annette Weissenrieder, which brings New Testament scholars, archaeologist, egyptologists and ancient historians together. It dwells again on the cave-sanctuary of Caesarea Philippi, which I presented with a first look to it in my last Kolloquium (and on two more occasions, so that some of you already know what it is about). What I try here, is a closer look on the rock-face and the niches and inscriptions, looking for the strategies of dedicants, how to communicate with the divine powers, how to overcome the border between the human and the divine. From the point of view of the LAR-approach, the paper tries somehow to disassemble known material, in seemingly “clear” contexts (cave sanctuary, Galiliean background, etc., Graeco-Roman city surrounding), and to assemble them freshly with a close look to their contents and contexts, and infer from them to the practices and religious demands they are part of or embedded in. I would be interested in comments on: Structure of the paper, redundancies? Modern concepts (medium) – ancient material? More material, other places to enforce the argument? - and will be happy about any other criticism, comments or ideas.
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