My paper applies a concept of religious identification as analytical instrument for the observation and description of religious dynamics from the perspective of the individual, especially in regard to the conditions of papyrological sources. In concrete terms, I investigate Egyptian cult-officials which referred individually to Greek deities. Since they were originally only educated in cultic practice and literature of Egyptian tradition and kept a highly endogamous familial structure, references to divine agents of Greek context presuppose an active entanglement and engagement with Greek culture and society. My concept and methodology shall offer a way to investigate the circumstances, patterns and dynamics behind each individual reference more closely.
The concept of identification is defined here as “positioning of structured selves in a socially structured environment” (Rüpke 2015). In consequence, one’s identities become observable in communicative actions, either with human and divine agents, or in self-reflective statements. Following Jörg Rüpke’s definition of religion as “attribution of agency to something beyond the unquestionably plausible” (ibid.), religious identification is the communication about such not unquestionably plausible agents. Besides, following Michel de Certeau, individuals appropriate systems of (religious) signs or practices only partially and imperfect (Certeau 1984). That means, historical records contain a wide range of individuated ways how actors set religion into practice and expressed religious identities.
In order to study dynamic processes of religious identification in documentary papyri, the first obstacle is to detect utterances of religious signs or practices at all. The second obstacle is to make the uttering agent visible: who was speaking there? Then, questions about the patterns of appropriation emerge: What was said? When, how, and in relation to whom did the person act, in which context was the religious utterance embedded and for which function? Case-studies, on which these questions will be applied, focus at first on the stolistes Pakysis from third-century Soknopaiou Nesos who worked also as bookkeeper and invoked Greek gods in one of his business-accounts. Another case is the cult-official Aurelius Ammon from fourth-century Panopolis who referred in a private letter to his mother, among other things, to the powers of Tyche, as known from the Corpus Hermeticum and the Stoic philosophical school.
The concept of identification is defined here as “positioning of structured selves in a socially structured environment” (Rüpke 2015). In consequence, one’s identities become observable in communicative actions, either with human and divine agents, or in self-reflective statements. Following Jörg Rüpke’s definition of religion as “attribution of agency to something beyond the unquestionably plausible” (ibid.), religious identification is the communication about such not unquestionably plausible agents. Besides, following Michel de Certeau, individuals appropriate systems of (religious) signs or practices only partially and imperfect (Certeau 1984). That means, historical records contain a wide range of individuated ways how actors set religion into practice and expressed religious identities.
In order to study dynamic processes of religious identification in documentary papyri, the first obstacle is to detect utterances of religious signs or practices at all. The second obstacle is to make the uttering agent visible: who was speaking there? Then, questions about the patterns of appropriation emerge: What was said? When, how, and in relation to whom did the person act, in which context was the religious utterance embedded and for which function? Case-studies, on which these questions will be applied, focus at first on the stolistes Pakysis from third-century Soknopaiou Nesos who worked also as bookkeeper and invoked Greek gods in one of his business-accounts. Another case is the cult-official Aurelius Ammon from fourth-century Panopolis who referred in a private letter to his mother, among other things, to the powers of Tyche, as known from the Corpus Hermeticum and the Stoic philosophical school.
The paper is a sketch for an international conference in Leiden in
November 2017: "Late Antique Religion in Practice: Papyri and the
Dynamics of Religious Identification"
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