EXC 212 B2-16 - MEDIA STRATEGIES OF CITIES AND RULERS IN MULTI-RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES OF ANTIQUITY: "FOREIGN" CULTS IN THE LIGHT OF MATERIAL EVIDENCE

Basic data for this project

Description

This project addresses a specific aspect of ancient religious policy, that is, how multi-religious societies dealt with ‘foreign’ cults (e.g., Egyptian or so-called oriental cults) in the media. Our research centres around the question as to how far the public presence or absence of deities or cults indicated religious political interests or disinterests of political authorities. The face design as the only mobile mass medium in societies of ancient Greece and ancient Rome plays a central role here. In the process, we will not examine coins in an isolated manner but in the context of other material evidence of religiousness and religious communities, such as sacred sites, cult statues and votive offerings. Our investigations start at the assumption generally accepted in research that all minting authorities transported religious moral values through the medium of the face design. These find expression in the presentation of deities of the Greek and Roman pantheon and their symbols, to which central importance is attached – on a monarchic (‘ruler cult’) or local level ( ‘polis religion’) – and which can also be detected in other archaeological and/or written types of sources. In this, the religious image is usually exploited with a political purpose.