School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 5 of 5
-
ItemThe Self Possessed: Framing Identity in Late Minoan Glyptic(Peeters-Leuven, 2019-05-01)A group of Late Minoan signet rings fashioned in precious metals and engraved with complex and evocative iconographic schemes appears to depict ‘nature’ or ‘rural’ cults enacted at extra-urban sanctuaries, and may have functioned as inalienable possessions implicated in the expression and maintenance of elite identities during the Aegean Bronze Age. The images on the ring bezels depict human figures in association with epiphanic figures situated in settings characterised by the presence of trees and stones, columnar shrines, stepped altars, openwork platforms, tripartite shrines and sanctuary walls, perhaps involving occasional rites and the erection and dismantling of temporary cult structures which can themselves be viewed as architectonic replications of rural cult sites and natural forms. Just as the fabric of these rings and the artistry and technical skill of their production were of restricted accessibility and controlled distribution, we may infer that so, too, the rites, places and activities recorded on these rings were socially restricted. Possession of these distinctive and desirable objects of economic, cultural and symbolic value may have signified access to, involvement in and mastery over such rituals, the special status of the owner delineated and broadcast through the circulating media of clay sealings, advertising their special relationship with forces and places within nature. Over time the personal and cultural memory, knowledge and associations accumulated within these rings may form histories or biographies of the rings themselves, implicating the identities of their past and present owners, and of the wider community. In this way, they can be understood as inalienable possessions, objects invested with authority and authenticity that in turn authenticate the status of their owners. These enduring symbols draw the past into the present, instantiating cultural and cosmological ideals which classify and objectify social relations through referencing the past. Thus these rings function as mnemonic devices, palimpsests of memory, association and affect which store and transmit information about spatially and temporally disbursed places, people and events, memorialising and broadcasting elite association with the (super)natural world and forming part of the material affordances of the world of things which recursively produce, reiterate and transform identities through ecologies of practice: the past mediated in the present through memory materialised in objects.
-
ItemEgyptosophy in the British Museum: Florence Farr, the Egyptian Adept and the Ka.(Routledge - Taylor & Francis, 2017)"Egyptosophy" refers to "the study of an imaginary Egypt viewed as the profound source of all esoteric lore" and reflects the idea – prevalent since antiquity – that the ancient Egyptians were a race of mysterious sages. The academic discipline of Egyptology split from Egyptosophy in 1822 with Jean-Francois Champollion's decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. By identifying Mutemmenu as an "Egyptian Adept" equivalent to a Golden Dawn initiate of high degree, Florence Farr foregrounded the role of the priestess in modern Hermetic magic. Where Farr's encounter with Mutemmenu does echo the wider corpus of mummy fiction is in its occurrence in the British Museum, as museums are often the setting for mummy reanimation. Warwick Gould suggests that Farr may have either associated the last syllable of Nenkheftka's name with the idea of the ka, or else thought she had been the wife of Nenkheftka in a previous incarnation.
-
ItemThe Artifice of Daidalos: Modern Minoica as Religious Focus in Contemporary Paganism(Equinox Publishing, 2019)This paper examines the representation of Minoan Crete within the feminist Goddess Movement, separatist feminist Dianic Witchcraft, and the male-only Minoan Brotherhood. Analysis and critique of the matriarchalist understanding of Minoan material culture by these groups demonstrates that it is interpreted in a highly ideological manner that has little to do with actual Minoan religion.
-
ItemThe Self-Possessed: Framing Identity in Late Minoan Glyptic(Peeters-Leuven, 2019)A group of Late Minoan signet rings fashioned in precious metals and engraved with complex and evocative iconographic schemes appears to depict ‘nature’ or ‘rural’ cults enacted at extra-urban sanctuaries, and may have functioned as inalienable possessions implicated in the expression and maintenance of elite identities during the Aegean Bronze Age. The images on the ring bezels depict human figures in association with epiphanic figures situated in settings characterised by the presence of trees and stones, columnar shrines, stepped altars, openwork platforms, tripartite shrines and sanctuary walls, perhaps involving occasional rites and the erection and dismantling of temporary cult structures which can themselves be viewed as architectonic replications of rural cult sites and natural forms. Just as the fabric of these rings and the artistry and technical skill of their production were of restricted accessibility and controlled distribution, we may infer that so, too, the rites, places and activities recorded on these rings were socially restricted. Possession of these distinctive and desirable objects of economic, cultural and symbolic value may have signified access to, involvement in and mastery over such rituals, the special status of the owner delineated and broadcast through the circulating media of clay sealings, advertising their special relationship with forces and places within nature. Over time the personal and cultural memory, knowledge and associations accumulated within these rings may form histories or biographies of the rings themselves, implicating the identities of their past and present owners, and of the wider community. In this way, they can be understood as inalienable possessions, objects invested with authority and authenticity that in turn authenticate the status of their owners. These enduring symbols draw the past into the present, instantiating cultural and cosmological ideals which classify and objectify social relations through referencing the past. Thus these rings function as mnemonic devices, palimpsests of memory, association and affect which store and transmit information about spatially and temporally disbursed places, people and events, memorialising and broadcasting elite association with the (super)natural world and forming part of the material affordances of the world of things which recursively produce, reiterate and transform identities through ecologies of practice: the past mediated in the present through memory materialised in objects.
-
ItemNuminous tree and stone: re-animating the Minoan landscape.(Peeters, 2016)Iconographic scenes of inferred cultic activity, including the hugging or leaning upon of aniconic stones and the apparent appearance of epiphanic figures in proximity to trees, are suggestive of an animistic conception of the natural world. Architectonic evocations of the numinous sacred landscape, through iconographic representation, cultic paraphernalia, palatial architectural features, extant baetyls and peak sanctuaries, reflect strategies of elite status legitimisation through advertisement of relational associations with landscape. Scenes of epiphanic ritual depicted within apparently natural settings – amongst trees and stones free from architectural elaboration – are suggestive of elite interaction with perceived numinous elements within the landscape, while images of envisioned epiphany imply direct communication between human ritual actors and the animate landscape, achieved through interaction with tree or stone. Stepped cult structures such as shrines and openwork platforms, which may be sat upon by women or surmounted by trees, may have symbolised mountains and facilitated the replication of peak sanctuary ritual in an architecturally elaborated, possibly urban, setting. Interaction with baetyls may appropriate qualities of solidity and permanence, while also enhancing claims to status and authority through evoking ancestor veneration. Evidence of feasting in association with baetyls may suggest their function within programs of social cohesion and the naturalisation of hierarchy in which elites expressed status and generated ritual indebtedness through conspicuous generosity and display. These elements of the Minoan sacred landscape will here be analysed through the lens of animism. In contrast with the influential primitivist evolutionary epistemology expounded by the Victorian comparative ethnologists, animism drawn from cultural anthropology posits a relational epistemology, in which a reflexive relatedness exists between people and the natural environment, which is perceived as being sentient. Rather than providing inert backdrops to ritual performance, the landscape is here reconfigured as sentient and numinous, functioning as a politicised, active agent in the enactment of power.