School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 10
-
ItemTraces of places: sacred sites in miniature on Minoan gold rings.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2021-01-25)Sacred sites in Minoan Crete are known from both archaeological remains and iconography. Glyptic art is the most extensive body of Aegean Bronze Age representational art and consists of carved seals in the form of engraved metal signet rings, stone seals, and the clay impressions (sealings) that these were used to produce. Gold signet rings from the Cretan Neopalatial period (1750–1490 BCE) depict various types of sacred site including mountain, rural, cave, and urban sanctuaries. How should we understand the built structures depicted in these miniature cult scenes? Do they all depict variations of walls or buildings, or are they altars? This paper differentiates the built structures depicted in cult scenes on Minoan gold rings, correlates them to archaeological remains at Minoan sacred sites, and proposes an explanation of ephemeral cult structures now only recorded in the iconographic evidence. It will be demonstrated that these miniature art forms represent Minoan sacred sites in three ways: as natural places characterised by the presence of trees and stones and the absence of architecture; as outdoor sanctuaries surrounded by ashlar stone walls; and as shrines and altars, the shapes of which evoke natural cult locations such as mountains and sacred groves through abstract form. It will be argued that representation of Minoan cult structures that evoked the natural landscape within prestigious art forms was a method whereby Neopalatial elites naturalised their authority by depicting themselves in special relationship with the animate landscape.
-
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.
-
ItemFlorence and the Mummy(Megalithica, 2009)
-
ItemSamuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers and Isis(Hidden Publishing, 2009)Ten years on from the groundbreaking Triumph of the Moon: A history of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Professor Ronald Hutton, a selection of worldwide scholars, some 'big names; some newer in the field, with nearly two centuries of hands-on pagan research experience between them, present a collection of researches inspired by, deriving from or just celebrating the immense impact of that seminal...
-
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.
-
ItemEnthroned Upon Mountains: Constructions of Power in the Aegean Bronze Age(Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2020)The Bronze Age Aegean lacks a clearly discernible iconography of rulership, permitting widely contrasting speculation on the character of Minoan society – that it was egalitarian, heterarchical, gynocratic or a theocracy overseen by priest-kings. That elites did exist is amply attested by mortuary, iconographic and architectural evidence, including the Throne Room of the Late Minoan palace at Knossos in which a centrally oriented throne with a mountain-shaped back is incorporated into the architectural fabric of the room. Iconographic representations of human figures holding sceptres and standing upon mountains as well as evidence for the increased palatial control of cultic activity at rural peak sanctuaries during the Neopalatial Period (1750–1490 BCE) emphasise an association between rulership and the mountainous landscape. Close analysis of seated figures within Minoan iconography reveals architectonic parallels to the Knossian Throne. Stepped structures, typically surmounted by seated female figures, function as abstract representations of the mountain form. It will be argued here that literal and metaphoric representations of mountain thrones in the form of the Knossos Throne and stepped structures function within an ideological program associating rulership with the natural landscape, thereby offering new insights into the construction of power in the Aegean Bronze Age.
-
ItemCeltic Egyptians: Isis Priests of the Lineage of Scota(Bloomsbury Academic, 2020-01-23)This paper analyses and critiques the uses of ancient Egyptian religion by the founders of two modern manifestations of the worship of the goddess Isis. Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, the primary creative genius behind the famous British occult group, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and his wife Moina Mathers established a mystery religion of Isis in fin de siècle Paris. Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, his wife Pamela and his sister Olivia created the Fellowship of Isis in Ireland in the early 1970s. Although separated by over half a century and not directly associated with each other, both groups have several characteristics in common. Each combined their worship of an ancient Egyptian goddess with an interest in the Celtic Revival; both claimed that their priestly lineages derived directly from the Egyptian princess Scota, foundress of Ireland and Scotland according to Irish and Scottish mythology and pseudohistory; and both groups used dramatic ritual and theatrical events as avenues for the promulgation of their Isis cults. It is argued here that while both the Parisian mysteries of Isis and the Fellowship of Isis are historically-inaccurate syncretic constructions, they exemplify the enduring popularity of the Egyptian goddess Isis who since antiquity has been appropriated and re-fashioned in order to serve as a symbol of the zeitgeist. Already in Pharaonic and Roman Egypt, Isis was a universal goddess within whom other goddesses were subsumed. In subsequent centuries, so flexible was the figure of Isis that she was even claimed to have been a goddess of the Druids. The tradition of an Egyptian origin of the peoples of Scotland and Ireland, as espoused in the medieval myth of the Egyptian princess Scota, legitimised the Mathers’s and the Durdin-Robertson’s claims of their ancient Egyptian priesthood. In addition to asserting that the Isis cult was brought by Scota, Pharaonic Egyptian, Graeco-Roman, Medieval, Hermetic, and Romantic literary and archaeological sources were utilised in order to construct their understanding of Isis. That Isis was recreated according to the abilities and concerns of the founders of the Parisian mysteries and the Fellowship of Isis is evident from examination of eye-witness reports of ritual performances, occult theatre, personal interviews, missives, and explanatory texts. It is determined that both groups favoured an ahistorical construction of the goddess as an eternal, mysterious, magical figure representative of universal harmony, unity and nature, which appealed to late-nineteenth and twentieth century Pagan sensibilities. Neither the Parisian mysteries of Isis nor the Fellowship of Isis has been the focus of much critical scholarship to date, and the use of the medieval myth of Scota by these figures has never been analysed. This paper builds upon previous research on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and contemporary Pagan religions, particularly the author’s examination of its prime movers; Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Florence Farr, and Aleister Crowley; the Order’s utilisation of ancient Egyptian religion; and its influence on the emergence of the modern Pagan movement in the mid-twentieth century.
-
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.