Book description
The first book to explore the religious dimensions of the family and
the household in ancient Mediterranean and West Asian antiquity.
- Advances our understanding of household and familial religion, as
opposed to state-sponsored or civic temple cults
- Reconstructs domestic and family religious practices in Egypt,
Greece, Rome, Israel, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, Emar, and Philistia
- Explores many household rituals, such as providing for ancestral
spirits, and petitioning of a household's patron deities or of
spirits associated with the house itself
- Examines lifecycle rituals - from pregnancy and birth to maturity,
old age, death, and beyond
- Looks at religious practices relating to the household both within
the home itself and other spaces, such as at extramural tombs and
local sanctuaries
John Bodel
is Professor of Classics and History at Brown University. He writes
about Roman social and cultural history, Latin epigraphy, and Latin
literature of the Empire. His books include
Roman Brick Stamps in the
Kelsey Museum
(1983),
Graveyards and Groves: A Study of the Lex Lucerina
(1994),
Epigraphic Evidence: Ancient History from Inscriptions
(editor, 2001), and
Dediche sacre nel mondo greco-romano:
Diffusione, funzioni, tipologie
(edited with Mika Kajava, 2008).
Saul M. Olyan is Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic
Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University. He is
the author of Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (1988),
A Thousand Thousands Served Him: Exegesis and the Naming of
Angels in Ancient Judaism (1993), Rites and Rank: Hierarchy
in Biblical Representations of Cult (2000), Biblical
Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions (2004), and Disability
in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical
Differences (2008).
