About: | Irene Madreiter |
Position: | Key Researcher |
Node: | Identities and Religions |
The main interest of this study lies in the literary perception of imperial space, of its populations (sedentary and nomadic) and lifestyles. A focus is on religious thoughts and practices. Wandering religious experts, mostly priests and/or healers, disseminated oriental religious ideas to the West since the time of the Assyrian empire, which also sparked off pejorative narratives in Greek sources (Madreiter 2012). Including Eastern perspectives reveals the biased character of the Western sources and the influence of this view on Eastern self-stereotyping until today. The literary topoi can also be reconnected with the tangible realities of material traces. This case study will focus on the transfer of religious worldviews and specific cults, e.g. of Cybele, Mithras, Anahita, into the core areas of the classical world, and on the role of Manichaean, Christian and Jewish ‘missionaries’ in transfers to the East. This combination of literary and material evidence will lead to a comprehensive picture of the role religious experts played as agents in cultural contacts.