Crowned Heights

Sacred Mountains and Emerging Urban Landscapes in Asia Minor

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21609469
AutoresChristina G Williamson (autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen32
Páginas99-140
Fecha de publicación2024-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnatolia Antiqua (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1018-1946 • E-ISSN: 2823-1090
EditorialOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/16bge
OpenAlexW7163183169
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas45

Mountains, with their spectacular panoramas and their difficult terrain, are at once attracting and repelling. Scholars of the ancient Greek world often designate them as liminal spaces, on the other side of the civilized, cultivated world. Mythologies indeed often position such ‘wild spaces’ at the edge of the human and the divine. This is also the case with Hittite narratives, yet here mountains are themselves immortal beings on a par with earthly kings. Neither motif, however, sits comfortably with Hellenistic Asia Minor, where central, major places of cult are frequently located on mountains, later to be absorbed by a nearby city. Although in the nexus between the spheres, such peak sanctuaries often hosted civic festivals with ordered processions leading up to the top, towards an enclosed, inward-facing courtyard framed by monumental architecture – features that are typically seen as urbanizing. This seeming paradox is at the heart of this study. Starting with a comparison of scholarly conceptions of mountains in the Greek world with perceptions from Bronze Age Anatolia, this study moves on to analyze in close detail the situation at four shrines: that of Zeus Labraundos near Mylasa in Karia; Meter Theon near Pergamon in Mysia; Mên Askaenos near Antioch in Pisidia; and Hemithea near Kastabos in the Karian Chersonese. These mountainous shrines embodied the ideals of their cities. Each case study offers unique insights into ways that the relationship between the city and its mountain shrine could be shaped, yet also demonstrates a tight bond that overrides any conceptual differences of location

Bronze Age · Central asia · Cult · Hittite language · Liminality · Mythology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Ancient Near East History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Architecture