Stephanie Lynn Budin
Biographic Data
| ID | 1439389 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephanie Lynn Budin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephanie Lynn |
| FAMILY NAME | Budin |
| SIGNATURE | BUDIN S L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Egyptianizing Female Figurines in Late Bronze Age Cyprus
This article looks at a handful of Late Cypriot III “Normal Face” figurines that display Egyptianizing features in both posture and hairstyle. After discussing how these figurines are unique in the Cypriot corpus, it shows how the features under consideration can only come from Egyptian precedent. It ends with a discussion of how an understanding of the Egyptian prototype (especially the hairstyle) can offer new insights into the interpretation o…
How Sacred Prostitution Is Faring in Academic Publications
This article looks at the current state of sacred prostitution studies in both ancient Near Eastern and Classical Studies through the review of two books published in 2019. Both books reveal that the current trend is to dismiss the existence of sacred prostitution in antiquity, one by attempting (not entirely successfully) to agree with that assessment, and one by condemning that dismissal altogether. All things considered, it does now appear tha…
Nude Awakenings
This article considers the earliest examples of so-called Nude Female iconography that emerged in Mesopotamia in the Early Dynastic period, with a particular focus on the aspects of nudity and gesture. Rather than concluding that these images represent goddesses or concepts such as fertility, the data reveal that in the Early Dynastic period female nudity was no different than male nudity
She Who Wrote
The author reviews the exhibit “She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia” which is on display at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City from October 2022 to February 2023
Freewomen, Patriarchal Authority, and the Accusation of Prostitution
Examining freewomen in Mesopotamian society, ancient Greek hetaira, Renaissance Italy courtesans, historical and modern Japanese geisha, and the Hindu devadāsī of India, Stephanie Lynn Budin makes a wide-ranging study of independent women who have historically been dismissed as prostitutes. The purpose of this book is to rectify a well-entrenched misunderstanding about a category of women existing throughout world history—women who were not (and …
Women in the Ancient Near East
Women in the Ancient Near East: A Sourcebook. Edited by Mark W. Chavalas. Routledge Sourcebooks for the Ancient World. London: Routledge, 2014. Pp. xii + 319. $43.95 (paper
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation. By Ruby Blondell. New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. xvii + 289, illus. $24.95 (paper
Sex and Gender and Sex
This article challenges some of the prevailing notions pertaining to non-binary sex and fluid gender in modern academia. Beginning with a look at the history of the sex vs. gender debate, it turns to the study of genetics to determine how binary sex is, overturning many current beliefs about the biological bases of multiple sexes. It then considers four case studies of so-called fluid gender in world history—Mesopotamian women as men, Albanian vi…
The World Between Empires, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Edward E. Cohen. Athenian Prostitution
In Athenian Prostitution: The Business of Sex, Edward E. Cohen attempts to deal with the very practical realia of the business of prostitution in fifth- and fourth-century b.c.e. Athens. This is not a simple task, for as Cohen himself notes in his introduction, the three sources of information on ancient Greek prostitution are ambiguous at best. Dramatic comedies, mainly New Comedy and its Roman imitators, are fiction and often far removed in tim…
Women in Antiquity
Reduced to Her Bare Essentials
This article considers the symbolic meanings of the face, breasts, vulva, and branch images which typify the schematic piriform pendants which first emerged in Tell el-‘Ajjul in the Late Bronze Age and spread through the Levant. In contrast to the usual hypotheses regarding fertility, I suggest that each of these elements refer to the Egyptian goddess Hathor as aspects of her attributes and powers in the Levant under Egyptian domination
Artemis
Artemis is a literary, iconographic, and archaeological study of the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, who presided over the transitions and mediations between the wild and the civilized, youth and maturity, life and death. Beginning with a study of the early origins of Artemis and her cult in the Bronze and Archaic Ages, Budin explores the goddess' persona and her role in the lives of her worshippers. This volume examines her birth and childhoo…
Aphrodite Enoplion
The ancient Greeks
From the Publisher: This accessible introduction surveys the land and peoples who gave us the Labyrinth, the Acropolis, the Iliad and Odyssey, Herodotus and Thucydides, Sappho and Sophocles, Aphrodite and Aristotle, and so much more. Using the full range of resources of art history, archaeology, and philology, this book details the familiar-mythic heroes and heroines, famous philosophers and poets, as well as classical art and architecture-and in…
The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity
Stephanie Budin demonstrates that sacred prostitution, the sale of a person's body for sex in which some or all of the money earned was devoted to a deity or a temple, did not exist in the ancient world. Reconsidering the evidence from the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman texts, and the early Christian authors, Budin shows that the majority of sources that have traditionally been understood as pertaining to sacred prostitution actually have not…
Simonides’ Corinthian Epigram
The Ancient Greeks
The ancient Greeks established the very blueprint of Western civilization—our societies, institutions, art, and culture—and thanks to remarkable new findings, we know more about them than ever, and it's all here in this up-to-date introductory volume. Ancient Greecechronicles the rise, decline, resurgence, and ultimate collapse of the Greek empire from its earliest stirrings in the Bronze Age, through the Dark Ages and Classical period, to the de…
The Ancient Greeks
A Reconsideration of the Aphrodite-Ashtart Syncretism
Scholars have long recognized a one-to-one correspondence, or interpretatio syncretism, between the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Phoenician goddess Ashtart (Astarte). The origin of this syncretism is usually attributed to the eastern origins of Aphrodite herself, whereby the Greek goddess evolved out of the Phoenician, as is suggested as early as the writings of Herodotos. In contrast to this understanding, I argue here that the perceived sync…
Pallakai, Prostitutes, and Prophetesses
Women in Antiquity
A Reconsideration of the Aphrodite-Ashtart Syncretism
Scholars have long recognized a one-to-one correspondence, or interpretatio syncretism, between the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Phoenician goddess Ashtart (Astarte). The origin of this syncretism is usually attributed to the eastern origins of Aphrodite herself, whereby the Greek goddess evolved out of the Phoenician, as is suggested as early as the writings of Herodotos. In contrast to this understanding, I argue here that the perceived sync…
Simonides’ Corinthian Epigram
Reduced to Her Bare Essentials
This article considers the symbolic meanings of the face, breasts, vulva, and branch images which typify the schematic piriform pendants which first emerged in Tell el-‘Ajjul in the Late Bronze Age and spread through the Levant. In contrast to the usual hypotheses regarding fertility, I suggest that each of these elements refer to the Egyptian goddess Hathor as aspects of her attributes and powers in the Levant under Egyptian domination
Artemis
Artemis is a literary, iconographic, and archaeological study of the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, who presided over the transitions and mediations between the wild and the civilized, youth and maturity, life and death. Beginning with a study of the early origins of Artemis and her cult in the Bronze and Archaic Ages, Budin explores the goddess' persona and her role in the lives of her worshippers. This volume examines her birth and childhoo…
Pallakai, Prostitutes, and Prophetesses
Pallakai, Prostitutes, and Prophetesses
The Ancient Greeks
The ancient Greeks established the very blueprint of Western civilization—our societies, institutions, art, and culture—and thanks to remarkable new findings, we know more about them than ever, and it's all here in this up-to-date introductory volume. Ancient Greecechronicles the rise, decline, resurgence, and ultimate collapse of the Greek empire from its earliest stirrings in the Bronze Age, through the Dark Ages and Classical period, to the de…
The Ancient Greeks
A Reconsideration of the Aphrodite-Ashtart Syncretism
Scholars have long recognized a one-to-one correspondence, or interpretatio syncretism, between the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the Phoenician goddess Ashtart (Astarte). The origin of this syncretism is usually attributed to the eastern origins of Aphrodite herself, whereby the Greek goddess evolved out of the Phoenician, as is suggested as early as the writings of Herodotos. In contrast to this understanding, I argue here that the perceived sync…
The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity
Stephanie Budin demonstrates that sacred prostitution, the sale of a person's body for sex in which some or all of the money earned was devoted to a deity or a temple, did not exist in the ancient world. Reconsidering the evidence from the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman texts, and the early Christian authors, Budin shows that the majority of sources that have traditionally been understood as pertaining to sacred prostitution actually have not…
Simonides’ Corinthian Epigram
The ancient Greeks
From the Publisher: This accessible introduction surveys the land and peoples who gave us the Labyrinth, the Acropolis, the Iliad and Odyssey, Herodotus and Thucydides, Sappho and Sophocles, Aphrodite and Aristotle, and so much more. Using the full range of resources of art history, archaeology, and philology, this book details the familiar-mythic heroes and heroines, famous philosophers and poets, as well as classical art and architecture-and in…
Aphrodite Enoplion
Artemis
Artemis is a literary, iconographic, and archaeological study of the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, who presided over the transitions and mediations between the wild and the civilized, youth and maturity, life and death. Beginning with a study of the early origins of Artemis and her cult in the Bronze and Archaic Ages, Budin explores the goddess' persona and her role in the lives of her worshippers. This volume examines her birth and childhoo…
Women in Antiquity
Reduced to Her Bare Essentials
This article considers the symbolic meanings of the face, breasts, vulva, and branch images which typify the schematic piriform pendants which first emerged in Tell el-‘Ajjul in the Late Bronze Age and spread through the Levant. In contrast to the usual hypotheses regarding fertility, I suggest that each of these elements refer to the Egyptian goddess Hathor as aspects of her attributes and powers in the Levant under Egyptian domination
Edward E. Cohen. Athenian Prostitution
In Athenian Prostitution: The Business of Sex, Edward E. Cohen attempts to deal with the very practical realia of the business of prostitution in fifth- and fourth-century b.c.e. Athens. This is not a simple task, for as Cohen himself notes in his introduction, the three sources of information on ancient Greek prostitution are ambiguous at best. Dramatic comedies, mainly New Comedy and its Roman imitators, are fiction and often far removed in tim…
The World Between Empires, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Sex and Gender and Sex
This article challenges some of the prevailing notions pertaining to non-binary sex and fluid gender in modern academia. Beginning with a look at the history of the sex vs. gender debate, it turns to the study of genetics to determine how binary sex is, overturning many current beliefs about the biological bases of multiple sexes. It then considers four case studies of so-called fluid gender in world history—Mesopotamian women as men, Albanian vi…
Freewomen, Patriarchal Authority, and the Accusation of Prostitution
Examining freewomen in Mesopotamian society, ancient Greek hetaira, Renaissance Italy courtesans, historical and modern Japanese geisha, and the Hindu devadāsī of India, Stephanie Lynn Budin makes a wide-ranging study of independent women who have historically been dismissed as prostitutes. The purpose of this book is to rectify a well-entrenched misunderstanding about a category of women existing throughout world history—women who were not (and …
Women in the Ancient Near East
Women in the Ancient Near East: A Sourcebook. Edited by Mark W. Chavalas. Routledge Sourcebooks for the Ancient World. London: Routledge, 2014. Pp. xii + 319. $43.95 (paper
Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation. By Ruby Blondell. New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. xvii + 289, illus. $24.95 (paper
How Sacred Prostitution Is Faring in Academic Publications
This article looks at the current state of sacred prostitution studies in both ancient Near Eastern and Classical Studies through the review of two books published in 2019. Both books reveal that the current trend is to dismiss the existence of sacred prostitution in antiquity, one by attempting (not entirely successfully) to agree with that assessment, and one by condemning that dismissal altogether. All things considered, it does now appear tha…
Nude Awakenings
This article considers the earliest examples of so-called Nude Female iconography that emerged in Mesopotamia in the Early Dynastic period, with a particular focus on the aspects of nudity and gesture. Rather than concluding that these images represent goddesses or concepts such as fertility, the data reveal that in the Early Dynastic period female nudity was no different than male nudity
She Who Wrote
The author reviews the exhibit “She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia” which is on display at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City from October 2022 to February 2023
Egyptianizing Female Figurines in Late Bronze Age Cyprus
This article looks at a handful of Late Cypriot III “Normal Face” figurines that display Egyptianizing features in both posture and hairstyle. After discussing how these figurines are unique in the Cypriot corpus, it shows how the features under consideration can only come from Egyptian precedent. It ends with a discussion of how an understanding of the Egyptian prototype (especially the hairstyle) can offer new insights into the interpretation o…
History (18 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (11 works) · Ancient history (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Classics (8 works) · History (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Law (5 works)