Common motifs in the “Orphic” B tablets and Egyptian funerary texts
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23454883 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas M Dousa (0000-0002-7138-3219, corresponding author) |
| Editors | Radcliffe G Edmonds (0000-0003-1103-6263) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Pages | 120-164 |
| Publication date | 2011-02-17 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | 'Orphic' Gold Tablets and Greek Religion (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/cbo9780511730214.007 |
| OpenAlex | W118220933 |
| ISBN | 9780511730214 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
By virtue of both their context and their content, the “Orphic” gold plates occupy a singular place among the religious texts of the classical and early Hellenistic world. Deposited in tombs in sites as far afield as southern Italy, Thessaly, and Crete between the end of the fifth century bce and the second century ce , these thin pieces of gold foil served as a vademecum for the deceased, containing instructions on how one should negotiate his or her entry into the other world: as such, they constitute our sole extant examples of genuinely mortuary texts – i.e., texts intended primarily to aid a deceased person in attaining a blissful afterlife – in the Greek cultural sphere. Equally significant is the milieu within which the laminae appear to have circulated. The rarity of these mortuary texts as grave goods in the Greek world, as well as their wide geographical distribution, make likely the hypothesis that they reflect the post-mortem beliefs and aspirations of a particular group, whose membership was mobile and far-flung. While long-standing scholarly convention has dubbed the gold plates as “Orphic,” the south Italian provenance of the older exemplars, as well as some of the imagery in the texts, has led some commentators to suggest that the tablets might have circulated in a Pythagorean milieu. On the other hand, the reference to “ mystai and Bakkhoi ” in one of the laminae and the statement of the deceased in others that “Bacchios himself” has “released” him or her point incontestably to an association with Dionysiac mysteries.
Afterlife · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology) · Extant taxon · Literature · Theology · Virtue · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.36 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2023 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |