The Molpoi Inscription

Ritual Prescription or Riddle

Bibliographic Data

ID9323880
AuthorsAngelos Chaniotis (Institute for Advanced Study, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume23
Pages375-379
Publication date2010-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueKernos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0776-3824 • E-ISSN: 2034-7871
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/kernos.1594
OpenAlexW1852857809
LanguageEN
Citations received10

Greek ritual regulations are notoriously elliptical. Witness, for example, the 21stcentury worshippers of the Hellenic gods who face great difficulties in their attempts to revive pagan rituals. Greece's neo-pagans made their most spectacular appearance in August 2008, when they ascended the Acropolis to protest against the transportation of ancient votive objects from the old to the new Acropolis Museum. 1 Dressed in white garments and crowned with wreaths, they raised their hands in prayer, performed libations, and recited ancient hymns to propitiate the gods against what they regarded as an act of sacrilege. Even if the pagan gods did exist -an unresolved question since the time of the ithyphallic hymn for Demetrios Poliorketes -I very much doubt that this ritual would have succeeded. We simply do not know enough details about the rituals of propitiation, or about any other rituals for that matter, to be able to perform them. Although it is often claimed that we know how a 'normative' Greek sacrifice was performed, I belong to the skeptics. With very few exceptions (especially detailed magical prescriptions) Greek cult regulations are like the recipes of Apicius; they provide some of the ingredients but not all of the information needed to make a ritual work or make the food taste tolerable. Normative ritual texts presuppose knowledge which they do not provide. 2 For this reason, historians of religion are fascinated with the few detailed cult regulations that do exist, such as the purification rituals of Selinous 3 and the rites of the Milesian board of religious singers, the molpoi. 4 But as the large number of studies on these texts show, even in the case of detailed cult regulations no consensus can be reached regarding many (most?) questions. However

Acropolis · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Clothing · Consolation · Literature · Prayer · Witness · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies

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