Title: Shifting social imaginaries in the Hellenistic period : narrations, practices, and images /
Authors: Stavrianopoulou, Eftychia, 1962-; Stavrianopoulou, Eftychia, 1962-
Year: 2013
Subjects: Greece History; Greece History
Abstract: There is a long tradition in classical scholarship of reducing the Hellenistic period to the spreading of Greek language and culture far beyond the borders of the Mediterranean. More than anything else this perception has hindered an appreciation of the manifold consequences triggered by the creation of new spaces of connectivity linking different cultures and societies in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. In adopting a new approach this volume explores the effects of the continuous adaptations of ideas and practices to new contexts of meaning on the social imaginaries of the parties participating in these intercultural encounters. The essays show that the seemingly static end-products of the interaction between Greek and non-Greek groups, such as texts, images and objects, were embedded in long-term discourses and thus subject to continuously shifting processes.
Contents: Change and continuity -- Deja vu? visual culture in western Asia Minor at the beginning of Hellenistic rule / Deniz Kaptan -- The image of the city in Hellenistic Babylonia / Heather D. Baker -- Babylonian, Macedonian, king of the world: the Antiochos cylinder from Borsippa and Seleukid imperial integration / Rolf Strootman -- A religious continuity between the dynastic and Ptolemaic periods? Self-presentation and identity of Egyptian priests in the Ptolemaic period (332-30 BCE) / Gilles Gorre -- Shifting conceptions of the divine: Sarapis as part of Ptolemaic Egypt's social imaginary / Eleni Fassa -- Modes of cultural appropriation -- Aretalogies / Andrea Jördens -- Hellenistic world(s) and the elusive concept of 'Greekness' / Eftychia Stavrianopoulou -- 'Jews as the best of all Greeks': cultural competition in the literary works of Alexandrian Judaeans of the Hellenistic period / Sylvie Honigman -- Political institutions and the Lykian and Karian language in the process of Hellenization between the Achaemenids and the early Diadochi / Christian Marek -- Interculturality in image and cult in the Hellenistic east: Tyrian Melqart revisited / Jessica L. Nitschke -- The spread of polis institutions in Hellenistic Cappadocia and the peer polity interaction model / Christoph Michels -- Shifting worldviews -- Ceremonies, athletics and the city: some remarks on the social imaginary of the Greek city of the Hellenistic period / Onno M. van Nijf -- The view from the old world: contemporary perspectives on Hellenistic culture / Andrew Erskine -- The Hellenistic far east: from the oikoumene to the community / Rachel Mairs -- Epilogue: Alexander the Great and Iskander dhu'l-Qarnayn: memory, myth and representation of a conqueror from Iran to south east India through the eyes of travel literature / Omar Coloru.