International Workshop: Religious Temporalities and the Ancient City

international workshop - RELIGIOUS TEMPORALITIES AND THE ANCIENT CITY

Ancient cities brought together a plurality of time systems such as calendars, shared rhythms and routines, narratives of the past and future, mixing the quotidian with the profound in a spatio-temporal continuum. Religion is at the crossroads of many of these urban temporalities. Rituals regulated the days, months, and seasons of human time, with transregional ‘panhellenic’ festivals synchronizing cities across the Mediterranean. Yet festivals also had a transcendent capacity of lifting the individual out of the everyday, creating ‘atemporal’ spaces in the city, but especially ‘atemporal’ communities that extended beyond the boundaries of the living and the dead. Who belonged to these temporal communities? Where were their timescapes located, how did they shape urban space? Which religious temporalities outlined the contours of civic identity? 

This workshop brings together scholars from across the world, and at different career stages, to focus on the role of religion and time in creating a multivalent sense of the city. 

Full programme below and on the website religioustemporalities.wordpress.com 

Keynote lecture: Thursday 15 May, 16:30-17:30

Prof dr Jörg Rüpke  (Max-Weber-Kolleg, Universität Erfurt)  - “Time of the Gods, Time of Humans: Urban Timescapes”

Urban life in all its diversity involves a multitude of different time experiences and concepts of time, by different rhythms, timings, and tempos, necessitating coordination. Timekeeping is an urban development, and religious actors were often time specialists, while stressing the ambivalence of human time in view of the eternal. 

Prof dr Jörg Rüpke is co-director of the Max-Weber-Kolleg in Erfurt and of the KFG project ‘Religion and Urbanity: reciprocal formations’. Previous projects include ‘Lived Ancient Religion: questioning cults and ‘polis religion’’. Author of the Fasti sacerdotum (2005) and Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion (2018), he has published extensively on urban and religious temporalities.

Registration

Anyone interested in the topic is welcome. In connection with the catering, we ask that you indicate your attendance for one or both days via the registration form, and whether you will join for the lunches (10 EUR per day).  Register by 12 May via this link, or via the website

For more information, see the website: religioustemporalities.wordpress.com
or contact one of the organisers:

• Pim Schievink (RUG): p.schievink rug.nl 
• Christina Williamson (RUG): c.g.williamson rug.nl 
• Sofie Remijssen (UvA): s.m.j.remijsen uva.nl  

This workshop is hosted via the CRASIS network ‘Time and Temporalities in the Ancient World’, with additional support from the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG), the OIKOS research groups ‘Cultural Interactions in the Ancient World’ and ‘Cities and Settlements in the Ancient World’, and the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO).

Provisional programme

Thursday 15 May 

• 9h00: Registration

• 9h30-10u00: Opening remarks

Festival time

• 10h00-10h40: Zahra Newby (University of Warwick)
  'Experiencing festival time through the visual cityscape'
  

Coffee break (20 min)

• 11h00-11h40: Steven Brandwood (Columbia University)
  'Ananeōsis and Festival Pasts across the Hellenistic World'

• 11h40-12h20: Astrid Lindenlauf (Bryn Mawr College)
  'From materiality to temporality: animal sacrifices in ancient Greece'

• 12h20-12h30: Presentation by students MA ‘Urban Timescapes’ – story map projects
  

Lunch

Divine foundations

• 13h20-14h00: Lucas Weisser-Gericke (University of Basel)
  '“Only in Egypt Are There Numerous Cities Founded by the Ancient Gods” (Diod. 1.12.6). The Claim to Urban Antiquity in Roman Egypt '

• 14h00-14h40: Greta Hawes (Macquarie University)
  'Determinate and indeterminate time in the mythic pasts of Greek cities and cults'

Coffee break (20 min)

Temple times

• 15u00-15u40: Nicholas Aherne (University of Groningen)
  'The Temple of the Palmyrene Gods: Temporalities and Transformations of Civilian-Military Cult Practice at Dura-Europos'

• 15u40-16u20: Angelika Kellner (Universität Mannheim)
  '(Eponymous) Priests and Temples in the Ancient Greek World. Sacred Chronologies on Display'

Keynote

• 16u30-17u30: Prof.dr Jörg Rüpke (Max-Weber-Kolleg, Universität Erfurt) - ‘Time of the gods, time of humans: Urban timescapes’
  

18u00 Drinks – Café De Sleutel

Friday 16 May 

Religious temporalities in Asia Minor

• 9h00-9h40: Rogier van der Heijden (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)
  ‘First of the earth, metropolis of Asia, Lydia and Greece: Intertwining past and present in the cults and benefactions of Roman Sardis’

• 9h40-10h20: Thomas Faassen (University of Groningen)
  'Inventing an Eternal Ancestry: The Emergence of Seleucid Ruler Cults in Asia Minor'

• 10h20-11uh00: Giuseppina Marano (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)
  'Divine Onomastics’ Chronotopia in Asia Minor: The Ancestral Gods'

Coffee break (20 min)

Experiencing temporalities

• 11h20-12h00: Demi Storm (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
  'Experiencing Religious Time: Aurelius Arimo dedicates a votive altar'

• 12h00-12h40: Ecem Usimi (Antalya University) & Asuman Lätzer-Lasar (Philipps-University Marburg)
  'The multitemporalities of the urban dead'

Lunch

Shifting communities

• 13h30-14h10: Despina Iosif (Hellenic Open University Athens)
  'Expanding Early Christian Time'

• 14h10-14h50: Elsa Lucassen (University of Amsterdam)
  'Whose festival calendar? Festivals and its actors in Roman Egypt'

Coffee break (20 min)

• 15h10-15h50: Hakan Ozlen (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
  '(Toward) Future Presents: Reconfiguration of Civic Belonging in John Chrysostom’s On the Kalends of January'

• 15h50-16h20: Concluding remarks