Material Culture and Women's Religious Experience in Antiquity

How can material artifacts help illuminate the religious lives of women in antiquity? In what ways do archaeological and art historical studies recover women’s religious perspectives and experiences that the literary record misses or underrepresents? The authors of the essays in this volume set out to answer such questions in fascinating, new case studies of women and ancient religions in the Near East and Mediterranean world. They cover a broad historical, geographic, and religious spectrum as they explore women’s lives from the time of ancient Egypt in the second millennium BCE into the early medieval period, from the Syrian Desert to Western Europe, in the religious traditions of Egypt, Canaan, Greece, Rome, ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity. Working at the intersections of religion, archaeology, art history, and women’s history, these authors make fresh contributions to interdisciplinary studies, and their essays will be of interest to students and scholars across these academic fields.

“This volume presents new material and asks searching questions about what material culture can tell us about women's religion in early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean. As one of the editors says, if some of them "are ultimately unanswerable, it does not necessarily follow that they are not worth asking and pursuing," and they are to be congratulated for opening exciting new perspectives in the growing field of material religion.”

The fascinating essays in this book make an important contribution to the scholarship seeking to recover women’s religious experience in antiquity. They show how archaeological and iconographic evidence can be invaluable in the quest to recover the lived experience of women in the past—from ancient Egypt to late ancient Christianity. Using material remains, the authors provide compelling arguments about women’s religiosity that often differ from the impression one gets from texts alone. This readable and well-illustrated book is a must for both scholars and general readers.

This new study is important for its focus on retrieving women’s experiences in ancient religion through evidence from material culture—areas so often underrepresented in past discussions. Its eleven well-illustrated chapters offer a rich spread of case studies that cross time and space, people and objects, from an Egyptian woman of the thirteenth–twelfth centuries BCE to Merovingian rings of the fifth to eight century CE. Individually fresh and insightful about women’s devotional experiences (some material has not been published before), they also have great strength as a collection since the rewards of such an ambitious range of topics are the many common questions and issues to emerge.

This volume presents new material and asks searching questions about what material culture can tell us about women’s religion in early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean. As one of the editors says, if some of them “are ultimately unanswerable, it does not necessarily follow that they are not worth asking and pursuing,” and they are to be congratulated for opening exciting new perspectives in the growing field of material religion.

Mark D. Ellison is associate professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.

Catherine Gines Taylor is Hugh W. Nibley Postdoctoral Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.

Carolyn Osiek is Charles Fischer Professor of New Testament emerita at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University.

How can material artifacts help illuminate the religious lives of women in antiquity? In what ways do archaeological and art historical studies recover women's religious perspectives and experiences that the literary record misses or underrepresents? The authors of the essays in this volume set out to answer such questions in fascinating, new case studies of women and ancient religions in the Near East and Mediterranean world. They cover a broad historical, geographic, and religious spectrum as they explore women's lives from the time of ancient Egypt in the second millennium BCE into the early medieval period, from the Syrian Desert to Western Europe, in the religious traditions of Egypt, Canaan, Greece, Rome, ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity. Working at the intersections of religion, archaeology, art history, and women's history, these authors make fresh contributions to interdisciplinary studies, and their essays will be of interest to students and scholars across these academic fields.

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