Icon, Cult, and Context: Sacred Spaces and Objects in the Classical World


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Series: Monographs 82
ISBN: 978-1-938770-06-7
Publication Date: Apr 2016
Price: Pb $60.00, eBook $48.00
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Maura K. Heyn and Ann Irvine Steinsapir

This festschrift honors UCLA professor emerita Susan Downey and her meticulous scholarship on religious architecture and imagery in the Roman/Hellenistic world. The iconography of gods and goddesses, the analysis of sacred imagery in the context of ancient cult practices, and the design and decoration of sacred spaces are the main themes of the book.

Professor Downey’s influence shines through in these discussions, which echo her mentorship of several generations of art history and archaeology students, and recognize her scholarly achievements. 

The broad temporal and geographic parameters of the volume are expansive, and the juxtaposition of images and analyses lead to surprising new conclusions.Authors examine such subjects as painting from Dura-Europos, Hellenistic sculpture at Saqqara in Egypt, Roman cameo glass, Pompeiian fresco, and aspects of Venus in portrait sculpture. The essays on Dura-Europos are especially valuable in light of the present turmoil in the region.
Table of Contents

Chapter 1. From Heracles to Zeus Megistos: Susan Downey’s Academic Contributions by Maura K. Heyn and Ann Irvine Steinsapir
Chapter 2.  Menerva on the Couch: A Votive Figurine from Cerveteri of Unusual Iconography by Helen (Ili) Nagy
Chapter 3. A New Interpretation of the Mounted Hunters in the Mithraeum of Dura-Europos by Lucinda Dirven
Chapter 4. Revisiting the “Temple of Bêl” at Dura-Europos: A Note on the Fragmentary Fresco from the Naos by Ted Kaizer
Chapter 5. Ariadne Transformed in Pompeii’s House of Fabius Rufus by Lillian B. Joyce
Chapter 6. The Importance of Being Venus by Eve D’Ambra
Chapter 7. A Portrait of a Bearded Man Flanked by Isis and Serapis by Mary Louise Hart
Chapter 8. A Deuteronomic Theme and Second Sophistic Rhetoric in the Dura-Europos Synagogue Paintings by May Oppenheim Talbot
Chapter 9. The Religious Iconography of Roman Cameo Glass by Karol B. Wight
Chapter 10. The Hellenistic Sculptural Program of the Sarapieion at Saqqara and the Ptolemaic Crown by Shanna Kennedy-Quigley
Chapter 11. The Sanctuary of Artemis Leukophryene as an Expression of Conflicted Civic Identity by Amanda Herring
Chapter 12. Recent Discoveries Concerning Religious Life in Europos-Dura by Pierre Leriche