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