Christopher Faraone
Christopher Faraone
Edward Olson Professor of Classics in the Department of Classics and the College
What can we learn about religious practices in the ancient Mediterranean through new translations of textual amulets?
An international group of scholars will produce a corpus of translations of the most important and best-preserved textual amulets of the Mediterranean, as well as drawings and recipes for them. The team plans to arrange the corpus chronologically so that historical trends can be easily traced.
For over two thousand years, people in pre-modern cultures wore objects on their bodies as amulets, initially things they found in the natural world, and then man-made items, eventually carrying a protective text. The last-named, which we will refer to as “textual amulets,” appear in different languages and cultures: Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, Semitic languages, etc, which have been generally studied in isolation. There is increasing interest in comparing these traditions and exploring their ties and interferences. Our project aims to assemble a team to produce a selective corpus of translations of the most important and best-preserved textual amulets of the Mediterranean, as well as drawings and recipes for them. We plan to arrange the corpus of textual amulets chronologically so that historical trends can be easily traced, and, where enough evidence survives, also by genre and region within these historical periods.
Edward Olson Professor of Classics in the Department of Classics and the College
Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Mythologies in the Divinity School, the Department of Classics and the College
Professor of Classics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Associate Professor of the History of Religions
Postdoctoral Affiliate in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies