The spectacular finds at Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Çorı: monolithic pillars representing stylized humans decorated with a large variety of animals, are the representation of an animist cosmos, in which animals and plants being may appear as persons, capable of will. Çatal Höyük represents a stage in which gods started to be shaped: the bull represented the Storm-god (a concept which reached the Classical period), the stag the god of the wild fauna, and female figurines symbolized the Mother-goddess. In Egypt, where gods where usually represented by animals, zoomorphism presents a continuity which ended only with the introduction of Christianity. The archaeological finds from Kaneš and the Hittite texts document an extraordinary continuity: each deity was represented by an animal, portraited in the vessel with which the celebrant (the royal couple or also a priest) reached a kind of communion with the god in drinking of the same wine and eating of the same bread.
University of Rome, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-7194-7272
Titolo del capitolo
Shaping Gods: from Göbekli Tepe to Kaneš, Ḫattuša, and Beyond
Autori
Alfonso Archi
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0109-4.07
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Theonyms, Panthea and Syncretisms in Hittite Anatolia and Northern Syria
Sottotitolo del libro
Proceedings of the TeAI Workshop Held in Verona, March 25-26, 2022
Curatori
Livio Warbinek, Federico Giusfredi
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
194
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0109-4
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0108-7
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0109-4
Collana
Studia Asiana
ISSN della collana
1974-7837
e-ISSN della collana
2612-808X