House H9 from Marina el-Alamein – a Research Summary

Studies on the relics of the Hellenistic-Roman town at the site of Marina el-Alamein in Egypt have been carried out since 1986. House H9 was one of the first buildings to be excavated, investigated, and preserved through conservation. Successive research has supplemented the previous studies. The house is one of the largest and earliest features at the site. In the context of Marina, it is more firmly embedded in the Greek-Hellenistic tradition, yet also refers to Roman solutions. It is a house of the oikos type, featuring a courtyard with two porticoes situated asymmetrically perpendicular to each other. Elements referring to the Greek systems of prostas and pastas can be discerned in the layout. The research focused on domestic cult as well as elements and character of the decor, including painted interior decoration. Architecture and home furnishings document civilisational changes at the cultural touchpoint between the Greek and Roman traditions.

Serena Partridge’s ‘Accessories’: Fabricating Uncertainty in the Brontë Parsonage Museum

The 1861 sale of the Brontës’ personal effects sent relic hunters scrambling to collect the material remains of the famous family. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the collection, preservation, and veneration of relics, particularly those associated with a writer’s private, domestic life, were important aspects of literary celebrity culture and commemoration, and both the Brontë Society and the original Brontë Museum were established to collect material remains. Yet when Virginia Woolf visited the museum in 1904, she viewed Charlotte Brontë’s clothing, shoes, and accessories with considerable unease. Anticipating the concerns of the literary establishment, Woolf feared that access to Brontë’s material remains would encourage the domestic cult which had formed around her following the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). She feared it would diminish the importance of Brontë’s writing by privileging a narrative of domestic rather than literary labour. This essay considers the creative-critical intervention of Serena Partridge’s ‘Accessories’ (2016), a collection of newly created pseudo-relics of Charlotte Brontë, framed by semi-fictional narratives that dramatize the construction, use, and significance of her personal possessions. I argue that ‘Accessories’ and biographical fiction are analogous modes of engaging with Brontë’s legacy. They respond to the anxieties articulated by Woolf through the fabrication – both literal and literary – of new pseudo-relics that (rather than emphasizing Brontë’s perceived conventional, domestic femininity) enable multiple interpretive possibilities while simultaneously acknowledging the contingent nature of our understanding of her experience.

A Divine Couple: Demeter Malophoros and Zeus Meilichios in Selinus

This paper concerns a collection of rough-hewn flat stelae excavated from the precinct of Zeus Meilichios in Selinus, Sicily between 1915 and 1926, a majority with two heads or busts, one male and one female, carved at their tops. These crudely fashioned idols are unique in their iconography. They combine the flat inscribed Punic stela with the Greek figural tradition, with some indigenous features. Their meaning is totally obscure – especially since they lack any literary reference. No comparable monuments have been found in ancient Mediterranean cult. The twin stelae were often set up above a collection of burnt rodent and bird bones, ashes, lamps, broken and burnt pottery and terracotta figurines, as a memorial of a sacrifice. The stelae were the objects of a gentilicial cult, similar to that posited for the inscribed “Meilichios stones” with which they shared the Field of Stelae of Zeus Meilichios. The theory advanced here interprets these diminutive stelae (average height 30 cm) as the objects of domestic cult. It was customary in many parts of the ancient Mediterranean, from the Bronze Age down to the Roman period, to venerate household or family gods who protected the health and the wealth of the family. They were thought to embody the spirits of the ancestors and could at times be identified with the gods of the state religion. This divine couple whose effigies were dedicated in the Field of Stelae over a period of four centuries, into the third century, cannot be claimed as Greek or Punic deities. What these nameless protectors of the family were called we cannot say: Meilichios and Meilichia, Father and Mother, or Lord and Lady of the household? As the objects of such a personal domestic cult, their names might have differed with each family.

Model Worlds

Expanding current constructions of Nilotica, chapter 6 examines the creation of three-dimensional “Egyptian” landscapes through garden statuary and water features at the Casa di Acceptus e Euhodia. Sidestepping unproductive debates about whether garden statuary signified “religion” or “Egyptomania,” this case study shows how “Egyptianizing” statuary collaborated with the garden’s other contents to create an interactive model landscape. Some evidence from this house suggests that its inhabitants may have directed a domestic cult toward a form of Isis. However, this chapter argues that such practices should not overdetermine our understanding of the garden assemblage. Rather than a binary divide between “Isiacs” and “non-Isiacs,” evidence suggests a broad spectrum of available religious choices. Furthermore, domestic material culture does not correspond to religious identity in a simple or straightforward way. Regardless of their relationship (or lack thereof) to Egyptian-derived cults, most Pompeians appear to have employed domestic Aegyptiaca and Nilotica in fairly similar ways.

Once a Child, Always a Child

This final chapter is both a conclusion and a brief consideration of one final category in a child’s life. It offers an overview of how children likely functioned in the domestic cult, and thus explores the child’s ongoing role as “child” even into adulthood. This is reinforced by a discussion of delinquency and the consequences for not upholding the domestic context as the child faced growing responsibility. The logic of the child’s domestic-cultic value in the pre-birth stage and as expressed in the material culture of childhood burials is extended to the expectations placed on them to promote the domestic cult. The role of children in the domestic cult forms the basis for one final application of this lens to the biblical text, specifically Ezekiel 16. This final reading leverages various aspects of the entire study, showing that the Hebrew Bible uses the child’s value as a social promotion of YHWH to the domestic cult.

The Pre-Born Child

A previously unstudied stage of the child’s life in current scholarship, the pre-born child is an essential expression of the child’s life in the ancient Near East. Through Mesopotamian medical texts, personal letters, prayers, and the mythology that intersects with this data set, thought on pre-born and birthing children strongly suggests the child’s value in domestic cult. In particular the connection between child and deity is an important connection between the child and the domestic cult that underpins the question of value. This data illustrates how the child is understood in ancient Israel, showing that texts like Jeremiah 1 and Psalm 139 are rooted in a wider comparative matrix. Here we see where Israelite intersects and diverges from its cultural matrix to make unique claims about YHWH through the pre-born child.

Children in Ancient Israel

Flynn contributes to the emerging field of childhood studies in the Hebrew Bible by isolating stages of a child’s life and, through a comparative perspective, studies the place of children in the domestic cult and their relationship to the deity in that cult. The study gathers data relevant to different stages of a child’s life from a plethora of Mesopotamian materials (prayers, myths, medical texts, rituals), and uses that data as an interpretive lens for Israelite texts about children at similar stages such as: pre-born children, the birth stage, breast feeding, adoption, slavery, children’s death and burial rituals, and childhood delinquency. This analysis presses the questions of value and violence, the importance of the domestic cult for expressing the child’s value beyond economic value, and how children were valued in cultures with high infant mortality rates. From the earliest stages to the moments when children die, and to the children’s responsibilities in the domestic cult later in life, this study demonstrates that a child is uniquely wrapped up in the domestic cult and, in particular, is connected with the deity. The domestic-cultic value of children forms the much broader understanding of children in the ancient world, through which other more problematic representations can be tested. Throughout the study, it becomes apparent that children’s value in the domestic cult is an intentional catalyst for the social promotion of YHWHism.