Dining and death : interdisciplinary perspectives on the 'Funerary Banquet' in ancient art, burial and belief / edited by Catherine M. Draycott and Maria Stamatopoulou.

Date:
2016
  • Books

About this work

Description

This book brings together papers covering a wide range of regions and periods, from Italy to China, and Old Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire, all focusing on the interpretation of banqueting imagery in funerary contexts. The papers largely concentrate on pictorial depictions of banqueting and/or food offerings and how they might be understood in such settings, although some papers consider tomb deposits and furnishings. Traditionally, three main interpretative paradigms have been employed in 'deciphering' such images: 1) they represent wordly activities, either quotidien or idealised, 2) they represent an imagined pleasant afterlife (and therefore evidence this belief) and 3) they represent funerary or mortuary rites. Such interpretations have been challenged by scholarship that refutes the validity of these strict, divisive categories, but in concentrating on social structures embedded in the images, has tended to eschew potential eschatological aspects of meaning. Collectively, the papers here reconsider this matter, making significant contributions to discussions of ambiguity, agency, interaction, performance, the issue of 'meaning', and the various ways in which images can be approached and used.

Publication/Creation

Leuven : Peeters, 2016.

Physical description

xxxi, 690 pages : black and white illustrations, maps ; 25 cm.

Series

Contributors

Contents

Introduction: What Lies Beyond? / C.M. Draycott -- Hellenistic Funerary Banquet Reliefs : Thoughts on Problems Old and New / J. Fabricius -- "Banquet and Grave" : The Material Basis, Aims and First Results of a Recent Research Project / P. Amann -- Meals for the Dead : The Image of the Deceased Seated Before a Table of Offerings in Ancient Egyptian Art / G. Robins -- The Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian Banquet : Ideals and Realities / N. Harrington -- Syro-Hittite Funerary Monuments Revisited / D. Bonatz -- Burial Klinai and Totenmahl? / E. Baughan -- Drinking to Death : The Totenmahl, Drinking culture and Funerary Representation in Late Archaic and Achaemenid Western Anatolia / C.M. Draycott -- Family Matters : The Interpretation of Lycian "Funerary Banquet" Reliefs / S. Lockwood -- Bridging the Boundary : The Sacrificial Deposit of the Maussolleion of Halicarnassus and Its Symbolic Language / A.M. Carstens -- Testimonia on Funerary Banquets in Ancient Sparta / M. Tsouli -- The Totenmahl Motif in Votive Reliefs of Classical Athens / C. Lawton -- The Banquet Motif on the Funerary Stelai from Demetrias / M. Stamatopoulou -- The Theme of the Banqueter on Hellenistic Macedonian Tombstones / M. Kalaitzi -- The Banquet in Etruscan Funerary Art and Its Underlying Meaning / T. Mitterlechner -- The Banquet in Palmyrene Funerary Contexts / L. Audley-Miller -- Reading the Image? Ambiguities in the Interpretation of Banquet Scenes on Grave Stelai from Roman Thrace / A. Slawisch -- At Table : Reading and Misreading Funerary Images of Banquets in Early China / M. Nylan -- Envoi / O. Murray.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    DFXP.AA1
    		Open shelves

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Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9789042932517
  • 9042932511