Art, sacred names, and cultural boundaries in Sasanian Babylonia: the case of two Babylonian incantation bowls in the Musée des explorations du monde in Cannes
The article focuses on two Babylonian incantation bowls in Jewish Aramaic today preserved in the Musée des explorations du monde (previously, Musée de la Castre) in Cannes and first published at the fin de siècle. The incantation texts inscribed on the two bowls are re-edited here for the first time...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2023
|
| In: |
Henoch
Year: 2023, Volume: 45, Issue: 2, Pages: 348-390 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Qumran Community
/ Aramaic language
/ Magic
/ Text
/ Bowl
/ Judaism
/ Geschichte 3.-7. Jh.
|
| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism KBL Near East and North Africa |
| Further subjects: | B
Lived Religion
B Babylonian incantation bowls B Divine names B Material Culture B Demons B Religious-cultural identification B Intercultural Relations B Sasanian Babylonia B Magical seals B Jewish magic B Jewish Art |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The article focuses on two Babylonian incantation bowls in Jewish Aramaic today preserved in the Musée des explorations du monde (previously, Musée de la Castre) in Cannes and first published at the fin de siècle. The incantation texts inscribed on the two bowls are re-edited here for the first time after more than a century, translated in English, and accompanied by new high resolution images and drawings. The two objects are interrogated for what they can reveal about communal self-definition and the cultural boundaries between Jews and non-Jews in Sasanian Babylonia. Specifically, the article analyzes the sacred names quoted in the incantations, as well as the interplay between image, text, and materiality, reflecting on dynamics of religious-cultural dissemination, differentiation, and appropriation, and on the role of a shared local sensitivity. The multilayered re-examination of the two bowls from an historical, artistic, interreligious and everyday life perspective aims at better understanding the many nuances of the lived religion of Jews and other minorities in Sasanian Babylonia, in between the two main interpretative poles proposed in scholarship, that of a shared magical culture and that of an arena of negotiated identities. |
|---|---|
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Henoch
|
