Dreams and Divination in the Greco-Roman Epigraphical Record

FAIN: FA-54881-09

Gil Haviv Renberg
Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)

This book project, entitled Commanded by the Gods: Dreams and Divination in the Greco-Roman Epigraphical Record, involves producing the first comprehensive study of the more than 1,300 Greek and Latin religious dedications that bear inscriptions recording that a worshiper acted in compliance with a divine communication received through a dream or some other medium. Such inscriptions provide an important but largely untapped source of information for the religious beliefs and practices of the Greeks and Romans, and in the case of those attesting to god-sent dreams or waking visions provide unparalleled testimony to the spiritual lives of ordinary individuals (i.e., the people usually overlooked by our literary sources). Since such phenomena are also evident in the Ancient Near East, Pharaonic Egypt, and early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this work will have relevance to scholars of religion in a number of fields beyond Classics, and thus is intended for a broad scholarly audience.

Associated Products

Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World, 2 vols (Book)
Title: Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World, 2 vols
Author: Gil Renberg
Abstract: In this book, Gil H. Renberg examines the ancient religious phenomenon of “incubation", the ritual of sleeping at a divinity’s sanctuary in order to obtain a prophetic or therapeutic dream. Most prominently associated with the Panhellenic healing god Asklepios, incubation was also practiced at the cult sites of numerous other divinities throughout the Greek world, but it is first known from ancient Near Eastern sources and was established in Pharaonic Egypt by the time of the Macedonian conquest; later, Christian worship came to include similar practices. Renberg’s exhaustive study represents the first attempt to collect and analyze the evidence for incubation from Sumerian to Byzantine and Merovingian times, thus making an important contribution to religious history.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://brill.com/display/title/12558
Primary URL Description: Publisher's link.
Publisher: Brill
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9789004299764
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit
Date: 1/6/2018
Organization: Society for Classical Studies

Dreams and Other Divine Communications from the Isiac Gods in the Greek and Latin Epigraphical Record (Book Section)
Title: Dreams and Other Divine Communications from the Isiac Gods in the Greek and Latin Epigraphical Record
Author: Gil Renberg
Editor: Valentino Gasparini
Editor: Richard Veymiers
Abstract: Studies of the worship of the Isiac gods beyond Egypt, whether by scholars who are active today or those who laid the groundwork much earlier, typically note the survival of a number of inscriptions recording dreams and divine commands from these gods by means of formulaic language (e.g., κατ’ ἐνύπνιον, κατ’ ὄναρ, κατ’ ὄνειρον, καθ’ ὅραμα, κατ’ ἐπιταγήν, κατὰ κέλευσιν, κατὰ πρόσταγμα, κατὰ χρηματισμόν, ex viso/visu, ex imperio, ex iusso/iussu, ex praecepto, ex monitu), primarily remarking on their value as evidence for the importance of dreams to their worshipers, but treating them only briefly. While such discussions are correct in recognizing the significance of these inscriptions, there has been no attempt to put them in the broader context of the roughly 1400 Greek and Latin inscriptions recording divine communiqués not just from Sarapis and Isis, but also from scores of other gods, especially Greek, Roman, Anatolian, Syrian, Celtic, and Punic.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/38733
Primary URL Description: Publisher's link.
Publisher: Brill
Book Title: Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images, and Practices
ISBN: 9789004381346

Homeric Verses and the Prevention of Plague? A New Inscription from Roman Termessos and its Religious Context (Book Section)
Title: Homeric Verses and the Prevention of Plague? A New Inscription from Roman Termessos and its Religious Context
Author: Gil Renberg
Editor: Kathleen Coleman
Abstract: Albert’s Anthology comprises 76 brief and informal reflections on a line or two of Greek or Latin poetry—and a few prose quotations and artistic objects—composed by colleagues and students of Albert Henrichs on the occasion of his retirement in Spring 2017. Appointed Professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University at the age of thirty in 1973 and Eliot Professor of Greek in 1984, Professor Henrichs has devoted his scholarly career to Greek literature and religion—especially his favorite Greek god, Dionysos—and to incomparably enthusiastic teaching of countless students at both the graduate and undergraduate level. His scholarship and dedication are legendary. This volume is offered to a brilliant and beloved scholar with gratitude, affection, and respect.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/publications/albert%E2%80%99s-anthology
Primary URL Description: Publisher's link.
Publisher: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Book Title: Albert’s Anthology

The Role of Dream-Interpreters in Greek and Roman Religion (Book Section)
Title: The Role of Dream-Interpreters in Greek and Roman Religion
Author: Gil Renberg
Editor: Gregor Weber
Abstract: Artemidorus Daldianus’s Interpretation of Dreams, a dream book written at the end of the second century CE, is the sole surviving dream interpretation book from Greek and Roman antiquity. The essays in this volume situate Artemidorus and his work in the context of his contemporaries as well as ancient dream interpretation, and examine his reception into the early modern age, highlighting viewpoints in international research.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110407402/html#overview
Primary URL Description: Publisher's link.
Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
Book Title: Artemidor von Daldis und die antike Traumdeutung: Texte – Kontexte – Lektüren
ISBN: 9783110407259

Unexplored Aspects of the Lycian ‘Twelve Gods Reliefs’ (Article)
Title: Unexplored Aspects of the Lycian ‘Twelve Gods Reliefs’
Author: Gil Renberg
Abstract: Explores issues surrounding the existence of 55 nearly identical dedicatory reliefs throughout Roman Lycia, raising new questions of their precise link to divinatory practices, Hellenization of local gods, continuity of religion in Lycia, etc., while also putting this unique series in the context of dedicatory reliefs found in rural Lycia and Pisidia. Suggests possible link to plague or some other crisis afflicting the region (if not the whole of the Roman Empire).
Year: 2014
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Epigraphica Anatolica

The Athenodoros Dipinto Reconsidered (I.Deir el-Bahari 208) (Article)
Title: The Athenodoros Dipinto Reconsidered (I.Deir el-Bahari 208)
Author: Gil Renberg
Abstract: Perhaps the most famous document to have been found in the rock-cut sanctuary of Amenhotep/Amenothes and Imhotep/Asklepios at Deir el-Bahari is a lengthy Greek dipinto in worsening condition that addresses the two gods before launching into the first-person account of a soldier named Athenodoros, who visited the sanctuary from Koptos sometime after the midpoint of Hadrian's reign and recorded a noteworthy encounter with one of the gods while spending the night there. For a half-century the interpretation of this text's first editor André Bataille has been accepted, but in producing a new edition as part of his corpus of Greek texts from this sanctuary Adam Lajtar proposed new readings and a different interpretation. While Lajtar's edition represents a significant improvement and his reading is certainly plausible, it is possible to make additional improvements to the text and to consider yet a third interpretation.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23849919
Primary URL Description: JSTOR link.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

The Epistolary Rhetoric of Zoilos of Aspendos and the Early Cult of Sarapis: Re-Reading P.Cair.Zen. I 59034 (Article)
Title: The Epistolary Rhetoric of Zoilos of Aspendos and the Early Cult of Sarapis: Re-Reading P.Cair.Zen. I 59034
Author: Gil Renberg
Author: William S. Bubelis
Abstract: Long recognized as an important document in the history of the cult of Sarapis, the enigmatic letter from an unknown individual named Zoilos to Apollonios the finance minister ( dioiketes ) of Ptolemy II, recorded as received on February 12 or 13, 257 B.C., stands out for the degree to which we are able to view the earliest stages of the process by which a sanctuary might be founded. Given that most of our other non-literary evidence on the foundation of cults and shrines dates to stages much further along in their development and tends to provide minimal information on the impetus, the letter serves as an especially important source for that nascent process, as well as for the role of dreams in determining or justifying a religious undertaking.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41291166
Primary URL Description: JSTOR link.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

‘I celebrated a fine day’: An Overlooked Egyptian Phrase in a Bilingual Letter Preserving a Dream Narrative (Article)
Title: ‘I celebrated a fine day’: An Overlooked Egyptian Phrase in a Bilingual Letter Preserving a Dream Narrative
Author: Gil Renberg
Author: Franziska Naether
Abstract: ... However, it is a long-overlooked element that arguably makes the letter even more significant than has previously been recognized: the letter-writer’s use of the unusual phrase “I celebrated a fine day”, a common Egyptian expression rendered into Greek in this papyrus.
Year: 2010
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Hadrian and the Oracles of Antinous (SHA, Hadr. 14.7); with an appendix on the so-called Antinoeion at Hadrian’s Villa and Rome’s Monte Pincio Obelisk (Article)
Title: Hadrian and the Oracles of Antinous (SHA, Hadr. 14.7); with an appendix on the so-called Antinoeion at Hadrian’s Villa and Rome’s Monte Pincio Obelisk
Author: Gil Renberg
Abstract: The Historia Augusta is, of course, notoriously unreliable, but since both literary sources and a Hieroglyphic text attest to Antinous’s oracular nature, the claim made by the Vita Hadriani deserves to be considered at least somewhat credible. … if one reads eum in reference to Antinous rather than Hadrian, then the phrase oracula per eum dari adserentes would preserve a valuable clue to the origin of Antinous 's cult - for it indicates that Antinous 's deification came in response to his issuing oracles over an unspecified period of time that had been recorded by Hadrian.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41419692
Primary URL Description: JSTOR link.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome

Dream-Narratives and Unnarrated Dreams in Greek and Latin Dedicatory Inscriptions (Book Section)
Title: Dream-Narratives and Unnarrated Dreams in Greek and Latin Dedicatory Inscriptions
Author: Gil Renberg
Editor: Christine Walde
Editor: Emma Scioli
Abstract: Gil Renberg considers dream narrative inscriptions on stone and papyrus (e.g., third century B.C. accounts of Asclepius’ healings from Epidauros). Renberg’s article provides a good overview of non-literary oneiric phenomena and the use of literary texts to assist in reconstructing inscriptional dream narratives.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: https://www.edizioniets.com/priv_file_libro/870.pdf
Primary URL Description: Front matter link.
Publisher: Pisa
Book Title: Sub Imagine Somni: Nighttime Phenomena in Greco-Roman Culture

Incubation at Saqqâra (Book Section)
Title: Incubation at Saqqâra
Author: Gil Renberg
Editor: Traianos Gagos
Abstract: Few sites in the Greco-Roman world provide a more richly varied set of documents attesting to the importance of dreams in personal religion than the cluster of religious complexes situated on the Saqqâra bluff west of Memphis. The area consists primarily of temples and sacred animal necropoleis linked to several cults, most notably the famous Sarapeum complex, and has produced inscriptions, papyri and ostraka that cite or even recount dreams received by various individuals, while literary sources preserved on papyrus likewise contain descriptions of god-sent dreams received there. The abundant evidence for dreams and dreamers at Saqqâra, as well as the evidence for at least one conventional oracle at the site, has led to the understandable assumption that incubation was commonly practiced there. However, careful analysis of the surviving Greek and Demotic documents shows that while we can be certain that incubation was indeed practiced at Saqqâra, it is far from clear who would engage in this ritual, which gods they might try to consult, and what they hoped to achieve – i.e., whether they were engaging in therapeutic or divinatory incubation.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/i/icp/?page=home
Primary URL Description: Publisher's link.
Secondary URL: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/i/icp/7523866.0025.174/--incubation-at-saqqara?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Secondary URL Description: Full article content.
Publisher: Michigan Publishing
Book Title: Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Papyrology

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