What’s in a Divine Name? : Religious Systems and Human Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean

Abstract

Divine Names are a key component in the communication between humans and gods in Antiquity. The book collects 36 essays pertaining to many different contexts – Egypt, Anatolia, Levant, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome – which address the multiple functions and wide scope of divine onomastics. In a diachronic and comparative perspective, divine names shed light on how polytheisms and monotheisms work as complex systems embedded in an historical framework.