The Archaeology of Religious Hatred: In the Roman and Early Medieval World

Description

In March 2001 the world watched in disbelief as explosives of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban reduced the gigantic Buddha statues at Bamiyan to stone powder. Yet few realise that such religious zeal to ‘free’ the world from ‘pagan’ art tollows an old tradition. What role did it play in transforming the colourful world of Roman paganism into medieval Christianity? All over the ancient world images have been found which bear deep scar marks from iconoclastic attacks. Beheaded statues and mutilated fragments of images, once the objects of veneration and awe, speak a language as clear as words. As Eberhard Sauer shows in this important new work, the sad material remains of what survived the onslaught of the image-haters form a powerful complement to eyewitness accounts. Archaeology helps us to understand one of the most radical changes in world history. Why was it that Christianity achieved sole domination in the West but remained a minority religion in much of Asia? Can the past help us to put the outrages of the present into context? After a period as Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Leicester, Eberhard Sauer is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Keble College, University of Oxford, as well as an Honorary Lecturer at Leicester. Cover Half title Imprint Contents Acknowledgements Preface 1 The tip of the iceberg 2 Pagan ‘vandalism’ and iconoclasm in peacetime 3 Destruction in war and peace 4 Image destruction seen through Christian eyes 5 Hilltop sanctuaries 6 Large Mithraic cult images 7 Destruction at Dendara: a colossal task Color plates between pages 96-97 8 Destruction and re-use in Egypt and Palestine 9 The speed of Christianisation in Egypt 10 A world waiting for Christianity? 11 Afterlife and oriental cults: serious competition for Christianity? 12 Money and Mithraism 13 Christianisation and bloodshed 14 A past phenomenon or future threat? 15 Conclusions Bibliography Picture credits Index