1 Habicht (20173), p. xv (translated and augmented edition of Gottmenschentum und griechische Städte, Munich 1956; 19702).
2 For an extensive discussion of the recent research trends on this subject, see A. Chankowski (2011); Iossif – Lorber (2011); Gnoli – Muccioli (2014), p. 11-27 (Introduzione), Caneva (2016a), with the previous references. In addition to the work of Habicht, another fundamental contribution to the analysis of ruler cults in their socio-political contexts was offered by Gauthier (1985)’s investigation of honours for political leaders (including cultic ones) as part of the institutional history of the Hellenistic polis. GAUTHIER’s research has had a deep impact on further epigraphic studies of the Hellenistic honorific practice, both at the level of international city-king negotiations—for which see in particular Ma (20022) on the reign of Antiochos III—and of internal interactions between civic institutions and local elites in the second and first cent. BC: for the latter point, see Wörrle – Zanker (1995); Mann – Scholz (2012); Ma (2013); Forster (2018).
3 On this point, see e.g. Erskine (2010).
4 See for instance Wikander (2005), Chaniotis (2007), Buraselis (2003; 2010; 2012), Caneva (2014a; 2015), Paul (2016) on the Greek side; Pfeiffer (2008) for Greek and Egyptian cults in the Ptolemaic kingdom; Gradel (2002), Scheid (2006/7), Kantirea (2007), Camia (2011) for the Roman imperial cult; see also the broad range of the contributions collected in Iossif– Chankowski – Lorber (2011); Günther – Plischke (2011); Gnoli – Muccioli (2014); Caneva (2016a). A far-reaching impact on the ‘ritual turn’ in studies of Hellenistic and Roman cults for rulers must be recognized to the work of Price (1980; 1984a; 1984b), whose studies have cross-fertilized the analysis of the textual evidence with a strong knowledge of the methods of cognitive anthropology. PRICE’s ground-breaking analysis of Roman imperial cult is, however, not paralleled by an equally convincing treatment of the Hellenistic precedents as the author often projects some distinctive trends of the Imperial period back onto Hellenistic ritual practice: on this point see the criticism by Caneva (2016b). In comparison, the ‘ritual turn’ has already reached a further stage of refinement and interdisciplinarity in relation to the heroic cultic honours for civic benefactors and members of local elite families: see recently von Mangold (2013) and especially the studies by Ekroth (2002; 2007; 2009; 2015), which have played an important role in the design of the PHRC methodology for the ritual analysis of ruler cults.
5 Bricault (2006) and (2019). Minas-Nerpel (2019) now draws attention to an Egyptian side of this process of cultic transfer from queens to Isis, showing that the epithet ‘the perfect one of the ram’, first attested for Isis under Ptolemy IV, already appears as a denomination of Arsinoe in Egyptian temples and it might have originated in Mendes, where the deified queen was venerated in association with the divine ram Ba-neb-djedet.
6 See in particular Cerfaux – Tondriaux (1957); Taeger (1957-1960).
7 On this point, see my remarks in Caneva (2017).
8 Together, Bringmann – von Steuben (1995), Bringmann (2000), Schmidt-Dounas (2000), and Kotsidu (2000) provide an interesting exception, as they often combine the textual (epigraphic and literary) sources with the archaeological evidence. However, KOTSIDU’s work only provides a catalogue of sources concerning honours for Hellenistic rulers, without offering a general discussion; moreover, her work lists cases in which political leaders receive ritual honours together with more traditional ones which only consist in the grant of honorific statues. On the other hand, Ma (2013) offers an inspiring combination of epigraphic and archaeological analysis of the honorific practice of erecting statues of benefactors and elite members in Hellenistic cities, but his work does not comprise a discussion of ritual honours. Some more specific studies can also be mentioned here as useful examples of the combination of written and archaeological analysis: Schwarzer (1999) and Michels (2011) on ruler cults in Pergamon; Pfeiffer (2008) on Ptolemaic Egypt; Mittag (2011) on Kommagene; on texts and coins, see e.g. Iossif (2011) and Erickson (2018; 2019).
9 An overview of the current debate in Greek epigraphy, at least in the English-speaking scholarship, reveals a renewed attention for the material aspects of writing and support and for the development of cross-disciplinary methodologies drawing on the toolkits of both philology and archaeology: see the methodological introduction by Petrovic (2019) to Petrovic – Petrovic – Thomas (2019); among the papers collected there, see in particular Mylonopoulos (2019) on dedicatory texts on Hellenistic sacred buildings and altars. Part of the purpose of the current book is to bridge the gap between this methodological trend and the study of Hellenistic cults for rulers.
10 Conversely, the paper by S.G. Caneva, “Incense in Hellenstic Ruler Cults”, which was presented at Session II of the conference, will appear in Bradley – Grand-Clément (forthcoming). A study of animal offerings to human recipients is in preparation by S.G. Caneva and Z. Pitz; the latter presented a preliminary communication on this topic at the Liège conference, Session II.
11 For the anthropological approach, see e.g. Bell (1992; 1997). From the point of view of performance theory, see Schechner (1988; 1993).
12 I align myself with an interpretation of ‘sacredness’ as a socially constructed (and often legally regulated) status by which an object, a place, or a person is considered as an effective instrument of communication with the super-human sphere. For a brief overview of the 20th-century-debate concerning the understanding of ‘sacred’ as an inherent (and possibly universal) or socially-constructed (and therefore context-related) property of things, see Tarot (2009); for a linguistic study based on ancient Greek literary sources, see Rudhardt (2008), p. 151-154, with a brief bibliographical update by the editors of the book at p. 154.
13 In this respect, see Peels (2016) for a linguistic analysis of the semantic domain of hosios, broadening the limits of sacredness in social life beyond the more restricted sphere related to hieros.
14 A fundamental reference in this respect is provided by Geertz (1973), which directly influenced the study of Roman emperor worship by Price (1980; 1984a; 1984b). For a broader application to ancient polytheisms, see in particular Scheid (1999) on the case of Roman sacrificial rituals.
15 See recently Mylonopoulos – Roeder (2006); Malone – Barrowclough – Stoddart (2007); Kyriakidis (2007); Elsner (2012); Raja – Rüpke (2015a); van Eck – Versluys – ter Keurs (2015) as well as the content of the online Material Agency Forum (MAF) on https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/series/material-agency-forum. For the relationship between material culture, agency, and embedded discourse, see also van Dyke – Alcock (2003); Robb (2005). The papers published in Raja – Rüpke (2015b) provide useful introductions to the archaeological study of various types of ritual spaces and related actions.
16 For a recent state of the question see Elsner (2012).
17 For an overview of the archaeological markers of heroic cults, see Ekroth (2009) and von Mangold (2013). On the importance of tombs in dynastic cults established in royal capitals, see Muccioli (2014), underlining the partial overlap with traditions of hero cults.
18 The case of Pergamon is revealing of these issues. The traditional interpretation of the peristyle building situated in front of the entrance of the citadel as a ‘Temenos für den Herrschelkult’ ultimately only relies on similarities with the plan of Hellenistic and Roman heroa: Boehringer – Krauss (1937); Schwarzer (1999), p. 272-278 and (2011), p. 114-115; Coarelli (2016), p. 162-167 prefers to interpret this building as a hērōon of Pergamos with an annexed gymnasium. A similar issue is related to the Nischenbau located at the southern edge of the theatre terrace: its traditional interpretation as the meeting house of a cultic association has been influenced by an arbitrary match with the epigraphic documentation concerning the association of the Attalistai, which in fact more probably had its seat in Teos: Schwarzer (1999), p. 265-272 and (2011), p. 115. See also the case of the Great Altar—interpreted as a site of ruler cult by Queyrel (2002)—with the underlying Apsidenbau, which is considered as a hērōon of Telephos or of Pergamos: Schwarzer (1999), p. 278- 286 and (2011), p. 111-114, and, on the other hand, Coarelli (2016), p. 158-169.
19 For a recent overview of the objectives and methodologies of ‘landscape archaeology’, see the case study of sanctuaries in Hellenistic Cyprus in Papantoniou (2012) and the reflections on the role of landscape in the longue durée analysis of socio-economic trends in Vionis – Papantoniou (2019). For an application of the landscape scale to the study of cultural identity via visual material supports, see Versluys (2017a) on Hellenistic and Roman Kommagene. In addition, Bonnet (2015) provides an inspiring example of the combination of textual and archaeological data for the reconstruction of the culturally hybrid ‘religious-scapes’ of Hellenistic Phoenician communities.
20 This level of analysis is defined by Versluys (2017b) as ‘object-scape’, which refers to the interaction of cultic and other types of objects within the framework of a sanctuary. See also Veymiers (2018), p. 50-51 for an application of this concept to the study of Isiac sanctuaries. Concerning Hellenistic and Roman ruler cults, this scale of analysis is related to the category of ‘temple-sharing god’ (synnaos theos), for which see Steuernagel (2010) for a useful reassessment combining textual and archaeological evidence. On this topic, see more in the Afterword, p. 229.
21 On the multi-sensory dimension of offerings, see Grand-Clément – Ugaglia (2017). On offering rituals expressing hierarchies between the recipients of cult within a certain ritual context, see Parker (2011), p. 103-116, with the previous references, on the relationship between gods and heroes in local sanctuaries; Scheid (1999) provides an inspiring application of this discussion to the Roman sacrifice, reflecting upon the interaction between traditional gods and worshipped emperors at Rome.
22 See, for instance, the case of Eumenes II announcing that he will personally fund the honours that the Ionian League has decreed to him: I.Milet I 306, lines 51-58 (OGIS II 763, Welles, RC 52; Kotsidu [2000], p. 296-297, no. 200 [E]); see also IGR IV 293, lines 69-73, with Chankowski (1998), p. 187-188, for the 1st-century-political leader and benefactor Diodoros Pasparos proposing to finance the erection of his cultic statue in the gymnasium of Pergamon.
23 On the financial and administrative mechanisms underpinning the religious life of Greek cities, see for instance Dignas (2002), Migeotte (2006), and V. Chankowski (2011) on the role of sacred finances in the interaction between civic and sanctuary administration; Papazarkadas (2011) on sacred and public land in Athens.