Abstracts

1 L’importance de la matérialité. Le rôle des petits autels, plaques et bases inscrits dans la compréhension des cultes pour les souverains

2S.G. Caneva (Università di Padova)

3This paper investigates the ritual and social functions of small inscribed objects (altars, plaques, blocks) in the diffusion of cultic honours for Hellenistic monarchs. By means of two case studies—the dedications to Arsinoe Philadelphos and those to the Attalid kings Attalos I and Eumenes II—the focus is placed on the advantages and methodological challenges of studying ritual activities for political leaders and their social agency by means of an interdisciplinary method combining the (limited, in this case) textual content of dedications with the material features of their support (palaeographic characteristics, material and form of supports) and, when available, with data concerning their archaeological context. The first objective of the contribution is to test the possibility of makin