Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
Histories of Art and Religion from India to Ireland

Explores the problems for studying art and religion in Eurasia arising from ancestral, colonial and post-colonial biases in historiography.

Ja? Elsner (Edited by)

9781108460941, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 March 2023

531 pages
24.4 x 17 x 2.9 cm, 1.076 kg

This book reveals the rewards of exploring the relationship between art and religion in the first millennium, and the particular problems of comparing the visual cultures of different emergent and established religions of the period in Eurasia - Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and the pagan religions of the Roman world. Most of these became established and remained in play as what are called 'the world religions'. The chapters in this volume show how the long traditions of studying these topics are caught up in complex local, ancestral, colonial and post-colonial discourses and biases, which have made comparison difficult. The study of Late Antiquity turns out also to be an examination of the intellectual histories of modernity.

1. Introduction Ja? Elsner
Part I. The Imperial Context: 2. The Gandharan problem Robert Bracey
3. Writing the art, archaeology and religion of the Roman Mediterranean Philippa Adrych and Dominic Dalglish
4. Mystery cult and material culture in the Graeco-Roman world Philippa Adrych and Dominic Dalglish
5. The Viennese invention of late antiquity: between politics and religion in the forms of late Roman art Ja? Elsner
6. The rise of Byzantine art and archaeology in late Imperial Russia Maria Lidova
7. Ferdinand Piper's Monumentale Theologie (1867) and Schleiermacher's legacy: the attempted foundation of a Protestant theology of art Stefanie Lenk
Part II. After Imperialism: Orientalism and its Resistances
8. The road from decadence: agendas and personal histories in the rise of early Islamic art Nadia Ali
9. Connecting art and Zoroastrianism in Sasanian studies Rachel Wood
10. 'Hindu' art and the primordial ?iva Robert Bracey
Part III. Post-colonialist, Old Colonialist and Nationalist Fantasies: 11. Jewish art: before and after the Jewish state (1948) Jesse Lockard and Ja? Elsner
12. Whose history is it anyway? Contests for India's past in the twentieth century Robert Bracey
13. Acculturated natives who rebel: revivalist, Ottomanist and Pan-Arabist engagements with early Islamic art (1876–1930s) Nadia Ali
14. Barbarians at the British Museum: Anglo-Saxon art, race and religion Katherine Cross.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], Religion: general [HRA], Religion & beliefs [HR], Humanities [H], History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE [ACG], History of art / art & design styles [AC], The arts [A]