The purpose of this symposium is to gather a group of scholars from different academic fields such as classics, biblical studies, history, and archaeology to explore the intersections of travel and religion in the ancient eastern Mediterranean world. Pilgrimage has received a fair amount of attention in recent studies on antiquity, which has greatly added to our understanding of visits people made to oracles, sanctuaries, and temples. Yet the connections between travel and religion in the human past are not exhausted by pilgrimage, and there is more work to be done on this phenomenon as well. The aim of this symposium is to go beyond the study of religious practice as the purpose of travel, and to highlight the manifold ways in which religion was an important aspect or function of all travel in antiquity.
08.50-10.30 Session 1: Travel and Transitions
08.50-09.00 Opening Remarks and Welcome
09.00-10.30 Georgia Petridou (University of Liverpool): Dying to See: Death and Pilgrimage Experience in Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Discourses (Hieroi Logoi)
09.45-10.30 Gillian Glass (Aarhus University): Heavenly Schoolrooms and Divine Homework: The Importance of Locations and Cosmic Content in Enoch, Er, and Scipio’s Learning
10.30-10.45 Break
10.45-12.15 Session 2: Travel and Trouble
10.45-11.30 Marianne Bjelland Kartzow (University of Oslo): Travelling Thomas: Slave Trade and Missionary Travel in The Acts of Thomas
11.30-12.15 Mark Letteney (University of Washington): Travel and Incarceration: Evidence from the Papyri
12.15-13.45 Lunch & Concert “On the Move”
13.45-15.15 Session 3: Travel and Sensory Experience
13.45-14.30 Laura Nissin (AIAS): Keeping the Home Fires Burning: Sensescapes of Pompeian Shrines
14.30-15.15 Elpiniki Meimaroglou (University of Cambridge): Travelling Colours: Charicleia’s Ecphraseis in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica
15.15-15.45 Break
15.45-17.15 Session 4: Travel Texts in Conversation
15.45-16.30 Pieter B. Hartog (PThU Groningen): The Journey Continues: The Ending of Travel Narratives and the Making of Worldview
16.30-17.15 Elisa Uusimäki (Aarhus University): Travel, Intercultural Contact and the Fear of God(s) in the Ancient Mediterranean
17.15-17.40 Closing Discussion
18.00-20.00 Dinner for the speaker
Please sign up to participate in-person in the academic and social programme of this day.
