RelNet

ABOUT DE PROJECT

Religious networks

Sacred travelers and itineraries in late First Millennium BCE Babylonia: a view from temple and private archives (RelNet)

Grant PID2022-136740NB-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by the “European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR”.

Poratad_03
Statue of a reclining nude goddess, 1st century BCE-1st century CE, Louvre, Paris, France.

Cuneiform texts from institutional and private archives contain a wealth of information on religious networks in late first millennium BCE Babylonia, including their participants, venues and itineraries. As demonstrated by previous studies focusing on other regions and periods, the analysis of religious networks is crucial to elucidate the social and political function of religious festivals and locales and to analyse the spatial dimension of rituals and ceremonies. This is a comparatively under-researched subject in Mesopotamian studies, but one well worth pursuing. Recent research has shown that social network analysis (SNA) in the study of religious phenomena is helpful to move beyond essentialist viewpoints towards more relational, contextual and multifaceted perspectives. However, no research of this kind has been carried out on Late Babylonian sacred landscapes. As a paramount political-religious venue, the Esagil was a primary hub in the network that linked cult centres in Babylonia. On the basis of the documentary evidence referred to above (a corpus of approximately 500 texts), a database will be created with all the information regarding the networks; and the religious festivals and journeys, their venues, movements, itineraries and participants (with particular attention paid to their gender and cultural dimensions) will be scrutinized for the first time using SNA and other tools from the digital humanities. An indispensable part of the project is understanding geospatial information and integrating it with SNA. For this reason, all geographical information regarding cultic venues, travellers, movements and itineraries will be collected, organized, analysed and shared in a series of interactive maps built using a geographic information system (GIS), with the aim of obtaining a geospatial SNA. The use of different digital tools and open access visualization platforms (which will be displayed on a web page presenting the results of the project) will enlarge the spectrum of approaches in the study of sacred landscapes and religious movements between individuals from Babylonian cult centres and enable a better visualization and broader dissemination of the results to stakeholders, including the scientific and academic community and the general public.