Divine spirits are embodied also by animals and natural phenomena. Thus, this chapter aims to investigate and interpret the role of deer in the practice of ceremonial and ritual activities as well as in the construction of religious beliefs by Bronze Age Anatolian societies.

From Homer to the Hellenistic period and beyond, one of the defining features of ancient Greek cultural history and its ongoing interpretation and adaptation is athletic competition. For the ancient Greeks, athletics, along with warfare, was a primary arena for the contestation of status and for the attainment of superiority and excellence. In antiquity, writers recognized the central role of athletics in Greek culture and identity: Thucydides’ Perikles stresses competitive festivals as one of the elements that make Athens an example for Greece (2.38–41); Herodotus includes common festivals in his famous definition of “Greekness” (8.144); moreover, the Persians marvel that οἳ οὐ περὶ χρημάτων τὸν ἀγῶνα ποιεῦνται ἀλλὰ περὶ ἀρετῆς (“[The Greeks] contend not for money but for arete,” Hdt. 8.26). Pindar, as frequently, puts it best: ὃς δ’ ἀμφ’ ἀέθλοις ἢ πολεμίζων ἄρηται κῦδος ἁβρόν / εὐαγορηθεὶς κέρδος ὕψιστον δέκεται, πολιατᾶν καὶ ξένων γλώσσας ἄωτον (“but he who wins luxurious glory in games or as a solider / by being praised gains the highest profit, the finest words from tongues of citizens and foreigners,” Isthm. 1.50–51).

This chapter focuses on elaborations from the categories of the angelia - the herald’s proclamation of victory - that are so productive for epinikian verse. The angelia’s utility for epinikian song goes beyond simply reinforcing authority or justifying praise. While the epinikian singer was undoubtedly provided the “facts of identity," they do not dryly report these facts; moreover, in some cases they do not report the specific “facts” of the angelia at all. “Identity,” in epinikian song’s modification of the angelia, is a subjective category, and the “facts” that relate to the victor – name, father’s name, polis, festival, and event – are not set in stone but rather creatively reworked, sometimes reimagined, and sometimes made extremely complex, in the context of song and its performance. By replacing fathers and integrating family, spinning myths derived from the victor’s polis or the festival site, and using the details of athletic practice itself as a mode of praising, the epinikian singer uses the angelia to structure his song and praise his patron (or patrons).

This chapter examines a series of athletic dedications to trace both the evolution of the epigrammatic representation of the angelia - the herald’s proclamation of victory at an athletic festival - and to define the particular characteristics of the epigram as an athletic dedication. While a continuity exists between modes of athletic verse, epigrams – as inscriptions – and epinikian songs – as choral performances – function differently and interact with different audiences. Epigrams do not, for example, use large-scale mythic narratives to bestow glory on their patrons, but they do circumscribe the movements and voices of their audiences and use the religiously and culturally important sites of their dedication to add to their meaning.

In conclusion, the last chapter will attempt to weave all the information presented in the previous chapters and in particular, reveal how the symbolic value of materiality has been a common thread throughout the history of ancient Near Eastern religions from prehistoric periods until the first millennium BCE.

The introduction will lead the reader to a better understanding of how material religion can be useful for reconstructing religions of the ancient world and especially the ancient Near East.

This chapter will focus on the analysis of the available traces of ancestor cults in the ancient Near East from prehistoric periods to the first millennium BC, with a specific focus on the cult of plastered skulls of the prehistoric Levant and the stone circles of southeastern Turkey.