To Be Like Gods

Author: Matthew G. Looper
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029277818X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
Winner, Association for Latin American Art Book Award, 2010 The Maya of Mexico and Central America have performed ritual dances for more than two millennia. Dance is still an essential component of religious experience today, serving as a medium for communication with the supernatural. During the Late Classic period (AD 600-900), dance assumed additional importance in Maya royal courts through an association with feasting and gift exchange. These performances allowed rulers to forge political alliances and demonstrate their control of trade in luxury goods. The aesthetic values embodied in these performances were closely tied to Maya social structure, expressing notions of gender, rank, and status. Dance was thus not simply entertainment, but was fundamental to ancient Maya notions of social, religious, and political identity. Using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, Matthew Looper examines several types of data relevant to ancient Maya dance, including hieroglyphic texts, pictorial images in diverse media, and architecture. A series of case studies illustrates the application of various analytical methodologies and offers interpretations of the form, meaning, and social significance of dance performance. Although the nuances of movement in Maya dances are impossible to recover, Looper demonstrates that a wealth of other data survives which allows a detailed consideration of many aspects of performance. To Be Like Gods thus provides the first comprehensive interpretation of the role of dance in ancient Maya society and also serves as a model for comparative research in the archaeology of performance.

The Open Court

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 642

Book Description

Face of the Gods

Author: Robert Farris Thompson
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
Thompson examines the altar traditions in cultures from the Atlantic coast region of Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Birdees and the Bracelet of the Five Gods

Author: Engy Donia
Publisher: Pen It + ORM
ISBN: 1639843353
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
A historical fantasy based on real rulers, prophecies, spells, battles, and a real villain whose name was obliterated from the ancient papyruses . . . Death is the end, but life goes on. And the past shouldn’t be messed with . . . Birdees is obsessed with her ancestors’ history—ancient Egyptian history. After her mother’s tragic death, her obsession grows more and more powerful. She rejects her ordinary, boring life and her mind keeps living within the pages of the history books, fascinated by the mystery and magic of the past . . . But she will soon realize that the reason for her obsession is an ancient legacy left for her from thousands of years before. A burden she holds in her hand for years, unbeknownst to her, that will bring her pain, suffering, and the death of her beloved ones. Yet she must protect her legacy with her life. It should never fall into the hands of the evil priest, Jed Didy, but must be passed to the rightful owners for the sake of survival . . .

Household Gods

Author: Alexandra Sofroniew
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606064568
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
Daily religious devotion in the Greek and Roman worlds centered on the family and the home. Besides official worship in rural sacred areas and at temples in towns, the ancients kept household shrines with statuettes of different deities that could have a deep personal and spiritual meaning. Roman houses were often filled with images of gods. Gods and goddesses were represented in mythological paintings on walls and in decorative mosaics on floors, in bronze and marble sculptures, on ornate silver dining vessels, and on lowly clay oil lamps that lit dark rooms. Even many modest homes had one or more religious objects that were privately venerated. Ranging from the humble to the magnificent, these small objects could be fashioned in any medium from terracotta to precious metal or stone. Showcasing the collections in the Getty Villa, this book’s emphasis on the spiritual beliefs and practices of individuals promises to make the works of Greek and Roman art more accessible to readers. Compelling representations of private religious devotion, these small objects express personal ways of worshiping that are still familiar to us today. A chapter on contemporary domestic worship further enhances the relevance of these miniature sculptures for modern viewers.

Clay Gods

Author: Nándor Kalicz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Copper Age
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description

The Birth of the State

Author: Petr Charvát
Publisher: Karolinum Press
ISBN: 8024622149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
In the book titled Birth of the State, readers learn what researchers nowadays think about the rise and stabilization of the oldest statehood in the original civilization centres of the Old World - Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The scholar takes them through essential economic, political and spiritual changes caused in those societies by the rise and stabilization of the first states. The overviews are completed with a comprehensive view of the entire theme, attempting to provide a balanced view of the rise of the oldest states not only as a question of economy, politics or power, but also as exceeding the basic threshold in the spiritual sphere. The book allows the very founders and cultivators of the oldest state units to speak: in the moments when their work seemed to be on the verge of total collapse, they spoke to their contemporaries urging them to defend the ideals that formed the basis of their civilizations. The book is intended for university students as well as others interested in the rise and development of the oldest states of the humankind.

Greece

Author: Sierra Adare
Publisher: Crabtree Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780778793106
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34

Book Description
Greece gave the world democracy, art, and architecture. New information in this revised edition examines the cultural achievements of both ancient and modern Greece.

Unpacking Culture

Author: Ruth B. Phillips
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520918762
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Book Description
Tourist art production is a global phenomenon and is increasingly recognized as an important and authentic expression of indigenous visual traditions. These thoughtful, engaging essays provide a comparative perspective on the history, character, and impact of tourist art in colonized societies in three areas of the world: Africa, Oceania, and North America. Ranging broadly historically and geographically, Unpacking Culture is the first collection to bring together substantial case studies on this topic from around the world.

The Triumph of the Sea Gods

Author: Steven Sora
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594777527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
An investigation of the geographical incongruities in Homer’s epics locates Troy on the coast of Iberia, in a conflict that changed history • Cites the rise in sea level in 1200 B.C. as leading to the invasion and victory of the Atlantean sea people over the goddess-worshipping Trojans who ruled the coasts • Identifies Troia (Troy) as part of a tri-city area that later became Lisbon, Portugal In The Triumph of the Sea Gods, Steven Sora argues compellingly that Homer’s tales do not describe adventures in the Mediterranean, but are adaptations of Celtic myths that chronicle an Atlantic coastal war that took place off the Iberian Peninsula around 1200 B.C. It was a war between the pro-goddess Celtic culture that presided over what is now Portugal and the patriarchal culture of the sea-faring Atlanteans. The invasion of the Atlantean sea peoples brought destruction to the entire region stretching from Western Europe’s Atlantic border to Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. This was a turning point not only politically but also spiritually. The goddess became demonized, as seen in myths such as Pandora’s Box in which woman was seen as the source of evil, not the origin of life, and Homer’s tale of the epic Greek and Trojan war, which was triggered by the abduction of a woman. The actual historical struggle described in Homer’s stories, Sora explains, occurred during what was the last in a series of rises in sea level that inundated various land masses (Atlantis) and permitted sea passage to areas previously accessible only by land. The “Sea Gods” (Atlanteans) attacked the tri-city region of Troia (Troy), near present-day Lisbon, which, shortly thereafter, fell victim to a devastating series of seaquakes and tsunamis. The war and the subsequent destructive weather broke the power of this seaboard civilization, leading to a wholesale invasion by the sea peoples and the rapid decline of the region’s goddess-worshipping culture that had reigned there since Neolithic times. Sora shows how Homer’s tales allow the modern world to glimpse this ancient conflict, which has been obscured for centuries.