Sensual Religion - Religion and the Five Senses - Graham Harvey
7. Resounding Mysteries: Sound and Silence in the Eleusinian Soundscape
Sensual Religion - Religion and the Five Senses - Graham Harvey
Georgia Petridou [+]
University of Liverpool
Georgia Petridou is a Lecturer in Ancient Greek History at the University of Liverpool. She is the author of Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture (OUP 2015) and the co-editor of Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World (with Chiara Thumiger, Brill 2016) and Beyond Priesthood. Religious Entrepreneurs and Innovators in the Imperial Era (with Richard Gordon and Jörg Rüpke, DeGruyter 2017). Her current research focuses on the intersections of ancient medicine and religion.
Description
The ancient initiatory “mysteries” of Eleusis, Greece, are famed for silence. Perhaps uniquely, there is silence about what happened at the key revelatory moment of the rituals. But we are told that the rituals involved phases of loud noise and of silence. This chapter advances current debates about the Eleusinian mysteries and its variegated Soundscape.