Religion and cult worship played a central role in civic and political life in the ancient Greek city-state of Kolophon, Brown University classics professor Ryan Boehm said in a lecture Wednesday afternoon in Reed Hall.
Kolophon was a city in present-day Turkey located near the ancient city of Ephesus that flourished during the late fourth century B.C. It is an interesting case study of Hellenistic Greece, as its study sheds light on the role of worship in Greek city-states as well as the form and function of archives in the ancient world, according to Boehm.
Boehm said Kolophon's most interesting structure is the sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods, which was built during a period of urban renewal in the late fourth century B.C. Using records from Hetty Goldman's 1922 excavation of the site, Boehm said he is currently attempting to reconstruct a blueprint of Kolophon to understand the significance of the sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods and its alleged role as a public archive.
"Much of the material remains unstudied and unpublished," he said.
Fragments of terra cotta and marble figurines of Kybele, the mother of the gods, suggest that the sanctuary was built in her honor. Kybele was seen as a "central symbol of Asiatic sovereignty," he said.
The sanctuary was built to link the present with the past and to unite the community during a period of urbanism, Boehm said. As a result of this urbanism, worship began to take place in a civic context.
"Religion and politics were inseparably intertwined," he said. "Part of what it meant to participate in politics was to participate in a common community of worship."
Fragments of 11 known documents including documents that dealt with city planning, urban projects, appointment of officials and citizenship were found in the sanctuary and suggest that the building may have been used as a public archive at one point in time, he said.
This "central civic function" of the sanctuary confirms the intersection between politics and religion, he said.
"The public business of the city was symbolically placed in the guardianship of the mother of the gods," he said.
In the third century B.C., after the Macedonian ruler Lysimachus destroyed Kolophon and the population resettled in Ephesus, the Kolophians retained a lingering attachment to the sanctuary.
This attachment complicated negotiations between kings and cities and posed a fundamental challenge to urbanism, Boehm said.
"The urban renewal process had a deep impact on religious life," he said. "History, identity, community and memory are deeply rooted in the cultural and physical landscape," he said.
The fact that the population returned to Kolophon to worship its gods after its "whole civic space moved" is extremely interesting, classics professor Roberta Stewart, who attended the lecture, said.
Teddy Henderson '15 and Margo Manocherian '15, prospective classics majors who also attended the lecture, said they were impressed with Boehm's research techniques.
The Hellenistic period of Greek history is often looked at from an "imperial standpoint" but Boehm's research focused "on the point of view of the citizens and the average Joe," Henderson said.
"He examined this issue from a perspective I've never seen before," Henderson said.
Manocherian said the lecture was an interesting look at the state of modern archeology.
"It's almost historiography because it involves interpreting records of records and reading between the lines," Manocherian said.
Reconstructing a site from work that was done around 90 years ago presents "a special kind of challenge," classics professor Roger Ulrich said.
He said the Hellenistic period which has traditionally been overlooked by historians and archeologists is becoming increasingly important in the field of Greek archeology.
The lecture, titled "The Sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods at Kolophon," was sponsored by the classics department.
