Identifying Borrowings between Eastern Mediterranean Cults: A Methodology Based on a Comparison of Cultic Practices for Ištar and Meter

Ancient civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean show many similarities with respect to the ways in which people worshipped their gods. We may think of the strikingly similar liver models used for divining the future that were found in Mesopotamia and Etruria, or of the similar mourning rituals held for Tammuz in Mesopotamia and for Adonis among the Greeks. This dissertation proposes a methodological framework for evaluating such similarities between different Mediterranean religions. Given a particular set of similarities, how can we determine whether we are dealing with real similarities and not merely superficial ones? The framework furthermore helps to determine whether real similarities between cultic practices are merely coincidental or the result of one religion borrowing from or being influenced by the other. What conditions must be met, or what kind of evidence presented before a historical connection between similar elements can reasonably be assumed? The multidisciplinary field that studies the interactions and exchanges between ancient eastern Mediterranean cultures has so far emphasised the numerous parallels and possible instances of borrowing between literatures of this region. Considering the mobile nature of stories and the fact that many texts that record these stories have survived, this emphasis is not surprising. Textual sources have enabled scholars to compare ancient narratives in detail and make convincing cases for literary borrowings between ancient Mediterranean cultures. While scholars initially let the sheer number and detail of literary parallels speak for themselves, recent research has ventured beyond parallelomania and developed tools for evaluating similarities and for identifying literary borrowings specifically. Until now, scholars have paid less attention to the question of how to determine the extent to which worshippers of ancient religions in the ancient eastern Mediterranean interacted and borrowed practices from each other. Scholars did, however, identify one of the biggest challenges in making a convincing case for borrowing between these religions: ancient local religious traditions were very conservative. Being rather bound to a specific place and not prone to change, it is only under specific circumstances that we may expect religious practices to have been borrowed by another group of worshippers. In most cases, however, historical evidence for these specific circumstances is lacking. So far, the problem of religious conservatism has not received satisfactory treatment in scholarship that examines similarities between cultic practices in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. This dissertation starts filling this gap. Because of the existence of methodological tools to examine parallels between eastern Mediterranean literatures, I have first tested, by means of a comparative case study between Mesopotamian cultic practices for the goddess Ištar and Greek practices for the goddess Meter, to what extent these tools are applicable to cultic similarities as well. This investigation has shown that the methods developed for identifying instances of literary borrowing or influence are largely and with only little adaptation applicable to similarities in the cultic sphere. On the basis of these results, a methodological framework was formulated for identifying instances of cultic borrowing or influence between eastern Mediterranean cultures in future case studies. Every time we see a set of similar cultic practices, the methodological framework developed in this book can be used to help untangle the complex web of real and superficial similarities as well as to identify possible instances of borrowing and influence. An important innovation is the incorporation of recent methods of comparative religious studies in this framework. Moreover, several new methods to identify cultic borrowings that were dialectically inferred from my case study could be included in the framework. Finally, I proposed a number of future case studies on the basis of which the framework could be improved or expanded