Ancestors

TL;DR: The book "Images of Ancestors" presents a collection of papers exploring the subject of ancestors in antiquity. It covers a wide range of time and place, drawing mainly on material sources. The book succeeds in providing a broader understanding of the function and meaning of ancestors, but the variation in approaches and lengths of the articles can create a piecemeal effect.

Abstract: ‘Images of ancestors’ involve time past, present and future, which explains why this subject was chosen for the international seminar held in 1999 to celebrate the μftieth anniversary of the Department of Classical Archaeology at Aarhus University. Of the twelve papers given by invited scholars, eleven are published here (three in German and the rest in English). The editor expresses (pp. 7–8) the hope that ‘each article can be read in its own right for the light it sheds on a particular aspect of images of ancestors in antiquity’, and that together they may ‘provide a broader understanding of the function and meaning of ancestors’. By and large, the volume succeeds in this dual aim, but particularly as the sum of its parts. The articles cover a wide but comprehensive range of time and place, drawing (understandably) mainly on material sources of di¶erent kinds. Inevitably they vary in strength, and also quite considerably in length; but as a whole, the book is greatly enhanced by the variety of approaches which individual papers have taken, since the authors were left to interpret ‘image’ and ‘ancestors’ in their own way. (Several of them have deμned their use of terms, which is helpful—not least because the term ‘ancestors’ can have speciμc connotations, as Flower, for instance, indicates by placing it in quotation marks when discussing it in relation to o ̧ce-holders in the Roman Republic.) For the reader, this variation is often thought-provoking, stimulating connections across the di¶erent societies discussed. Yet it undoubtedly adds to the risk inherent in any such collection of papers of creating rather a piecemeal e¶ect; and here readers would have been given a clearer perspective on some of the issues at stake had the introduction o¶ered some general discussion, or pulled together ideas which had emerged (or failed to) across the papers. As it is, the introduction describes the context and content of the volume in a straightforward way and avoids entanglement in theoretical perspectives. But one simple, personal scenario which H. describes (p. 7)—of how it takes only a few generations to turn a relative individually remembered into a distant forebear and object of collective projections—hints at some of the subtle distinctions involved in the concept of ancestors. A central theme of the articles is just how far ‘ancestors’ acquire their qualities from the needs of the living. In the opening paper, for instance, Antonaccio argues from the assumption that a better understanding of a society’s ancestors can lead to better understanding of its more immediate interests. She demonstrates this for Iron Age Greece, showing how the interpretation of funerary buildings and of ancient grave goods at certain sites could suggest that these communities created certain people as ‘ancestors’ as a way of reinforcing links with the past and thereby claims on the future. More speciμc in their dynastic messages are the images of various rulers discussed in some other papers. Considering sculptural and written evidence, Jeppesen argues that ancestors probably were represented on the Maussolleion at Halikarnassos, while Fleischer examines how various Hellenistic rulers assimilated their portraits to images of their ancestors (including mythological characters), and vice versa, in order to consolidate their own position. On the other hand, religious concerns are argued for the ancestor monument erected by Antiochos I on Nemrud Daği in a paper by Jacobs. Another recurrent theme is how images were created or reshaped according to 482   