Practicalities of Hellenistic Ruler Cults
The PHRC digital library
Uncovering the ritual and social aspects of cultic honours for human beings
Until now, the study of cultic honours for Hellenistic political
leaders and benefactors has mainly focused on the ideological and
diplomatic features of the phenomenon. The project "Practicalities of
Hellenistic Ruler Cults" (PHRC) shifts the focus on its practical
aspects: the materiality of media, ritual action and space, actors,
administration, and the funding of cults. In doing so, PHRC aims to set
the debate on ritual honours for human beings in the broader context of
Greek religious and social history in the post-classical period.
The PHRC digital library
The sources of PHRC comprise Greek epigraphic texts from the Eastern
Mediterranean, between the ages of Alexander and Augustus. At this first
stage of the project, the discussed documents were exclusively related
to three main geographical areas: the Aegean islands, Western Asia
Minor, and Cyprus. Also thanks to new collaborators, recent releases
have started including items from mainlang Greece, Egypt, and the
Eastern coast of the Mediterranean.
This website is the dissemination portal of PHRC. It
provides access to a growing digital library of Greek inscriptions
which have been geo-referenced, xml-encoded and semantically annotated
in order to allow researchers and students to browse the material
through a wide range of queries in compliance with their interests. Each
inscription is showcased with an introduction providing archaeological
and philological information, an English commentary, and multilingual
translations. When useful, a selective critical apparatus focuses on the
debated sections of the text concerning the topic of cultic honours for
human beings.
The specific purposes of this project justify the choice of a selective commentary.
The PHRC commentaries are not meant to entirely replace other paper or
digital commented editions of the relevant inscriptions, but to provide a
specific insight in the treatment of cultic honours. In compliance with
a logic of linked open data for research, the PHRC website is provided
with a series of authority lists by which users not
only can browse the content of the PHRC digital library through a varied
set of queries, but also have access via external links to the
complementary information provided by other relevant Digital Classics
portals.
The Current version: PHRC 1.0 (released June 2021)
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