Modeling the spread of religion : The spread of Egyptian cults in the Agean Sea throughout the early Hellenistic period (323-167 BCE)

CHALUPA, Aleš, Tomáš GLOMB, Dalibor PAPOUŠEK, Zdeněk POSPÍŠIL, Adam MERTEL and Zdeněk STACHOŇ. Modeling the spread of religion : The spread of Egyptian cults in the Agean Sea throughout the early Hellenistic period (323-167 BCE). In MERCURY workshop : Simulating Roman Economies, 3.-4.10.2018, Oxford, Velká Británie. 2018.

Basic information

• Original name: Modeling the spread of religion : The spread of Egyptian cults in the Agean Sea throughout the early Hellenistic period (323-167 BCE)
• Authors: CHALUPA, Aleš (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution), Tomáš GLOMB (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Dalibor PAPOUŠEK (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Zdeněk POSPÍŠIL (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Adam MERTEL (703 Slovakia, belonging to the institution) and Zdeněk STACHOŇ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: MERCURY workshop : Simulating Roman Economies, 3.-4.10.2018, Oxford, Velká Británie, 2018.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60304 Religious studies
• Country of publisher: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/18:00101276
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: Mathematical modeling; Network Analysis; Spread of Religions; Egyptian Cults; Early Christianity
• Tags: rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

The paper presents results of the research conducted within the framework of the GEHIR project (Generative Historiography of Religion), investigated in the years 2015-2017 at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, by an interdisciplinary team including scholars of religion, computer scientists, geographers, and mathematicians. This project applied innovative methods previously used in the study of the dynamics of complex systems (e.g., mathematical and computational modeling, network science) to reach a better understanding of the history of four religious traditions active in the ancient Mediterranean: Egyptian cults, Mithraism, Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity. The presented case study focuses on the evaluation of the factors that influenced the spread of Egyptian cults (especially the cult of Isis and Sarapis) in the Aegean Sea throughout the early Hellenistic period (ca 323-167 BCE). Two main hypotheses were introduced, one accentuating the importance of political factors (Ptolemaic propaganda), the other of trade/economic factors (grain trade between Alexandria and island in the Aegean Sea), but outcomes of scholarly discussion remain inconclusive. A possible solution can be found in supplementing established methodological apparatus of historiography by formalized methods, e.g., the coding of relevant datasets, statistics, geospatial modeling, and network analysis. To be able to compare the possible impacts of political and trade/economic factors on the spread of Egyptian cults we 1) constructed a model of the ancient maritime transportation network as a platform for quantitative analysis, 2) transformed selected factors of possible influence into georeferenced parameters of the network, and 3) defined a mathematical model that allowed us to determine which parameters of the network explain the spatial dissemination of archaeological evidence connected to Egyptian cults in the most persuasive way.

Links

• GA18-07487S, research and development project: Name: Náboženství na sítích antického Středomoří: Role primárních a sekundárních center při šíření náboženských inovací

Investor: Czech Science Foundation