Résumé
The lecture explored the various materials used for the making of ancient Greek divine imagery, their possible semantics, and the reactions they caused to the worshipers who encountered them. Influenced by the abundance of Roman "copies" of Greek originals, scholars have emphasized the importance of stone, particularly marble, in the creation of divine imagery. Written sources, however, reveal that the contrary was the case. In the past, it has been often assumed that the Archaic period was primarily a time of stone, the Classical and Late Classical periods times of bronze, and the Hellenistic period one that did not seem to favor one over the other material. The lecture attempted to challenge this assessment, especially with respect to the Archaic period. Although it is difficult to associate bronze and marble exclusively with divine imagery, the same does not hold true for ivory and gold, which were used for the creation of divine images for centuries.
The lecture, however, did not focus exclusively on materials such as marble, bronze, gold, or ivory. Sources also refer, albeit less frequently, to divine images made of silver, dark stone variations, and even gypsum. Particular focus was placed on wooden images, called in the written sources xoana and considered by them particularly "ancient". Although the hypothesis that the term xoanon refers to exceedingly old divine images has been successfully deconstructed, the thesis was presented that there is indeed something true in the wood’s association with ancientness both semantically and literally. Wood’s physical properties did not really allow its re-use. Thus by the time Pausanias visited Greece, perhaps even long before the second century CE, wooden statues were indeed among the oldest preserved images of their kind. The lecture also raised the question as to why wood was not extensively used as a material for the creation of divine imagery from the Classical period on.
