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The Sacred Grove

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

Students of comparative religion have long been familiar with the evidence furnished by ancient Mediterranean myth and ritual pointing to the existence of a common fund of religious experience amongst the early civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Near East. In spite of wide divergences between the views of anthropologists of the extreme diffusionist and anti-diffusionist schools, there has in the last twenty-five years or so been a decided reaction in favour of the historical method in this field of study, and there appears to be general agreement that a common culture-pattern, embodied in a common fund of myth and ritual, existed in Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine. This hypothesis of a common pattern is supported by an ever-increasing volume of archaeological evidence. Routes of migration of peoples and commercial and other cultural contacts indicate a complex interchange of ideas between the Near East and the Mediterranean region generally. Of cardinal importance for the understanding of these mutual relations in early times are the discoveries in Crete, where evidence of extensive cultural relations with the Orient and Egypt, as well as with the mainland of Greece, has come to light.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1954

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