Agir d’après les dieux

• Main Author: Kevin Bouillot
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques 2019-03-01
• Series: Cahiers Mondes Anciens
• Subjects: dedication; epigraphy; oracle; ritual action; ritual vocabulary
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/mondesanciens/2486

Among the Anatolian epigraphic documents, numerous dedications are said to be made « after an order/command/dream » that is attributed to a god and that makes the dedicator act according to the divine will, or together with the divine. When contextualized, these documents often appear to take part in an oracular consultation ritual, or even to be the predictable conclusion of this ritual, by contributing to realize the project that is being submitted to the divine council. Thus dedication becomes a way of acting upon reality, as a prerequisite for the divine support given to the human project, and a speech act that both says the existence, the greatness and righteousness of the god, and the piety of the dedicator.