How to build places with words: The narrative construction of sacred Abydos, Delos, and Mecca.

摘要

The present dissertation examines the ways that human cultures create sacred landscapes. The cultural tool at work in the creation of sacred landscapes is narrative, a form hardwired into the human mind and central for developing identities. Because of the connection between narrative and identity, some narratives---whether tribal or religious or national in character---gain tremendous importance. These culturally central narratives have settings, and those settings often inherit the importance of the narrative. Literary and religious texts are treated in this study as cultural products that are doing things. One important accomplishment of such cultural products is the connection of important narratives to physical landscapes. Generic categories such as poetry or history or drama prove often to be simply different cultural strategies for constructing sacred landscapes.;The body of this dissertation concerns three different case studies of place construction. Abydos from ancient Egypt, Delos from classical Greece, and Mecca from medieval Islam. These places were pilgrimage sites that attained an immense importance within their respective cultures. Each case study has a unique theoretical focus. In the chapter on Abydos this focus is the invention of tradition. In the chapter on Delos it is the soft power of poetry. And in the chapter on Mecca it is the social construction of the social institution of the h&dotbelow;ajj.;Since in each case the goal is to look for the ways that words manipulate and add meaning to a place, this dissertation works closely with texts in their original languages. The chapter on Abydos treats hieroglyphic texts such as the stelae erected in that city during the Middle Kingdom and their relation to the Egyptian Pyramid Texts. In the treatment of Delos successive poetic versions of this island are examined in their original Greek, from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, fragments of paeans by Pindar, and the Hymn to Delos by Callimachus. In the case of Mecca the pilgrim Ibn Jubayr and his detailed Rrh&dotbelow;lah, or travel narrative, is the centerpiece of the chapter.