Τα αρωματικά έλαια και οι πρακτικές χρήσεις τους στη Μυκηναϊκή Ελλάδα και την Ανατολική Μεσόγειο (14ος-13ος αι. π.Χ.) ; Perfumed oils and practices of use in mycenaean Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean (14th-13th centuries B.C.)

The present dissertation is focused on the use of perfumed oils in Mycenaean Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean during the period of prosperity of the Mycenaean palaces and the contemporary centres of the Near East (14th-13th cent. BC.). Its aim is, by focusing primarily on the information obtained by the Mycenaean Linear B tablets and on parallels from the rich epigraphic material of the ancient Near East, to determine the possible ways in which the use of perfumed oils was practiced and simultaneously to investigate the related ideology. The Mycenaean written documents from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae attest that one of the most important industries of the Mycenaean palaces was engaged in the production of perfumed oils and unguents (Chapters 1-4). The contemporary rich epigraphic material from the Eastern Mediterranean, coming from Hattusa, Ugarit, Emar, El-Amarna, Nuzi, Alalakh, Assur and Nippur, contributes significantly to this study, by providing important comparative evidence concerning the ways of perfumed oils’ use as well as the meaning attributed to these practices in the immediate neighbourhood of the Mycenaean world (Chapters 5-11). In what follows the results of this comparative investigation are presented. At first, all the instances concerning the use of perfumed oils, as these are recorded in the Eastern Mediterranean texts, are presented and all the archaeological and epigraphic evidence attesting to the occurrence of some of them in the Mycenaean world is examined (Chapter 12). Moreover, the meaning of anointment with perfumed oils in the Eastern Mediterranean is analysed, revealing an extremely complex ideology related primarily to the notion of “purification”. For this reason the use of perfumed oils in the Eastern Mediterranean was mainly connected with the performance of religious rituals and the so-called “rites of passage”, processes in which the idea of “purification” was a central one and which are similar to the most of the instances in which the use of perfumed oils was practiced ...