Religion and Cultural Memory (Cultural Memory in the Present)

In ten brilliant essays, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory. Building on Maurice Halbwachs's idea that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one, he argues that memory has a cultural dimension too. He develops a persuasive view of the life of the past in such surface phenomena as codes, religious rites and festivals, and canonical texts on the one hand, and in the Freudian psychodrama of repressing and resurrecting the past on the other. Whereas the current fad for oral history inevitably focuses on the actual memories of the last century or so, Assmann presents a commanding view of culture extending over five thousand years. He focuses on cultural memory from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Osage Indians down to recent controversies about memorializing the Holocaust in Germany and the role of memory in the current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies (Cultural Memory in the Present)

Religion & Spirituality

Jan Assmann

Religious Studies

Stanford University Press

The Mind of Egypt presents an unprecedented account of the mainsprings of Egyptian civilization-the ideals, values, mentalities, belief systems, and aspirations that shaped the first territorial state in history. Drawing on a range of literary, iconographic, and archaeological sources, Jan Assmann reconstructs a world of unparalleled complexity, a culture that, long before others, possessed an extraordinary degree of self-awareness. Moving through successive periods of Egyptian civilization, from its beginnings in the fifth millennium b.c.e. until the rise of Christianity 4,500 years later, Assmann traces the roles of the pharaohs, the priests, and the imperial bureaucracy. He explores the ideal relation of man to God and explains its expression in architecture and rituals. Most strikingly, he focuses on the "meaning world" of ancient Egypt-the multiple notions of time, the structures of immortality, and the commitment to social justice and human fellowship. Widely acclaimed for his cross-disciplinary approach, Assmann has produced a tantalizing study of an ancient civilization.

The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs

History

Ancient Civilizations

Owl Publishing Company

Metropolitan Books

Cultural Memory and Early Civilization

Cambridge University Press

Religion und kulturelles Gedächtnis: Zehn Studien

Die Zauberflöte

Fischer Taschenbuch Vlg.

Ägyptische Hymnen und Gebete (Die Bibliothek der Alten Welt : Reihe der Alte Orient) (German Edition)

Artemis Verlag

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Books by Jan Assmann