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Center

The Marburg Centre for the Ancient World (MCAW) is an association of disciplines from the faculties of Protestant Theology (FB05), History and Cultural Studies (FB06), and Foreign Language Philologies (FB10) at the Philipps-Univerisität Marburg, as well as relevant chairs from the faculties of Law (FB01) and Pharmacy/Medicine (FB16/FB20). These disciplines include Ancient History, Old Testament, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Civil Law and Roman Law, Christian Archaeology and Byzantine Art History, History of the Early Church and the Christian Near East, History of Pharmacy and Medicine, Classical Greek and Latin, Historical-Comparative Linguistics, Classical Archaeology, New Testament, Semitic Studies, and Pre- and Protohistory. Scholars from the fields of economics, medicine, and religious studies are also associated with the Centre. The Marburg Centre for the Ancient World is thus a unique institution within the German university landscape and serves as the centre of excellence for ancient studies in Hesse.

The Marburg Centre for the Ancient World serves primarily as a forum for intensifying academic cooperation between the associated disciplines. It not only supports the development of joint research projects on topics relating to the ancient world but is also represented in the area of teaching through interdisciplinary lecture series and seminars.

A common research theme currently being pursued by members of the MCAW is the question of the conscious shaping of religious experience in various ancient cultures. We would like to replace the idea that ‘the sacred’ was experienced as a sui generis category with the assumption that religious practice was instead shaped by the participants themselves and that religious experience can therefore be understood as a product of conscious efforts.

Since 2019, we have been exchanging ideas on this topic, its theoretical foundations, and its methodological relevance for our disciplines in a series of workshop discussions. In particular, the field of "religious atmosphere" and its application in the ancient sciences has been a focus of our work, which we have been intensively researching since November 2023 in the DFG-funded Research Trainin Group "Staging Religious Atmosphere in Ancient Cultures."

Various aspects that have proven relevant to the concept of religious atmosphere are also explored in our annual lecture series. For example, in the winter semester of 2022/23, we addressed the question of how people in antiquity experienced emotions and how we can access their feelings and experiences. Currently, we are conducting the lecture series "Religious Atmosphere in Antiquity – From Staging to Experience."