When is Herakles Not Himself? Mediating Cultural Plurality in Greater Central Asia, 330 BCE – 365 CE
Date of Award
Fall 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History of Art
First Advisor
Gaifman, Milette
Abstract
This dissertation project began with a relief panel that appears to depict the Greek hero Herakles standing among a group of Buddhist monks and lay worshipers. Like many scholars before me, I wondered why the image of Herakles would be integrated into the Buddhist art of Greater Central Asia in antiquity? Previous studies have identified this figure as Herakles-Vajrapāṇi based on his combined attributes (especially the lion skin and the vajra), and thus proposed variations on a combatant or protective function for him. While these theories are plausible, they contain several consequential assumptions that obscure the complexity of transcultural engagement in antiquity. For example, must a figure that features Herakles’ iconography (or that “looks Greek” as is often the corollary) be identified as such? And what would it mean to be Herakles, the Greek hero, thousands of kilometers and multiple centuries distant from Classical Athens? It is only possible to understand such figures by parsing the modern from ancient epistemes that (re)framed their reception throughout history.My dissertation thus analyzes the heretofore uncatalogued corpus of heraklean figures (as I label them) on artworks produced or displayed in Greater Central Asia from 330 BCE to 365 CE. Each chapter focuses on a case study site (including Takhti Sangin, Ai Khanoum, Begram, and Butkara I) where the results of colonial era epistemes have stymied the analysis of heraklean figures. For instance, much of this corpus has been decontextualized both literally, via poor collecting practices, and figuratively, by treating heraklean figures as abstracted iconographies rather than as objects that interacted sensorially with their architectural surroundings and audience in order to function. To combat this ahistoricization, I propose a material culture studies approach to clarify the strategies of ancient knowledge production that (re)constructed the identities and functions of these figures throughout the lifecycles of the artworks they decorated. Re-examining the corpus of heraklean figures using this new methodology highlights both the artistic variety among such figures and the functional patterns that connect them despite their plurality. Based on this analysis, I argue that ancient producers combined several iconographic tools and social strategies to facilitate communication in highly multicultural milieux such as shared sacred spaces. For example, producers designed iconographies for religious figures that circumscribed their function without determining their identity. Such figures could then be conflated to produce a transcultural network of quasi-historical stories (anchored in the landscape) that rationalized local customs and contemporary relationships between societies. Ultimately, my dissertation demonstrates that equal attention to modern receptions is required in order to effectively study the ancient artwork of marginalized regions such as Greater Central Asia. I initiate this practice by establishing methods to address issues caused by imperialist histories of the field and its corpus. I also propose new vocabularies for discussing strategies of transcultural engagement that encourage greater sensitivity to the actors and aims of knowledge production. This approach helps to reimagine the institutional structures once established to perpetuate colonial frameworks in broader society. As a consequence, scholars will attain a more nuanced understanding of entanglements across the silk routes that contributed to artistic production and reception in antiquity.
Recommended Citation
Sellati, Lillian Clare, "When is Herakles Not Himself? Mediating Cultural Plurality in Greater Central Asia, 330 BCE – 365 CE" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1248.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1248
