We were excited to welcome Jan-Mathieu Carbon for an Online Open House entitled “A Middle Ground in the Middle Sea: the “Marriage” of Salmakis and Halikarnassos.” The event took place on Friday, April 16 at 11:00 a.m. EDT and was recorded. You can watch the on the Center for Hellenic Studies YouTube Channel or in the frame below.
He provides this overview of the topic:
A—literary, archeological, epigraphical—survey of the city of Halikarnassos can help us to understand how the identity of this multicultural community was constructed. Focusing particularly on the location of its neighbor Salmakis, as well as stories of marriage (or more broadly, “mixing”, μίξις) connected with it and the figure of Hermaphroditos, can illuminate a “colonial past”, an often elusive “middle ground” between a local Karian population and the Greek community which grew to dominate the area.
To get ready for the event, you might like to read:
Mentioned in the discussion:
- the ‘water in Greek sanctuaries’ project in Uppsala, Sweden:
project overview at University of Uppsala
Water at ancient Greek sanctuaries: medium of divine presence or commodity for mortal visitors?
article from Journal of Archaeology and Ancient History. 2019 Number 26. Open access in DIVA
“Water at ancient Greek sanctuaries: medium of divine presence or commodity for mortal visitors?“ - Marco Santini has an excellent pair of detailed articles on the construction of the past at Halikarnassos, using the Salmakis myth and also that of Pegasos and Bellerophon:
Marco Santini, Princeton, on academia
Jan-Mathieu (Mat) Carbon
Jan-Mathieu (Mat) Carbon teaches Greek history at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. A CHS fellow in 2016-2017, his work particularly focusses on Greek epigraphy and religion. Ongoing projects include co-editing with Signe Isager and Poul Pedersen a corpus of the inscriptions of Halikarnassos, and a number of digital collaborations such as the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms CGRN and the Choix d’inscriptions oraculaires de Dodone CIOD