Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1945-02-26)February 26, 1945 Volos, Greece |
| Died | May 19, 2007(2007-05-19) (aged 62) Oxford, UK |
| Spouse | Michael Inwood |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Athens (BA), University of Oxford (DPhil) |
| Thesis | Minoan and Mycenaean Afterlife Beliefs (1973) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Classics |
| Sub-discipline | Ancient Greek religion;classical archaeology |
| Institutions | University of Reading |
| Notable works | "What is Polis Religion" and "Further Aspects of Polis Religion" (1990, republished in 2000),"Reading" Greek Culture (1991) |
Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood (Greek:Χριστιάνα Σουρβίνου; February 26, 1945 – May 19, 2007) was a scholar in the field ofAncient Greek religion and a highly influentialHellenist.
Sourvinou-Inwood was born inVolos,Greece, in 1945, but grew up inCorfu. Sourvinou-Inwood studied at the University of Athens from 1962–66, where she specialised in history and archaeology, and was a pupil of the Greek prehistoric archaeologistSpyridon Marinatos;[1] after graduating with a starred first in Classics, she began research in the field ofMycenology inRome, publishing her first article on the reading of aLinear B tablet fromKnossos in 1968.[1][2]
Sourvinou-Inwood moved to the UK in 1969,[1] and graduated fromOxford in 1973 with a doctorate onMinoan civilization and Mycenaean beliefs in the afterlife. She subsequently worked as a lecturer inclassical archaeology atLiverpool (1976–78), a senior research Fellow atUniversity College, Oxford (1990–95), and Reader inClassical Literature at theUniversity of Reading (1995–98).[3]
After her initial research into Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, Sourvinou-Inwood moved to studying Archaic and Classical Greece, in particular Greek religion, employing evidence from a wide variety of sources including material culture and iconography as well as literary texts, mythology, and ritual practices.[1] She has been praised for the clarity and directness of her approach. In the words of a colleague, "she wanted scholars to abandon fashionable assumptions" and "to read ancient texts through the eyes of their contemporary readers";[4] she insisted on the need to eliminate anachronistic modern assumptions from the study of the ancient world in order to reconstruct the perceptions, beliefs, and ideologies of people in the ancient world.[1]
According to the University of Reading Classics Department, Sourvinou-Inwood's acknowledged supremacy in the area of Greek religion studies made a lasting contribution to the Department's research, and this field continues to be one of its strongholds in the twenty-first century.[5] In 2018, the FestschriftΠλειών. Papers in memory of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood was published by the University of Crete, edited byAthena Kavoulaki.[1] This followed a memorial conference that was held in 2012 in Crete.
One of Sourvinou-Inwood's most influential works was her development of the 'Polis-religion' model, which demonstrated how the ancient Greek city (polis) controlled religious life. This was originally explored in two articles, entitled "What is Polis Religion?" and "Further Aspects of Polis Religion";[6] the former has been described as "unquestionably the most influential article on Greek religion of the last 25 years".[3]
After retiring from teaching in 1998, Sourvinou-Inwood began writing mystery novels set in ancient Greece, featuring a priestess as the detective; the novels draw extensively on her research.[1] A collection of poems written during her undergraduate studies has also recently been published.[1]
