The Øivind Andersen Lecture Series
Honoring a Legacy of Classical Scholarship
The Norwegian Institute at Athens is proud to announce the launch of the Øivind Andersen Lecture Series, an annual event celebrating the life and work of the Institute’s founding director, Professor Emeritus Øivind Andersen. This distinguished series serves as a platform for leading scholars from Norway and around the world to share their research on the literary, historical, and social dimensions of antiquity—areas to which Prof. Andersen has made profound and lasting contributions.
About the Series
Launched in tribute to Prof. Øivind Andersen’s foundational role in establishing the Norwegian Institute at Athens, the lecture series is designed to inspire dialogue across disciplines and borders. It features public lectures by eminent academics whose work reflects the spirit of intellectual curiosity and commitment to classical studies that defined Andersen’s career.
Inaugural Lecture
The inauguration lecture of the series will take place on the 22nd of May (7 p.m.) at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, featuring a lecture by Prof. Anastasia Maravela (Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo) titled:
Homer, Hesiod and ‘Homeric’ Hymns at the Service of Isis: The Reuse of Greek Epic Tradition in The Poetic Dedication of Isidorus at Narmouthis
Abstract
In around 88 BCE a certain Isidorus dedicated a set of four poems in traditional Greek metres – two in hexameters and two in elegiac disticha – to the goddess Isis-Hermouthis. The poems, conventionally known as “the hymns of Isidorus” (SEG VIII 548–551), were carved on the entrance pilasters of a forecourt of the goddess’ temple in Narmouthis/Medinet Madi, southwest in the Fayum oasis in Egypt. Despite their temporal and spatial distance from the core of Greek epic tradition – the poetry of Homer, Hesiod and the hymns conventionally known as ‘Homeric’ – the four poems that make up Isidorus’ poetic gift to Isis-Hermouthis engage intensively, and often creatively, with early epic at multiple levels. This lecture will discuss the themes, scenes and tropes from early Greek epic poetry that have left their mark on Isidorus’ poems, hoping to shed light on the intertextual and cultural strategies, by means of which a regional Hellenistic poet puts the Greek literary heritage at the service of a complex goddess, who at first had been local and non-Greek, but by that time had developed into a universal deity.
Biographical Information
Anastasia Maravela is Professor of Ancient Greek at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo. She studied Classics at the University of Athens, University College London and the University of Oslo. Her research interests span from editorial philology to literary criticism, aspects of ancient history and social life in antiquity. She has written on Greek epic and lyric poetry, imperial prose, Greek and Coptic papyri from Egypt, as well as religion and magic in the ancient Mediterranean.
The event will take place at the Norwegian Institute at Athens in a hybrid format, accommodating both in-person and online attendance via Zoom.
Registration is required for both formats:
To attend in person, please register by email: [email protected]
To attend online, please register using the following Zoom link: