Women in Trouble, and the Habit of Objectifying a Text in the So-Called Confession Inscriptions

A growing corpus of inscriptions from Asia Minor, the so-called confession inscriptions, allows us to study the personal religious experiences of individuals, families, and communities in situations of trouble and distress. They are stelae dedicated in sanctuaries from the regions of Lydia and Phrygia, dated from the first to the third century CE. These documents testify to divine punishments for a criminal offence, a sin against the gods, or a violation of purity and cultic rules. This chapter aims to reassess these mainly as objects collocated in a certain time and space. A first question concerns the meaningfulness of gender differences, a still understudied aspect notwithstanding the presence of female dedicators. Women will not be considered as a separate group on its own: they will be investigated as agents of culture and material engagement. On a second analytical level, applying economic theories on praxeology, the chapter will ask in what ways these inscriptions could serve as material tools of human actions. Goal of the chapter is to show that the religious mentalities and ritual practices in the ‘confession inscriptions’ can be better understood as a result of routinized schemes performed with objects by agents of different genders.