This volume looks very promising indeed.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Setting the Stage

1 Contextualizing the Study of Ecstatic Experience in Ancient Old World Societies

Sarah Kielt Costello

2 Not Only Ecstasy: Pouring New Concepts into Old Vessels

Etzel Cardeña

3 From Shamans to Sorcerers: Empirical Models for Defining Ritual Practices and Ecstatic Experience in Ancient, Medieval and Modern Societies

Michael J. Winkelman

Part 2 Psychoactive Substances Past and Present

4 Psychoactive Plants in the Ancient World: Observations of an Ethnobotanist

Giorgio Samorini

5 Ecstasy Meets Paleoethnobotany: Botanical Stimulants in Ancient Inner Asia

Alison Betts

6 Caucasian Cocktails: The Early Use of Alcohol in “The Cradle of Wine”

Stephen Batiuk

7 Mind-altering Plants in Babylonian Medical Sources

Barbara Böck

8 Plant-based Potions and Ecstatic States in Hittite Rituals

Rita Francia

9 Forbidden at Philae: Proscription of Aphrodisiac and Psychoactive Plants in Ptolemaic Egypt

Riccardo Andreozzi and Claudia Sarkady

10 The Ring-Kernoi and Psychotropic Substances

David Ilan

Part 3 Ecstatic Experience and the Numinous

11 Beer, Beasts and Bodies: Shedding Boundaries in Bounded Spaces

Anne Porter

12 Lament, Spectacle and Emotion in a Ritual for Ishtar

Sam Mirelman

13 Writing for the Dead, Welcoming the Solar-Eye Goddess and Ecstatic Expression in Egyptian Religion

John Coleman Darnell

14 Altered States on Prepalatial Crete

Emily Miller Bonney

15 Bodies in Ecstasy: Shamanic Elements in Minoan Religion

Christine Morris and Alan Peatfield

16 The Mycenaeans and Ecstatic Ritual Experience

Susan Lupack

17 Emotional Arousal, Sensory Deprivation and “Miraculous Healing” in the Cult of Asclepius

Olympia Panagiotidou

18 Ecstasy and Initiation in the Eleusinian Mysteries

Alice Clinch

19 Apolline and Dionysian Ecstasy at Delphi

Yulia Ustinova

20 Communing with the Spirits: Funeral Processions in Ancient Rome

Maik Patzelt

Part 4 Expressions of the Ecstatic Mind

21 Ecstatic Experience and Possession Disorders in Ancient Mesopotamia

Ulrike Steinert

22 Ghosts In and Outside the Machine: A Phenomenology of Intelligence, Psychic Possession and Prophetic Ecstasy in Ancient Mesopotamia

John Z. Wee

23 Ecstatic Speech in Ancient Mesopotamia

Benjamin R. Foster

24 Ecstatic Experience: The Proto-Theme of a Near Eastern Glyptic Language Family

Diana L. Stein

25 Understanding the Language of Trees: Ecstatic Experience and Interspecies Communication in Late Bronze Age Crete

Caroline J. Tully

26 Psychedelic Art and Ecstatic Visions in the Aegean

Karen Polinger Foster

27 Sight as Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient Mediterranean

Nassos Papalexandrou