Introduction: Authoritative Traditions and Ritual Power in the Ancient World

The overlapping domains of authority and tradition—and their amalgam “authoritative tradition”—have acquired in recent decades significant power as analytical categories. Prompted in large measure by the pioneering work of Eric Hobsbawm, scholars now examine the diverse ways that authority is generated for certain social groups through the invention of traditions.1 For Hobsbawm, this impulse and capacity to invent traditions is particularly symptomatic of modern societies that during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been characterized by