Documenting Despair and Hope: Temples as War Archives in Late Antiquity

Military functions of churches, monasteries, mosques, and other sacred spaces in Late Antiquity are well known. Troops prayed in them before battle, for example. Officers met at these spaces for diplomacy. Arms were stored at temples. In this paper, I will bring to the fore an understudied military function of sacred spaces–their use as war archives. In light of a group of inscriptions, small objects, and texts, I will demonstrate the ways in which temples (here broadly construed to include various types of sacred spaces) were used for documenting and interpreting war. With the storage and exhibition of certain objects, and with the incision of inscriptions, temples documented the communal trauma that came with war, expressed despair, and incited hope. My aim with this study is to complicate our understanding of the making of sacred space and communal identity at the intersection of military and civilian realms in Late Antiquity.