The Grant Agency of Masaryk University presented the MUNI Scientist Awards of 2023. Tomáš Glomb received the award for the publication of the book Connecting the Isiac Cults in Bloomsbury Academic, which is the culmination of his long-term research on the spread of the Egyptian cults in the Hellenistic period. Using methods of established historiography combined with quantitative results from formalized modeling using the transportation network of the ancient Mediterranean, the book reveals that the political activities of the Ptolemaic dynasty outside Egypt contributed substantially to the spread of the Egyptian cults. An important message of the book is that the methods of complexity science can greatly enrich the study of ancient cultural transmissions - not, however, as an exclusive universal toolkit, but only in a very careful synthesis with traditional historiography.
You can see the list of awardees here.
Aleš Chalupa, Tomáš Glomb, and Juraj Sarkisjan published the article: Stations of the Publicum Portorium Illyrici are a Strong Predictor of the Mithraic Presence in the Danubian Provinces: Geographical Analysis of the Distribution of the Roman Cult of Mithras in Open Archaeology.
In this short text, Tereza looks back at the experience of attending summer schools focusing on quantitative methods and evaluates how beneficial it was for her research and self-development in the Study of religions.
