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Eternal Night: Caves and Ritual Imagination in Ancient Mediterranean Religions

This paper explores the role of caves as sacred spaces in the history of religions. One important cave for pilgrims in the early Middle Ages was the cave of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. According to this widespread legend, a group of young men fled persecution by hiding in a cave and remaining asleep for nearly two centuries. This paper traces this long-sleeper legend’s similarities with late antique Jewish legends, Christian magical texts of late antiquity, and Sura 18 from the Qur’an. It explores how recent studies of the archaeology of caves and histories of the night can deepen our understanding of the importance of caves as sacred spaces for healing, protection, and revelation.

Georgia Frank is Charles A. Dana Professor of Religion at Colgate University. A historian of ancient Christian pilgrimage, the senses in religious experience, and liturgical song, she is author of Unfinished Christians: Ritual Objects and Silent Subjects in Late Antiquity (Penn Press, 2023).

The Global Approaches to Sacred Space lectures are generously funded by the SGS Global Research Workshop series with further support from the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CESTA, CMEMS, CREEES, the Departments of Art & Art History, Classics, French & Italian, History, and Religious Studies.

Co-organized by Prof. Bissera V. Pentcheva and Andrei Dumitrescu.