In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the person, deity, spirit, or daemon that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece, Rome and India, cult images in a temple may undergo a daily routine of being washed, dressed, and having food left for them. Processions outside the temple on special feast days are often a feature. Religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection. In many contexts "cult image" specifically means the most important image in a temple, kept in an inner space, as opposed to what may be many other images decorating the temple.
Prehistoric civilizations The earliest so-called Venus figurines have been dated to the prehistoric Upper Paleolithic era (35–40 ka onwards). Archaeological evidence from the islands of the Aegean Sea have yielded Neolithic era Cycladic figures from 4th and 3rd millennium BC, idols in namaste posture from Indus Valley civilization sites from the 3rd millennium BC, and much older petroglyphs around the world show humans began producing sophisticated images.National Museum, Seated Male in Namaskar pose, New Delhi, Government of India;S Kalyanaraman (2007), Indus Script Cipher: Hieroglyphs of Indian Linguistic Area, Motilal Banarsidass, , pages 234–236 However, because of a lack of historic texts describing these, it is unclear what, if any connection with religious beliefs, these figures had, or whether they had other meaning and uses, even as toys.S. Diamant (1974), A Prehistoric Figurine from Mycenae, The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 69 (1974), pages 103–107JÜRGEN THIMME (1965), DIE RELIGIÖSE BEDEUTUNG DER KYKLADENIDOLE, Antike Kunst, 8. Jahrg., H. 2. (1965), pages 72–86 (in German)
Antiquity Ancient Near East and Egypt
The earliest historic records confirming cult images are from the ancient Egyptian civilization, thereafter related to the Greek civilization. By the 2nd millennium BC two broad forms of cult image appear, in one images are zoomorphic (god in the image of animal or animal-human fusion) and in another anthropomorphic (god in the image of man). The former is more commonly found in ancient Egypt influenced beliefs, while the anthropomorphic images are more commonly found in Indo-European cultures. Symbols of nature, useful animals or feared animals may also be included by both. The stelae from 4,000 to 2,500 BC period discovered in France, Ireland through Ukraine, and in Central Asia through South Asia, suggest that the ancient anthropomorphic figures included zoomorphic motifs. In Nordic and Indian subcontinent, bovine (cow, ox, -*gwdus, -*g'ou) motifs or statues, for example, were common. In Ireland, iconic images included pigs.
The use of images in the Ancient Near East seems typically to have been similar to that of the ancient Egyptian religion, about which we are the best-informed. Temples housed a cult image, and there were large numbers of other images. The ancient Hebrew religion was or became an exception, rejecting cult images despite developing monotheism; the connection between this and the Atenism that Akhenaten tried to impose on Egypt has been much discussed. In the art of Amarna, Aten is represented only as the sun-disk, with rays emanating from it, sometimes ending in hands, and temples to Aten (e.g. the Great Temple of the Aten in Amarna) were open courts with no roof, that the Sun might be worshipped directly as it traveled across the sky.
Cult images were a common presence in ancient Egypt, and still are in modern-day Kemetism. The term is often confined to the relatively small images, typically in gold, that lived in the naos in the inner sanctuary of Egyptian temples dedicated to that god (except when taken on ceremonial outings, say to visit their spouse). These images usually showed the god in their sacred barque or boat; none of them survive. Only the priests were allowed access to the inner sanctuary.
There was also a huge range of smaller images, many kept in the homes of ordinary people. The very large stone images around the exteriors of temples were usually representations of the pharaoh as himself or "as" a deity, and many other images gave deities the features of the current royal family.
Classical Greece and Rome
Ancient Greek temples and Roman temples normally contained a cult image in the cella. The cella in Greek temples was in the center, while it was located in the back of Roman temples. Access to the cella varied, but apart from the priests, at the least some of the general worshippers could access the cella some of the time, though sacrifices to the deity were normally made on altars outside in the temple precinct (temenos in Greek). Some cult images were easy to see, and were major tourist attractions. The image normally took the form of a statue of the deity, typically roughly life-size, but in some cases many times life-size, in marble or bronze, or in the specially prestigious form of a Chryselephantine statue using ivory plaques for the visible parts of the body and gold for the clothes, around a wooden framework. Most cult statues are anthropromorphic and take human shape. The most famous Greek cult images were of this type, including the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and Phidias's Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon in Athens, both colossal statues now completely lost. Fragments of two chryselephantine statues from Delphi have been excavated.
The acrolith was another composite form, this time a cost-saving one with a wooden body. A xoanon was a primitive and symbolic wooden image, perhaps comparable to the Hindu lingam; many of these were retained and revered for their antiquity. Many of the Greek statues well-known from Roman marble copies were originally temple cult images, which in some cases, such as the Apollo Barberini, can be credibly identified. A very few actual originals survive, for example the bronze Piraeus Athena (2.35 metres high, including a helmet).
In Greek and Roman mythology, a "palladium" was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend, especially the wooden one that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to Rome by Aeneas. (The Roman story was related in Virgil's Aeneid and other works.)
Abrahamic religions
Some members of Abrahamic religions identify cult images as idols and their worship or veneration as idolatry, the worship of hollow forms, though others do not. The matter has long been controversial, depending largely on the degree of veneration or worship which is thought by opponents to be given to them. The word idol entered Middle English in the 13th century from Old French adapted in Ecclesiastical Latin from the Greek ("appearance"), a diminutive of ("form").
The Book of Isaiah gave the classic expression to the paradox that Abrahamic religions have traditionally claimed to be present in the worship of cult images:
The term idol, usually pejorative in English (except in Indian English where it usually carries no hostile implication), is an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship, while idolatry is the worship of an "idol" as though it were God., Quote: "Idolatry (...) in the first commandment denotes the notion of worship, adoration, or reverence of an image of God." Anthropologists reporting on many cultures are generally sceptical that images themselves are in fact regarded as deities within religions, rather than representations of deities; this, however, has been since antiquity the recurrent charge of those opposed to religious images.
Judaism
Judaism emphatically forbids idolatry, and considers it one of the gravest sins.
Judaism is aniconic, meaning any physical depiction of God whatsoever is disallowed; this likewise applies to cult images. The prohibition of idols within Judaism is so severe that numerous stipulations exist which are beyond simply concerning their use: Jews cannot eat anything offered to an idol as a libation, cannot move openly in places where idols are present, and cannot interact with idol worshippers within certain timeframes of idolatrous festivals or gatherings.Tractate Avodah Zarah
As time progressed and the religious traditions which the Jews were exposed to diversified, what was considered "idolatry" was subject to some debate. In the Mishnah and Talmud, idolatry is defined as worshipping a graven image through the actions of both typical idol worshippers, and through actions customarily reserved for worship of the Jewish God in the Temple in Jerusalem, such as prostrating, sacrificing animals, offering incense, or sprinkling animal blood on altars. Kissing, embracing, or "honoring" an idol, while not considered idolatry per se, was still forbidden.
Christianity
Christian images that are venerated are called icons. Christians who venerate icons make an emphatic distinction between "veneration" and "worship". Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians make an exception for the veneration of images of saints – they distinguish such veneration from adoration or .
The introduction of venerable images in Christianity was highly controversial for centuries, and in Eastern Orthodoxy the controversy lingered until it re-erupted in the Byzantine Iconoclasm of the 8th and 9th centuries. Religious monumental sculpture remained foreign to Orthodoxy. In the West, resistance to idolatry delayed the introduction of sculpted images for centuries until the time of Charlemagne, whose placing of a life-size crucifix in the Palatine Chapel, Aachen was probably a decisive moment, leading to the widespread use of monumental reliefs on churches, and later large statues. Many Christians believed that idols were not merely idle statues, but that they are inhabited by demons who could exercise influence through the idol. By destroying idols, converted Christians believed to deprave devils of their earthly and material dwelling.Brend, Barbara. "Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bihzād of Herāt (1465–1535). By Michael Barry. p. 231. Paris, Flammarion, 2004." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17.1 (2007): 231.
The , an eighth-century work composed at the command of Charlemagne in response to the Second Council of Nicaea, set out what remains the Catholic position on the veneration of images, giving them a similar but slightly less significant place than in Eastern Orthodoxy.
The 16th-century Reformation engendered spates of destruction of images, especially in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries (the ), and France. Destruction of three-dimensional images was normally near-total, especially images of the Virgin Mary and saints, and the iconoclasts ("image-breakers") also smashed representations of holy figures in stained glass windows and other imagery. Further destruction of icons, anathema to Puritans, occurred during the English Civil War. Less extreme transitions occurred throughout northern Europe in which formerly Catholic churches became Protestant.
Catholic regions of Europe, especially artistic centres like Rome and Antwerp, responded to Reformation iconoclasm with a Counter-Reformation renewal of religious imagery, though banning some of the more fanciful medieval iconographies. Veneration of the Virgin Mary flourished, in practice and in imagery, and new shrines, such as in Rome's , were built for Medieval miraculous icons as part of this trend.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Islam