Fountains and Water Culture in Byzantium

This book restores the fountains of Roman Byzantium, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul, reviving the sounds, shapes, smells and sights of past water cultures. Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, is surrounded on three sides by sea, and has no major river to deliver clean, potable water. However, the cultures that thrived in this remarkable waterscape through millennia have developed and sustained diverse water cultures and a water delivery system that has supported countless fountains, some of which survive today. Scholars address the delivery system that conveyed and stored water, and the fountains, large and small, from which it gushed. Papers consider spring water, rainwater and seawater; water suitable for drinking, bathing and baptism; and fountains real, imagined and symbolic. Experts in the history of art and culture, archaeology and theology, and poetry and prose, offer reflections on water and fountains across two millennia in one location.

Introduction Brooke Shilling and Paul Stephenson; 1. Where do we go now? The archaeology of monumental fountains in the Roman and early Byzantine East Julian Richard; 2. Monumental waterworks in Late Antique Constantinople Paul Stephenson and Ragnar Hedlund; 3. Fistulae and water fraud in Late Antique Constantinople Gerda de Kleijn; 4. The Silahtarağa statues in context Brenda Longfellow; 5. The bronze goose from the hippodrome Rowena Loverance; 6. The serpent column fountain Paul Stephenson; 7. The culture of water in the 'Macedonian Renaissance' Paul Magdalino; 8. When bath became church: spatial fusion in Late Antique Constantinople and beyond Jesper Blid Kullberg; 9. Zoomorphic rainwater spouts Philipp Niewöhner; 10. Spouts and finials defining fountains by giving water shape and sound Eunice Dauterman Maguire; 11. Fountains of paradise in early Byzantine art, homilies, and hymns Brooke Shilling; 12. Where did the waters of paradise go after iconoclasm? Henry Maguire; 13. 'Rejoice, Spring.' The Theotokos as a fountain in the liturgical practice of Byzantine hymnography Helena Bodin; 14. Words, water, and power: literary fountains and metaphors of patronage in eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium Ingela Nilsson; 15. Ancient water in fictional fountains: waterworks in Byzantine novels and romances Terése Nilsson; 16. The shrine of the Theotokos at the Pege Isabel Kimmelfield; 17. A dome for the water: canopied fountains and cypress trees in Byzantine and early Ottoman Constantinople Federica Broilo; 18. Sinan's ablution fountains Johan Mårtelius.

Brooke Shilling is a lecturer in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Lincoln. Her areas of research include Late Antique and Byzantine mosaic art.
Paul Stephenson is Professor of History and Head of the School of History and Heritage at the University of Lincoln. He is the author or editor of eight books and his research focuses on Byzantium.