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One Name, Two Histories

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One Name, Two Histories

Macedonia names two things that this atlas holds in a single row because the name itself is part of the material.

The first is the ancient kingdom north of Greece proper, whose ruling house claimed Greek descent and Heracles as an ancestor while its neighbours to the south argued about whether Macedonians were Greek at all. Its religion was recognisably Greek in its gods and its sanctuaries, with local emphases: the sanctuary at Dion under Mount Olympus was the kingdom's principal cult centre, and Alexander sacrificed there before crossing into Asia. What Alexander's campaigns then did was carry Greek cult practice, city foundation and language across Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia and beyond, which is the precondition for almost everything the atlas holds under Hellenistic religion, including the setting in which the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek.

The second is the modern region, divided between the republic of North Macedonia and the Greek province of the same name, whose religious history is Slavic and Christian. Its centre is Ohrid, on the lake at the republic's southwestern edge, where the pupils of Cyril and Methodius established a school after being expelled from Moravia and where Slavonic literacy was consolidated for the Balkans.

The atlas keeps one entry and distinguishes the senses in the material, since splitting them would imply a settled answer to a question that is not settled.

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