ABSTRACT
Ancient Greek worshipers occasionally made their own offerings before presenting them to the gods. Making an offering by hand honored sacred figures through one's labor, time, and commitment, and may have generated an especially effective petitionary endeavor. Through the process of making and through the efforts of their labor, Greek devotees engaged physical artifacts over extended periods within the spaces of daily life, and also undertook a religious pursuit that was inherently creative and productive. As such, studying the creation of these items from the perspective of embodiment, touch, and phenomenology is particularly fruitful. The study of self-made devotional artifacts also underlines the personal experience of Greek religious iconography, through the fashioning of images and people's embodied, tactile encounters with that iconography. This chapter makes the case for four types of self-made religious dedications: vegetal wreaths, figural cakes, woven votives, and wooden artifacts. In the case of these four votive types, devotees engaged the gods through the work of their hands. Such creative and tactile pursuits forged a connection between divinities, objects, and dedicators that could hold emotional resonance.
