This graduate seminar introduces students to the major theoretical frameworks for analyzing issues of sacrality and topography in the ancient Mediterranean basin, along with an overview of the types of data available to address such questions in five primary contexts: ancient Israelite religion, hellenistic Judaism, classical Greece, republican and early imperial Rome, and early Christianity, the last of which receives special attention in the second half of the semester. The course is designed to investigate both continuities among traditions, especially in matters of sacral ontology, while also tracing trajectories unique within traditions, in which forms and ideals of sacralization are often constructed in opposition to dominant or disfavored traditions.