Images of Anonymous Women
A Semiotic Approach to Image-Text Relations in Interpretation of Ancient Near Eastern Art and the Hebrew Bible
By (author) Y. Kim
Hardback (Published)
(July 2026)
ISBN: 9789042957732
Price: $150.00
On back order
Interpretation is a comprehensive act involving various sign systems, both visual and verbal. While viewers of images construct narratives when interpreting them, readers build interpretations of texts through related visual imagery. When images and texts thus become inseparable in interpretation, an adequate method for analyzing both within an isomorphic framework is required. In this volume, Kim introduces semiotics as a transdisciplinary method and presents two semiotic models to support a meta-critical analysis of both textual and visual interpretations. These models are applied to interpretations of two anonymous women from the ancient Near East: a nude woman depicted on an Old Babylonian terracotta plaque, and a woman described in chapter 7 of the biblical Song of Songs. For each case, Kim presents her own interpretation alongside analyses of two contemporary interpretations: those of Zainab Bahrani and Julia Assante for the Old Babylonian figure, and those of Othmar Keel and Fiona Black for the biblical text. <br />The semiotic analysis reveals unique interpretations, each of which emerges from an interplay between the studied works’ inherent ambiguity or polysemy and the interpreters’ personal preferences. The diverse backgrounds of the latter – academic, feminist, or cultural – and their strategies for relating images to texts – whether historical, thematic, semiotic, or grotesque – fill the works’ inenarrable or invisible gaps in distinctive ways, highlighting the crucial role every interpreter plays in producing his or her interpretation. Kim emphasizes the significance of subjectivity in every interpretation: it is only when the subjectivity of any interpretation is recognized that the interpreter may become the focal point of semiotic analysis, an analysis which aims to move beyond the image-text dichotomy. Grounded in semiotic methodology, the model of a tripartite relationship between image, text, and interpreter offers a significant advance beyond the image-text binary which persists in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern studies.
- By (author) Y. Kim
Other Titles in this Series
Représenter dieux et hommes dans le Proche-Orient ancien et dans la Bible
Actes du colloque organisé par le Collège de France, Paris, les 5 et 6 mai 2015
Volume 287
Götter bewohnten Ägypten
Bronzefiguren der Sammlungen »Bibel + Orient« der Universität Freiburg/Schweiz
Anfänge der ägyptischen Kunst
Eine problemgeschichtliche Einführung in ägyptologische Bild-Anthropologie
Formen für ägyptische Fayencen aus Qantir Band II
Katalog der Sammlung des Franciscan Biblical Museum, Jerusalem und zweier Privatsammlungen
What Is Stronger than a Lion?
Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East
Architecture, Iconography, and Text
New Studies on the Northwest Palace Reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II
Volume 301
Goddesses in Context
On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources
The Awakening of Osiris and the Transit of the Solar Barques
Royal Apotheosis in a Most Concise Book of the Underworld and Sky
L’Ecrit et l’Esprit
Etudes d’Histoire du texte et de théologie biblique en hommage à Adrian Schenker
When Gods Speak to Men
Divine Speech according to Textual Sources in the Ancient Mediterranean Basin
Volume 289
Eine königliche Weisheitslehre?
Exegetische Analyse von Sprüche 28-29 und Vergleich mit den ägyptischen Lehren Merikaras und Amenemhats
Göttliche Körper – Göttliche Gefühle
Was leisten anthropomorphe und anthropopathische Götterkonzepte im Alten Orient und Alten Testament?
Divine Names on the Spot II
Exploring the Potentials of Names through Images and Narratives
Volume 299
Comment devient-on prophète?
Actes du colloque organisé par le Collège de France, Paris, les 4-5 avril 2011
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