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
Out of stock
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
Amulette, Siegel und Perlen
Studien zur Typologie und Tragesitte im Alten und Mittleren Reich
Volume 229
Divine Names on the Spot II
Exploring the Potentials of Names through Images and Narratives
Volume 299
Handel als Medium von Kulturkontakt
Akten des Interdisziplinaren altertumswissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums (Basel, 30.-31. Oktober 2009)
Volume 277
All the Wisdom of the East
Studies in Near Eastern Archaeology and History in Honor of Eliezer D. Oren
Volume 255
Die Erzählung von den beiden Brüdern
Der Papyrus d'Orbiney und die Königsideologie der Ramessiden
Volume 195
Die Selbstbehauptung Israels in der Welt des Alten Orients
Religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich anhand von Gen 15/22/28, dem Aufenthalt Israels in Agypten, 2. Sam 7, 1.Kon 19 und Psalm 104
Volume 115
Israeliten und Phönizier
Ihre Beziehungen im Spiegel der Archäologie und der Literatur des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt
Volume 235
Die Erzählung des Wenamun
Ein Literaturwerk im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Geschichte und Religion
Volume 209
Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Shephelah
Papers Presented at a Colloquium of the Swiss Society of Ancient Near Eastern Studies Held at the University of Bern, September 6, 2014
Volume 282
Les fluides corporels en Égypte et au Proche-Orient anciens
Actes du colloque organisé à l'Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier, 5-7 septembre 2019
Volume 309
‘Trinkt von dem Wein, den ich mischte!’ ‘Drink of the Wine which I have Mingled!’
Festschrift für Silvia Schroer zum 65. Geburtstag
Volume 303
L’Ecrit et l’Esprit
Etudes d'Histoire du texte et de theologie biblique en hommage a Adrian Schenker
Volume 214
La Samarie, la Diaspora et l’achevement de la Torah
Territorialites et internationalites dans l'Hexateuque
Volume 284
Formen für ägyptische Fayencen aus Qantir. Band II
Katalog der Sammlung des Franciscan Biblical Museum, Jerusalem und zweier Privatsammlungen
Volume 225
The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Scribal Scholarship in Antiquity
Studies in Honor of Arie van der Kooij on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday
Volume 306
The Text of Leviticus
Proceedings of the Third International Colloquium of the Dominique Barthelemy Institute, held in Fribourg (October 2015)
Volume 292
The Awakening of Osiris and the Transit of the Solar Barques
Royal Apotheosis in a Most Concise Book of the Underworld and Sky
Volume 262
From Most Ancient Sources
The Nature and Text-Critical Use of the Greek Old Testament Text of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible
Volume 215
Entre dieux et hommes
Anges, demons et autres figures intermediaires: Actes du colloque organise par le College de France, Paris, les 19 et 20 mai 2014
Volume 286
Eine königliche Weisheitslehre?
Exegetische Analyse von Sprüche 28-29 und Vergleich mit den ägyptischen Lehren Merikaras und Amenemhats
Volume 234