Visualizing Emotions in the Ancient Near East
edited by Sara Kipfer
The history of emotion is an important interdisciplinary research field, not least because it touches fundamental questions about the distinction between psychobiology-based universals and socio-cultural, path-dependent and thus relative peculiarity. Conceptual incongruities between what is today understood as emotion and various views on emotions in antiquity should not distract from the fact that, while emotions do have a history, they substantially belong to all human experience as such. Visual media and images open perspectives for transcultural research that differ from the testimony of texts. Their study can thus make a major contribution to a better understanding of emotions in the Ancient Near East. How where gestures, body posture, facial expressions etc. visualized in images from Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt and what role does the visualization play in communicating emotions? The first part of the present volume takes concrete examples as a starting point and discusses the fundamental question whether or not emotions were represented and can thus be studied in Ancient Near Eastern art. Approaches and arguments are controversial: Some authors argue that there are no visualizations of emotions, but only cultural roles and ritual embodiments. Their view is contrasted by other contributors, who assume that one may detect non-verbal expressions hiding emotions in visual respresentations and that it is crucial to specify the appropriate tools and methodologies to interpret them in an adequate way. The second part offers five additional theoretical reflexions from comparative, linguistic and art-historical perspectives. With such a broad interdisciplinary approach including Assyriology, Egyptology, Near Eastern archaeology and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies, the volume offers a large panorama of the most important research positions on a fundamental topic.Contributors include John Baines, Dominik Bonatz, Izak Cornelius, Margaret Jaques, Othmar Keel, Sara Kipfer, Florian Lippke, Silvia Schroer, Andreas Wagner, Elisabeth Wagner-Durand, and Wolfgang Zwickel.
Dr. Sara Kipfer is an SNSF-funded fellow at the universities of Chicago and Heidelberg. Her research focuses on reception-historical exegesis, biblical anthropology and prophecy.
- Edited by Sara Kipfer
Other Titles in this Series
All the Wisdom of the East
Studies in Near Eastern Archaeology and History in Honor of Eliezer D. Oren
La double transmission du texte biblique
Etudes d’histoire du texte offertes en hommage à Adrian Schenker
Israeliten und Phönizier
Ihre Beziehungen im Spiegel der Archäologie und der Literatur des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt
Volume 235
The Power of Images
The Poetics of Violence in Lamentations 2 and Ancient Near Eastern Art
Volume 297
Gottes Zorn in den Psalmen
Eine Studie zur Rede vom Zorn Gottes in den Psalmen im Kontext des Alten Testaments
Götter bewohnten Ägypten
Bronzefiguren der Sammlungen »Bibel + Orient« der Universität Freiburg/Schweiz
Anfänge der ägyptischen Kunst
Eine problemgeschichtliche Einführung in ägyptologische Bild-Anthropologie
Le peuple aux trois noms
Une histoire de l'ancien Israël à travers le prisme de ses ethnonymes
Volume 298
Les vivants et leurs morts
Actes du colloque organisé par le Collège de France, Paris, les 14-15 avril 2010
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
Formen für ägyptische Fayencen aus Qantir Band II
Katalog der Sammlung des Franciscan Biblical Museum, Jerusalem und zweier Privatsammlungen
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
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Volume 4
Connecting the Dots: Counting, Writing, and the Beginnings of Civilization
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Volume 7
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Kultur – Kontakt – Kultur
Beiträge anlässlich der 66. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Frankfurt/Main und Mainz, 25.–29. Juli 2022
Volume 35
Money of Mercenaries in the Cimmerian Bosporus
From the Mithridatic Wars to the Roman-Bosporan War of AD 45-49
Volume 45
New Research on Old Collections in Southwest Asian Archaeology
Proceedings of the Workshop Held at the British Museum, London, 31 July – 2 August, 2023
Old Aramaic Inscriptions and their Contexts
An Epigraphic, Archaeological, and Historical Synthesis
Volume 63
Politics, Peoples, and Polities in the Ancient Near East
Proceedings of the 69th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki
Pottery Traditions and Material Culture in Second Millennium BC Northern Mesopotamia
Contacts and New Horizons in the Land between the Tigris and the Zagros. Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the 12th ICAANE, University of Bologna, 7 April 2021
Volume 19
