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
Images of Anonymous Women
A Semiotic Approach to Image-Text Relations in Interpretation of Ancient Near Eastern Art and the Hebrew Bible
Volume 310
Wortschöpfung
Die Memphitische Theologie und die Siegesstele des Pije – zwei Zeugen kultureller Repräsentation in der 25. Dynastie
Tabou et transgressions
Actes du colloque organisé par le Collège de France, Paris, les 11-12 avril 2012
La Septante en Allemagne et en France/Septuaginta Deutsch und Bible d’Alexandrie
Textes de la Septante à traduction double ou à traduction très littérale/Texte der Septuaginta in Doppelüberlieferung oder in wörtlicher Übersetzung
‘Trinkt von dem Wein, den ich mischte!’ ‘Drink of the Wine which I have Mingled!’
Festschrift für Silvia Schroer zum 65. Geburtstag
Volume 303
La Samarie, la Diaspora et l’achèvement de la Torah
Territorialités et internationalités dans l’Hexateuque
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
Entre dieux et hommes : anges, démons et autres figures intermédiaires
Actes du colloque organisé par le Collège de France, Paris, les 19 et 20 mai 2014
Bilder als Quellen – Images as Sources
Studies on ancient Near Eastern artefacts and the Bible inspired by the work of Othmar Keel
Le Décalogue et l’histoire du texte
Etudes des formes textuelles du Décalogue et leurs implications dans l’histoire du texte de l’Ancien Testament
Divine Names on the Spot
Towards a Dynamic Approach of Divine Denominations in Greek andSemitic Contexts
Volume 293
Le jeune héros
Recherches sur la formation et la diffusion d’un thème littéraire au Proche-Orient ancien
»Kultprostitution« im Alten Testament?
Die Qedeschen der Hebräischen Bibel und das Motiv der Hurerei
Die Selbstbehauptung Israels in der Welt des Alten Orients
Religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich anhand von Gen 15/22/28, dem Aufenthalt Israels in Ägypten, 2. Sam 7, 1.Kön 19 und Psalm 104
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Volume 19
