Visiting Research Scholar Spotlight: Juan Manuel Tebes

By Juan Manuel Tebes
08/20/2015

Thanks to a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, I am spending the summer months at ISAW doing research on what I call the “iconographies of power” present in the rock art and pottery of Northwestern Arabia and the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. During the past few years I have devoted most of my time to investigating the Hejazi Qurayyah Painted Ware (QPW). I was always amazed by its enigmatic painted, naturalistic iconography, which consists of schematic human figures with their arms raised and carrying what can be interpreted as bird-like masks, long hair, feathered headdresses, false animal tails, and hunting/war weapons. More recurring representations are those of birds identified as ostriches.

Looking for parallels for these depictions, I was surprised that many previous studies had highlighted the influence of foreign iconography, particularly the diverse contemporary ceramic traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean. Certainly, that external influence was vast; however, very little was said about possible parallels in the QPW homeland, overlooking the most obvious potential source of parallels: the local rock art. The arid landscape of the Arabian Peninsula and the Southern Levant provides an immense source of data in its rock inscriptions, which are very difficult to date and interpret. In a recently published book I edited, I proposed the QPW human figures should be compared with the “adorant” figures so common in the rock inscriptions, usually interpreted as hunters, worshippers or shamans. I suggested that the local emergent elites of the late second millennium BCE used the distribution of this decorated pottery, with high social and symbolic overtones, to buy or reinforce the favor of clients and to highlight their connections with outside powers. 

Now I want to pursue this research even further, investigating the iconography of the rock art itself. This includes the study and comparison of the depictions of human and animal figures, their shapes, positions and attached elements, and the examination of their absolute and relative dating. I am focusing especially on the religious background of these figures. It is highly likely that the cultic iconography of the desert peoples was represented in perishable materials such as wood, leather, and cloth, yet most of the extant evidence comes from the rock art. This research, of course, has many points of contact with the larger issue of the origins of Yahwism, believed by many to have its genesis in the ancient land of Midian, but I leave that to my next book project!