The Logic of the Image: Visualizing Knowledge in Early Mesopotamia

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

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The ubiquity of the image on ancient Near Eastern artefacts and its function as a medium for visualizing knowledge has not been a primary concern in ancient Near Eastern studies. While studies on motifs, style, technologies, workshops, and attempts to decode the symbolic meaning of some motifs abound, the contribution of the image as a semiotic meaning-making system that decisively contributes to shaping the world view in ancient as well as modern times still needs to be further explored. Indeed, in history of science as well as more recent debates on the production of knowledge and ancient epistemologies the image has been conspicuously absent. The spectacular finds from Uruk including monumental architecture, administrative texts, lexical lists, as well as an array of artefacts displaying a sophisticated imagery invite us to reconsider our approach to the image and its essential role in knowledge production.

Beate Pongratz-Leisten is a cultural historian of the ancient Near East who has widely published on the interrelated topics of history, religion, literature, and art in Greater Mesopotamia including Syria from the fourth millennium into the first millennium BCE. Her work combines inquiry into the textual and material records with theoretical approaches from history of religion, historical studies, anthropology, history of reception, cognitive narratology and cognitive psychology, as well as art history and visual studies. Her contributions to ancient near Eastern literature, ritualand ritual performance, the conceptualization of divinity, and the study of the interface between polytheism and monotheism resulted in her role as chief editor of a sixteen volume handbook on Ancient Near Eastern Literature for Old Testament Studies as well as a NEH grant for the publication of a two volume monograph on Akkadian Rituals for the series Writings from the Ancient World, Society of Biblical Literature. She recently submitted a monograph Myth in Text and Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Narrative Reading of the World to Cambridge University Press and is currently working on the image in the context of knowledge production.

Photo caption:  Late Uruk – Jemdat Nasr Period, 3300 – 2900 BC, marble with bronze handle in the shape of an ewe, 3 1/8 x 1 ¾ in. (8 x 4.5 cm). © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum, acquired by Conrad Preußer, 1915 near Uruk. VA 10537. Photo: SMB/Olaf M. Teßmer.

This lecture will be followed by a reception.

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