"Ornaments of Interaction: Jewelry in the Late Bronze Age," in Joan Aruz, Sarah B. Graff, and Yelena Rakic, eds., Cultures in Contact: From Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B.C. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia (2013), pp. 258-267 (original) (raw)
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Manipulating the Divine and Late Bronze/Iron Age 'Astarte' Plaques in the Southern Levant
Analysis of so-called 'Astarte' plaques has continually focused on issues of typology and the divine identity of the nude female represented. Little has been said though on how the plaques may have actually operated in lives of their owners, mostly due to the fact that their find spots are so varied. However, it may be possible to understand these figurines as guardian and protection deities that would have been affixed to doorways, based on comparative evidence from Mesopotamia and the appearance of similar figures flanking doors on shrine plaques and shrine models in the Levant. Moreover, it must then be wondered what is the significance of having representations of the nude female body (whether or not they were specific goddesses, abstract symbols or human women) operating in such a way? This paper will explore then the possibility of the female body as a particularly potent mechanism for interacting and communicating with the divine as well as for influencing, manipulating and controlling the divine in the Southern Levant.
The Nude Female in the Southern Levant: a mixing of Syro-Mesopotamian and Egyptian Iconographies
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This paper is a study of the evolution of the so-called Nude Female or Nude Goddess image in the Ancient Near East. It specifically considers the cross-fertilization of the superficially similar but distinct iconographies of Syro-Mesopotamian Aštart plaques and Egyptian potency figurines in the southern Levant, focusing on the case studies of kourotrophic iconography and portrayals of the Levanto-Egyptian goddess Qedešet/Qudšu. The paper ends with a reevaluation of the hypothesis that all of these Nude Female icons, especially in the Levant, are meant to portray the goddess Asherah.
Icons of the Matrix: female symbolism in ancient culture (2014 update)
Beyond "essentialism": recurring patterns of female symbolism in ritual culture and modern theoretical preoccupations with 'fertility idols." The female figurines, central icons of the paleolithic and neolithic. Vulva petroglyphs on a global scale. Megalithic women, cupules, and rock dust. Symbolic patterns of the ceramic figurines and what they might tell us about ceremonial paintup, dress, and practices. Breastpots and female effigy vessels, and some striking similarities between urns widely separated in time and place.
This paper aims to broaden the current understanding of the interrelations between the Predynastic Badarian and Naqadian periods (second half of the fifth to end of the fourth millennium BC) in Egypt through the analysis of a Badarian hippopotamus-shaped pendant. The argument is put forward that this pendant forms a miniature replication of a vessel that was used in the production, storage, and supply of malachite body paint. Due to its correspondence in colour with vegetation, malachite may have been believed to have endowed its wearer with the positive qualities of life, growth, fertility, and healing. On this basis, it is contended that the pendant functioned as an amulet by providing its wearer with magical access to malachite paint and its associated properties. Since a palette pendant from the Naqada IID-IIIB period is argued to have functioned in a similar way as the Badarian pendant, this is taken to suggest that the people who lived during the Badarian and Naqadian periods were involved in parallel practices and displayed comparable cognitive processes.