Iconography of ancient Palestine/Israel
The iconography of ancient Palestine/Israel represents a third field of Old Testament research alongside the historical-critical exegesis of biblical and non-biblical texts and biblical archaeology. The pictorial objects and artefacts are part of the material culture and thus a testimony to ideas of daily life in the southern Levant. Unlike the texts of the Old Testament, they reflect the life and beliefs of a large number of people. Motifs and subjects have repeatedly been documented in different places. A comparison with pictorial evidence from neighbouring cultures shows that the imagery of Palestine/Israel is related to that of other Middle Eastern nations. This shows how closely the southern Levant is integrated into Middle Eastern culture and its religious history.
After research into the visual world of the southern Levant was established in the 1970s by the so-called Fribourg School, which Othmar Keel brought to life with his work, iconography is currently increasingly coming into focus as an independent field of research at various universities. The research department Iconography of Ancient Palestine/Israel at the University of Wuppertal focusses on several aspects that allow for a comprehensive description of the visual world of Palestine/Israel. This concerns the development and further elaboration of a comprehensive method for analysing the visual world, in which the pictorial objects and artefacts are interpreted as part of their everyday culture. This includes the perception of their materiality and the use of the objects and artefacts in their cultural environments. Another focus is the development of techniques for digitising the objects and artefacts and the evaluation of the digitised material using artificial intelligence.
