The Senses in the Near East

The senses are our window on the world, the lens through which we come to know our environment. Most of us take for granted that we are looking out the same window as everyone else, but the way that each of us interprets and classifies the sensations we experience is mediated by our culture. Even the paradigm of five senses is arbitrary and comes to us not from modern science but from ancient Greek philosophy.

Drawing on evidence from textual and artistic sources, this project considers questions like: How did the people of the ancient Near East understand the way their senses functioned? What types of sensory phenomena are represented in the sources and why? And what are the methodological issues that the modern scholar confronts when investigating the senses in the ancient world?

This research brings the ancient Near East into dialogue with the evolving field of sensory studies, which prioritizes the human experience of sensation and invites scholars to move beyond the physiological study of the senses to an examination of their cultural meanings.

Now Available

Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East

Edited by Ainsley Hawthorn and Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel

$89.95 | Hardcover Edition

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Cover image of the book Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. The cover is yellow with red and black text and blue geometric decoration.

Publications and Presentations

Edited Volumes

2019. Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. With A.-C. Rendu Loisel.

Book Chapters

2020. "Your Clothes Should Be Clean! Your Head Should Be Washed! Body Cleaning and Social Inclusion in the Epic of Gilgamesh." In Cleaning and Value: Interdisciplinary Investigations, edited by I. Bredenbröker, C. Hanzen, and F. Kotzur, 167-80. Leiden: Sidestone Press.

2019. "The Shifting Gaze: Looking and Seeing in the Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions." In Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East, edited by A. Hawthorn and A.-C. Rendu Loisel,105-21. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns.

2019. "The Senses in the Ancient Near East: An Introduction." In Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East, edited by A. Hawthorn and A.-C. Rendu Loisel, 1-20. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. With A.-C. Rendu Loisel.

Dissertation

2012. Catching the Eye of the Gods: The Gaze in Mesopotamian Literature. Ph.D. diss. Yale University. Subimtted under the name A. A. Dicks.

Workshops

2015. "Representing the Senses in the Ancient Near East: Between Text and Image." Workshop at the 61e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Bern, Switzerland. June 25. With A.-C. Rendu Loisel.

Invited Talks

2017. "The Shifting Gaze: Vision in the Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions." Presented to the Research Training Group “Early Concepts of Man and Nature: Universal, Local, Borrowed,” Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. February 2.

2014. "Vicious Vision: Anger, Envy, and the Evil Eye in Mesopotamia." Presented at the Institute for Assyriology and Hittitology and Distant Worlds: Graduate School for Ancient Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. July 14. Presented under the name A. Dicks.

Dicks, A. 2014. "Seeing, Staring, Peering, Glaring: The Vocabulary of Vision in Sumerian and Akkadian." Presented at the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Institute for Ancient History, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Germany. July 3. Presented under the name A. Dicks.

2014. "The Eye of Death: Malevolent Gaze in Mesopotamia." Presented at the Institute for Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna, Austria. June 24. Presented under the name A. Dicks.

Conference Presentations

2013. "Divine Visions: Sight and Gaze in Mesopotamian Literature." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Baltimore, Maryland. November 23-26. Presented under the name A. Dicks.

2013. "igi du8 vs. igi bar: Semantics, Subject-Specific Usage, and Theological Implications." Presented at the 59e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Ghent, Belgium. July 15-19. Presented under the name A. Dicks.

Campus Talks

2009. "Look Steadfastly Upon Me: The Gaze of the Gods in Mesopotamian Literature." Presented at the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Roundtable, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. March 26. Presented under the name A. Dicks.

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