Sounding sensory profiles in the ancient near east

Abstract

The senses have attracted much attention in cultural studies in recent times. Which senses are important in different cultures? What is the relationship between sensory experience and reasoning? Which senses are considered reliable sources of knowledge? Which senses are linked to emotions like love or disgust? With which senses are gods or angels perceived? Which experiences of the senses have a part to play in festivals and religious celebrations? How do theory and practice of the senses relate to each other? In the last few years, questions about the senses have also started to attract the interest of scholars in the fields of Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern studies, which is the focus of this volume. For example, since 2009 there has been a program unit on Senses, Cultures, and the Biblical World at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature; in 2012 Yael Avrahami published a monograph on The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible (New York: T&T Clark); 2015 marked the beginning of the interdisciplinary synaesthesia project at the University of Toulouse; since 2016 there have been sessions on Senses and Sensibility in the Near East at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research; and in 2017 Nicole L. Tilford authored the book Sensing World, Sensing Wisdom: The Cognitive Foundation of Biblical Metaphors (Atlanta: SBL Press). So far, the respective discussions are still very fresh, and most of them take place outside Europe. This prompted us to organize an international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic, inviting many of the pioneers behind the development mentioned above. The conference took place at the University of Vienna on March 23–25, 2017. Its title, and thus the title of this volume, was inspired by an article by David Howes and Constance Classen, “Conclusion: Sounding Sensory Profiles” (pages 257–88 in The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses, ed. David Howes [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991]), which is reprinted in this volume. The present volume brings together most of the contributions to this meeting, supplemented by a few other articles on the subject. It offers insights into the meaning of the senses in ancient Israel, Mesopotamia, and Egypt and shows various questions and methods with which this topic can be approached. We hope that this will provide a stimulus and a basis for further exploration of the senses in the ancient Near East. We would like to thank the Universities of Vienna and Zurich for funding the conference and the publication of this volume. Our thanks go to everyone who contributed a paper to the conference and to this volume, to Alan Lenzi, Jeffrey Stackert, and the editorial board of the Ancient Near East Monographs for the inclusion of this volume in this series, and to Nicole Tilford and the SBL Press staff for their excellent editorial work. Special thanks are due to Jeanine Lefèvre, Nina Beerli, Christian Sichera, and Sarah Herzog for their help in the preparation of the manuscript.