Visions of Gods and Monsters

Since the late nineteenth century, scholars in biblical and ancient Middle Eastern studies have observed the existence of written texts that describe mythological battles between gods and their monstrous antagonists. Previous studies have attempted to argue the social positions and significance of such divine-combat myths primarily from these written texts. Visions of God and Monsters builds a robust alternative model of ancient sociological analysis that centers visual culture and new artifactual data. In this book, Madadh Richey explores the social contexts and functions of divine-combat images in the visual culture of Mesopotamia and the Levant during the Iron Age (ca. 1175–550 BCE). Each chapter of the book focuses on a specific context or motif in which an anthropomorphic divine figure engages in combat with a monstrous opponent. The book thus develops situated analyses of these artifacts via visual culture theories of manufacture, display, and modes of seeing, as well as the particular strains of cultural theory most relevant to interpretation of god- and monster-representation, including gender, queer, animal, and monster theories.