About the lecture
In several biblical texts, the city personified as God’s wife is treated to a beauty regime, including being dressed in various items of dress and adornment. These processes recall procedures appropriate for a cultic statue in the ancient Near East, and in fact God’s bride subsequently uses some of the items of dress and adornment that were gifted to her to worship divine images (Ezek 16:16-19; Hos 2:11-14). Beautification and adornment in these texts can therefore be understood as part of a process of divinization, connecting the woman to the divine sphere in order to make her into and mark her out as appropriate for marriage to God.
About Dr. Quick
Laura Quick is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in Theology and Religion at Worcester College. She has published widely on dress, adornment, and the body in biblical literature, and is currently researching the concepts of beauty and aesthetics in the Hebrew Bible and wider ancient Near East.
Digital event - how to participate
The seminar will be held digitally. If you wish to attend a lecture, you need to register in advance.
Register here!
A zoom link will be sent to you before the event. You can download Zoom or use your browser: https://zoom.us/download
Suggestions for further Reading
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Sonja Ammann, “The Clothing of Cult Statues and Biblical Polemics against Iconic Worship,” in Clothing and Nudity in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Christoph Berner et al. (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 255-268.
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Tawny Holm, “Nanay and Her Lover: An Aramaic Sacred Marriage Text from Egypt,”JNES
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A. Leo Oppenheim, “Golden Garments of the Gods,” JNES 8 (1949): 172-193.
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Laura Quick, Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
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Christopher Walker and Michael Dick, The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Mesopotamian Mīs Pî Ritual(Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2001).
About Ancient Attire
A Digital Lecture Series on Dress, Adornment and Vestimentary Codes in the Ancient Mediterranean World
The aim of this series is to investigate vestimentary codes in ancient cultures, and to explore how these concepts relate to gender, hierarchy and power.
Seven excellent international researchers, experts on the material cultures and texts of the ancient Mediterranean, will present a 30-minute lecture, followed by amble time for questions and discussion.
We are interested in mapping dress and adornment as broadly as possible and therefore we encourage our speakers to consider vestimentary codes from a multi-sensorial perspective and to give thought to both touch, smell, taste, hearing and vision.
Ancient Attire Programme - Fall 2022
- Friday August 26 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Rosalind Janssen: “Unpacking Tutankhamun’s Wardrobe”
- Friday September 16 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Laura Quick: “Divine Dress, Divinization and Dethronement in the Hebrew Bible”
- Friday October 21 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Søren Lorenzen: “The High Priest and his Glorious Camouflage”
- Friday November 11 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Mary Harlow: “Female Dress at Rome: Getting it Right”
- Friday December 2 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Agnès Garcia-Ventura and Dr. Mireia López-Bertran: “Dressed to sound? An approach to dress and attire of female musicians in Phoenician and Punic contexts”
- Friday December 16 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Salvatore Gaspa: “Dress, Adornment and the Material Language of Power: Royal Textiles in Assyria”
Organizer
The lecture series is organized by Professor Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme and hosted by The Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo and the Faculty’s research group Biblical Texts, Cultures and Receptions.