About the lecture
While eye-paints are mentioned sparingly in the Hebrew Bible (2 Kgs 9:30; Ezek 23:40; Jer 4:30; Isa 3:16), they have garnered significant attention in studies on the history and social anthropology of cosmetics. These studies often portray eye-paints as tools for women's beautification and seduction. However, a different narrative emerges from both artefactual and comparative evidence across the ancient Near East and the eastern Mediterranean. This presentation, using Jer 4:30 as a case study, will delve into the various associations eye-paints carry, including death, the underworld, mourning, return to life, fertility, and protection.
About Dr. Rees
Susannah Rees completed her doctoral thesis, ‘Cosmetics in the Hebrew Bible’, at King’s College London. Her research focuses on the role that cosmetics play in the construction and performance of identity in the ancient world. She uses anthropological models, ethnographic material, and archaeological data to illuminate the role of body adornment in the Hebrew Bible as well as the Ancient Near East more broadly.
Digital event - how to participate
The seminar will be held digitally. If you wish to attend a lecture, you need to register in advance.
A zoom link will be sent to you before the event.
You can download Zoom or use your browser: https://zoom.us/download
This lecture is part of the lecture series Ancient Adornment
Suggestions for further Reading
- Noegel, Scott B. 2016. “Scarlet and Harlots: Seeing Red in the Hebrew Bible.” HUCA 87: 1– 47.
- Quick, Laura. 2021. Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Especially pp.151–81.
- Rees, Susannah. 2022. “‘Women Rule Over Them’: Dressing for an Inverted World in Isaiah 3” in Dress Hermeneutics and the Hebrew Bible: “Let Your Garments Always Be Bright.” Edited by Antonios Finitsis, London: T&T Clark, 165-186.
- Rees, Susannah. 2021. “The נזם and Navigating Power Structures.” Biblical Interpretation, 31(1), 1-24.
- Stavrakopoulou, Francesca. 2013. “Making Bodies: On Body Modification and Religious Materiality in the Hebrew Bible.” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 2: 532–53.
- Wasserman, Nathan. 2015. “Piercing the Eyes: An Old Babylonian Love Incantation and the Preparation of Kohl.” Bibliotheca Orientalis 72: 601–12.
About the lecture series
A Digital Lecture Series on strategies of body adornment in ancient Mediterranean cultures
With this lecture series, we wish to reflect on different kinds of body adornment such as jewellery, headdresses, seals, staffs, weapons, tattoos, and cosmetics. It is our aim to investigate aesthetics and strategies of adorning bodies in ancient Mediterranean cultures, and to explore how body adornment relates 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 body adornment as broadly as possible and therefore we encourage our speakers to consider this topic from a multi-sensorial perspective and to give thought to both touch, smell, taste, hearing and vision.
Organizers
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.
Ancient Adornment Programme - Fall 2024
- Friday September 13 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Uroš Matić: “Dress, Adornment and Coloniality of Gender and Desire in New Kingdom Egypt and Nubia”
- Friday September 27 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Sarah Hollaender: “Notorious Cross-Dressers? (Re)styling Hercules and Omphale in Roman Antiquity”
- Friday October 11 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Bruno Biermann: “Levantine Seals between the Material, Sensory, and the Social: Archaeological, Iconographic, and Exegetical Perspectives on Beauty, Power, and Dress”
- Friday November 1 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Susannah Rees: “Eye-paints in the Hebrew Bible: Looking for Meaning”
- Friday November 15 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Melanie Wasmuth: “Blossoms for eternity – floral jewellery in ancient Egypt”
- Friday December 6 at 3pm (Oslo): Dr. Laurence Darsigny-Trépanier and Dr. Anne Létourneau: “Bejeweled Biblical Animals: Constructing Gender with Non-Human Bling”