ORCID
James W. Watts: 0000-0002-4872-4986
Document Type
Article
Date
2012
Keywords
literacy, scribes, scholars, authority, legitimacy, iconic books, monuments
Language
English
Disciplines
Near Eastern Languages and Societies | Reading and Language | Religion
Description/Abstract
This essay probes the origins of iconic textuality in the ancient Near East, informed by post-colonial perspectives on iconic texts. The surviving art and texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibit at least four forms of iconic textuality: monumental inscriptions, portraits of scribes, displays and manipulations of ritual texts, and beliefs in heavenly texts. The spread of literacy did not displace the social prestige of scribal expertise that was established in antiquity. The every-growing number and complexity of texts accounts for the continuing cultural authority of scholarly expertise. The tension between expert and non-specialist uses of texts, however, explains scholarship’s avoidance of the subject of iconic books and texts while drawing constant attention to their semantic interpretation instead.
Recommended Citation
Watts, James W. "Ancient Iconic Texts and Scholarly Expertise." Pre-print version for archival repository. First published in Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 6 (2010/ 2012), 331-344. Reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts (ed. J. W. Watts; London: Equinox, 2013), 407-418.
Source
local input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Included in
Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Religion Commons
Additional Information
First published in Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 6 (2010/ 2012), 331-344. Reprinted in Iconic Books and Texts (ed. J. W. Watts; London: Equinox, 2013), 407-418.