Bilder als Quellen/Images as Sources: Studies on Ancient Near Eastern Artefacts and the Bible Inspired by the Work of Othmar Keel.

• Author: Brown, Brian
• Position: Book review

Bilder als Quellen/Images as Sources: Studies on Ancient Near Eastern Artefacts and the Bible Inspired by the Work of Othmar Keel. Edited by SUSANNE BICKEL, SILVIA SCHROER, RENE SCHURTE, and CHRISTOPH UEHLINGER. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, special volume. Freiburg: ACADEMIC PRESS, 2007. Pp. xx + 560, plates. FS 159.

The series Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis (OBO) continues with this offering, a Festschrift in honor of the art historian Othmar Keel. This volume brings together twenty-six articles dealing with the art history and literature of the ancient Near East, areas to which Keel has made numerous contributions over the past five decades. The authors examine a wide range of topics, but the focus is on questions that Keel himself has pursued, such as religious practice and belief, the role and representation of women, and intercultural connections, specifically within and involving the "Biblical world."

The resulting book is divided into four sections, entitled Artefacts. Analyses, Interpretations, and Horizons. This division is somewhat arbitrary--many of the articles in "Artefacts" could be included in "Interpretations" or "Analyses," while Stern's article (pp. 321-28), for example, included within "Analyses," is more of a catalogue. In fact, most of the contributions use an object or objects as the basis for discussion of larger issues. A few are more limited in scope: several examine biblical passages and refer very little, if at all, to archaeological finds (Schurte, Schipper, and Schenker), while some "catalogue" entries (those of Stern, Staubli, Munger, and Cornelius) are so specialized that they will appeal primarily to other specialists.

The individual contributions display a good deal of variation in quality. The most successful are those tackling a broad question and/or using both archaeological and textual data. The standouts in this respect are Strawn and LeMon ("Psalm 150:6 in Light of Ancient Near Eastern Iconography"), Ben-Tor ("Scarabs of Middle Bronze Age Rulers of Byblos"). Sass ("The Syro-Hittite Roots of the South Arabian Table Scene"). Eggler and Uehlinger ("Ein bemerkenswertes Siegel aus dem perserzeitlichen Amman"), Bickel ("Zur Ikonographie der Amarnazeit"), Oman ("The Revadim Plaque Type"), Kaelin ("'Agypten als Modell im I. Jt. v. Chr."), and Schenker ("Das Paradox des israelitischen Monotheismus"), all of which contribute to large-scale problems through small-scale analysis of individual objects (or, in...