Gastvortrag Fabio Porzia
Lecture title:
Phoenicians in Israel/Palestine: The Question of the Divine Couple
As well as studying the specific attributes and the evolution of this iconography, the talk will address its association in cultic contexts with another figurine: the pregnant woman. By providing new arguments to identify the bearded man and the pregnant woman as (mainly) divine images, which are at the same time associated and distinct, it will be stressed that the idea of a divine couple in an “open relationship” is of pivotal importance in understanding the organisation of ancient polytheisms.
Fabio Porzia is Researcher at the Institute of Heritage Science of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). He is historian (of religion\s in particular) and philologist of the Late Bronze and Persian Period Levant. Besides the historical-critic exegesis of the Hebrew Bible and the archaeology and epigraphy of the kingdoms of Israel and Juda, he focusses on the religious and ethnic dynamics on a regional scale, including the Phoenician, Aramaic, Philistine, and Transjordanian worlds.
You are cordially invited!