Sunday, January 25, 2015

Ancient selfies?

ASOR BLOG: Graffiti—the ‘Selfies’ of the Ancient Near East? Dr. Karen B. Stern, known to PaleoJudaica readers for averring that Aramaic is "the little black dress of Semitic languages," is back with more on her work on ancient graffiti.
But ancient and medieval people were also deeply concerned with their self-documentation, self-representation and self-promotion. They, too, registered their presence at tourist destinations, participation in life events, and positions amidst friends and peers. In place of iPhones and Facebook, they took styluses, nails, and paint to copy words and images to stone and plaster to broadcast their sentiments and images to the world. Their ‘selfies’ were graffiti.
Earlier posts dealing with Dr. Stern's work are here, here (the source of the quote above), and here.