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Project

De sfinx en verwante mengwezens: Een motief van de politiek-religieuze legitimatie in de dynamische tijd van de culturele veranderingen tijdens de Late Bronstijd en de Vroege IJzertijd in het oostelijke Middellandse Zeegebied

Composite creatures are common in the Ancient Near East (Egypt, Syro-Mesopotamia and the Levant, Anatolia and the Aegean).  Although the sphinx is only one of them, it is a most intruiging one.  It appears in very diverse contexts, e.g. divine, fantastical, royal, naturalistic, and on very diverse media, e.g. on seals and amulets, on furniture, textile and ceramics, on murals, as monument and figurine.  Several monographs have been published about the sphinx before (e.g. Roeder 1909, Dessenne 1957, Demisch 1977, Winkler-Horacek (ed.) 2011), but they all focussed either on a listing of types or stylistic characteristics, or on the evolution or distribution of the motif throughout the ages.  The aim of this thesis is to define the different meanings and functions the sphinx could have, and epecially, how these meanings and functions related to each other.  


 











 

 

Date:1 Oct 2010 →  24 Aug 2018
Keywords:Iconography, Sphinx
Disciplines:Archaeology, Theory and methodology of archaeology, Other history and archaeology, History
Project type:PhD project