Multimodal Artefact Analysis in Ancient Studies

This volume focuses on the use of multimodal communication strategies in ancient Egypt and Western Asia. It comprises thoroughly revised contributions from an international conference held at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich in 2021. It brings together archaeologists, Assyriologists, and Egyptologists, alongside scholars from contemporary media studies and visual linguistics. The concept of multimodality serves as a conceptual anchor, enabling insights into the relationships between semiotic codes, sensory modalities, and cognitive processes – past and present. Such a comparative perspective requires a reflection on terminological and theoretical-methodological issues. Several contributions acknowledge the significance of social semiotics in attaining this objective, while others explore sensory experiences and cognitive processes of perception. Detailed case studies investigate a wide range of image- and text-bearing artifacts from ancient Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria, emphasizing the deliberate interplay between their visual, verbal, auditory, and tactile aspects. The volume adds a longue durée perspective to recent advances in multimodality studies and provides a fresh and promising angle for future inquiries into ancient material cultures.