Art Deemed Religious
“Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way.”1
The last chapter discussed the initial absence, and eventual development, of buildings deemed religious in communities of worship centered around Ahura Mazda and YHWH. Along with the lack of temples dedicated to their worship, there appears to be strong scholarly consensus that these deities were generally not associated with any specific imagery or iconography. Although forms of art and specific images have come to be identified with the modern religious of Judaism and Zoroastrianism, these appear, like synagogues and fire temples, to be later developments that coincide with other changes in the religions of YHWH and Ahura Mazda. Despite an apparently universal human propensity to create images, the attestations of art connected to these religions appear relatively late in their respective histories. This chapter will suggest that the paucity of autochthonous art deemed religious in these religions deemed monotheistic can be explained by their respective mobile pastoralist social contexts and development in agriculturally marginal landscapes.
1 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, A Pelican Original (London: British Broadcasting Corp., 1977), 16.