In “Aesthetics and Religion” Richard Viladesau writes “Virtually all religions contain some degree of practice of religious aesthetics—that is, the making of judgments about perception, beauty, feeling, the arts, and the sensible elements in knowledge and communication, insofar as they relate to God, revelation, morality, community, or sacred values.”¹ Although it appears that no concretely identifiable images of YHWH or Ahura Mazda appear in evidence prior to the Common Era, it is highly unlikely that images of YHWH and Ahura Mazda were never made. To the contrary, it is very reasonable to assume that a variety of objects depicting these deities have been or will be created. It is significant that not a single one of these images, however, has been claimed by a community that would spread it along with the religion across time and space to survive in the modern world. It is difficult to deny the role of agriculturally marginal landscapes and subsequent mobile pastoralist social contexts on the diminished potential for expressions of this building block. Without regular access to sites, resources, and motivating pressures, the production of art deemed religious on the scale of those that appear within settled agriculturalist societies across the ancient Near East seems imprudent and hardly environmentally pragmatic. It is possible that the societies that gave rise to the respective religions of Ahura Mazda and YHWH created art, but on such small and temporary scales that no image survived the processes of cultural evolution to survive in association with one of these deities. What effect might this have had on the development of these religions? 

In Ways of Seeing, Berger explores the impact of technology on perceptions and experiences of art in the modern world. He writes “The uniqueness of every painting was once part of the uniqueness of the place where it resided. Sometimes the painting was transportable. But it could never be seen in two places at the same time. When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings.”² Berger’s observation points to the importance of physical setting to intention of meaning as well as the experience of art. Although he is clearly focused on paintings (particularly those of the European Renaissance and later), Berger’s insight seems applicable to the art produced (or assimilated) in mobile pastoralist societies: in order to survive, symbols may need to resist change, multiplication, or fragmentation. Evidence for methods of producing (and reproducing) images as what might be called “mobile art” found throughout the ancient Near East suggest that this need is not necessarily limited to mobile pastoralist social contexts. Studies of coinage, for instance, suggest that types of reproducible, mobile art serve to (re-)enforce meaning in ways that seem to resist such change and fragmentation. The dominance of the image of a fire-in-a-holder on Sasanian coins appears to be intentionally designed to brand the rulers in a way that reflects the scenes sculpted into immobile monumental art.³ Similarly, in the 21^stcentury businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations invest incredible amounts of money into advertising, branding, and public relations to manage the meanings associated with their names in the societies in which they function. The power of mobile art deemed religious to brand meaning is leveraged by adherents of various religions around the world: clothing, jewelry, and tattoos offer opportunities to communicate one’s religious beliefs, affiliations, and identities in society.  

In Carnal Knowing, Margaret Miles explores visual strategies used to advertise, educate, and ultimately condition meaning regarding the figure of “woman” in medieval European Christianity.⁴ She writes, “If people are to be attracted to certain values, attitudes, and explanatory myths, a variety of methods and media must be employed. Certainly, language plays a large role; stories, admonition, debate and discussion—all verbal exchanges—define, express, and extend common interests. But no society in the Christian West neglected the powerful medium of religious images; even cultures that practiced and advocated iconoclasm proscribed only certain kinds of images.”⁵ Miles’ comments highlight the importance of understanding art deemed religious as visual rhetoric. The apparent lack of images depicting YHWH or Ahura Mazda stands out against the religious backdrop of the ancient Near East where the abundance of divine images communicates a diversity of religious thoughts. Consider one potential narrative produced (or reflected) by this absence in the figuration of these deities: the power and natures of YHWH and Ahura Mazda cannot be captured by the limited (and reductive) means of visual representation. Recall Boyce’s comment that the “vastness of the steppes encouraged the Indo-Iranians to conceive their gods as cosmic, not local, divinities.”⁶ Like the potentially limiting effects that localization-by-temple may have had on deities in religions deemed polytheistic, it seems reasonable to assume that visual representations, anthropomorphic or not, are less capacious than the imaginations of adherents. It is possible that diminished potential for buildings deemed religious and permanent public art deemed religious religions resulting from mobile pastoralist social and agriculturally marginal environmental contexts shaped the scale on which YHWH and Ahura Mazda were conceived in these religions deemed monotheistic.