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Communication dans un congrès Année : 2019

Relating text and image in Sasanian seals: the ruwān wēn formula and the iconography of Dēn

Résumé

This paper proposes to examine the methodological problems of approaching the relationship between text and the image in Sasanian seals. The particular focus will be the case of seal legends containing variants of the ruwān wēn – “see the soul” – formula and seal images featuring (possible) representations of the Dēn, the anthropomorphic goddess who embodies one’s actions and meets the ruwān – “immortal soul” – on the third morning after death. Particularly revealing is seal BM BB 1, where the ruwān wēn formula is associated with a portrayal of the Dēn (Grenet 2013). The large corpus of seals at our disposal from the Sasanian period offers a relatively repetitive typology of set imagery, seal-shapes and formulaic legends, yet the one does not obviously correspond to the other, and it is often difficult to determine the relationship between the inscription and the image on a given seal. Thus, the eleven occurrences of formulae relating to the ruwān all present different iconographic types, from a scorpion, to a man riding a horse, to the god Māh. Still, cases of wordplay on the divine entity represented on a seal and the engraved theophoric name of the owner of the seal have been put forward, suggesting a connection between the two. It is also by drawing a link between the female figure on seal MOT 6.1 and its inscription, kunišn ī frāzrōn weh—“the action that advances is good”—that the study of the iconography of Dēn in Sasanian art began, based on the correspondence between kunišn – “action” – and the Dēn in Zoroastrian texts (Gnoli 1993). Beyond seals, this presentation will be an opportunity to think more widely about the methodological problems of explaining images by their accompanying text in Sasanian art.
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halshs-03943256, version 1 (17-01-2023)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-03943256 , version 1

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Olivia Ramble. Relating text and image in Sasanian seals: the ruwān wēn formula and the iconography of Dēn. Etudier l’image dans l’Orient ancien de l’âge du Bronze aux Sassanides, Delphine Poinsot; Margaux Spruyt, May 2019, Paris Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA, Paris), France. ⟨halshs-03943256⟩
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