Emma de Koning

A ‘Pregnant’ Image: The Resonance of Childbirth Iconography and Ritual in the Societies of the Ancient Mediterranean

During my studies, I developed an interest in ancient religion as a place where private concerns and public activities come together, especially in the case of healing cults. This combines quite naturally with my preoccupation with women, their place in society, and their role in history to form my PhD project, which studies childbirth symbolism in the ancient Aegean. Starting from a remarkable but understudied corpus of pregnant and parturient figurines from Cyprus, Crete, and the Cyclades – spanning the period between Chalcolithic and Hellenistic times – my project aims to reconstruct the symbolic ‘language’ that was used in ritual contexts and that combined images of childbirth and other symbols. It then becomes possible to examine how these figurines and rituals acted as sources of resonance within and outside the sanctuary, and how this connected to women’s social roles. In doing so, the project aims to add depth to the narratives of ancient women’s lives and to examine the use of childbirth as a powerful symbol.

 

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