Emma de Koning

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

My PhD project deals with the creation, distribution, and use of childbirth imagery on Cyprus. Explicit representations of both pregnancy and birth are highly unusual across the ancient Mediterranean, but the island of Cyprus offers an extraordinarily rich corpus of such images. The oldest of them date to the Chalcolithic period, but they continue to be produced – in different groups, styles, and circumstances – until the Hellenistic era. To date, however, no comprehensive overview of these figurines or their contexts exists, and they are very unevenly studied. While various subgroups of this corpus have played significant roles in discussions about social relations on Chalcolithic Cyprus or about the Phoenician influence on Cypro-Archaic coroplastic production, they have received little attention specifically as images of birth. Starting from a theoretical perspective based in concepts of materiality and object agency, my project aims, first, to compile these scattered figurines into a single, diachronic overview; and, second, to analyse not only their iconography and its development, but especially also the contexts in which they were used, the concepts and ideas they embody, and their relationship to other representations of womanhood and motherhood.

 

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