brilliant advice for comics creators, too (except that we don’t have agents)

45. Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism: the Early Period
46. Catherine Hester, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine
48. Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, Mani's Pictures: The Didactic Images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China

42. Mira Balberg, Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature
43. Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender
44. Dayna Kailee's, City of Demons: Violence, Ritual, and Christian Power in Late Antiquity

#InternationalWomensDay

Four photographs of four sculptures - described in alt text under each image. 3 date from 1st to 6th centuries CE - Jordan, Italy, Japan. One a textile sculpture from the 21st century.

Aren't you JUST a TINY bit disappointed... 🤣

How we look at the ancient Jewish and other pasts tells us much about how we MAKE our PRESENT. Ancient demons and monsters aren't just fun and cool (they're also that)! How they land in the present day and who they resonate for is very revealing.

Because YES the racist visual regime that praises the convention called "realism" is the same forensic gaze that presumes to judge bodies and assign their gender in binary ways. Racism and cisnormative ways of looking & classifying "non-normative" bodies.

The "crude" vs "realist" false binary still prevails in contemporary art historical scholarship on antiquity albeit sometimes couched in other language. See my book on how it's used to devalue / misgender images of Lilith and other demons in Babylonian incantation bowls.

Which is why women use men's loos in gender segregated toilet situations