Estetica - medium - comunicazione. Appunti per una scienza delle immagini

The role of images for the comprehension of symbolic thought and communication system in ancient societies and cultures has been recently re-evaluated in a wide range of new studies dealing with the iconic turn, that is the centrality of the production and use of images to convey meanings, information and emotions. Within the field of ancient Near Eastern studies, images have been largely analysed as the product of royal ideology or the manifestation of religious thought, actually with a sometimes too rigid schematism of interpretation and evaluation. In this contribution, some hints for new formulation and analysis of images and ancient iconography in the ancient Near East will be presented and discussed.