ABSTRACT
The term ‘figurative language’ lends itself to two quite disparate interpretations, especially in reference to the cultures of the ancient Near East. It is mostly understood as a literary mode which uses vivid imagery as a means of ‘concretising’ matters of intellectual comprehension rather than visual impressions. But by ‘figurative language’ one could also describe a specific genre of Ancient Near Eastern art which may be defined as ‘narration in pictures’. It is best illustrated by the technique of ‘registers’ which prevails in Egyptian or Mesopotamian pictorial or sculptural representations: the dynamism of consecutive events or consecutive stages in one event, is captured in a succession of ‘stills,’ comparable to a running series of slides or a filmstrip.1
