Understanding the Woman in the Window

The image of the “woman in the window” conjures many different connotations, from Juliet’s enchanting exchange with Romeo to prostitutes in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. The ancient world also paired women and windows in iconography and literature. A particularly well-known example appears in Levantine and Near Eastern ivories.1 Around 80 ivory objects featuring a woman peering from a window have been found at sites across the ancient Near East, including Samaria, Arslan Tash, Khorsabad, and Nimrud. Dating from the ninth and eighth centuries BCE and made from elephant tusks, the carvings are generally quite small (around 4 inches tall and […]