Human culture began to create visual expressions in the form of images around 20,000 years ago, followed long after that by the appearance of writing ca. 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. But contrary to the present day, ancient civilizations did not adhere to a strict differentiation between the two modes of visual expressions: image and text, thus creating complex visual languages ranging between the image and the word. This class will explore imagery and text as they were used to convey information and ideology in Egypt and other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Amongst other, the explored subjects will include Mesopotamian cuneiform writing, Egyptian hieroglyphs, monumental reliefs of Assyria and Egypt, ivories of Samaria and Nimrud and royal emblems of Israel and Judah. A survey of the archaeology and history of the Ancient Near East and Egypt will also be explored in order to place ancient writing within its wider context. Study of these ancient symbolic systems will enable a better understanding of the transformations that occurred in the approaches to the word/image dichotomy in modern art and in current digital media.