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Illustrated compendium with some discussion
Excerpted from the author's Ph.D. dissertation, this paper examines the role of ritual activity in the making of ancient Assyrian stelae and rock reliefs, carved in the process of military expansion. These elusive monuments are shown to have been cumulative moments of transformation, whereby the royal body fuses with an ancestral land.
KASKAL 15, 243-253, 2015
Neo-Assyrian letters are a broad and interesting corpus of data to investigate how ancient Assyrians dealt with the manufacture of statues, the shaping of royal and divine effigies, and the final arrangement of sculptures. This paper aims to analyse the ritual and practical aspects of the making of images in the Neo-Assyrian period with reference to this corpus of letters, which reveals how Assyrian kings, officials and sculptors worked together for this purpose. It explores the role of the personnel involved, the process of the creation , and the final display of statues. Based on the interplay of texts and archaeological data, the study reveals the intense activity of making statues of gods and kings in Assyria, with the administration supervising both projects for new statues and the maintenance of already existing ones.
The modern engagement of ‘landscape’ as a concept and reality is historically constituted; nevertheless, it appears to be especially relevant to the study of the ancient Assyrians, who were hearty conquerors of an imperial realm. This paper outlines the history of scholarship on the Neo-Assyrian landscape, including critical perspectives on the concept’s evolution. The ancients themselves did not use an all-encompassing term such as ‘landscape’, but rather, described individual features of the lands they encountered or conquered, both natural and man-made. These records are found in royal texts as well as in monumental images, and reflect, to varying degrees, the economic, social, political, and symbolic significance of the land and its relationship to Assyrian identity. With a wealth of new archaeological, art historical, and textual material constantly emerging, however, this paper asks what types of data might be brought to bear on the topic, as well as what theoretical frameworks or methodological concerns might guide our interpretations. Traditional aesthetics-based and unproblematized historical approaches to palace culture are shown to be enhanced or potentially superseded by multi-level research strategies that include a more in-depth and interpretive reading of Assyrian visual and textual sources, the incorporation of archaeological survey discoveries, and the inclusion of data from lesser-known commemorative sites in outlying territories. Ultimately, the concept of the Assyrian landscape is shown to generate a number of alternative readings and trajectories.
Monographs on the Ancient Near East (MANES), 1998
Discusses the different methods of pictorial arrangements that were utilized for Neo-Assyrian palace wall reliefs. Illustrated with drawings and photographs of artworks.
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
Ancient Assyrian art and architecture has been the subject of scholarly interest, analysis, and debate since the mid-19th century when archaeological excavations began to reveal physical evidence of this ancient culture. Initially viewed as historical sources for illuminating the world of the Hebrew Bible, late-20th- and early-21st-century work has utilized current art historical theory to explore multiple levels of meaning expressed in the layout of ancient buildings, as well as through the form of objects and their associated visual imagery. It is clear that Assyrian art and architecture is inseparable from ancient Mesopotamian studies in general. Both the cultural background of earlier periods in northern Mesopotamia and the parallel history of Assyria’s southern and western neighbors, Babylonia and Syria, are intimately linked and highly relevant to Assyrian cultural practices of all kinds. The Oxford Bibliographies article “Babylonian Art and Architecture” is essential reading ...
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