Critical Approaches to Ancient Near East Art

The problem with a formerly obscure art subject becoming popular is the number of times experts are called upon to verify the status of artifacts. In the past few years this has been especially true of objects of ancient Near Eastern art, and this book helps to sort the real from the "hopeful" artifacts. The volume begins by defining the field, narrowing down the field of possible forgeries, and the centers on technologies and practices of artistic production, for example, through theories of Cypriot art through seal carving. The volume goes on to examine combinations of text and images (Assurbanioal's reliefs), social identities in such artifacts as terra-cotta figurines in Hellenistic Babylonian, religion/ritual and politics it terms of godlike kings in Mesopotamia, and making and defying space, as in Assyrian landscapes seen as ritual. Annotation c2014 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Brian A. Brown, University of California, Berkeley, USA;
Marian H. Feldman, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.