The Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-first Century

The Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-first Century
Author: Jerrold S. Cooper
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Total Pages: 438
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780931464966

Sixteen essays from the Albright conference held at the Johns Hopkins University charting the course of ancient Near Eastern studies in the twenty-first century. This landmark volume is essential reading for both students and scholars.

Dictionary of the Ancient Near East

Dictionary of the Ancient Near East
Author: Piotr Bienkowski
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2010-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780812221152

An authoritative guide to the whole of the cradle of civilization.

A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art

A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art
Author: Ann C. Gunter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 704
Release: 2018-11-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1118301250

Provides a broad view of the history and current state of scholarship on the art of the ancient Near East This book covers the aesthetic traditions of Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia, and the Levant, from Neolithic times to the end of the Achaemenid Persian Empire around 330 BCE. It describes and examines the field from a variety of critical perspectives: across approaches and interpretive frameworks, key explanatory concepts, materials and selected media and formats, and zones of interaction. This important work also addresses both traditional and emerging categories of material, intellectual perspectives, and research priorities. The book covers geography and chronology, context and setting, medium and scale, while acknowledging the diversity of regional and cultural traditions and the uneven survival of evidence. Part One of the book considers the methodologies and approaches that the field has drawn on and refined. Part Two addresses terms and concepts critical to understanding the subjects and formal characteristics of the Near Eastern material record, including the intellectual frameworks within which monuments have been approached and interpreted. Part Three surveys the field’s most distinctive and characteristic genres, with special reference to Mesopotamian art and architecture. Part Four considers involvement with artistic traditions across a broader reach, examining connections with Egypt, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean. And finally, Part Five addresses intersections with the closely allied discipline of archaeology and the institutional stewardship of cultural heritage in the modern Middle East. Told from multiple perspectives, A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art is an enlightening, must-have book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of ancient Near East art and Near East history as well as those interested in history and art history.

Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition

Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition
Author: Graham Speake
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1941
Release: 2021-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135942064

Hellenism is the living culture of the Greek-speaking peoples and has a continuing history of more than 3,500 years. The Encyclopedia of Greece and the HellenicTradition contains approximately 900 entries devoted to people, places, periods, events, and themes, examining every aspect of that culture from the Bronze Age to the present day. The focus throughout is on the Greeks themselves, and the continuities within their own cultural tradition. Language and religion are perhaps the most obvious vehicles of continuity; but there have been many others--law, taxation, gardens, music, magic, education, shipping, and countless other elements have all played their part in maintaining this unique culture. Today, Greek arts have blossomed again; Greece has taken its place in the European Union; Greeks control a substantial proportion of the world's merchant marine; and Greek communities in the United States, Australia, and South Africa have carried the Hellenic tradition throughout the world. This is the first reference work to embrace all aspects of that tradition in every period of its existence.

Ivory, Bone, and Related Wood Finds

Ivory, Bone, and Related Wood Finds
Author: Wilma Stern
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2007-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047421167

Hundreds of richly decorated ivory and bone fragments from furniture and parts from at least three crossed-leg chairs, survived under seawater in an apsidal room at Kenchreai, the Eastern port of ancient Corinth. These excavated remains include fragments of an incised bone panel with a scene of an emperor and attendants, a thiasos, bucolic and hunt scenes, seated philosophers, erotes, and a miniature ivory Corinthian order supporting a bone arcade decorated with erotes. Decorative moldings and large bone rings suggest that most of these belonged to a luxuriously decorated chest. Dating to the fourth century, these objects provide an important addition to our knowledge of the artistic production of late Roman Egypt and the working of ivory, bone, and wood.

The Assyrian Sacred Tree

The Assyrian Sacred Tree
Author: Mariana Giovino
Publisher: Saint-Paul
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2007
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9783525530283

Revised thesis (doctoral) - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2004.

Carving as Craft

Carving as Craft
Author: Archer St. Clair
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2003-08-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780801872617

From 1989 to 1994 more than fifteen hundred bone and ivory objects were excavated from the northeast slope of Rome's Palatine Hill. These remains constitute the largest such find in the western Mediterranean and the first traces of the actual working of ivory in Rome itself. In this original work, art historian Archer St. Clair explores the significance of these finds in understanding both the development of artisanship in Rome and the broader Greco-Roman cultural and artistic tradition to which they belong. Dating primarily from the first through the fifth century C.E., the carved objects include ornamentation for furniture and boxes in the form of plaques and framing strips, jewelry, dolls, a wide variety of pins, as well as smaller numbers of handles, needles, and other implements. Also present at the site was extensive evidence of a bone and ivory workshop, including prepared blanks and waste fragments that provide valuable evidence for artisanal practices in both materials. This volume includes a representative catalog of 648 objects from Palatine East, extensively illustrated with photographs and detailed drawings. Four chapters of introductory material offer a comprehensive overview of the material properties of bone and ivory, the literary evidence, and wider context of their use in the ancient world, and the particular significance of the Palatine East site. While bone has often been treated simply as an inferior and less valuable alternative to ivory, St. Clair notes the close association in their use and elucidates a complex relationship between them. In doing so, she offers a detailed, contextual study of the uses, social perception, and distribution of the two materials, revealing a shared Mediterranean vocabulary of form and technique.

The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973

The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973
Author: Elspeth R.M. Dusinberre
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Museum
Total Pages: 760
Release: 2023-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 194905716X

This volume contains the excavation report for 12 cremation burials from the Phrygian site of Gordion in central Anatolia. These tombs, dating from the later seventh century to the third quarter of the 6th century BCE, were excavated by The University Museum between 1950 and 1969, and by the German brothers Alfred and Gustav Korte in 1900. The processes for interment through construction of tumulus and cremation procedure are carefully detailed, followed by an analysis of associated finds. Two tumuli of the Hellenistic period, both covering stone chambers with inhumation burials within, are included in an appendix. Further appendices discuss other specific materials excavated from the cremation burials. A discussion of the contemporary inhumation and cremation tumulus burials at Gordion in the Phrygian period, highlighting their continuities and significant differences, forms part of the conclusion, as does discussion of sociocultural developments at Gordion between ca. 650-525 BCE as illuminated by the mortuary remains. The tumuli afford insights into questions related to gender, religion, adult/child identity, trade, social status, ethnicity, transcultural affiliations, ceramic developments, jewelry manufacture, high-status artifact display (including ivory), feasting behaviors, animal sacrifice, hero cult, and widespread "killing" of artifacts associated with the cremation burials. This entirely new publication of Gordion's tumuli makes available at last the elite cremation burials of the later Middle and early Late Phrygian (Achaemenid) periods excavated by The University Museum. By including the two Korte tumuli, it provides a complete assemblage of the cremation tumuli at Gordion. They afford remarkable new insights into life, death, and an elaborate system of value at Gordion during this most turbulent century.

Ivory, Bone, and Related Wood Finds

Ivory, Bone, and Related Wood Finds
Author: Wilma Olch Stern
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 457
Release: 1976
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9004158189

Parts of crossed-leg chairs and richly decorated fragments of bone and ivory excavated at Kenchreai, the Eastern port of Corinth, include scenes of an emperor and a miniature ivory Corinthian arcade that decorated luxurious furniture produced in late Roman Egypt.