Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East

This book investigates the practice of constructing cities in the ancient Near East, bringing together architecture and cultural history.

Ömür Harman?ah (Author)

9781107533745, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 March 2015

372 pages, 51 b/w illus. 9 maps
25.9 x 17.8 x 2 cm, 0.93 kg

'This book takes a fresh approach to some of the issues addressed, deeply embedded in theoretical considerations from recent general archaeological and anthropological literature.' Landscape History

This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (c.1200–850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

1. Introduction
2. Landscapes of change: cities, politics, and memory
3. The land of Aššur: the making of Assyrian landscapes
4. City and the festival: monuments, urban space, and spatial narratives
5. Upright stones: architectural technologies and the poetics of urban space
6. Cities, place, and desire.

Subject Areas: Prehistoric archaeology [HDDA], Archaeology [HD], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1], History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE [ACG]