Two topics of current critical interest, agency and materiality, are here explored in the context of their intersection with the divine. Specific case studies, emphasizing the ancient Near East but including treatments also of the European Middle Ages and ancient Greece, elucidate the nature and implications of this intersection: What is the relationship between the divine and the particular matter or physical form in which it is materially represented or mentally visualized? How do sacral or divine "things" act, and what is the source and nature of their agency? How might we productively define and think about anthropomorphism in relation to the divine? What is the relationship between the mental and the material image, and between the categories of object and image, image and likeness, and likeness and representation? Drawing on a broad range of written and pictorial sources, this volume is a novel contribution to the contemporary discourse on the functioning and communicative potential of the material and materialized divine as it is developing in the fields of anthropology, art history, and the history and cognitive science of religion.

The Materiality of Divine Agency (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER), 8)

Arts & Photography

Pongratz-Leisten, Beate

Sonik, Karen

History & Criticism

de Gruyter

Religion and Ideology in Assyria (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER), 6)

Addressing the relationship between religion and ideology, and drawing on a range of literary, ritual, and visual sources, this book reconstructs the cultural discourse of Assyria from the third through the first millennium BCE. Ideology is delineated here as a subdiscourse of religion rather than as an independent category, anchoring it firmly within the religious world view. Tracing Assur's cultural interaction with the south on the one hand, and with the Syro-Anatolian horizon on the other, this volume articulates a ""northern"" cultural discourse that, even while interacting with southern Mesopotamian tradition, managed to maintain its own identity. It also follows the development of tropes and iconic images from the first city state of Uruk and their mouvance between myth, image, and royal inscription, historiography and myth, and myth and ritual, suggesting that, with the help of scholars, key royal figures were responsible for introducing new directions for the ideological discourse and for promoting new forms of historiography.

Walter de Gruyter

Addressing the relationship between religion and ideology, and drawing on a range of literary, ritual, and visual sources, this book reconstructs the cultural discourse of Assyria from the third through the first millennium BCE. Ideology is delineated here as a subdiscourse of religion rather than as an independent category, anchoring it firmly within the religious world view. Tracing Assur's cultural interaction with the south on the one hand, and with the Syro-Anatolian horizon on the other, this volume articulates a "northern" cultural discourse that, even while interacting with southern Mesopotamian tradition, managed to maintain its own identity. It also follows the development of tropes and iconic images from the first city state of Uruk and their mouvance between myth, image, and royal inscription, historiography and myth, and myth and ritual, suggesting that, with the help of scholars, key royal figures were responsible for introducing new directions for the ideological discourse and for promoting new forms of historiography.

This work investigates the various methods by which king and god exchanged information: how the king learned the divine will and how he reported on his activities in the execution of that will to the god. The topics investigated include astronomical omens, prophecy, dreams, hepatoscopy, and letters to (and from) the gods as well as other literary forms of communication between the king and the gods.

Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien: Forman der Kommunikation zwischen Gott und Konig im 2 und 1. Jahrtausend v.Chr. (State Archives of Assyria Studies)

History

Ancient Civilizations

Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project

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Books by Pongratz-Leisten, Beate

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pongratz-Leisten, Beate. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Materiality of Divine Agency (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER), 8)

Religion and Ideology in Assyria (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER), 6)

Religion and Ideology in Assyria (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER), 6)

Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien: Forman der Kommunikation zwischen Gott und Konig im 2 und 1. Jahrtausend v.Chr. (State Archives of Assyria Studies)