Middle Assyrian Seal Motifs from Tell Fekheriye (Syria)


Book Description

Despite ongoing interest in Middle Assyrian glyptic art, the publications of Middle Assyrian seals and seal impressions from excavated sites in the Near East are very rare. The book is the first to offer a comprehensive study on the seal corpus from an archaeological site historically located in the western territory of the Middle Assyrian state. The seal impressions and few original seals, which were found during the excavations in Tell Fekheriye (Syria), substantially add to our understanding of the iconographic repertory and the use of seals in the Middle Assyrian period. The corpus dates to the reigns of the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser I and Tukulti-Ninurta I in the 13th century B.C. It documents practices of governance and administration in the growing Middle Assyrian Empire, points to activities of high-ranking Assyrian officials and unfolds the pictorial reality of political and ideological intensions. While finding detailed information on unpublished materials, their archaeological contexts and interpretations, the reader is also invited to follow a discourse on art, state and society for which the Middle Assyrian seal motifs from Tell Fekheriye provide an excellent case study.




Values and Revaluations


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The Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Ceramic Sequence at Tell Fekheriye (Syria)


Book Description

The importance and primary role of the site of Tell Fekheriye (Syria) has always been emphasized in the research history of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. As known from excavations and written sources, the site was an important centre in the Mittani and the Middle Assyrian periods. However, a systematic study and analysis of the pottery has never been accomplished, although the material offers a local and regional perspective on the ceramic production of a Late Bronze Age urban centre. This book fills this gap, offering an insight into the pottery from the site. The material provides a crucial set of data from Northern Mesopotamia, shedding new light on the Late Bronze Age, and in the phase of power alternation between the Mittani Kingdom and the Middle Assyrian state. This work illustrates the chrono-typological changes in the ceramic assemblages and provides an analysis of the functions related to the ceramic vessels, in context with other findings (sealings). In the end, the analysis of ceramic material as a starting point leads the reader to the investigation of topics related to society and social behaviours, economy, and political assets and administration in this urban centre for roughly 300 years of its history.




Selves Engraved on Stone: Seals and Identity in the Ancient Near East, ca. 1415–1050 BCE


Book Description

Selves Engraved on Stone explores the ways in which multiple aspects of identity were constructed through the material, visual, and textual characteristics of personal seals from ancient Mesopotamia and Syria in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE.




Over the Mountains and Far Away: Studies in Near Eastern history and archaeology presented to Mirjo Salvini on the occasion of his 80th birthday


Book Description

This volume is a tribute to the career of Professor Mirjo Salvini on the occasion his 80th birthday, composed of 62 papers written by his colleagues and students. The majority of contributions deal with research in the fields of Urartian and Hittite Studies, the topics that attracted Prof. Salvini most during his long and fruitful career.




Middle Assyrian Seal Motifs from Tell Fekheriye (Syria)


Book Description

The series is dedicated to the ancient site of Tell Fekheriye in Syria which is believed to have played a central role in the political and cultural history of the region during mainly the Late Bronze Age and later the Roman-Byzantine periods. In fact, the excavations exposed impressive architectural remains and finds from the period when the site was under the hegemony of first the Mittani and then the Middle Assyrian state (ca. 1500-1100 BC).







From the Treasures of Syria


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Studia Alphabetica


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Assyria to Iberia


Book Description

The exhibition "Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014) offered a comprehensive overview of art and cultural exchange in an era of vast imperial and mercantile expansion. The twenty-seven essays in this volume are based on the symposium and lectures that took place in conjunction with the exhibition. Written by an international group of scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, they include reports of new archaeological discoveries, illuminating interpretations of material culture, and innovative investigations of literary, historical, and political aspects of the interactions that shaped art and culture in the in the early first millennium B.C. Taken together, these essays explore the cultural encounters of diverse populations interacting through trade, travel, and migration, as well as war and displacement, in the ancient world. Assyria to Iberia: Art and Culture in the Iron Age contributes significantly to our understanding of the epoch-making exchanges that spanned the Near East and the Mediterranean and exerted immense influence in the centuries that followed.