Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- List of Figures and Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- 1 Introduction -- Felipe Rojas and Jonathan Ben-Dov -- 2 Entangled Images: Royal Memory, Posthumous Presence, and the Afterlives of Assyrian Rock Reliefs -- Karen Sonik and David Kertai -- 3 Narrating Temporality: Three Short Stories about Egyptian Royal Living-Rock Stelae -- Jen Thum and Anne-Claire Salmas -- 4 Forgetting an Empire, Creating a New Order: Trajectories of Rock-Cut Monuments from Hittite into Post-Hittite Anatolia, and the Afterlife of the "Throne" of Kızıldağ -- Lorenzo d'Alfonso and Matteo Pedrinazzi -- 5 A Carving in Antioch: History, Magic, Antiquarianism, Archaeology -- Felipe Rojas -- 6 Herodotus and Empire: Ancient Near Eastern Monuments and Their Cultural Recycling in Herodotus' Histories -- Robert Rollinger -- 7 Sculpting in Time: Rock Reliefs, Inscriptions and the Transformation of Iranian Memory and Identity -- Matthew P. Canepa -- 8 Éminences grises: Emergent Antiquities in Seventeenth-Century Iran -- Lindsay Allen and Moya Carey -- 9 Neo-Babylonian Rock Reliefs and the Jewish Literary Imagination -- Jonathan Ben-Dov -- 10 Translatio studii: Stelae Traditions in Second Temple Judaism and Their Legacy in Byzantium -- William Adler -- 11 The Long History of an Imaginary Inscription: Josephus's Two Pillars in Early Modern European Histories of Astronomy -- John Steele -- Index.

This book concerns the ancient rock-cut monuments carved throughout the Near East, paying particular attention to the fate of these monuments in the centuries after their initial production. As parts of the landscapes in which they were carved, they acquired new meanings in the cultural memory of the people living around them. The volume joins numerous recent studies on the reception of historical texts and artefacts, exploring the peculiar affordances of these long-lasting and often salient monuments. The volume gathers articles by archeologists, art historians, and philologists, covering the entire Near East, from Iran to Lebanon and from Turkey to Egypt. It also analyzes long-lasting textual traditions that aim to explain the origins and meaning of rock-cut monuments and other related carvings.

Description based on print version record.