Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond

This book is an enthusiastic celebration of the ways in which popular culture has consumed aspects of the ancient Near East to construct new realities. The editors have brought together an impressive line-up of scholars-archaeologists, philologists, historians, and art historians-to reflect on how objects, ideas, and interpretations of the ancient Near East have been remembered, constructed, reimagined, mythologized, or indeed forgotten within our shared cultural memories. The exploration of cultural memories has revealed how they inform the values, structures, and daily life of societies over time. This is therefore not a collection of essays about the deep past but rather about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

This book is an enthusiastic celebration of the ways in which popular culture has consumed aspects of the ancient Near East to construct new realities. The editors have brought together an impressive line-up of scholars-archaeologists, philologists, historians, and art historians-to reflect on how objects, ideas, and interpretations of the ancient Near East have been remembered, constructed, reimagined, mythologized, or indeed forgotten within our shared cultural memories. The exploration of cultural memories has revealed how they inform the values, structures, and daily life of societies over time. This is therefore not a collection of essays about the deep past but rather about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Foreword, Paul Collins Preliminary Considerations, Agnes Garcia-Ventura and Lorenzo VerderameVisual Arts Pedro Azara and Marc Marin Mesopotamia in Miro. Miro in Mesopotamia Jean M. Evans Case Studies in the Popular Reception of the Tell Asmar Sculpture Hoard Silvana Di Paolo Images of Ruins as Metaphorical Places of Transformation: The Case of PersepolisPerforming Arts Kerstin Droa-KrupeArtaserse: An Ancient Oriental Ruler on Modern Opera Stages? Valeska Hartmann When Imitation Became Reality: The Historical PantomimeSardanapal (1908) at the Royal Opera of Berlin Daniele Federico Rosa Ye Go to Thy Abzu: How Norwegian Black Metal Used Mesopotamian References, Where It Took Them from, and How It Usually Got Them WrongFilm and Television Kevin McGeough "Babylon's Last Bacchanal": Mesopotamia and the Near East in Epic Biblical Cinema Eva Miller He Who Saw the Stars: Retelling Gilgamesh inStar Trek: The Next Generation Lorenzo Verderame Evil from an Ancient Past and the Archaeology of the Beyond: An Analysis of the MoviesThe Exorcist (1973) andThe Evil Dead (1981)Novels and Comics Jana Myna?ova and Pavel Ko?inek The Ancient Near East in Czech Comics and Popular Culture: The Case ofJachym and the Printer's Devil Luigi Turri Gilgamesh, The (Super)Hero Francesco Pomponio Mystery Literature and Assyriology Ryan Winters Ancient Aliens, Modern Cosmologies: Zecharia Sitchin and the Transformation of Mesopotamian MythArchaeologist in the Middle Davide Nadali The (In)visibility of Archaeology Juan-Luis Montero Fenollos Imagining the Tower of Babel in the Twenty-First Century: Is a New Interpretation of the Ziggurat of Babylon Possible? Silvia Festuccia Athletic Disciplines in the Ancient Near East: Representation and Reconstruction Afterword. Memory and Memories: From the Ancient Near East to the Modern West Frances Pinnock Contributors Subject Index