The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East

Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power

edited by Y.Z. Eliav, E.A. Friedland and S. Herbert

Book cover: The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East

Extent: 770 pages

Publisher: Peeters Publishers

Subjects: Ancient Near East, Mediterranean Archaeology

Series: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion

Series volume number: 9

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(July 2008)

ISBN: 9789042920040

Price: $107.00

Out of stock

Public sculptures were the “mass media” of the Roman world. They populated urban centers throughout the empire, serving as a “plastic language” that communicated political, religious, and social messages. This book brings together twenty-eight experts who otherwise rarely convene: text-based scholars of the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian realms from the fields of classics, history, and religion and specialists in the artistic traditions of Greece and Rome as well as art historians and archaeologists. Utilizing the full spectrum of ancient sources, the book examines the multiple, at times even contradictory, meanings and functions that statues served within the complex world of the Roman Near East. Moreover, it situates the discussion of sculpture in the broader context of antiquity in order to reevaluate long-held scholarly consensuses on such ideas as the essence of Hellenism (the culture that emerged from the encounter of Greco-Romans with the Near East) and the everlasting “conflict” among paganism, Christianity, and Judaism.

  • Edited by YZ Eliav
  • Edited by EA Friedland
  • Edited by S Herbert