Thinking, Speaking and Representing Animals in Western Asia
Edited by Laura Battini
Hardback (Published)
(June 2026)
ISBN: 9781805833185
7.99 x 10.91 inches
Price: $77.00
On back order
This volume explores human relationships with animals in the ancient Near East, examining birds, reptiles, mongooses, lions, deer and dogs through archaeology, iconography and textual study. Spanning the 3rd millennium BC to Late Antiquity, it reveals the cultural, symbolic and political roles of animals across Western Asia.
In all societies, ancient and modern, animals have been of great importance to humans, being used for sustenance, transport, entertainment and emotional fulfilment. In the Ancient Near East, the cradle of domestication, the relationship between humans and animals was much stronger than it is today. The fascination animals exert on humans and the relationships between them are the subject of this book, the result of several workshops organized during the ASOR congress, where archaeologists, researchers specialising in iconography, historians, Assyriologists and archaeozoologists came together to exchange views and achieve a broader understanding of animals. Although our desired perspective is from that of the animal, in Mesopotamia the gaze is always the human one.
The book is divided in two parts: the first is devoted to small animals (birds, snakes, lizards and mongooses). The second part concerns animals worthy of the king, such as deer, lions and dogs. The articles cover the period from the end of the 3rd millennium BC to the Sassanid and Roman/Byzantine periods, with a particular emphasis on the first and second millennia BC.
Introduction
Part I: Small Animals: Birds, Reptiles and Mongooses
Chapter 1: “A Sparrow in the Hand is Better than the Pigeon on the Roof”: An Aviary in the Steppe (Khirbet Es-Samra, Jordan) – Hervé Monchot, Lionel Gourichon
Chapter 2: Mesopotamian Changes in Human-Birds-Landscape Relations as Reconstructed by Archaeological and Iconographic Data from Akkadian to Old Babylonian Period: Seals from the British Museum – Laura Battini
Chapter 3: The Reptilian Omens: Linguistic Patterns and Analogical Reasoning in an Ancient Mesopotamian Divinatory Text – Nicole Lundeen, Maya Rinderer
Chapter 4: The Mongoose, A Wild Animal in Natural, Religious and Domestic Contexts – Françoise Laroche-Traunecker
Chapter 5: Animals, Drums, and the Roll of Thunder: Animal Symbolism in an Omen Sequence from the Astrological Omen Series Enūma Anu Enlil – Lucrezia Menicatti
Part II: Animals for the King: Deer, Lions and Dogs
Chapter 6: Wisdom in Stone: A New Perspective on the Late Sasanian Deer Hunt Relief at Taq-e Bustan – Arvin Maghsoudlou
Chapter 7: ‘Pet’ Lions at the Assyrian Court – Paul Collins
Chapter 8: Mesopotamian Lions in Captivity – Chikako E. Watanabe
Chapter 9: In the Beginning was a Male: Ancient Near Eastern Visual Gender Bias of the Lion and the Lioness – Tallay Ornan
Chapter 10: Dogs in Hammurabi’s Days – Nele Ziegler
Chapter 11: Big Babylonian Dogs: Why do Big Dogs Appear in the Art of Babylonia in the Early Second Millennium BC? – Trudy Kawami
Laura Battini is a researcher at the French National Centre of Scientific Research. Among her books are L’espace domestique en Mésopotamie (1999), Making Pictures of War (2016), and La déesse aux oies (2026). She is director of the journal Ash Sharq, and is editor of the series Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology, as well as a blog (https://ane.hypotheses.org/). Her principle areas of research are Mesopotamian architecture and urbanism, materiality and the body, and violence.
- Edited by Laura Battini
Other Titles in this Series
Too Much Writing, Too Few Scribes: Extra-Scribal Writing in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean (1650-1100 BCE)
Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols: Rethinking Ancient Images from the Levant to Mesopotamia
Studies Offered to Tallay Ornan
Stone Tools in the Ancient Near East and Egypt
Ground stone tools, rock-cut installations and stone vessels from Prehistory to Late Antiquity
What Difference Does Time Make? Papers from the Ancient and Islamic Middle East and China in Honor of the 100th Anniversary of the Midwest Branch of the American Oriental Society
New Research on Old Collections in Southwest Asian Archaeology
Proceedings of the Workshop Held at the British Museum, London, 31 July – 2 August, 2023
Composite Artefacts in the Ancient Near East
Exhibiting an imaginative materiality, showing a genealogical nature
Penser l’espace en Mésopotamie : contributions à la compréhension spatiale à travers les aménagements
Scripta memoriae Jean-Claude Margueron dedicata
Par la bêche et le stylet! Cultures et sociétés syro-mésopotamiennes
Mélanges offerts à Olivier Rouault
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