1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910792073303321

Autore

Harmanşah Ömür

Titolo

Cities and the shaping of memory in the ancient Near East / / Ömür Harmanşah, Brown University [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2013

ISBN

1-107-23688-6

1-107-30165-3

1-107-53374-0

1-107-31449-6

1-107-30581-0

1-139-22721-1

1-107-30894-1

1-107-30674-4

1-299-25732-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xix, 351 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Classificazione

SOC003000

Disciplina

307.760956

Soggetti

Cities and towns - Middle East - History

Collective memory - Middle East

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction -- 2. Landscapes of change: cities, politics, and memory -- 3. The land of Aššur: the making of Assyrian landscapes -- 4. City and the festival: monuments, urban space, and spatial narratives -- 5. Upright stones and building stories: architectural technologies and the poetics of urban space -- 6. Cities, place, and desire.

Sommario/riassunto

This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (c.1200-850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses,



erecting monuments and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.