This volume examines the state ideology of Assyria in the Early Neo-Assyrian period (934-745 BCE) focusing on how power relations between the Mesopotamian deities, the Assyrian king, and foreign lands are described and depicted. It undertakes a close reading of delimited royal inscriptions and iconography making use of postcolonial and gender theory, and addresses such topics as royal deification, “religious imperialism”, ethnicity and empire, and gendered imagery. The important contribution of this study lies especially in its identification of patterns of ideological continuity and variation within the reigns of individual rulers, between various localities, and between the different rulers of this period, and in its discussion of the place of Early Neo-Assyrian state ideology in the overall development of Assyrian propaganda. It includes several indexed appendices, which list all primary sources, present all divine and royal epithets, and provide all of the “royal visual representations,” and incorporates numerous illustrations, such as maps, plans, and royal iconography.

The great gods were imagined as the masters and the conquerors of the foreign lands. The Assyrian king presented himself as the representative, priest, servant, master builder, and warrior of the great gods. The great gods had ordered the Assyrian king to implement their world dominion. On this divine mission, the Assyrian king was confronted by various hinderances such as the wild foreign landscape and its wild animals. By the act of conquering, the named chaotic elements of Otherness became a part of Order. The relationship between the Assyrian king and the foreign deities was portrayed as characterized by mutual respect. The religious imperialism of the two kings was not of an iconoclastic character. The foreign elites and people had the choice to submit and pay tribute and then be shepherded, or to resist and then be annihilated or enslaved. In times of confrontation, polarizations and dichotomies centred social classes ("elites") and not nations or nationalities

In Babel: Political Rhetoric of a Confused Legacy, Boyd shows how one of the most familiar stories from the Bible, the Tower of Babel, has been misinterpreted for millennia. He offers a new interpretation, and also examines how the story has shaped politics and intellectual culture to the current day.

A Companion to Assyria is a collection of original essays on ancient Assyria written by key international scholars. These new scholarly contributions have substantially reshaped contemporary understanding of society and life in this ancient civilization. The only detailed up-to-date introduction providing a scholarly overview of ancient Assyria in English within the last fifty years Original essays written and edited by a team of respected Assyriology scholars from around the world An in-depth exploration of Assyrian society and life, including the latest thought on cities, art, religion, literature, economy, and technology, and political and military history

This volume offers new theoretical approaches to the study of concepts and manifestations of power in the ancient world. Bringing together scholars from Egyptology and ancient Near Eastern studies, this volume aims to synchronize our understanding of the complex mechanics of Power across our fields. Broad in theoretical, geographical, and temporal scope, it presents theoretical models in an approachable manner, showcasing ways in which they can be employed by all scholars of the ancient world.

This book explores the aspiration to universal, imperial rule across Eurasian history from antiquity to the eighteenth century.

In Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape, Alice Hunt investigates the social and symbolic meaning of Palace Ware by its cultural audience in the Neo-Assyrian central and annexed provinces, and the unincorporated territories, including buffer zones and vassal states. Traditionally, Palace Ware has been equated with imperial identity. By understanding these vessels as a vehicle through which interregional and intercultural relationships were negotiated and maintained she reveals their complexity gaining a more nuanced view of imperial dynamics. Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape is the first work of its kind; providing in-depth analysis of the formal and fabric characteristic, production technology, and raw material provenance of Palace Ware, and locating these data within the larger narratives of power, presentation, symbol and meaning that shaped the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape.