This volume rethinks the ways through which the terms ideology and propaganda have been used and can be used in ancient Near Eastern studies. The seventeen contributors to this collection include scholars whose work brings new reflections and theoretical approaches to bear on varied materials and contexts. Their essays – from different fields of research (Assyriology, Hittitology, Archaeology and Art History) – untangle the origin of the definitions of ideology and propaganda, reassessing their primary meaning; evaluate newly available sources and examine them through the lens of current theoretical approaches and perspectives; and emphasize the importance of analyzing single-case studies and specific historical events. "Ancient Near Eastern Weltanschauungen in Contact and in Contrast: Rethinking ideology and propaganda in the Ancient Near East" points to a need for a recurring rethinking of western terms that scholars often use to understand and describe ancient Near Eastern cultures.

Acknowledgements / List of Abbreviations

Ludovico Portuese / Marta Pallavidini: Introduction

Mesopotamia

Davide Nadali: An Ideological Approach to the Issue of Propaganda in Ancient Near Eastern Studies: New Answers to Old Questions

Silvana Di Paolo: Visual Tools of Power Argumentation: Models in Contrast

Nikita Artemov: LUGAL KIŠ and Related Matters: How Ideological are Royal Titles?

Hannes D. Galter: Assyrian Royal Inscriptions between Royal Propaganda and Historical Positioning

Johannes Bach: Revisiting the Representation of the “Other” in “Sargon’s Eighth Campaign”

Dominik Bonatz: Are Monsters Propagandistic? Thoughts on the Imagery of Hyperreality in Ancient Assyria

Ludovico Portuese: Doorway Creatures: Crises, Ideologies and Persuasion in the Neo-Assyrian Palace

Paul Collins: Kingship in Space and Time at the Northwest Palace, Nimrud

Elisabeth Wagner-Durand: Bodies of Propaganda? The Visual Embodiment of Kingship in the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Mattias Karlsson: “An object of wonder for all of the people”. Ideology and Propaganda in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires

Anatolia and Egypt

Marta Pallavidini: The Hero, the Pious, the Chosen, the Legitimate. One Ideology, Different Propagandae in the Hittite Empire

Amir Gilan: “Šawoška of Šamuḫa, My Lady, caught him like a fish with a net”: Usurping the Throne and writing about it

Levan Gordeziani / Irene Tatišvili: Hittite Funeral Traditions and Afterlife Beliefs in the Context of Hittite Cosmology

Marco De Pietri: ḥr.w n k3.w and bibrû: Between Tribute and Gift. Ideological and Propagandistic Developments in Egypto-Hittite Relationships

Syria and the Levant

Emanuel Pfoh: Friend of the King: Revisiting the Household Terminology in EA 288 and its Socio-political Implications

Mariacarmela Montesanto: Ideology and Material Culture in the Late Bronze Age Northern Levant: A Pottery Perspective

Costanza Coppini: Fragments of Power. The Use of Pottery and the Reconnaissance of the Presence of the Middle Assyrian State in the Archaeological Record

Matthew Susnow: Elite Ideology, RItual Manipulation and the Anomalous Cultic Practices Implemented by the Hazor Rulership