Rita Dolce is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Near Eastern Cultures and Fine Arts at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy, and a member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria, where she has excavated for 40 years at the site of Tell Mardikh-Ebla. Her research interests lie mainly in the figurative art, urban topography and architecture of the third millennium BC in Mesopotamia and Syria. She has written numerous books and articles focusing particularly on visual communication as the language of power and a means of dissemination in the societies of the Ancient Near East, and on the urban origins of Ebla, its palatial culture and the structure and significance of cult places in this important Early Syrian kingdom.

"Building on a vast documentary record that covers the entire Syro-Mesopotamian tradition, Dolce's analysis offers an in-depth study in visual semiotics. She identifies specific 'semantic codes' and an explicit syntactical organization, through which a strong message was conveyed by means of visual imagery. This is iconology at its best: by highlighting the coherence of a representational program, and drawing on parallel written statements, our sensitivity is trained to appreciate the 'intrinsic meaning' of a topos such as the action of beheading – a topos with a valence that goes well beyond that of other types of mutilation precisely because of its ideological import."Giorgio Buccellati, University of California Los Angeles, USA

• List of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgementsImage CreditsAbbreviationsIntroductionChapter II.1. From the Distant Past to the Recent PastI.2. An Unrepeatable ActI.3. The Headless Body: Anonymity/IdentityChapter IIII.1. Exclusivity/MultiplicityII.2. Exhibition/QuantificationChapter IIIIII.1. What Happens to the "Coveted Object"?III.2. Destinations/MotivationsIII.3. Exhibition and MultivalenceChapter IVIV.1. Severed Heads and Birds of PreyIV.2. Eannatum of Lagash and the Birds of PreyIV.3. Mari and the Birds of PreyIV.4. Sargon I of Akkad and the Birds of Prey IV.5. Dadusha of Eshnunna and the Birds of Prey IV.6. The Assyrians and the Birds of Prey Chapter VV.1. Moving Through Space and TimeV.2. How Does the Head Travel?Chapter VIVI.1. "Other" Decapitations in Times of WarVI.2. What Happens to the Severed Heads of Statues?VI.3. Moving Through Space and TimeVI.4. Annihilation/CatharsisBibliographyIndex

Rita Dolce is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Near Eastern Cultures and Fine Arts at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy, and a member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria, where she has excavated for 40 years at the site of Tell Mardikh-Ebla. Her research interests lie mainly in the figurative art, urban topography and architecture of the third millennium BC in Mesopotamia and Syria. She has written numerous books and articles focusing particularly on visual communication as the language of power and a means of dissemination in the societies of the Ancient Near East, and on the urban origins of Ebla, its palatial culture and the structure and significance of cult places in this important Early Syrian kingdom.

"Building on a vast documentary record that covers the entire Syro-Mesopotamian tradition, Dolce's analysis offers an in-depth study in visual semiotics. She identifies specific 'semantic codes' and an explicit syntactical organization, through which a strong message was conveyed by means of visual imagery. This is iconology at its best: by highlighting the coherence of a representational program, and drawing on parallel written statements, our sensitivity is trained to appreciate the 'intrinsic meaning' of a topos such as the action of beheading – a topos with a valence that goes well beyond that of other types of mutilation precisely because of its ideological import."Giorgio Buccellati, University of California Los Angeles, USA

• List of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgementsImage CreditsAbbreviationsIntroductionChapter II.1. From the Distant Past to the Recent PastI.2. An Unrepeatable ActI.3. The Headless Body: Anonymity/IdentityChapter IIII.1. Exclusivity/MultiplicityII.2. Exhibition/QuantificationChapter IIIIII.1. What Happens to the "Coveted Object"?III.2. Destinations/MotivationsIII.3. Exhibition and MultivalenceChapter IVIV.1. Severed Heads and Birds of PreyIV.2. Eannatum of Lagash and the Birds of PreyIV.3. Mari and the Birds of PreyIV.4. Sargon I of Akkad and the Birds of Prey IV.5. Dadusha of Eshnunna and the Birds of Prey IV.6. The Assyrians and the Birds of Prey Chapter VV.1. Moving Through Space and TimeV.2. How Does the Head Travel?Chapter VIVI.1. "Other" Decapitations in Times of WarVI.2. What Happens to the Severed Heads of Statues?VI.3. Moving Through Space and TimeVI.4. Annihilation/CatharsisBibliographyIndex