Afterlives of Ancient Rock-cut Monuments in the Near East

Jonathan Ben-Dov, Ph.D. (2005), is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Tel Aviv University. He has published widely on the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Ancient Time reckoning, including a recently co-edited volume The Construction of Time in Antiquity: Ritual, Art, and Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Felipe Rojas, Ph.D. (2010), is Associate Professor of Archaeology at Brown University. He currently co-directs archaeological projects in Turkey and Jordan, and recently published the book The Pasts of Roman Anatolia: Interpreters, Traces, Horizons (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

"The volume’s contents are thus wide-ranging and the main message to learn is that ancient rock-cut monuments triggered vivid yet very varied reactions throughout their existence. (...) The editors’ intent to consider the “afterlives” of monuments in this inclusive way is to be praised"- Marc Van De Mieroop, Columbia University, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.04.26"This is an interesting collection on how inscriptions were interpreted before modern scholarship and who was interested in doing so."- Lester L. Grabbe, in The Society for Old Testament Study Book List 2022“The volume’s contents are thus wide-ranging and the main message to learn is that ancient rock-cut monuments triggered vivid yet very varied reactions throughout their existence. (…) The editors’ intent to consider the “afterlives” of monuments in this inclusive way is to be praised, and I hope that the chapters that do so successfully will inspire others to pursue the same path.” - Marc Van De Mieroop, Columbia University, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.04.26.

• PrefaceList of Figures and TablesNotes on Contributors1 IntroductionFelipe Rojas and Jonathan Ben-Dov2 Entangled Images: Royal Memory, Posthumous Presence, and the Afterlives of Assyrian Rock ReliefsKaren Sonik and David Kertai3 Narrating Temporality: Three Short Stories about Egyptian Royal Living-Rock StelaeJen Thum and Anne-Claire Salmas4 Forgetting an Empire, Creating a New Order: Trajectories of Rock-Cut Monuments from Hittite into Post-Hittite Anatolia, and the Afterlife of the “Throne” of KızıldağLorenzo d’Alfonso and Matteo Pedrinazzi5 A Carving in Antioch: History, Magic, Antiquarianism, ArchaeologyFelipe Rojas6 Herodotus and Empire: Ancient Near Eastern Monuments and Their Cultural Recycling in Herodotus’ HistoriesRobert Rollinger7 Sculpting in Time: Rock Reliefs, Inscriptions and the Transformation of Iranian Memory and IdentityMatthew P. Canepa8 Éminences grises: Emergent Antiquities in Seventeenth-Century IranLindsay Allen and Moya Carey9 Neo-Babylonian Rock Reliefs and the Jewish Literary ImaginationJonathan Ben-Dov10 Translatio studii: Stelae Traditions in Second Temple Judaism and Their Legacy in ByzantiumWilliam Adler11 The Long History of an Imaginary Inscription: Josephus’s Two Pillars in Early Modern European Histories of AstronomyJohn SteeleIndex