Michael Seymour – författare

A timely and definitive exploration of the art and culture of the ancient civilizations situated between Rome and the Middle East that presents a new way of understanding the region’s influential heritageThis publication examines the art and architecture of regions that served as major trade routes between the Roman and Parthian Empires from 100 B.C. to A.D. 250. The book examines the cultural histories of cities including Petra, Baalbek, Palmyra, Dura-Europos, and Hatra together for the first time, capturing the intricate web of influence that emerged in the Ancient Middle East through the exchange of goods and ideas across the region. Works illustrated and discussed include statues, coins, reliefs, architectural elements and friezes, painted tiles and wall fragments, jewelry, textiles, and more. The World Between Empires is the definitive book on this subject, contextualizing the significance of these works on a local and global scale, including a thoughtful discussion of recent cultural heritage destruction and preservation efforts in the region, particularly in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and the role of museums.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(03/11/19–06/23/19)

For two thousand years the real, physical metropolis lay buried while another, ghostly city lived on through ideas as varied as the legendary Hanging Gardens, the career of the biblical Daniel, and even the Apocalypse. More recently, the site of Babylon has been the centre of major excavation, yet the spectacular results of this work have done little to displace the many other fascinating ways in which the city has endured and reinvented itself in culture. Saddam Hussein, for one, notoriously exploited the Babylonian myth to associate himself and his regime with its glorious past. Why has Babylon so creatively fired the human imagination, with results both good and ill? Why has it been enthralling to so many, and for so long?In exploring answers, Michael Seymour ranges extensively over space and time and embraces art, archaeology, history and literature.From Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, via Strabo and Diodorus, to the Book of Revelation, Bruegel, Rembrandt, Voltaire, William Blake and modern interpreters like Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino and Gore Vidal, the author brings to light a carnival of disparate sources dominated by powerful and intoxicating ideas such as the Tower of Babel and the city of sin. Babylon: Legend, History and the Ancient City weighs idea against reality, fiction against fact, conjuring the fascinating story of this ancient metropolis and its legacy to brilliant life as never before.

This book features a collection of papers produced in honour of Roger Matthews, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Reading. Roger previously taught at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology (2001–2010), before which he served as the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (BSAI, today BISI) in Baghdad and the British Institute at Ankara (BIA) in the 1980s and 1990s. The volume honours Roger’s legacy by assembling interdisciplinary research by his students, collaborators, and colleagues that maps challenges and new possibilities in the archaeology of Southwest Asia across the interrelated themes that have emerged from his work in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Türkiye.