This book focus on Athenian art in the second half of the fifth century, one of the most important periods of ancient art. Including papers on architecture, sculpture, and vase painting the volume offers new and before unpublished material as well as new interpretations of famous monuments like the sculptures of the Parthenon. The contributions go back to an international conference at the American School of Classical Studies, Athens.

Spanning centuries and the vastness of the Roman Empire, The Last Statues of Antiquity is the first comprehensive survey of Roman honorific statues in the public realm in Late Antiquity. Drawn from a major research project and corresponding online database that collates all the available evidence for the 'statue habit' across the Empire from the late third century AD onwards, the volume examines where, how, and why statues were used, and why these important features of urban life began to decline in number before eventually disappearing around AD 600. Adopting a detailed comparative approach, the collection explores variation between different regions-including North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Near East-as well as individual cities, such as Aphrodisias, Athens, Constantinople, and Rome. A number of thematic chapters also consider the different kinds of honorand, from provincial governors and senators, to women and cultural heroes. Richly illustrated, the volume is the definitive resource for studying the phenomenon of late-antique statues. The collection also incorporates extensive references to the project's database, which is freely accessible online.

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art surveys a broad spectrum of Christian art produced from the late second to the sixth centuries. The first part of the book opens with a general survey of the subject and then presents fifteen essays that discuss specific media of visual art-catacomb paintings, sculpture, mosaics, gold glass, gems, reliquaries, ceramics, icons, ivories, textiles, silver, and illuminated manuscripts. Each is written by a noted expert in the field. The second part of the book takes up themes relevant to the study of early Christian art. These seven chapters consider the ritual practices in decorated spaces, the emergence of images of Christ's Passion and miracles, the functions of Christian secular portraits, the exemplary mosaics of Ravenna, the early modern history of Christian art and archaeology studies, and further reflection on this field called "early Christian art." Each of the volume's chapters includes photographs of many of the objects discussed, plus bibliographic notes and recommendations for further reading. The result is an invaluable introduction to and appraisal of the art that developed out of the spread of Christianity through the late antique world. Undergraduate and graduate students of late classical, early Christian, and Byzantine culture, religion, or art will find it an accessible and insightful orientation to the field. Additionally, professional academics, archivists, and curators working in these areas will also find it valuable as a resource for their own research, as well as a textbook or reference work for their students.

The art of ancient Egypt that has been handed down to us bears no names of its creators, and yet we value the creations of these unknown masters no less than the works of later centuries, such as statues by Michelangelo or the paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. This book introduces some of the most important masterpieces, ranging from the Old Kingdom during the Third millennium BC to the Roman Period. The works encompass sculptures, reliefs, sarcophagi, murals, masks, and decorative items, most of them now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but some occupying places of honor as part of the World Cultural Heritage in museums such as the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Featured works include: Seated statue of King Djoser Wood relief of Hesire on a dining table Statue of a scribe made of various materials Funerary relief of Aschait Sphinx of Sesostris III Robed statue of Cherihotep Reliefs from the Temple at Carnac Sarcophagus of Queen Hatshepsut Murals from Thebes Seated figure of the goddess Sachmet Statue of Queen Teje Head of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV) Queen Nefertiti Golden mask of Tutankhamun Ramses II from Abu Simbel Horus falcon made of granite Stone relief from the temple ambulatory at Edfu About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

In this volume, Bobou offers a systematic analysis of ancient Greek statues of children from the sanctuaries, houses, and necropoleis of the Hellenistic world in order to understand their function and meaning. Comparing images of children in reliefs, terracotta figurines, and marble statutes, she shows that children and childhood became more prominent in the visual material record from the late fifth century BC, a time during which children became a matter of parental and state concern. Looking at the literary and epigraphical evidence, Bobou argues that statues of children were important for transmitting civic values to future citizens, serving as paradigms of behaviour and standing testament to the strength and future of a community. Created by adults, the statues reveal much about adult ideology and values during this period, and the expectations and hopes placed on children. The combination of iconographic studies and examination of the original locations in which statues were placed highlights the importance of children in Hellenistic society as well as their connection with specific areas of civic and social life.

This book is the first in ten years to present a comprehensive survey of art and architecture in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, northeast Syria and southeast Turkey), from 8000 BCE to the arrival of Islam in 636 CE. The book is richly illustrated with c. 400 full-colour photographs, and maps and time charts that guide readers through the chronology and geography of this part of the ancient Near East. The book addresses such essential art historical themes as the origins of narrative representation, the first emergence of historical public monuments and the earliest aesthetic commentaries. It explains how images and monuments were made and how they were viewed. It also traces the ancient practices of collecting and conservation and rituals of animating statues and of architectural construction. Accessible to students and non-specialists, the book expands the scope of standard surveys to cover art and architecture from the prehistoric to the Roman era, including the legendary cities of Ur, Babylon, Nineveh, Hatra and Seleucia on the Tigris.

This beautiful publication presents a collection of exquisite ancient bronzes from the Wadsworth Atheneum that were collected by John Pierpont Morgan. It accompanies a special exhibition of the bronzes at Bowdoin College. This fully illustrated catalogue presents highlights of the ancient bronzes that were collected by J. Pierpont Morgan and are currently in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum. Purchased between 1904 and 1916, the bronzes were given to the museum by Morgan’s son in 1917. Morgan was a passionate collector and spent years of his life acquiring exquisite works of art. He had a discerning eye and discriminating taste, and his driving motivation was to find works of quality and beauty. His Greek and Roman bronzes include a range of figure and vessel types: males and females, gods and mortals, humans and animals and hybrid mythological creatures, free-standing statuettes, and furniture embellishments. This is the first exhibition and publication to consider the bronzes as a group. Morgan chose each work of art for its exquisite craftsmanship, its quality of composition and execution, and its preservation. These objects represent the very best of ancient Mediterranean bronze sculpture, with carefully rendered clothing, hair, and fur, and adorned with inlays of silver and other luxury materials. Showcasing different types of objects and figures that were made in bronze in the ancient world, this exhibition and book demonstrate the high level of quality that these works of art could achieve. The bronzes are important not only for their provenance and place in America’s ‘Gilded Age’, but also as highly significant individual works of art that represent the best of ancient bronzeworking. New high-resolution photography of each work of art will allow readers to appreciate their intricate details of craftsmanship, including copper and silver inlay. This focused publication will also present current research on these exceptional objects to help readers better understand how they were made and what they represented in an ancient context.

In this volume, Milette Gaifman explores a phenomenon known as aniconism - the absence of figural images of gods in Greek practiced religion and the adoption of aniconic monuments, namely objects such as pillars and poles, to designate the presence of the divine. Shifting our attention from the well-known territories of Greek anthropomorphism and naturalism, it casts new light on the realm of non-figural objects in Greek religious art. Drawing upon a variety of material and textual evidence dating from the rise of the Greek polis in the eighth century BC to the rise of Christianity in the first centuries AD, this book shows that aniconism was more significant than has often been assumed. Coexisting with the fully figural forms for representing the divine throughout Greek antiquity, aniconic monuments marked an undefined yet fixedly located divine presence. Cults centered on rocks were encountered at crossroads and on the edges of the Greek city. Despite aniconism's liminality, non-figural markers of divine presence became a subject of interest in their own right during a time when mimesis occupied the center of Greek visual culture. The ancient Greeks saw the worship of stones and poles without images as characteristic of the beginning of their own civilization. Similarly, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the existence of aniconism was seen as physical evidence for the continuity of ancient Greek traditions from time immemorial.

In antiquity, Rome represented one of the world's great cultural capitals. The city constituted a collective repository for various commemoratives, cultural artefacts, and curiosities, not to mention plunder taken in war, and over its history became what we might call a 'museum city'. Ancient Rome as a Museum considers how cultural objects and memorabilia both from Rome and its empire came to reflect a specific Roman identity and, in some instances, to even construct or challenge Roman perceptions of power and of the self. In this volume, Rutledge argues that Roman cultural values and identity are indicated in part by what sort of materials Romans deemed worthy of display and how they chose to display, view, and preserve them. Grounded in the growing field of museum studies, this book includes a discussion on private acquisition of cultural property and asks how well the Roman community at large understood the meaning and history behind various objects and memorabilia. Of particular importance was the use of collections by a number of emperors in the further establishment of their legitimacy and authority. Through an examination of specific cultural objects, Rutledge questions how they came to reflect or even perpetuate Roman values and identity.

This volume is dedicated to the topic of the human evaluation and interpretation of animals in ancient and medieval cultures. From a transcultural perspective contributions from Assyriology, Byzantine Studies, Classical Archaeology, Egyptology, German Medieval Studies and Jewish History look into the processes and mechanisms behind the transfer by people of certain values to animals, and the functions these animal-signs have within written, pictorial and performative forms of expression.

In this fully illustrated study, Rune Frederiksen assembles all archaeological and written sources for city walls in the ancient Greek world, and argues that widespread fortification of settlements and towns, usually considered to date from the Classical period, in fact took place much earlier. Frederiksen discusses the types of fortified settlement and the topography of urban fortification, and also the preservation of structures from early settlements. He also presents an architectural history of Greek fortification walls before the Classical period, and makes the intriguing observation that early monumental architecture developed just as much in fortifications as it did in early temples. This underlines the importance of the secular sphere for the development of early communities across the Greek world.

Statues are among the most familiar remnants of classical art. Yet their prominence in ancient society is often ignored. In the Roman world statues were ubiquitous. Whether they were displayed as public honours or memorials, collected as works of art, dedicated to deities, venerated as gods, or violated as symbols of a defeated political regime, they were recognized individually and collectively as objects of enormous significance.
By analysing ancient texts and images, Statues in Roman Society unravels the web of associations which surrounded Roman statues. Addressing all categories of statuary together for the first time, it illuminates them in ancient terms, explaining expectations of what statues were or ought to be and describing the Romans' uneasy relationship with 'the other population' in their midst.

The volume offers a timely (re-)appraisal of Seleukid cultural dynamics. While the engagement of Seleukid kings with local populations and the issue of "Hellenization" are still debated, a movement away from the Greco-centric approach to the study of the sources has gained pace. Increasingly textual sources are read alongside archaeological and numismatic evidence, and relevant near-eastern records are consulted. Our study of Seleukid kingship adheres to two game-changing principles: 1. We are not interested in judging the Seleukids as "strong" or "weak" whether in their interactions with other Hellenistic kingdoms or with the populations they ruled. 2. While appreciating the value of the social imaginaries approach (Stavrianopoulou, 2013), we argue that the use of ethnic identity in antiquity remains problematic. Through a pluralistic approach, in line with the complex cultural considerations that informed Seleukid royal agendas, we examine the concept of kingship and its gender aspects; tensions between centre and periphery; the level of "acculturation" intended and achieved under the Seleukids; the Seleukid-Ptolemaic interrelations. As rulers of a multi-cultural empire, the Seleukids were deeply aware of cultural politics.

The Pronomos Vase is the single most important piece of pictorial evidence for ancient theatre to have survived from ancient Greece. It depicts an entire theatrical chorus and cast along with the celebrated musician Pronomos, in the presence of their patron god, Dionysos. In this collection of essays, illustrated with nearly 60 drawings and photographs, leading specialists from a variety of disciplines tackle the critical questions posed by this complex hub of evidence. The discussion covers a wide range of perspectives and issues, including the artist's oeuvre; the pottery market; the relation of this piece to other artistic, and especially celebratory, artefacts; the political and cultural contexts of the world that it was produced in; the identification of figures portrayed on it: and the significance of the Pronomos Vase as theatrical evidence. The volume offers not only the most recent scholarship on the vase but also some ground-breaking interpretations of it.

The Bronze Age of Europe is a crucial formative period that underlay the civilisations of Greece and Rome, fundamental to our own modern civilisation. A systematic description of it appeared in 2013, but this work offers a series of personal studies of aspects of the period by one of its best known practitioners. The book is based on the idea that different aspects of the Bronze Age can be studied as a series of "lives": the life of people and peoples, of objects, of places, and of societies. Each of these is taken in turn and a range of aspects presented that offer interesting insights into the period. These are based on recent research (for instance on the genetic history of the Old World) as well as on fundamental earlier studies. In addition, there is a consideration of the history of Bronze Age studies, the "life of the Bronze Age". The book provides a novel approach to the Bronze Age based on the personal interests of a well-known Bronze Age scholar. It offers insights into a period that students of other aspects of the ancient world, as well as Bronze Age specialists and general readers, will find interesting and stimulating.

This innovative, extensively illustrated study examines how classical antiquities and archaeology contributed significantly to the production of the modern Greek nation and its national imagination. It also shows how, in return, national imagination has created and shaped classical antiquities and archaeological practice from the nineteenth century to the present. Yannis Hamilakis covers a diverse range of topics, including the role of antiquities in the foundation of the Greek state in the nineteenth century, the Elgin marbles controversy, the role of archaeology under dictatorial regimes, the use of antiquities in the detention camps of the Greek civil war, and the discovery of the so-called tomb of Philip of Macedonia.

This is a book about classical sculptures in the early modern period, centuries after the decline and fall of Rome, when they began to be excavated, restored, and collected by British visitors in Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century. Viccy Coltman contrasts the precarious and competitive culture of eighteenth-century collecting, which integrated sculpture into the domestic interior back home in Britain, with the study and publication of individual specimens by classical archaeologists like Adolf Michaelis a century later. Her study is comprehensively illustrated with over 100 photographs.

The literature and art of Augustan Rome are often thought of as the product of an age of high classicism, characterized by maturity, balance, and harmony. This volume examines the presence of what might be seen as an unclassical love of paradox and the marvellous, and shows that it is an important strain in the poetry of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, as well as in prose works of history and rhetoric, and in the Augustan visual arts. The volume includes chapters by some of the leading experts in the Augustan period as well as a number of younger scholars. It will be of interest to all students of Roman literature and culture.