City, Memory, Monument in the Ancient Near East

The creation of new cities is considered an ideological project or divine intervention in the political narratives and myths of Near Eastern cultures, and the social production of urban space is often masked. In this book, Ömür Harmanşah argues that urban spaces shape social memory and identity, and that this practice of place-making is an arena for political action and state spectacle. He examines the official discourse that developed around the practices of Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers during the Late Iron Age (c. 1200-850 BCE) of building cities, constructing irrigation canals, erecting monuments, and organizing public festivals.

In the Early Iron Age, city-building among the Assyrian Empire and the Syro-Hittite states was a common practice of construction, an official discourse, and a source of cultural identity. City, Memory, Monument in the Ancient Near East is the first detailed and comprehensive analysis of this multifaceted historical phenomenon from a comparative perspective. The book presents a cultural history of city-building practices by examining ancient texts, archaeological excavations and surveys, and environmental and spatial analyses.

Ömür Harmanşah is a faculty member in the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago.