E-Books →Orientalist Gazes Reception and Construction of Images of the Ancient Near East Since the 17th Century

Studies on the reception of Antiquity are booming, and the volume is a further reflection of this process. It brings together thirteen articles with a focus on the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th. During the 19th century, the (re)discovery through archaeology of Assyrian sites such as Nineveh triggered enormous interest among Europeans, who had previously known of these cities only through Biblical texts. The new findings challenged previous discourses about the region that were circulating in Europe at that time. However, the ancient materials were not received directly through primary sources; rather, their reception might be expanded or modified depending on the current prevailing discourse. This means that a subject can be (re)modified almost arbitrarily and interpreted for a variety of contexts. The question of interest for those working in reception studies, therefore, is not to assess whether the past is represented "correctly" (a normative approach), but rather to understand the situation in which it is received and ultimately instrumentalised (a constructivist approach). For this reason, the focus of several chapters is placed on the discursive interplay between the (re)discovery itself and its processing in politics, architecture, and art. Moreover, even though the archaeological excavations and the shaping of Assyriology as a new academic discipline were clearly a catalyst for this reception, one also has to pay attention to other chronologies that have so far been considered more peripheral. Therefore, the volume also includes studies dealing with sources from the 17th century onwards. - Among others the contributions study "The Ancient Near East in German textbooks around 1900" (B. Onken), "Reconstruction drawings of Ancient Near Eastern architecture as inspiration for building in the 1920ies in Germany" (B. Pedde), "The German novelist Karl May as a multiplier of knowledge about the Ancient Near East" (F. Pedde), "Fashion and the Ancient Orient" (F. Pinnock) and "Arnaldo Momigliano and his picture of the Orient" (A. Marcone), to list just a few.