Myth, Text and Image in Ancient Mesopotamia

Beate Pongratz-Leisten is a cultural historian of the ancient Near East and has published widely on topics of religion, literature, history, royal ideology, materialities of culture, and transmission of cultural memory. Inspired by insights from Cognitive Narratology and Cognitive Semiotics, her book represents a new approach to the relationship between text and image and to the art history of ancient Mesopotamia.

• Acknowledgements; List of Figures; Part I. Imagination and the Power of Story-Telling: What this Book is About; Part II. Explorations of Myth in Assyriology: Part III. Reviving Myth as Conceptual Metaphor: Mythos as Mode of Thought; Part IV. Mythic Narrative as a Fundamental Instrument of Thought: The Explanatory, Orientational, and World-Making Functions of Myth; Part V. Mythos as Mode of Remembrance and Its Re-actualization in the Image: Part VI. The Mythos of the Chaoskampf and the Conflict Myths Informing the Royal Pictorial Repertoire: Part VII. Projecting Myth onto the Landscape: A Multi-Modal Approach; Part VIII. Marking Myth on the Body: Part IX. Ekphrasis or the 'Verbal Enactment of the Gaze to Relate with and Penetrate the Object': Part X. The Agency Behind the Creation Process of Text and Image: Epilogue.