Winter I.J. On Art in the Ancient Near East. Vol. 1. Of the First Millennium BCE

Leiden-Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2010. — (Culture and history of the ancient Near East, v. 34)Anyone who has already done the task of gathering together previously published essays aimed at heterogeneous audiences and intended for different purposes into single volumes will know, and those who may do it in future are likely to discover, that the reading through of one’s own essays published over a 35-year period is as daunting, disorienting, and humbling an experience as any in a long professional career. Not everything could be included; hence, decisions relative to durability and overall mission had to be made. Errors—since noted in the scholarly literature and pointed out sometimes cordially, sometimes gleefully, sometimes fi rmly—had to be endured, and changes/inconsistencies in the readings of personal and geographical names, as well as advancements in evidence and thought in the scholarly literature had to be ignored, lest the project take on massive proportions of self-editing, up-dating and contextualizing. In addition, some sense of the whole had to be articulated in the framing of an Introduction that ideally would be sustained once texts and images were re-formatted into a unit: one that would, it could only be hoped, somehow convey both the integrity of the parts and a broader picture generated by the whole.