Bøger af Elisabeth Wagner-Durand

The volume sheds light on Ancient Near Eastern kingship by focusing on its constant urge for legitimation. Thus, it highlights specific aspects like royal building activities, warfare and wisdom and frames these into material and textual expressions that take the powerful form of narratives. The contributions made in this volume look for specific topoi of kingship and examine which shapes they took and why. The publication determines which narrative topoi have once been selected to legitimize kingship, which media have been chosen to transmit these narratives, and what kind of narrative strategies have been applied. To consider both, texts and images, in the same margin, the book is based on a dual approach: referring to certain narrative themes both philological and archaeological material will be presented. By joining diverse perspectives of scholars of material culture and texts and their various approaches the publication promises new and special insight into the connection of narration and legitimation in Mesopotamia. It reflects Ancient Near Eastern kingship and its narrative strategies from a interdisciplinary and transmedial point of view and gives new insights into the matter of royal legitimation.

Narratives are primary agents in the production of social meaning and identity. They are articulated not only in oral and literal forms of expression, but also through images and artefacts. By virtue of their materiality, these objects bearing narrative potential have their speci¿ c contexts of appreciation. But how do images actually trigger narration? Can we describe the social loci of their observation? And how do these contexts ¿ social practices, religious rituals, demonstrations of political power ¿ interact with, and reaffect the artefacts in question? Both case studies from archaeology and approaches from a wider range of cultural studies seek to answer these questions within a broader methodological framework.