Greek Art and the Orient

For over a century, scholars have recognized an 'orientalizing period' in the history of early Greek art, in which Greek artisans fashioned works of art under the stimulus of Near Eastern imports or resident foreign artisans. Previous studies have emphasized the role of Greek and Phoenician traders in bringing about these contacts with the civilizations of the ancient Near East and Egypt, debating their duration or intensity in the Greek world. In this study, Ann Gunter interrogates the categories of 'Greek' and 'Oriental' as problematic and shifts emphasis to modes of contact and cultural transfers within a broader regional setting. Her provocative study places Greek encounters with the Near East and Egypt in the context of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which by the 8th and 7th centuries BCE extended from southern Turkey to western Iran. Using an expanded array of archaeological and textual sources, she argues that crucial aspects of the identity and meaning of foreign works of art were constructed through circumstances of transfer, ownership and display.

ISBN 0521832578   Pages 272 ISBN13 9780521832571 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Cambridge University Press   Weight (grammes) 840 Imprint Cambridge University Press   Published in Cambridge Format Hardback   Height (mm) 253 Publication date 16 Feb 2009   Width (mm) 177 Library of Congress N5630 .G84 2008   Spine width (mm) 21 DEWEY 709.38   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

		List of Illustrations		1
1		Art and "Assyrianization" Along the Imperial Frontiers		17
2		Conceptual Geographies and Frameworks		50
3		Defining and Interpreting Styles		80
4		Gifts, Exchange, and Acquisition		124
5		Imperial Ideologies and Modes of Appropriation		155
		Conclusions		178
		Notes		185
		Selected Bibliography		235
		Index		253

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