ZAINAB BAHRANI
The Graven Image: Representations in Babylonia and Assyria
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 256 pp., 28 b/w ills. $49.95
Zainab Bahrani undertakes in The Graven Image to locate and describe the fundamental status of imagery for the "Assyro-Babylonian" culture of ancient Mesopotamia. This is a courageous and lofty ambition, which, as she points out, has not been systematically tackled before. It took her ten years to write the book, ...