Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel and Jean M. Evans 2008

Beyond Babylon.
Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art;
New Haven: Yale University Press.
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This volume displays many different objects coming from the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East (the Levant, Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia), trying to underline the contacts and the trades between these countries in the Middle Bronze Age and in the Late Bronze Age, having a peculiar focus on the so-called ‘international period’.

The Middle Bronze Age part includes the presentation of artefacts from Babylon, Mari, Ebla, Ugarit, Byblos and Egypt with also some essays about the development of trades in the Early Second millennium BC, the Cedar Forest, the Minoan Kamares Ware, the T&#244d Treasure, the commerce of lapis lazuli, the Old Assyrian colonies in Anatolia and the Ivories kept at the MET.

A second part of the volume is devoted to a discussion about texts, trade and travellers with some sub-chapters on jewellery, the Minoan and Egyptian fresco depictions, ritual and royal imagery including information about board games and horses.

The third section of the volume is dedicated to the Late Bronze Age, including contacts between different countries (Egypt during the Amarna age, Hittites, Mittani, the Kassite Babylon, Syria and the Aegean).

A specific chapter is focused on the Uluburun shipwreck and the peculiar role of Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age.

Two final sections are about ‘the art of exchange’ (focusing on ivories, shells, bones and vitreous materials) and about the ‘legacy‘, bridging Babylon with Homer, Anatolia and the Levant, with an insight on ivory-working in the Early First millennium BC.

At the end of the volume, useful appendices are attached concerning chronological problems (and synchronization) between different areas and countries.