This book traces the transformation of the belief systems that shaped life in ancient Near Eastern communities.

Human belief systems and practices can be traced to ca. 10,000 BCE in the Ancient Near East, where the earliest evidence of ritual structures and objects can be found. Religious architecture, the relics of human skeletons, animal symbolism, statues, and icons all contributed to a complex network into which the spiritual essence of the divine was materially present. In this book, Nicola Laneri traces the transformation of the belief systems that shaped life in ancient Near Eastern communities, from prehistoric times until the advent of religious monotheism in the Levant during the first millennium BCE. Considering a range of evidence, from stone ceremonial enclosures, such as as Göbleki Tepe, to the construction of the first temples and icons of Mesopotamian polytheistic beliefs, to the Temple of Jerusalem, the iconic center of Israelite monotheism, Laneri offers new insights into the symbolic value embodied in the religious materiality produced in the ancient Near East.