Glazed Brick Decoration in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of a Workshop at the 11th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Munich) in April 2018.

• Author: Albenda, Pauline

Glazed Brick Decoration in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of a Workshop at the 11th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Munich) in April 2018. Edited by ANJA FUGERT and HELEN GRIES. Oxford: ARCHAEOPRESS. 2020. Pp. iii + 122, illus. [pounds sterling]30.

A recent ICAANE workshop held in Munich presented papers on aspects of glazed brick decoration in the ancient Near East. The aim of the workshop was to establish a network for researchers working on glazed bricks, in order to enhance the exchange of new evidence from the latest studies. Among the six essays presented in the publication, three discuss the decorated glazed bricks from the nineteenthand early twentieth-century excavations at the Assyrian sites of Ashur, Khorsabad. and Babylon that survive and are kept in various museums. Two essays examine glazed brick samples dated to the Neo-Assyrian period, using scientific methods of analysis. Photographs, line drawings, lists, and references supplement the individual contributions. Considerable information and research are described in these essays, and for their own content, each is outlined below.

In the introductory essay, coeditors A. Fugert and H. Gries trace the development of glazing technologies and the production of decorated glazed bricks destined for the facades of public buildings, starting with the second millennium BCE to the Achaemenid period (sixth-fifth centuries BCE). They cite the distinctions of brickworks between Assyria and Elam. For example, glazed inudbricks were used in Assyria and Babylon, in contrast to a finer silicious glazed brick type developed in Elam. High relief brickwork for facades first appeared in Elam after the middle of the second millennium BCE and it was still an important element of religious and royal architecture in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods. The authors conclude with a summary of the topics discussed in the five essays that follow.

In their second contribution, Fugert and Cries describe the GlAssur Project launched in 2016; its aim is the reconstruction and scientific investigation of the yet unpublished Assyrian glazed bricks from the site of Assur, currently in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. All the bricks have been examined and recorded, using digital photography. Many of these glazed bricks came from the Ashur temple complex at Assur, where altogether eighteen glazed brick facades were found in situ. Within the text is a list of...