ISAW Professor Beate Pongratz-Leisten Publishes New Book on Myth and Cultural Memory in Ancient Mesopotamia

Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at ISAW, has released her new book, Myth, Text and Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Narrative Reading of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

The publication examines the power of storytelling and the role of myth in the cultural memory of ancient Mesopotamia. The study considers myth as a form of knowledge and as a way ancient communities explained, organized, and represented their world. Drawing on approaches from cognitive semiotics, visual studies, and narratology, the book explores how myths operated across both text and image, and how images could make absent people, places, or ideas present to viewers. In doing so, it offers a new approach to the imagery and iconology of ancient Mesopotamia and highlights the importance of meaning in the study of ancient Near Eastern art.

Pongratz-Leisten’s work focuses on the interrelated topics of history, religion, literature, and art in Greater Mesopotamia, including Syria, from the fourth millennium into the first millennium BCE. Her research combines inquiry into textual and material records with theoretical approaches from history of religion, historical studies, anthropology, reception history, cognitive narratology and psychology, art history, and visual studies.

Her past publications include several books on the cultural and religious history of ancient Mesopotamia, including Religion and Ideology in Assyria and Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien.

Learn more about the book here.