This beautifully illustrated guide to the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is the perfect companion for travelers and armchair travelers alike. It provides a concise survey of three ancient cultures that have often been misunderstood, both because of Biblical and neoclassical traditions, and because of twentieth- and twenty-first-century events. Lavishly illustrated in full color on every page, the book is arranged topically to cover the broad areas of life, such as people, politics, religion, the world of the dead, and important places...

This sumptuously illustrated volume analyzes artists' representations of angels and demons and heaven and hell from the Judeo-Christian tradition and describes how these artistic portrayals evolved over time. As with other books in the Guide to Imagery series, the goal of this volume is to
help contemporary art enthusiasts decode the symbolic meanings in the great masterworks of Western Art.
The first chapter traces the development of images of the Creation and the Afterworld from descriptions of them in the Scriptures through their evolution in later literary and...