Acknowledgements
This book is the culmination of a long journey that began as a dissertation project at Columbia University in Fall 2009. Between then and now, many people and institutions have generously supported my work via different means. I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to them here in spirit and words. First and foremost, I want to thank my dear parents, Semiha and Mayilâ Yalçın, for their constant care and support since everything began. They formed a great team, who prioritized their childrenâs well-being and success before everything else. I am just sad to think that my father did not live to witness this important phase in my career although I know that he is always with me in spirit. This is my parentsâ achievement as well as mine, so I dedicate this volume to them.
I would also like to thank Zainab Bahrani, who has played a very important role in my life since 2009. She has been my academic advisor, counselor and a good friend, patiently listening to my questions and (many) complaints, and offering insightful advice in return. Her constant guidance and support have made the writing of this book and everything around it a much more manageable and rewarding process. Thanks are also due to the other members of my dissertation committee at Columbia: Marc van de Mieroop, Francesco De Angelis, Terrence DâAltroy and Ellen Morris. Their comments and suggestions have been invaluable and deeply influential on the arguments and interpretations I put forward in Selves Engraved on Stone. I should name Elif Ãnlü and Erhan Tamur here as well, who read the drafts of different book chapters and kindly gave feedback. I offer my gratitude also to the anonymous reviewer of Brill who read the full manuscript and provided extensive and insightful feedback. The comments and suggestions of these colleagues significantly improved the strength of the arguments maintained in this study.
Throughout the research and writing phases of the Columbia dissertation and this book, I was given the privilege of studying in person numerous Near Eastern seals and tablets in the collections of various museums in the United States and Europe. Without the generous support provided by the curators of those collections, it would have been impossible to achieve the breadth of analysis presented in the following chapters. In this context, I would particularly like to thank Sidney Babcock (The Morgan Library and Museum), Joan Aruz (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Jonathan Taylor and Dominique Collon (British Museum), Beatrice Andre-Salviniâ (Louvre Museum), Mathilde Broustet (Bibliothèque Nationale), Joachim Marzahn (Vorderasiatisches Museum), Ulla Kasten and Agnete Wisti Lassen (Yale Babylonian Collection), Grant Frame and Katherine Blanchard (Babylonian and Near East Sections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology), and Denise Doxey (Museum of Fine Arts). Special thanks are also due to the staff of The Metâs Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, especially Sarah Graff, Kim Benzel, Yelena Rakic and Michael Seymour, whose collegiality and support during my term as an Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellow (2011â2012) helped me complete most of the research on the glyptic corpus analyzed in this book.
Selves Engraved on Stone is a heavily revised and expanded version of my dissertation, and most of it was written after I started my current position as an assistant professor of ancient and medieval art history at Macalester College in 2017. Words are truly not enough to express my gratitude to the faculty and staff of Macalesterâs Department of Art and Art History, whose support and guidance in the last five years became so instrumental in the growth both of this book, and of myself as an academic and teacher. Here I am particularly indebted to my colleagues Joanna Inglot, Kari Shepherdson-Scott and Ruthann Godolei. I will be forever thankful for their faith in me and my work. I would also like to thank the staff of the DeWitt Wallace Library for pushing the limits of a small liberal arts college library, and making every academic source I needed quickly available.
Parts of Chapter 3 in this book previously appeared as âMen, Women, Eunuchs, etc.: Visualities of Gendered Identities in Kassite Babylonian Seals (ca. 1470â1155 BCE)â in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (No. 376, November 2016). In this context, I would like to thank the American Society of Overseas Research and the University of Chicago Press for giving me permission to integrate those sections into the discussion presented below.
I put the final touches on Selves Engraved on Stone before submitting it for peer review, and then prepared the revised final version at Koç Universityâs Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) in Istanbul, where I was in residence as a senior fellow during the 2021â2022 academic year. I would like to thank the Centerâs director Christopher Roosevelt, fellowship and project coordinator Duygu Tarkan, and rest of the staff for creating and maintaining an excellent research environment for the scholars studying the history and cultures of Anatolia and its neighboring regions. The Centerâs extensive facilities and the support of its hardworking staff contributed to the smooth completion of this book project.
I am also thankful to the following scholars and institutions for giving permission to use the images of seals and other artworks discussed in this study: Dominique Beyer, Dominik Bonatz, Gary Beckman, Alfonso Archi, Friedhelm Pedde, The Morgan Library and Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Vorderasiatisches Museum, British Museum, and Louvre Museum. I also would like to thank Marissa Mohammed and Alexander Podosenov, who kindly deployed their talents in digital imaging for the preparation of the line drawings of many seals discussed in the book. I should also name Emma de Looij and Katelyn Chin from Brill Publishers and my copy-editor Francesca Simkin here. Their generous help and patience with me made the writing and publication of this book go as smoothly as possible.
Finally, I would like to thank Aslı Ãzyar and Elif Ãnlü for being a source of inspiration and encouragement since the beginning of my academic journey in 2002. Thanks are also due to my dear friends Türkan Pilavcı, Arthur Mitchell, Berna Gerçek-Swing, YaÄızhan Yazar, Kristi Fackel, Jessica Maratsos, Erhan Tamur, Eva von Dassow, and Peter Hanschke for helping me in the past few years via different means (by copy-editing chapter drafts, or just by listening patiently to my complaints and sharing their wisdom over coffee or drinks). I am grateful for the positive impact they have in my life.