The Animated Temple and Its Agency in the Urban Life of the City in Ancient Mesopotamia Beate Pongratz-Leisten, NYU, ISAW

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dealing with the issue of agency, I think the author might benefit from quoting Irene J. Winter (2007), Agency Marked, Agency Ascribed: The Affective Object in Ancient Mesopotamia. In Art's Agency and Art History, R. Osborne and J. Tanner (eds.), Malden, MA and Oxford, Blackwell Publishing: 42-69.

For what concerns the Neo-Babylonian works on ancient temple structures of the Sumerian and later traditions, it can be useful refer to Irene J. Winter (2000), Babylonian Archaeologists of the(ir) Mesopotamian Past. In Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Rome, May 18th-23rd 1998, P. Matthiae, A. Enea, L. Peyronel and F. Pinnock (eds.), Rome, La Sapienza: 1787-1800.

Author Response

Dear Colleague,

I thank you very much for reminding me of Winter's articles which I know of course, but forgot to quote.

Best regards,

Reviewer 2 Report

I truly enjoyed your excellent paper analyzing the intertwined, animate nature of material, city, and temple in ancient Mesopotamian sources. As an architectural historian, it provides a much need introduction to the complexity of thought and experience of architecture in the era. I will certainly use it as a resource for my undergraduate students. 

The reflection near the end of the essay on a similar attitude in medieval Europe is welcome, and reflects scholarship such as Mailan S. Doquang's The Lithic Garden and my own, "Light, Stone, and Flesh: Bernard of Clairvaux and the Wall of the Church" in Jacquet and Giraud's From the Things Themselves. 

Author Response

Many thanks for your positive response! As the reviewers remain anonymous, I need your name in order to be able to quote you properly.

Kind regards,

Beate Pongratz-Leisten