Imagining the Heavens across Eurasia from Antiquity to Early Modernity

This book surveys how humans across Eurasia depicted their knowledge of the heavens over a period of nearly 4,000 years. Frequently focusing on enigmatic objects, the authors present a wide variety of objects – through text and pictures – from tombs, churches, temples, caves, museums, libraries and even a bathroom. Analyzing and contextualizing the objects and their astral imageries, the authors narrate what the producers and users of these images knew about the heavens and how they shaped their relationships to them through the objects presented. Among the images treated in the chapters we find planetary and celestial deities (Egypt, Rome, India, Japan), the seven-day-week (Rome, Tibet, Japan), constellations and zodiacal signs (Mesopotamia, the Islamic world, Europe), the Sun and the Moon (Sasanian Iran, northern China, Islamic Iraq), scholars, muses and globes (ancient Greece), power and politics (Rome, Italy), and a dancing goat (Iran).