From the earliest Near Eastern urban civilizations to modern times, rulers and their retinues have disseminated ideological information with regard to the legitimacy of their status, their obligations, and their rights. The visual expressions of these royal statements were the subject of our research group, under the auspices of the Mandel Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and of its international workshop, ‘Picturing Royal Charisma in the Near East (Third Millennium BCE to 1700 CE)’ that took place at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, January 12–14, 2015. We thank Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center for supporting our project and providing us with a pleasant and welcoming home for developing our ideas concerning the various aspects of Middle Eastern sovereigns and their manifestation in the visual arts. Special thanks to Prof. Dani Schwartz, former Academic Head of Scholion, and Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten, its current Head, for their continuous support. This volume comprises some of the papers delivered at our workshop that dealt with the visual presentation of rulers around the ancient and medieval Eastern Mediterranean region. These contributions reflect the endurance of some royal themes and pictorial formulae that were used over a period of more than 4000 years. Considering the Eastern Mediterranean basin, Mesopotamia, and Iran as a geographically connected unit, we aimed to explore their interrelations synchronically and diachronically, through the imagery of rulers and power, from the late fourth millennium BCE to the later Islamic period c. 1600 CE.

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