The volume is the result of the eighth Annual University of Chicago
Oriental Institute Seminar, held on March 2-3, 2012. Seventeen speakers,
from both the US and abroad, examined the interconnections between
temples, ritual, and cosmology from a variety of regional
specializations and theoretical perspectives. The seminar revisited a
classic topic, one with a long history among scholars of the ancient
world: the cosmic symbolism of sacred architecture. Archaeologists, art
historians, and philologists working not only in the ancient Near East,
but also Mesoamerica, Greece, South Asia, and China, re-evaluated the
significance of this topic across the ancient world.