We invite you to join a diverse range of scholars reviewing the reception, use, and misuse of the Ancient Near East in early modern art, literature, scholarship, and politics. Fourteen speakers will explore the ways that the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia were imagined and their history constructed by scholars, artists, and writers during the early modern period (ca. 1600–1800) – and the political and social uses that they were put to.