Copies and Copying in the Context of Ancient Western Asia: Ancient, Modern, and Future Practices

ABSTRACT Before the doors of the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Museum of the Ancient Near East) in Berlin closed to visitors in October 2023, one could not walk through the museum without passing by the plaster copies of the Zincirli Gate lion, the Uruk Vase, and the Stele of Hammurabi. One of the highlights of the museum, the monumental reconstruction of the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, is a different kind of copy, a hybrid reimagination representing something that no longer exists. Starting from archaeological copies in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, this article examines how museum visitors interact with copies and how museums with archaeological objects have framed copies in their exhibits in the past and today. For this purpose, it contextualizes copies within ancient Western Asian practices of copying. Based on this evaluation, it invites us to imagine the future of archaeological copies in museums with ancient Western Asian collections.