Ludovico Portuese is Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East (L-OR/05) at Dipartimento di Civiltà Antiche e Moderne (DICAM) of the Università degli Studi di Messina. His research interest mainly focuses on the archaeology, the history of art and the social history of ancient Mesopotamia. He has investigated the life at the Assyrian court during the first millennium BCE (Life at Court: Ideology and Audience in the Late Assyrian Palace, Zaphon 2020), published several articles on the art and the archaeology of Mesopotamia, and devoted two volumes to the analysis of metaphors (Researching Metaphor in the Ancient Near East, Harrassowitz 2020) and of the terms ideology and propaganda (Ancient Near Eastern Weltanschauungen in Contact and in Contrast. Rethinking Ideology and Propaganda in the Ancient Near East, Zaphon 2022).