Diana L. Stein, Associate Lecturer atBirkbeck, University of London, specializes in seals and sealing practices in the ancient Near East. She has authored, co-authored and co-edited several volumes (1993, 2001, 2003, 2016), as well as numerous articles relating to Near Eastern chronology, mythology, iconography, material culture and ritual practice. Her research and fieldwork have taken her to Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.

Sarah Kielt Costello is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her research areas include early Mesopotamian and Cypriot art and archaeology, as well as museum and heritage studies. She recently co-edited Object Biographies: Collaborative Approaches to Ancient Mediterranean Art (2021) and has written numerous articles and book chapters. She has worked on archaeological projects in Cyprus, Turkey, Israel and Greece.

Karen Polinger Foster (retired, Yale University) specializes in the art of the Aegean, Egypt and the ancient Near East, about which she has written numerous books and articles. Her latest publications include A Mesopotamian Miscellany (2020) and Strange and Wonderful: Exotic Flora and Fauna in Image and Imagination (2020). She has served as the archaeological illustrator for projects in Egypt, Syria, Italy and France.

Part 1 Setting the Stage 1 Contextualizing the Study of Ecstatic Experience in Ancient Old World Societies 2 Not Only Ecstasy: Pouring New Concepts into Old Vessels 3 From Shamans to Sorcerers: Empirical Models for Defining Ritual Practices and Ecstatic Experience in Ancient, Medieval and Modern Societies Part 2 Psychoactive Substances Past and Present 4 Psychoactive Plants in the Ancient World: Observations of an Ethnobotanist 5 Ecstasy Meets Paleoethnobotany: Botanical Stimulants in Ancient Inner Asia 6 Caucasian Cocktails: The Early Use of Alcohol in "The Cradle of Wine" 7 Mind-altering Plants in Babylonian Medical Sources 8 Plant-based Potions and Ecstatic States in Hittite Rituals 9 Forbidden at Philae: Proscription of Aphrodisiac and Psychoactive Plants in Ptolemaic Egypt 10 The Ring-Kernoi and Psychotropic Substances Part 3 Ecstatic Experience and the Numinous 11 Beer, Beasts and Bodies: Shedding Boundaries in Bounded Spaces 12 Lament, Spectacle and Emotion in a Ritual for Ishtar 13 Writing for the Dead, Welcoming the Solar-Eye Goddess and Ecstatic Expression in Egyptian Religion 14 Altered States on Prepalatial Crete 15 Bodies in Ecstasy: Shamanic Elements in Minoan Religion 16 The Mycenaeans and Ecstatic Ritual Experience 17 Emotional Arousal, Sensory Deprivation and "Miraculous Healing" in the Cult of Asclepius 18 Ecstasy and Initiation in the Eleusinian Mysteries 19 Apolline and Dionysian Ecstasy at Delphi 20 Communing with the Spirits: Funeral Processions in Ancient Rome Part 4 Expressions of the Ecstatic Mind 21 Ecstatic Experience and Possession Disorders in Ancient Mesopotamia 22 Ghosts In and Outside the Machine: A Phenomenology of Intelligence, Psychic Possession and Prophetic Ecstasy in Ancient Mesopotamia 23 Ecstatic Speech in Ancient Mesopotamia 24 Ecstatic Experience: The Proto-Theme of a Near Eastern Glyptic Language Family 25 Understanding the Language of Trees: Ecstatic Experience and Interspecies Communication in Late Bronze Age Crete 26 Psychedelic Art and Ecstatic Visions in the Aegean 27 Sight as Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient Mediterranean