such as the conflict between Gilgamesh and the monstrous Humbaba in the later Epic of Gilgamesh. Although these sources present images of the Cedar Forest as a fantastical, nearly mythical land, it was also anchored in reality, linked to the cedar forests of Lebanon. The intersection of real and imagined qualities used to define distant lands allowed the Middle and Neo-Assyrian kings in particular to manipulate the image of these places for their own political, religious, and social gain. Through examining references to the Cedar Forest in royal inscriptions and other texts, it becomes clear that such locations were carefully employed to mark the edges of political and military dominion, a grand claim of the reach and extent of the Assyrian king’s rule. Though the Cedar Forest and other locations like it were connected to the core through trade and military encounters, they remained abstracted and rendered fantastical by the subjective consideration of the distance that defined them. The mental map these locations collectively created was thus subject to shift over time, continuously renegotiated based on the demands of political elites and social conceptions held by those who lived at the other end of the imagined world.