how religious and lay authorities manipulated and distorted Chinggis Khan’s image to
make it serve ritual purposes that bolstered their power. I call this process ‘iconization’,
that is, changing an image so as to make it serve a specific, historically defined,
representation of power. Iconization drew on many different techniques, from Buddhist
consecration of icons to political imposition of orthodox iconography to enshrinement
in ancestral halls.