The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple 1107017394, 9781107017399

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T h e L i ve s o f S u m e r i an S c u l p t u r e This book examines the sculpture created during the Early Dynastic period (2900–2350 BC) and originating in Sumer, a region corresponding to present-day southern Iraq. Featured almost exclusively in temple complexes, some 550 Early Dynastic stone statues of human figures carved in an abstract style have survived. Chronicling the intellectual history of ancient Near Eastern art history and archaeology at the intersection of sculpture and aesthetics, this book argues that the early modern reception of Sumer still influences ideas about this sculpture. Engaging also with the archaeology of the Early Dynastic temple, the book ultimately considers what a stone statue of a human figure has signified, both in modern times and in antiquity. Jean M. Evans is a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Getty Foundation, The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, and the Warburg Institute of the University of London. She was the co-organizer of the international exhibition Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. and co-editor of its corresponding publication.

!!!! T h e L i ve s o f S u m e r i an Sculpture An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple

Jean M. Evans University of Chicago

cambridge university press

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107017399 © Jean M. Evans 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Evans, Jean M. The lives of Sumerian sculpture : an archaeology of the early dynastic temple / Jean M. Evans. pages  cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-01739-9 1.  Sculpture, Sumerian.  2.  Figure sculpture – Iraq – Sumer. 3.  Temples – Iraq – Sumer.  4.  Archaeology and art.  I.  Title. NB80.E93  2012 732’.5–dc23    2011050310 ISBN 978-1-107-01739-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

C ontents

List of Illustrations

page vii

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

1

1.

2.

Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930: Making the Body Visible

15

Introduction to the Study of Sumer, 1850–1930

15

Philology and the Sumerian Problem

19

Visualizing the Terrain of Human Taxonomy

21

Beautiful Skulls: Apollo Belvedere, Craniometry, and the Reconstitution of an Ideal

24

Archaeology, Gudea, and the Examination of Monuments

30

“Sumerian” Skeletal Remains

35

Biblical, Ethnographic, and Civilized Time in Sumer

37

Conclusion: Sculpting the Sumerian Body

41

Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture

46

Introduction: The 1930s as a Transitional Period in the Study of Sumerian Sculpture

46

Henri Frankfort, the Oriental Institute, and Physical Anthropology

50

Sculpture, Ornament, and the Origins of Art

56

Sumer, “Primitive” Art, and Modern Art

61

Conclusion: Ideals of Sculpture

69

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Contents 3.

4.

5.

6.

vi

Seeing the Divine: Sanctuary, Sculpture, and Display

76

Introduction: The Early Dynastic Temple as Museum

76

Constructing Sculpture Display in Ishtar Temple G

81

Sculpture Display in the Diyala Temples and the Early Dynastic Altar

88

Statues, Access, and the Divine

97

Conclusion: Seeing as a Cultural Construction

107

The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture

111

Introduction: Approaching Early Dynastic Sculpture

111

Dedication in the Early Dynastic Temple Institution

116

Materials and Methods of Manufacturing Early Dynastic Sculpture

123

The Subjects and Objects of Ritual in the Life of Sculpture

131

The Death of Sculpture?

137

Conclusion: Corporeal Aesthetics and Early Dynastic Temple Sculpture

143

Becoming Temple Sculpture: The Asmar Hoard

146

Introduction to the Asmar Hoard

146

Locating the Asmar Hoard

148

Actors, Agency, and Rituals of Libation

152

Tradition, Heirlooms, and Diyala Sculpture

159

Becoming Human: Style, Identity, and the Asmar Hoard

167

Conclusion: Models for the Human Donor in Temple Sculpture

174

Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues 179 Introduction: The Donor as a Social Persona

179

Male Donors, Occupation, and Identity

180

Female Donors: Gender, Banqueting, and Cultic Practices

188

Depositional Patterns at Nippur

191

Female Donors and the Inana Temple

195

Conclusion: Collective Identity and Early Dynastic Sculpture

200

Conclusion: Materiality, Abstraction, and Early Dynastic Sculpture

203

Notes

209

Bibliography

245

Index

273

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I llustrations

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Paris, Universal Exposition 1889, Chaldean display, page 2 Girsu, diorite statue of the ruler Gudea of Lagash, ca. 2100 BC, 3 Katharine Woolley, 1928 reconstruction of Shub-Ad, 4 Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture hoard, 5 Map of greater Mesopotamia with principal sites mentioned in the text, 9 Bertin 1889, “Profiles from the Assyrian and Babylonian Monuments,” 18 Apollo Belvedere, Roman marble copy of a Greek fourth-century BC original, 22 Jan Wandelaar, Human Skeleton, 1740, 25 Camper 1794, “Physiological examination of the differences in the features, when viewed in front,” 27 Attributed to Francois-Joseph Gall, 1820 (?) cast of the head of the Apollo Belvedere adapted for phrenology, 28 Girsu, Fragmentary diorite heads now attributed to the ruler Gudea of Lagash, ca. 2100 BC, 32 Pinches 1892, Reconstruction of a fragmentary diorite head from Girsu, 33 Field 1935, “Arab (No. 26), Kish Area,” 38 Malvina Cornell Hoffman, Arab from Kish, 1932, 43 Early Dynastic sculpture excavated in the Diyala region, 47 Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture hoard, statue of the abstract style, 48 Khafajah, Nintu Temple, Early Dynastic statue of the realistic style, 49 Frankfort 1928, “Degeneration of natural representations into geometric designs,” 59 Frankfort 1932a, “The evolution of the goat motive,” 60 After Wilenski 1932, comparison of a statue of Gudea with Moore’s Mother and Child, 67 G. Rachel Levy, 1934 watercolor of sculpture from Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, 68 Nippur, North Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture hoard, 73 Seton Lloyd, 1933 reconstruction of Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Single-Shrine Temple I, 79 Vatican City, Basilica of St. Peter, 80

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Illustrations 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

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Walter Andrae, 1919 reconstruction of Ashur, Ishtar Temple G sanctuary, 81 British Museum, Roman gallery, ca. 1905, 82 Ashur, plan of Ishtar Temple G with the later remains of Ishtar Temple E overlying it, 83 Robert Nanteuil, Portrait of Cardinal Mazarin in His Palace, ca. 1658–60, 85 Louvre Museum, Assyro-Chaldean Gallery, ca. 1900, 86 Reconstruction of Khafajah, Temple Oval, House D sanctuary, 91 Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, “Interior of Single-Shrine Temple I after the Altar Had Been Repaired and a Statue Base Placed on Top of It,” 92 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, plan representing various subphases, 94 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, isometric drawing of the sanctuary area representing various subphases, 95 Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, plan of the Square Temple, 96 Girsu, vessel of the god Ningirsu dedicated by the Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash, 99 Nippur, Early Dynastic door plaque dedicated by Ur-Enlil, the dam-gar3 (merchant), 100 Lagash, Ibgal of Inana, foundation figure of the Early Dynastic ruler Enanatum of Lagash, 101 Lagash, Bagara of Ningirsu, drawing of the relief carving on an Early Dynastic mace head, 101 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic door plaque dedicated by Lumma the gal-zadim (master stonecutter), 104 Willem De Kooning, Woman I (1950–52), 108 Ur, diorite statue of the Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash, 113 Pashime, stele dedicated by Ilshu-rabi during the Akkadian period, 114 Early Dynastic support in the form of a bull man with clasped hands, 118 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic statue of a standing female figure, 128 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic statues assembled from multiple pieces, 138 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic statue of a standing female figure, 142 Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, plan of Archaic Shrine IVC with plan of the predecessor to the Square Temple (solid lines) superimposed, 150 Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, plan of Archaic Shrine III, 153 Early Dynastic solid-footed goblets, 154 Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture fragment of a figure holding a solid-footed goblet, 154 Khafajah, plan of Sin Temple VIII, 156 Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, modern impression of an Early Dynastic cylinder seal, 160 Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic vessel fragment with hero mastering animals, 161 Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture hoard, statue of a kneeling belted hero, 162 Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic statue of a crouching belted hero holding a vessel, 163 Khafajah, Sin Temple VI/VII, Early Dynastic statue of a crouching figure bearing a load, 164

Illustrations 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Susa, second archaic deposit, statue of a crouching male figure holding a vessel, 166 Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic statues of belted heroes with clasped hands; statue of a nude female figure, 168 Khafajah, Sin Temple V, Early Dynastic relief-carved vessel with a nude female figure, 169 Mari, Ishtar Temple, statue of a standing male figure dedicated by Ishqi-Mari, ruler of Mari, 171 Ur, Seal Impression Strata, drawing of an Early Dynastic cylinder seal design, 172 Khafajah, Early Dynastic clay figurines of nude females, 175 Mari, Temple of Ninni-zaza, statue of a standing male figure dedicated by the cup-bearer (sagi) of the ruler, 181 Girsu, Early Dynastic stele fragment of the ruler Eanatum of Lagash, 182 Mari, Temple of Ninni-zaza, sculpture fragment of a male figure holding a musical instrument dedicated by Urnanshe, the nar-mah (exalted singer/ musician), 183 Mari, Ishtar Temple, statue of a seated male figure dedicated by Ebih-il, the nu-banda3 official, 185 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic statue of a seated male figure dedicated by Seskina, the nu-banda3 official, 186 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic statues, 189 Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic statue of a standing male figure ~~ ga official of Enlil, 194 dedicated by Lugal-hursag, sag Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic relief-carved vessel with male and female figures, 199 Mari, Ishtar Temple, statue of a male and a female figure seated together, 200 Ur, Early Dynastic door plaque, 204

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AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

I am very grateful to the many individuals and institutions that made this book possible. I thank the following generous institutions whose fellowships gave me the time to think about, write, and revise my ideas: the Getty Foundation, the Warburg Institute of the University of London, and The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq. I thank McGuire Gibson for inviting me to participate in the final publication of the Inana Temple excavations at Nippur and for encouraging me to incorporate unpublished Inana Temple materials into my study. I also thank Clemens Reichel for permitting me to cite unpublished data from the Diyala Excavations; this material is currently being prepared for publication on the “Diyala Virtual Archive” (www.diyalaproject.edu). I thank the following individuals who read this manuscript at various stages and provided much-needed encouragement, inspiration, advice, and guidance: Robert D. Biggs, Madeleine Cody, Paul Collins, McGuire Gibson, Tom Hardwick, Oscar White Muscarella, Edward L. Ochsenschlager, Holly Pittman, Vincent van Exel, Karen Wilson, Christopher Woods, and Richard L. Zettler. I thank Henry Taylor for the many discussions on Early Dynastic sculpture and Lauren Crampton and my Bryn Mawr College graduate seminar for their foray into Sumer. David Morgan sent me the page proofs of his introduction to Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief, and Paul Taylor sent me the text of his lectures, “Gombrich and the Idea of Primitive Art” and “Henri Frankfort, Aby Warburg and ‘Mythopoeic Thought.’” Tom Hardwick sent me his article “Five Months Before Tut: Purchasers and Prices at the MacGregor Sale, 1922.” Tom

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xi

Acknowledgments Urban sent me the page proofs for Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond. I thank all these individuals for sharing these materials. I thank Kashia Pieprzak for her assistance with nineteenth-century French terminology. I thank the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for supporting me during the early phase of this study. In particular, I thank Kim Benzel for her encouragement and Jean-François de Lapérouse for his assistance with the examination of Early Dynastic sculpture. Of course, all errors are my own. The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq also provided financial support for the images reproduced in this book. For assistance with images, I would like to thank, in addition to many of the above-mentioned individuals, Mark Altaweel, Alessandra Biagianti, Pascal Butterlin, Nina Cummings, Catherine Giraudon, Thomas Haggerty, Ian Jenkins, Michael Kane, Kathleen Langjahr, John A. Larson, Lia Melemenis, Philippe Mennecier, Sean Molin, Michael North, Neal Stimler, Emma Stower, and Sarah Uttridge. I also thank the Directorate General for Antiquities and Museums of Syria for permission to reproduce images of objects in the collections of the National Museums. Some of the ideas in this book were presented on the following occasions: History of Scholarship Seminar, Warburg Institute, London; Visual Culture Colloquium, Bryn Mawr College; Mari, ni est ni ouest? 75 ans de découvertes archéologiques à Tell Hariri (conference), Damascus; Eastern Tigris Region Colloquium, Heidelberg; Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) annual meeting, New York; Sixth International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE), Rome; Ritual in the Ancient Near East seminar, Columbia University; the Charles K. Wilkinson Lecture Series, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; College Art Association (CAA) annual conference, Boston; American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) annual meeting, Philadelphia. I am grateful for the constructive feedback that I received. I thank Cambridge University Press for accepting my manuscript for publication and for the care with which Helen Wheeler, James Dunn, and the production team transformed it into a book. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Donald P. Hansen first encouraged my interest in the Early Dynastic period. From him, I learned that art historical inquiry should be situated in both the archaeological record and a firsthand knowledge of fieldwork. I often wonder what he would have thought about the way I have applied his lessons; I miss the chance to ask him. Without the support of my husband, Vincent, there may have been a book, but certainly there would have been none of the joy. And thank you, Marieke Dahlia, for your lovely in- and ex-utero companionship during the final revisions and production of this book.

xii

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I n t ro d u c t i o n

Because this study was conceived of as a biography, it should start at the begin­ ning, with an early modern image of Sumer. Visual evidence of Sumerians was almost completely unknown until 1877, when the site of Tello began to yield numerous statues of Gudea, the ruler of Lagash (ca. 2100 BC). Shortly there­ after, the Sumerians were featured in an ethnographic exhibition celebrating the progress of human labor at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris (Figure 1). Included in the exhibition were a Cro-Magnon husband and wife carving an antler, Mexicans manipulating agave fiber, Sudanese blacksmiths with mon­ key-skin bellows, Chinese cloisonné-makers, and Gudea with tablet, ruler, and ­stylus.1 In the center of a pavilion, a polychrome plaster reconstruction of Gudea was exhibited. Nearby was a plaster cast of the statue of Gudea on which it was modeled (Figure 2). The head of the statue had not survived, so one was created based on other ancient sculpture as well as a “modern Chaldean” from around Baghdad.2 Plaster cast, stone statue, and living human being thus were com­ bined to form the earliest modern image of a Sumerian. Another early modern image of a Sumerian is from around half a century later. By then, knowledge of the Sumerians had grown considerably through excava­ tions, including those of the so-called Royal Cemetery at Ur. One of its famous burials belonged to a woman whose name was read in Sumerian as Shub-ad. A reconstruction of Shub-ad was overseen by one of the premier physical anthro­ pologists of Britain (Figure 3). Because the skull of Shub-ad was poorly pre­ served, a plaster cast was taken of a different skull excavated at Ur. The features of the face were modeled in wax over the plaster cast in order to approximate a Sumerian physical type, and the garment was styled according to Sumerian statues. Polychromy heightened the realistic effect. The modern sculpture of Shub-ad was declared “an accurate representation of the Sumerian type.” As a

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture

1. Universal Exposition, Paris, 1889, Chaldean display with a reconstruction of the ruler Gudea of Lagash. From Heuzey 1891–1915, frontispiece.

physical type, it was, incidentally, also “a type occasionally seen amongst the Arab women of southern Iraq at the present day.”3 Today, the Sumerian name of Shub-ad is read instead as Puabi, a Semitic Akkadian name.4 The dramatically arching eyebrows, heavily lined eyes, and prominent lip bow of the Shub-ad reconstruction are reminiscent of a publicity photo of Greta Garbo in the 1931 feature film Mata Hari. It was rumored that several women were claiming to have been the model for Shub-ad. All of this nonsense, however, was soon forgotten. The end of the initial phase of the discovery of Sumerian civilization – circa 1850–1930 – was marked by significant advances in the understanding of the Sumerian language and

2

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Introduction

2.  Girsu (Tello), diorite statue of the ruler Gudea of Lagash dedicated to the god Ningirsu (also known as “Statue B”), ca. 2100 BC. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Départment des Antiquités Orientales, AO 2. From Sarzec 1884–1912, Plate 18.

early Mesopotamian chronology. Early Sumerian sculpture was dated to the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900–2350 BC), a span of time encompassing some six hundred years of the third millennium BC. An Early Dynastic hoard of stone statues was discovered during the 1934 excavations at the site of Tell Asmar, in the Diyala region east of Baghdad (Figure 4). The sculpture in the Asmar hoard was proclaimed the oldest monumental stone sculpture in Mesopotamia. The style of the sculpture, which abstracted the component parts of the body to geometric shapes, was understood as an embodiment of primordial forms at the origins of world art history. Thus, Sumerian sculpture was transformed from an ethnographic artifact and racial index of an ancient civilization into an aesthetic object. The contrast between the early ethnographic materialization of the Sumerians and the subsequent canonical, art-historical status of Sumerian sculpture is striking. Comprised of plaster, wax, polychromy, and real materials, the early

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture

3.  Katharine Woolley, 1928 reconstruction of Shub-Ad from Ur, Royal Cemetery, tomb PG 800. From Woolley 1934, Plate 128. Reproduced courtesy of Richard L. Zettler, Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near East Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

modern images of Gudea and Shub-ad are scientific documents of ethnogra­ phy. Literally and figuratively, in their use of perishable materials and in their conception, the modern reconstructions of Gudea and Shub-ad belong to the singular time and place of their manufacture. In contrast, stone sculpture tra­ ditionally belongs to the realm of fine art. The former comprises the ephemeral side of the latter, which is durable and eternal. When considered together, these two sides of sculpture underscore its unique ability to document the body. In the 1860s, a technique for casting the absent body at Pompeii was achieved by pouring plaster into the cavities encountered within the compacted volcanic ash covering the city. Out came self-sculptures or semiophores, objects that paradoxically rendered present that which had been absent.5 Similarly, the absent Sumerian body was made present in scien­ tific reconstructions assembled from a patchwork of ancient sculpture, skel­ etons, and living human beings. Materialized in the void of absence, the various modes of casting the Sumerian body obliterated ancient sculpture as a physical, material object.

4

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Introduction

4. Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture hoard. The statues in the hoard are now divided among the Iraq Museum, Baghdad; The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. From Frankfort 1935b, Figure 63. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

The biography of Sumerian sculpture undertaken here is arranged as a series of themes encircling a central premise: a statue is a material object. In Lives of Indian Images, which suggested my own title, Davis utilizes the concept of biography to interrogate past and present interpretive communities, which pro­ duce multiple readings of objects.6 Through these varied perceptions, objects embody the qualities of social beings and assume identities that are not fixed at the moment of inception. Rather, these identities shift repeatedly through human interactions.7 Materiality, which considers the social relations between people and objects, is a central concern of this biography. While the analyses of material culture in ancient contexts are typically empirical, addressing the form, materials, and manufacture of objects, materiality addresses the object as it is implicated in the construction of social identities. The constitution of object worlds and their shaping of human experiences are central issues of materiality.8 Thomas characterizes the shifting nature of object worlds as a lack of contain­ ment, which causes us, as subjects, to have entanglements with objects.9 Because we conceive of stone statues in a certain way, we respond to them in a certain

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5

The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture way. Our responses are grounded not in universal principles but in the varied and often conflicting notions that reflect shifting sociohistorical phenomena. Materiality is not an essentialist principle, and object worlds must be contextu­ alized within specific cultural contexts. Meskell therefore challenges archaeolo­ gists to formulate new questions that can potentially delineate ­subject–object relations from archaeological context.10 As a biography, the study here further recognizes that past and present visual cultures  – in which ways of seeing are contextualized within cultural practices – will perceive objects in different ways. Vision and seeing thus are perceptual practices mediated by specific sociocultural conditions.11 A consider­ ation of visual perception marks an anthropological shift away from traditional art-historical discourse.12 The potential for both materiality and visual culture to emerge as independent disciplinary pursuits is mediated, however, by efforts to avoid ensconcing them within the same constraints as existing disciplines.13 Materiality and visual culture therefore are utilized here as part of an art history that has abandoned universalist and essentialist models, particularly in refer­ ence to aesthetics. I understand materiality and visual culture as evidence of a general paradigmatic shift that art history has already adapted, processed, and accommodated to varying degrees.14 As in anthropology and archaeology, new paradigms in art history generate new issues that require address. To my mind, one advantage of the shift away from the aesthetic inquiry central to traditional art history is the creation of an expanded corpus of visual imagery. This corpus can be subject to the visual analysis that had formerly been the exclusive domain of the artwork. Regarding the subject of this book, visual culture admits into an inquiry into Sumerian sculpture the visual imagery through which perceptions of Early Dynastic sculp­ ture have been constructed. That is, the study of Sumerian sculpture requires a negotiation of the historical terrain comprised of past scholarship. Because it engages in the practice of materializing absence, archaeology has grown increasingly reflexive in understanding its own methodologies as a mode of encountering the past that is open to human agency and thus unfixed.15 The materials of archaeology are continuously remade and, in the example of Sumerians, pushed to the margins of the field and rendered immaterial. To con­ sider the modes in which the Sumerians were materialized and made present is to understand a part of the history of our own cultural production in ancient Near Eastern studies. In doing so, the dominant discursive practices in which we currently participate are better understood. Much of the empirical data of early ancient Near Eastern archaeology is not used because it is outdated. We pick and choose what is relevant and leave the rest – the plaster casts and waxworks – behind. However, I am interested in what has been left behind, in the story that shifts among these ephemeral visions of past worlds. This, too, comprises the visual culture of ancient Sumer.

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Introduction The spaces left behind also are metaphors for postcolonial issues in which subal­ tern discourses are relegated to the margins.16 In the paradigm of Orientalism, the Orient is an absence that must be constructed in order to be rendered ­present.17 Mitchell describes a series of fundamental absences – the absence of movement, reason, order, and meaning – that are polar opposites of the West. Such absences are necessary elements in the ordering of representation itself.18 Bhabha locates important late twentieth-century cultural work in the spaces between estab­ lished bodies of knowledge.19 The inquiries into the early reception of Sumerian sculpture sustained at the beginning of this book gradually shift from intellectual history to ancient context. That is, my interest in how the early reception of Sumerian sculpture influences our current conceptions of Early Dynastic statues leads to a reex­ amination of the temple. I therefore raise certain issues at the beginning of the book that are central to, for example, postcolonial theoretical methodologies, but I do not attempt to sustain such a narrative throughout the entire text. The final chapters of the book instead self-consciously negotiate between our inher­ itance of the early reception of Sumer and our understanding of Early Dynastic sculpture as a material presence in the temple. The second part of the book therefore pragmatically engages with an archaeology of Early Dynastic temple sculpture that aims to apply more current methodologies to the late nineteenthand early twentieth-century archaeological data and to overcome the biases we have inherited. Rather than a positivist approach that encompasses all surviv­ ing examples of Early Dynastic sculpture, my aim is approached thematically through a series of inquiries that begin with the general and proceed toward a specific subset of inquiries. The object world of Early Dynastic sculpture underscores the assumptions we as subjects impose on objects. By exploring the shifting meanings  – the lives  – of sculpture over time, I proceed sequentially and temporally toward answering the question of what a stone statue of a human figure signified, both in modern times and in antiquity. The some 550 surviving examples of Early Dynastic sculpture belong to a type referred to as a dedicatory, worshiper, or votive statue. These statues are with few exceptions only found in temples, and it is only in the Early Dynastic period that they are found in such abun­ dance. Inscribed Early Dynastic statues reveal that sculpture was dedicated to temples by individuals who, although of an elite class, were not royal. We know, for example, of temple administrators, priests, scribes, cup-bearers, and singers who dedicated statues to Early Dynastic temples. At no other time in the history of the ancient Near East has nonroyal sculpture survived in such abundance. Early Dynastic temple sculpture is therefore foremost a phenomenon of private, elite individuals. My study emphasizes that Early Dynastic temple statues are a distinct phenomenon of the Early Dynastic period. Consequently, I have refrained

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture from collapsing the evidence of various periods into a single treatment of the Mesopotamian image across time and space. What was happening in the first millennium BC, when textual evidence is more abundant, was not necessarily happening in the third millennium BC. At the same time, the reality is that a degree of continuity in Mesopotamian traditions has created a type of compos­ ite understanding of the Mesopotamian image in scholarship. This composite understanding is valid in general but is not applicable wholesale to the par­ ticular. The tension between phenomena that are distinct in time and space as opposed to the continuity of tradition must be negotiated in any study. I have been particularly careful to note the dates of the sources used in this study because in my view it is methodologically flawed to project later sources onto earlier periods. This book comprises a study of sculpture dating to the Early Dynastic period of Sumer, but it is not a study of Sumerians per se. The English term Sumerian, derived from the Akkadian šumerum, is a conventional term for the people who lived in ancient Sumer, a region with its upper limit at about the latitude of the site of Nippur (Figure 5). In the Sumerian language, this region was referred to as ki-en-gi, perhaps meaning native land or homeland. But it is only in modern scholarship that a Sumerian people were designated according to definitions of race and ethnicity. Sumerian history usually refers to the period during which the Sumerian language was used, but its precise chronological demarcation is problematic. It cannot be proven unequivocally that the earliest known writing indeed records the Sumerian language. On the other hand, the Sumerian language continued to be used for writing certain texts long after it had ceased as a spoken language. In addition, other languages, such as Akkadian, were used in Sumer. Conventionally, Sumerian history spans the third millennium BC, but in some studies it will also include portions of the fourth and the second millennia BC. Archaeological surveys have indicated a settlement pattern for Sumer in which populations were increasingly concentrated in large urban centers over the course of the Early Dynastic period (2900–2350 BC). Thus there arose during the Early Dynastic period a number of city-states or polities, consisting of one or more urban centers and surrounding land. For example, the Early Dynastic city-state of Lagash included the cities of Lagash (al-Hiba), Girsu (Tello), and Nina (Surghul). By the end of the Early Dynastic period, some twenty to thirty city-states shared a common cultural identity. Shifting alliances or coalitions of city-states emerged, with rulers expressing hegemony by adopting titles such as “king of Kish.” Ultimately, an empire encompassing much of greater Mesopotamia was founded by the Akkadian rulers (ca. 2334–2154 BC). After the decline of the Akkadian empire, some city-states in Sumer reemerged as independent polities similar to those that had characterized the Early Dynastic

8

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Introduction

5.  Map of greater Mesopotamia with principal sites mentioned in the text. Map by Vincent Van Exel; ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA.

period. This is when Gudea of Lagash ruled (ca. 2100 BC). Around this time, another empire, known as the Third Dynasty of Ur, was established and lasted until the end of the third millennium BC (Ur III period, ca. 2112–2004 BC). In scholarship of the ancient Near East conducted from around 1850 to 1930, Early Dynastic sculpture was discussed as “early Sumerian sculpture.” I will be referring also to “Sumerian people” and “Sumerian sculpture” when discuss­ ing this early scholarship. Although the cultural assemblages excavated from Sumer – and, in the example of Early Dynastic sculpture, the assemblages exca­ vated from Akkad and greater Mesopotamia – were related to varying degrees, these relationships are not to be equated with a homogeneous Sumerian pop­ ulation construed according to either racial or ethnic criteria. We only have Sumerians insofar as they are the inhabitants of the geographical region of Sumer. The persistence of discussing Sumerian sculpture in contemporary scholarship is a reflection of the Sumerian culture and cultic practices in which it is reason­ ably assumed that Early Dynastic sculpture originated. Sites such as Mari and Ashur are located outside the geographical region of Sumer as are the sites in the Diyala region east of Baghdad. The presence of the temple sculpture ­tradition is a product of Sumerian cultural influence, but these sites are not themselves Sumerian sites. As a title, The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture encompasses an aware­ ness of the discursive shifts surrounding Early Dynastic statues.

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture Chapter 1 begins by examining sculpture in general as a document of human taxonomy. Because of its ability to reproduce the body, sculpture was uniquely positioned vis-à-vis nineteenth-century race and aesthetics. It was classical sculpture that signified the civilized body at the pinnacle of human taxonomy, and aesthetics and ethnography were combined to delineate a visual culture of bodily differences. Because of the materialization of the classical ideal in human taxonomies, nineteenth-century Western scholars understood sculpture in gen­ eral as an authenticating document of the body. The reception of Sumerian sculpture is contextualized in Chapter 1 within the debates from 1850 to 1930 over the origins of the Sumerian race, a complex issue known as the “Sumerian problem.” Although differences were recognized, statues, relief-carvings, skel­ etal remains, and living human beings comprised a single scientific category of ethnographic data that aimed to understand the Sumerians as a physical type. Attempts at a linguistic classification of the Sumerian language, the iden­ tification of a Sumerian race on monuments, and the excavation of so-called Sumerian skeletal remains were all informed by sculpture and its aesthetics. The results often reflected persistent cultural attitudes regarding what the origins of Western civilization should look like. The Sumerian problem formed the background against which hundreds of Early Dynastic statues were excavated in the Diyala region of Iraq in the 1930s. Finally, for the first time, a large sculpture corpus was available for determining Sumerian origins. As I discuss in Chapter 2, however, the Diyala publications instead adopted art-historical methodologies. As the oldest monumental stone sculpture in Mesopotamia, Early Dynastic sculpture was drawn into a wellestablished discourse on the origins of art. Sumer already had been designated “primitive” within an ethnographic paradigm. From there, it was but a small shift to framing Sumerian sculpture as “primitive” art. The aesthetics of the “primitive,” which already had been embraced by the early twentieth-century Western art world, allowed Sumerian sculpture to be defined art-historically. The reconfiguration of Early Dynastic sculpture as artwork therefore reflected the role of sculpture as an ethnographic document in general and the established visual culture of a Sumerian racial body in particular. Three principal areas of inquiry regarding Early Dynastic sculpture are still informed by the early reception of Sumerian sculpture. The first area concerns a debate over Early Dynastic chronology. Essentially, the significance accorded to sculpture style obscured its limitations as a chronological marker. Secondly, the belief that an abstract or geometric style of sculpture was evolving toward nat­ uralism or realism obscured the quality of abstraction that statues dedicated to temples share throughout the Early Dynastic period. Forming a tradition lasting hundreds of years, abstraction in its various manifestations is an important visual quality of Early Dynastic temple statues. It is therefore worthwhile to consider

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Introduction abstraction as a formal system for the physical representation of a donor in the temple context. We therefore must ask: why abstraction? Finally, an emphasis on formal analysis has divorced Early Dynastic statues from a fuller understanding of their significance in the temple. Essentially, our current conceptualizations are based on early twentieth-century archaeological reconstructions in which Early Dynastic temple statues are consistently installed in the sanctuary. In the early twentieth century, archaeology used contempo­ rary models for reconstruction. Particularly relevant to Early Dynastic statues was the setting of the art museum, where the dominant display model for sculp­ ture was its installation against the long walls of museums. Similarly, the context of Early Dynastic sculpture was reconstructed as a display set against the long walls of the temple sanctuary. As I begin to argue in Chapter 3, we must shift our understanding of Early Dynastic statues by considering the activities surrounding them. One theory why so many people dedicated statues to temples in the Early Dynastic period has to do with issues of access. Embodying the worshiper, the statue could represent the donor in the presence of the divine, communicating the dedica­ tory request for a long, healthy, and prosperous life for the donor. This is a life of the statue that is separate from the donor: the statue does that which the donor cannot do. After dedication, however, the statue assumed other func­ tions. In addition to the sanctuary, archaeological evidence demonstrates that entrances, courts, and small rooms also are legitimate findspots that reflect the lives of Early Dynastic temple statues. Released from the sanctuary, statues have encounters beyond the realm of the donor and the act of dedication, and beyond an assumed display function exclusive to the sanctuary. As material forms, Early Dynastic statues can become autonomous, poten­ tially assuming new meanings. Chapter 4 therefore examines the life cycle of the statue in the Early Dynastic temple. In terms of production, I argue that Early Dynastic sculpture must be approached exterior to the aesthetic value recorded in texts for objects of precious materials. Carved predominantly from gypsum, a relatively low-value stone, Early Dynastic temple sculpture was valuable because of its association with temple institutions. The status of Early Dynastic temple sculpture therefore was in the privilege accorded through access to the act of dedication. The use of abstraction for Early Dynastic temple statues cre­ ated a category of temple object – a frontal human figure with clasped hands – that would have been valued because it was associated with the dedicatory purpose. The use of gypsum elsewhere in the Early Dynastic temple reinforced the appropriateness of the medium. Finally, abstraction in the Early Dynastic sculpture corpus potentially also had a practical aspect in facilitating the steady supply of statues to the donor sphere. The composite quality of Early Dynastic temple statues suggests repeated processes of construction through reuse. Such

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture a practice would have prolonged the life of the statue beyond the claimed repre­ sentation of any single donor. In Chapter 4, I argue that statues fulfilled multiple functions. References to sculpture in the Early Dynastic archive from the city-state of Lagash provide an opportunity to examine the ritual offerings surrounding a small number of Early Dynastic temple statues. According to textual evidence, Early Dynastic temple statues of both living and deceased individuals were the recipients of offerings made by temple visitors who were not the donor of the statue and who did not necessarily know whom the statue represented. The temple statue potentially was the focus of cultic activities because of its visual appearance, which therefore was critical to its life inside the temple. A frontal human fig­ ure with clasped hands signified a specific visual image, a specific category of temple object, regardless of whether it was inscribed and regardless of whether the identity of its donor was known. Abstraction potentially facilitated the effectiveness of this visual image by allowing for consistency within the temple sculpture corpus. The more general observations in Chapters 3 and 4 are specified in Chapter 5. The Asmar sculpture hoard is still the earliest-stratified corpus of Early Dynastic temple sculpture. The agency of the Asmar hoard statues can be deduced from the archaeological record, which suggests that the emergence of the temple statue genre of a frontal human figure with clasped hands was stimulated by a shift in temple practices related to rituals of libation. Such activities reveal the involvement of sculpture within the sphere of cultic activities, in a manner analogous to the cultic activities recorded in Early Dynastic texts from the citystate of Lagash. In addition, a deliberate shift to abstraction can be established by considering earlier sculpture styles exterior to the temple statue genre and stratigraphically preceding the Asmar sculpture hoard. In Chapter 6, I attempt to mediate my own interpretations of abstraction in Early Dynastic temple statues by returning to a consideration of the limited number of representational devices that connect donors with their statues. The representation of titles and occupations is attested among temple sculpture from the city of Mari, located in Syria beyond the borders of Sumer. In Sumer proper, the most substantial corpus of Early Dynastic temple sculpture is that of the Inana Temple at Nippur. Located in the holy city of Sumer, the Inana Temple was continuously rebuilt and ritually renewed for thousands of years. The Inana Temple sculpture demonstrates a greater continuity or conservatism in its main­ tenance of the dedicatory guise of a frontal figure with clasped hands than, for example, the temples at Mari, far from the traditional religious centers of Sumer. The degree to which temple traditions were maintained in certain con­ texts problematizes any reconstruction of stylistic development. Certain temple practices also were organized according to gender, with male and female donors maintaining distinct dedicatory practices. The gendered

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Introduction iconography of banqueting is reserved almost exclusively in sculpture in the round for female figures. Facilitating social interactions, statues of female fig­ ures perhaps are analogous to females who sometimes assumed special cultic responsibilities on behalf of their families. The representation of banqueting for female figures is understood as analogous to the representation of titles and occupations for male figures. That is, both form small, select categories of tem­ ple sculpture. In the alignment of representation with gender, a small number of variations are manifest in the temple statue genre. Nevertheless, there persists a collective element to representing the identity of the donor in Early Dynastic temple sculpture. Through dedication to the temple, sculpture became part of the divine world. But, at the earthly level, this divine world was a construct regulated by a temple administration. As an extension of this, abstraction is a response to the need for an object in a consistent and recognizable visual form rather than a response to the need for individual expression. That is, abstraction oriented sculpture as a possession of the temple. Temple statues are thus material witnesses to the prac­ tices associated with them in addition to the individual who donated them. This approach creates a distance between donor and statue. In the space produced between the two, I argue that we can attempt to understand better the life of Early Dynastic temple statues.

A Note on Ancient Languages Names of sites as well as ancient places, such as temples, and persons are writ­ ten using the commonly accepted English forms. This has created some incon­ sistencies but was chosen in order to facilitate the reading of the text by a general audience. Certainly, the specialist will be aware of more recent transla­ tions.20 Following standard convention, Akkadian words are written through­ out the text in italics, and Sumerian words are written in bold. I have rendered Akkadian words by following The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. With few exceptions, I have rendered Sumerian words according to the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary of The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project of the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology (www. psd.museum.upenn.edu). Restorations of ancient texts are indicated with brack­ ets; when a portion of a word is inside brackets and a portion of it is outside brackets, this indicates a partially legible word.

A Note on Unpublished Sources for This Study This study makes use of two significant corpuses of largely unpublished archae­ ological data regarding Early Dynastic temples. The first is from the Diyala

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture excavations conducted by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute at the sites of Tell Asmar, Khafajah, and Tell Agrab. While much of the Diyala material was published soon after excavation, a volume tentatively entitled Miscellaneous Small Finds from the Diyala Region never materialized. In addition, a great deal of unpublished documentation is archived at the Oriental Institute. All of this data is currently being prepared under the direction of Dr. Clemens Reichel for the “Diyala Virtual Archive” (www.diyalaproject.edu), which will serve as an on-line repository for all of the field documents. The second corpus is from the Oriental Institute excavations of the Inana Temple at Nippur. This mate­ rial was being prepared for final publication by Dr. Donald P. Hansen at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University; after his death in 2007, the exca­ vation data were archived at the Oriental Institute. Full publication of the Inana Temple excavations is being prepared by Dr. Robert D. Biggs, Dr. Karen Wilson, Dr. Richard L. Zettler, and the present author under the aegis of the Nippur Publication Project directed by Dr. McGuire Gibson. In instances where I make reference to unpublished Inana Temple materials, I have cited the field number assigned during excavation, which will allow these objects to be identified in the forthcoming publication. I would like to thank all these individuals for per­ mitting me to consult these unpublished materials for the present study.

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!!!! One

S u m e r i a n O r i g i n s, 1 8 5 0 – 1 9 3 0 M ak i n g t h e B o dy V i s i b l e

I hope you understand the distinction & when I criticize design and execution will understand I do so merely because your winged god is not the Apollo Belvedere. –Henry Rawlinson, letter to Austen Henry Layard, early explorer of Assyria (1846) In every nation sufficiently advanced to have made effigies of their gods or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no doubt have endeavored to express their highest ideal of beauty and grandeur. Under this point of view it is well to compare in our mind the Jupiter or Apollo of the Greeks with the Egyptian or Assyrian statues. – Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) A tout prix, trouvez des têtes! – Léon Alexandre Heuzey (1831–1922), curator of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the Louvre Museum, instructing Ernest de Sarzec at Tello1 Prolonged civilization does seem to exhaust every people; it has been so in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and it has been so in Mesopotamia. – Arthur Keith (1866–1955), in the conclusion to his report on the human skeletal remains from Tell al-‘Ubaid2

Introduction to the Study of Sumer, 1850–1930 The discovery of the Sumerian language was an offshoot of the mid-nineteenth century decipherment of cuneiform, the wedge-shaped writing system used

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture for thousands of years in the ancient Near East.3 The decipherment of cuneiform was largely indebted to a trilingual inscription in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian that was carved into the cliffs at Bisitun, Iran. The oldest of the languages, Babylonian, is a Semitic language. In 1850, it was posited that cuneiform originally must have been intended for writing a differently structured language because some qualities of the writing system are not suited to a Semitic language. Soon thereafter, certain tablets from the Neo-Assyrian capital of Nineveh were identified as bilingual, consisting of Akkadian words and corresponding words in an unknown language. In 1869, on the basis of the ancient title “king of Sumer and Akkad,” Jules Oppert correctly described this language as Sumerian. Other late nineteenth-century scholars, however, also referred to the Sumerian language variously as Akkadian, Scythian, Chaldean, and Turanian – if indeed they believed such a language existed. Today, Akkadian is the term used to refer to the Semitic languages of the ancient Near East, including Babylonian, Assyrian, and other dialects. The mid-nineteenth-century rediscovery of the ancient Near East had taken place at the Assyrian capitals in northern Iraq. In the early twentieth century, however, archaeological excavation in search of Sumer increasingly shifted to southern Iraq.4 Up until World War I and then in the interwar years, numerous sites yielded archaeological remains identified as Sumerian (Figure 5).5 This chapter addresses the period from the mid-nineteenth-century discovery of the Sumerian language to the 1930s. By the end of this period, knowledge of the Sumerian language had grown exponentially. This period also culminated in the first annual conference of archaeologists, held in Baghdad during the winter of 1930, where a chronological sequence of four cultural phases was established for the earliest-known remains in Sumer: Ubaid, Uruk, Jamdat Nasr, and Early Dynastic.6 The first three phases were named after the sites where their definitive material culture was best attested; the Early Dynastic period was so named because the earliest historically attested dynasties fell within it. Except for certain internal modifications as well as revisions in terms of absolute dating, this is the same chronology used today: Ubaid (sixth–fifth millennium BC), Uruk (fourth millennium BC), Jamdat Nasr (3100–2900 BC), and Early Dynastic (2900–2350 BC). The discovery of Sumer was not romanticized like the rediscovery of Assyria. Sumer did not have the daring adventures, such as dangling off cliffs while trying to copy crucial relief-carved inscriptions in difficult locations. It did not have the grand imperial imagery, such as the monumental Assyrian relief carvings entering the Louvre Museum and the British Museum in a sweeping conquest witnessed by thousands of spectators. And it did not have tragic heroes, such as George Smith (1840–1876), who returned to Nineveh to find the missing fragments of an Akkadian flood story predating the Bible, only to die alone later in a hotel in Aleppo. Ultimately, the discovery of Sumer differed significantly from

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 the rediscovery of Assyria because there was no recognizable trace of Sumer in biblical, classical, or postclassical traditions.7 Sumer therefore did not have links to the same traditions that fueled the European imagination of Assyria.8 Shortly after the discovery of the Sumerian language, however, scholars constructed Sumerian narratives where there had been none. Essential to these narratives was the origins of civilization. Long before the first archaeological discoveries, Mesopotamia had been associated with the origins of civilization.9 The Sumerians, upon discovery, were believed to hold the key to civilization because, among other achievements, they had invented writing.10 There was much debate over the Sumerians. Who exactly were they? When did they arrive in southern Iraq, and where had they come from? Did they bring civilization to southern Iraq or did they build on the contributions of earlier inhabitants? These overarching questions became known as the “Sumerian problem.”11 Debate over the Sumerian problem permeated most aspects of early ancient Near Eastern scholarship until well into the twentieth century. According to the dominant models of the time, attempts to solve the Sumerian problem assumed that linguistic affiliations were tantamount to racial affiliations.12 The Sumerian and Akkadian languages therefore were equated with Sumerian and Semitic Akkadian races. Because the Sumerian language was eventually succeeded by the Akkadian language, the fate of the Sumerians was construed almost unanimously during the period under consideration here as an epic battle in which Sumerians had been conquered by Semites. In 1939, the philologist Thorkild Jacobsen wrote an important article reviewing the evidence for a Sumerian–Semitic conflict in third-millennium BC texts. Dismissing notions of racially construed warfare, he concluded that ancient conflict instead was based on political and territorial factors.13 In a retrospective essay, Jacobsen later described the prevailing intellectual climate when he wrote the article: There was a virtual unanimity about what had shaped early Mesopotamian history, it was race, Sumerians fighting Semites. Races differed in physique and in character, so cranial measurements, shapes of noses, and even bearded or beardless were matters of moment. [ . . . ] It was not until 1937 or 1938 that in Chicago I [ . . . ] found, rather to my surprise, that there was no such evidence and so, presumably, no such ‘racial conflict.’14 As Jacobsen attests, it was believed that the examination of monuments could contribute to a resolution of the Sumerian problem. From the mid-nineteenthcentury discovery of the Sumerian language to the 1930s, the identification of various races was the principal reason for examining sculpture – and an array of other visual imagery on relief-carvings, cylinder seals, and inlays – excavated in Mesopotamia. In order to establish the racial typologies of ancient peoples, images assumed the properties of living individuals (Figure 6). Sculpture thus was transformed into an ethnographic document of a living body. Only after

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture

6.  “Profiles from the Assyrian and Babylonian Monuments.” From Bertin 1889, Plate VI.

the material remains of Sumer were produced as ethnographic documents was a suitable discourse located for their study. How was this methodology validated as a scientific practice? The early reception of Sumerian sculpture can be contextualized within the role of sculpture as a document of human taxonomy. Sculpture in general had long served as an authenticating document of human variation and, eventually, race. The specific role of classical sculpture in the earliest human taxonomies, and its persistence as a racial paradigm, anticipated the early methodologies underlying the reception of Sumerian sculpture. In this anticipation, we can understand the early

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 scholarship on the visual culture of ancient Sumer at the intersection of sculpture, race, and aesthetics. This chapter therefore considers three discourses on Sumerian civilization that shifted and developed from one another from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s: the linguistic classification of the Sumerian language; the analysis of racial characteristics on Sumerian monuments beginning with those retrieved from Tello in the 1880s; and the identification of Sumerians among skeletal remains beginning in the 1920s. Each of these inquiries was informed by a visual culture of the Sumerian. Although differences were recognized, ­living peoples, skeletal remains, and ancient monuments comprised a single scientific category of ethnographic data. The materialization of the Sumerian as an ethnographic document reveals that the aesthetic was not the predominant mode for the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reception of Sumerian monuments. The intertwining threads of racial discourse addressed in this chapter form the background against which hundreds of Early Dynastic statues were excavated in the Diyala region of Iraq in the 1930s. Finally, a large sculpture corpus was available for the study of the Sumerians. As I discuss in Chapter 2, however, the publication of the Diyala sculpture instead marked a distinct shift in the study of sculpture from an ethnographic object to an artwork subject to formal analysis. An art history of Early Dynastic sculpture, however, did not emerge in a vacuum. The casting of Early Dynastic sculpture as an aesthetic object reflected both the unique power of sculpture as an ethnographic document and the visual culture of a Sumerian racial body in the period 1850–1930.

Philology and the Sumerian Problem According to the biblical account in Genesis, the populations of the world descended from the three sons of Noah – Shem, Ham, and Japheth – and the scattering of languages at the Tower of Babel corresponded to their descendants. Philologists derived the linguistic categories of Semitic, Hamitic, and Japhetic from the biblical account and attempted to classify all languages into one of the three categories. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the emphasis on distinctions among the biblical descendants of Noah shifted to distinctions between Aryan and Semite. Similarities among certain Japhetic languages led to the creation of an Indo-European or Aryan genealogy, which sought the origins of modern European languages in India. In 1847, a number of disparate languages that were neither Semitic nor Indo-European were grouped into a new linguistic category designated Turanian.15 The German philologist F. Max Müller (1823–1900) articulated a progressive scheme that not only cut across traditional linguistic categories but also revealed Turanian languages as the ancient precursors ultimately of Indo-European languages.16

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture The term Turanian is derived from the Iranian epic tradition, in which the peoples of Turan are the enemies of Iran. Turanian speakers inhabited “the barbarous countries, ‘outside’ or beyond Iran and the Aryans.”17 The Turanian languages constituted a broad category of seemingly disparate languages, which was explained by the designation of most Turanian speakers as nomadic. Turanian languages therefore changed rapidly and varied greatly. In reality, the Turanian category was malleable; it had become, in one early twentieth-century view, “a regular dumping ground for languages awaiting classification.”18 Although now recognized as a linguistic isolate unrelated to any known language, the Sumerian language initially was classified as Turanian before it was deciphered and before the designation of Sumerian had been agreed on.19 The classification of Turanian placed the Sumerian language at the origins of civilization, but the speakers of Turanian assumed an ambivalent relationship with the West. Writing in 1868, one author defended the Turanians and argued that they deserved respect for having “achieved some rather notable things.” Nevertheless, the Turanians were “the arrested infant of humanity.” Turanian ideas and institutions revealed an “ethnic immaturity,” and Turanian physiognomy reflected this lowly status.20 Initially, the existence of a Sumerian language was not universally accepted. Beginning in 1874, Joseph Halévy (1827–1917) argued that the so-called Sumerian language was instead an ideographic writing of the Akkadian language. Once phonetic writing had been developed, argued Halévy, ideographic writing was retained as a cryptography or hieratic mode used by priests for religious rituals.21 Halévy persisted in an acrimonious debate with the scholarly community until his death in 1917, long after the initial support for his arguments had faded. Critics of Halévy equated his insistence on the primacy of a Semitic culture with his own Semitic background.22 Halévy indeed was particularly incensed that the birth of civilization should be attributed to the Turanians rather than the Semites. The reality that the cuneiform writing system had been invented for a language other than Semitic Akkadian only seemed to confirm existing prejudices.23 Prefiguring the dominant view in later ancient Near Eastern studies, Halévy eventually argued that Sumerian and Akkadian were geographical or political divisions rather than ethno-linguistic categories.24 Halévy maintained that one of the ways in which ancient civilizations are revealed to posterity is through monuments. He found no evidence to support the existence of two separate artistic traditions that would represent the Turanians and the Semites, respectively.25 For some twenty-five years after the identification of the Sumerian language, however, Sumerian monuments were largely unknown. Müller had argued that the surviving words of ancient languages were akin to an ancient monument, and philological distinctions had already suggested the physical differences between speakers of Turanian and Semitic languages.26 Speakers of Turanian were described in 1868 as “not adequately

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 chiseled” and “rough-hewn.”27 In the vocabulary of sculpture, a physiognomy was established. Similarly, when Sumerian monuments were recovered, the Sumerians a priori resembled what Western scholars wanted early civilization to look like.

Visualizing the Terrain of Human Taxonomy The concept of race materialized as a fixed construct to explain visible differences among human beings. In its ability to reproduce the body, sculpture in particular was uniquely positioned in the visual culture of race and aesthetics. Because both sculpture and ethnography were concerned with the realistic representation of the human body, sculpture was examined in order to provide ethnographic data. Sculpture thus helped make the ethnographic body ­visible.28 Aesthetics and ethnography commingled at the visualization of bodily difference. The German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762) originally defined aesthetics as a discourse of the body traversing regions of human perception and sensation. Aesthetics was thus a geography in which philosophy embraced “a dense, swarming territory beyond its own mental enclave.”29 In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, cartographies of the body were drawn up. Mental faculties were localized and measured on the topography of the skull. Human taxonomy ultimately was transposed on the physical coordinates of geographical space.30 As human space expanded through exploration and conquest, the degeneration of aesthetic form was of great concern in human taxonomy. The German art historian Johann Winckelmann (1717–1768) demarcated an aesthetic terrain for the beauty of the human body manifest in Greek sculpture. At its borders and beyond lay the primitive, the barbarian, the savage, and the animal. One could not be defined in the absence of the other.31 The enormously influential writings of Winckelmann, central to which is Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of the Art of Antiquity, 1764), long conditioned the Western reception of classical antiquity. This was the classical ideal, and Winckelmann was described by Goethe as the Columbus of a forgotten land.32 In articulating a chronology, Winckelmann situated Greek art within the cultural framework of a stylistic progression through cyclical stages of growth and decay.33 His formal, empirical approach prefigured modern art history and archaeology and departed from the earlier biographical paradigm for the arts. Winckelmann traced the evolution of Greek art through a small number of statues that had been considered superior since their Renaissance rediscovery and are now known to be Roman copies of Greek originals. Winckelmann’s classical ideal secured the equation between classical sculpture and true, idealized beauty for future generations.

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture

7.  Apollo Belvedere, Roman marble copy of a Greek fourth-century BC original. Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City. Photograph by Michael Kane.

At the apex of the classical ideal, Winckelmann situated the Apollo Belvedere, so-called after its location in the Belvedere Courtyard of the Vatican (Figure 7).34 A conflation of the beautiful and the sublime, the aesthetics of the Apollo Belvedere were defined by traits it possessed as much as by those it did not. The Apollo Belvedere of Winckelmann is stripped of veins and sinews; its unique beauty combines that of all other gods. Winckelmann further defined concepts central to the classical ideal, such as oneness or unity, by paradox and negation.35 The classical ideal is neither real nor ideal, neither metaphysical nor empirical. It is often an eloquent abstraction, the stillness of the sea.36 Winckelmann’s Apollo Belvedere is an eternal springtime.

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 Although the central concern of Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums was Greece, Winckelmann also considered Egyptian, Phoenician, Persian, and other ancient art. The principal ancient Near Eastern antiquities known in the time of Winckelmann were Phoenician coins and reliefs from Persepolis. Winckelmann claimed that the Phoenicians were the closest forerunners to the Greeks. In contrast, Winckelmann famously denied a role to the Egyptians in the formation of Greek art and civilization, placing Egypt and Greece in diametric opposition to one another; he likewise saw no link from Persia to Greece.37 Even though the Persians were “well-formed people” and, consequently, their art “had all the advantages of nature,” Winckelmann found Persian art to be lacking.38 The Persians aimed for the extraordinary rather than the beautiful, and they had been feeble, unable to form a powerful free state.39 Winckelmann surmised that the Persians themselves had understood this, which is why they imported Greek sculptors. Winckelmann imagined the classical ideal as a body void of any markings of either physical or cultural difference.40 Yet in the balance, proportion, and moderation of classical sculpture, Winckelmann saw the visual embodiment of larger values inherent in Greek culture in general.41 Winckelmann also maintained that the classical ideal and its corresponding cultural norms were the standard against which other peoples could be valued. The classical ideal was manifest in a particular climate inhabited by particular people at a particular time; only certain physiognomies signified beautiful people who made and appreciated beautiful art.42 If the Greeks had produced an aesthetic ideal, the Persians had opposed it. Regardless of Winckelmann’s intentions, the aesthetics underlying the classical ideal profoundly recapitulated the superiority of the human body as it was materialized – paradoxically – in statues of the gods. Although eighteenth-century notions of human variety and nineteenth-century notions of race are not the same, some have argued that Winckelmann nevertheless had a role in the origins of racialist thought.43 Human difference was studied long before its conceptualization as race. During the Enlightenment, race was interchangeable with variety, nationality, and other concepts that addressed human difference. These concepts were linked to ideas of physical beauty and the capacity for aesthetic response.44 The taxonomies of the Enlightenment signified a major shift in the study of human difference. What had been a religious category of difference became the subject of a systematic investigation. In the nineteenth century, these ideas coalesced into a racial science, through which human differences were formulated as biological categories to be visualized, quantified, and analyzed. Racial science proved persistent and provided an underlying continuity to a line of inquiry that lasted well into the twentieth century.45 Yet race is neither timeless nor absolute: social structures change and discourses shift. Omi and Winant use the term “racial formation” in order to understand racial categories as finite social, historical, and

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture cultural categories of representation. Racial formation is the process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.46 Writing in 1684, the French physician Francois Bernier (1625–1688) was the first to attempt to divide and classify humankind. In the tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1758), however, the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) included humans within his systematic classification of all plants and animals.47 The Linnaean taxonomy consisted of a nested hierarchy in which organisms were classified according to a binomial nomenclature of genus and species – thus emerged Homo sapiens.48 Linnaeus utilized the Enlightenment division of the world into the four continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America – evoking also the four corners of the world, the four elements, and the four humors – for his principal categories of Homo sapiens.49 The French naturalist Count Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788) more precisely maintained that ideas regarding original skin color and variations on beauty were contingent on climate. Buffon located the most beautiful people between 20 to 30 or 35 degrees of latitude north, which encompassed the most temperate climates from “Mogol to Barberie,” including Persians, Turks, Greeks, and all Europeans.50 In the multivolume Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (Natural History: General and Particular, 1749–), Buffon presented an alternative to taxonomy. He rejected classification in general as the aim of studying human variety and criticized Linnaean classification specifically as an abstraction in which entities were ordered without recourse to empirical observation.51 Along a scale from savage to civilized, in relative terms, Buffon instead sought to describe human variety and to address why it occurred. The history of human diversity can be understood according to a Kuhnian model characterized by long periods of normal science that are punctuated by conceptual revolutions that generate new analytic paradigms.52 For some two centuries, the study of race involved a period of normal science in which techniques were developed in order to refine the accumulating data that defined how humans vary. The guiding paradigm, however, was Linnaean because it aimed to determine a small number of categories into which all human diversity could be classified. The Linnaean strain in physical anthropology came to a crisis in the middle of the twentieth century. The subsequent paradigm shift can be understood to some extent as Buffonian because it aimed instead to document and to explain human diversity among populations.

Beautiful Skulls: A pollo B elvedere , Craniometry, and the Reconstitution of an Ideal Winckelmann defined the classical ideal, but the Apollo Belvedere had long been considered an ideal human form and had been a visual image of science ever

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8.  Jan Wandelaar, Human Skeleton, 1740 (engraving). From Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani (London, 1749), Plate 1. Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

since its Renaissance rediscovery in 1489.53 When Bernard Sigfried Albinus had a definitive drawing of the human skeleton created in 1747, it fused scientific empiricism with evocations of the Apollo Belvedere (Figure 8).54 The materialization of classical sculpture thus had long been authenticated, but Winckelmann’s definitive treatment of the classical ideal became the norm. The Apollo Belvedere continued to be privileged as an idealized human form long after it had lost its status in art history.55 Well into the twentieth century, classical sculpture in general and the Apollo Belvedere in particular served as the ideal against which humanity could be literally modeled, measured, and judged. The noble simplicity and calm grandeur of the Greek gods thus rose to the pinnacle of human taxonomy.

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture No other writer could approach the systematic manner in which Winckelmann articulated the implications of his theoretical paradigm.56 Despite his adoration of the Apollo Belvedere, however, Winckelmann asserted that the classical ideal had no single representative and was a sum, a selection, of the most perfect forms.57 Winckelmann’s classical ideal therefore was far removed from empiricism. Yet after Winckelmann the reification of the classical ideal departed dramatically from the abstract, eternal springtime of the Apollo Belvedere. According to Gould, after the reification or conversion of an abstract concept into an entity, a fallacy occurs in which standard scientific practices necessitate its quantification and location in a physical substrate.58 It was as if Winckelmann’s eloquent struggle to define the classical ideal presented a challenge: it should be possible to locate and to quantify beauty. The facial angle theory developed by the Dutch anatomist and artist Petrus Camper (1722–1789) was predicated on the belief that the human skull could be subject to systems of measurement.59 Camper observed from sawing skulls down the middle that the cavity of the brain generally maintained an oval form but the extension of the jaw varied considerably. A vertical line running from the forehead to the front of the incisor teeth was compared with a horizontal line drawn from the base of the nose to the ear canal. The ideal facial angle was produced when the vertical line formed a 100-degree angle with the horizontal line, and this was exemplified by the Apollo Belvedere. Camper reconstructed the skull of the Apollo Belvedere for the sake of his argument, situating the Greek god at one extreme of a hierarchy that descended to an ape (Figure 9).60 Camper’s ideal facial angle essentially was the scientific observation of the classical ideal through craniometry, the study and measurement of the skull. What had been formulated by Winckelmann as an ideal had thus become real, and the Apollo Belvedere, through proximity, was reified as a reflection of a Western physical reality.61 In the nineteenth century, the facial angle would become the primary craniometric method by which race could be measured, quantified, and classified. The trajectory culminating in nineteenth-century racial science navigated through various methodologies later dismissed as pseudoscience. Nevertheless, these methodologies fundamentally influenced scientific thought.62 The late eighteenth-century revival of the ancient practice of physiognomy, the reading of signs on the face, essentially determined internal character through the analysis of external appearance. The most important tool of physiognomy was the silhouette, which rendered the profile in shadow. When Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) produced a physiognomic silhouette of the Apollo Belvedere – the profile was found neither too perpendicular nor too sloping – he in effect materialized the soul of a statue.63 Phrenology developed as a conceptual extension of physiognomy predicated on a correlation between the topography of the skull and personality traits. Both physiognomy and phrenology thus equated internal

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9.  “Physiological examination of the differences in the features, when viewed in front” (from left to right: orang-outang, Negro, Calmuck, European, and Apollo Belvedere). From Pieter Camper, The Works of the late Professor Camper, on The Connexion between the Science of Anatomy and The Arts of Drawing, Painting, Statuary . . . (London, 1794), Plate III.

character with the physical body, realizing its idealized forms in a self-fulfilling circular logic.64 A plaster cast of the head of the Apollo Belvedere “shaven” for phrenological research is attributed to Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828), the founder of phrenology (Figure 10).65 Ultimately, the skull came to characterize race, and an ideal physiognomy guided by classical sculpture increasingly contributed to the typology of a civilized European. Craniometry presented the skull as an ethnographic artifact, a material object that could be extracted from cultural context and studied. Standardized measurements were intended to produce a consistent skull typology for any given population. Established skull typologies were then subject to comparative analysis. Because they were based on quantitative measurement and precise comparison, craniometric studies were considered devoid of subjectivity. Differences that had been identified as superficial physical markers came to signify inherent biological traits.66 As racial science became a formal discipline in the nineteenth century, ever more refined techniques and instruments for taking human measurements emerged.67 Among the quantitative methods to classify race, the most important was the cephalic index, which measured the ratio between the width of the skull and its length. Formulated by the Swedish anatomist Anders Adolf Retzius (1796–1860), the cephalic index classified humans as brachycephalic (proportionately wide), dolichocephalic (proportionately long), or mesocephalic (moderate). In 1844, Retzius determined that the skull of the Apollo Belvedere was dolichocephalic.

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10. Attributed to Francois-Joseph Gall, 1820 (?) plaster cast of the head of the Apollo Belvedere adapted for phrenology. Musée de l’Homme, Paris, laboratoire d’anthropologie, inv. no. 28899. Courtesy Philippe Mennecier.

Whether ancient sculpture reflected a physical reality was hotly debated. James Cowles Prichard’s Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (1813) went through three editions and was the most influential study on the human race to be published in nineteenth-century England before the work of Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Recalling that Blumenbach had compared classical sculpture with ancient skulls from Greece in his own collection, Prichard defended the use of classical sculpture to reconstruct the physical appearance of ancient Greeks.68 Works such as Knox’s The Races of Men: A Fragment (1850) and Nott and Gliddon’s Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857) continued to stress the validity of classical sculpture as an authenticating document for a physical type that assumed a place of priority in the hierarchy of racial science. Knox described the head of the Apollo Belvedere as “the noblest of all human heads.”69 The beginning of the nineteenth century had been dominated by the monogenist belief that all humans are members of a single biological species. The polygenist belief that human races differed from one another so profoundly that they constituted distinct biological species predominated by the middle of the nineteenth century. Regardless, both monogenists and polygenists proceeded from an assumption that the species were fixed and thus unchanging.

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 When Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859), he linked species to one another through time and space in evolutionary processes evoked by the visual image of a branching tree. Evolution raised the question of how and when races had formed. The mid-nineteenth century also saw a burgeoning interest in the exploration of ancient civilizations, including Egyptian, Assyrian, and Mayan.70 The impact of such discoveries, however, was inconsequential because it was assumed that the evolution to fixed, unchanging races had occurred long ago. In other words, the solution to the contradiction between fixed, unchanging races and evolution was to establish race as so ancient and static that natural selection was a closed and imperceptible episode in human history. Evolutionists were monogenists, but the polygenist analysis of racial science persisted.71 Nineteenth-century racial science had reoriented human difference toward the understanding that culture and civilization were biologically determined by race. Even as aesthetics and anthropology grew increasingly disparate in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, classical sculpture continued to serve as the aesthetic standard in race. The aesthetic and visual dimensions of racial science were crucial to its methodologies. The central visual icon of racial science was based on a hierarchy of skulls passing progressively from lowliest to loftiest, with racial types deemed inferior relegated to a liminal status between man and animal.72 Until well into the twentieth century, this visual imagery persisted at its extreme: a frog morphing into the Apollo Belvedere.73 The frontispiece of the best-selling first edition of Ernst Haeckel’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Natural History of Creation, 1868), which popularized the work of Darwin, was intended to demonstrate the evolution to an ideal type, labeled Indo-German.74 The facial angle of the Indo-German approximates that of classical sculpture, and the full, loose curls flowing down the neck and rising at the summit of the head evoke the bow-knot into which the hair of the Apollo Belvedere is arranged. Something of this frontispiece is evoked in the opening sequence of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1936), which frequently has been read as the culmination of the visual culture of race and ­aesthetics.75 The sculpture Discobolus comes to life in the ruins of the Acropolis and transforms into an athlete, who carries the Olympic torch from Athens to Berlin. The overt message is that of an Aryan ideal rooted in Greek antiquity. However, both Riefenstahl’s sequence and Haeckel’s frontispiece summon the desire for the flesh of Greek sculpture, the paradoxical desire to materialize the classical ideal. The Apollo Belvedere was central to paradigms of taxonomy and race. Through it, a close correspondence came to be assumed among body, race, and aesthetics. This correspondence was literal. The classical body measured worth through data paradoxically gathered by empirical observation. Sculpture underscored the presence of an aesthetic concept in race, and classical sculpture was the aesthetic standard of a civilized body. Through the paradoxical materialization of

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture an abstraction – the classical ideal – the bodily components in classical sculpture, such as the cranium, silhouette, skeleton, facial angle, and profile, were given material form. Working back from the stone, the Apollo Belvedere assumed the material, physical form of a human body. The irony was that the Apollo Belvedere was thus reconstituted to the same ethnographic body with which it was meant to stand in diametric contrast.76

Archaeology, Gudea, and the Examination of Monuments As the preceding discussion would indicate, a science of making the absent body present through sculpture was well established before the mid-nineteenthcentury discovery of the Sumerians. The paradox that a classical ideal in sculpture could be materialized as a real human form conditioned a Western response to sculpture in general. Savage argues that nineteenth-century sculptors worked in the shadow of the classical ideal as an authenticating document of a normative body.77 Because of the close relationship between sculpture and ethnography, nineteenth-century scholars examining other peoples also negotiated a terrain onto which a visual culture of race could be anticipated, invented, and projected. The materialization of physical form through casting, sculpting, and measuring gave weight to absence. The Sumerians belonged to an imagined cultural domain made possible by the model just presented, a trajectory of normal science and accumulating data that defined human difference. Essentially, the physical characteristics of a newly discovered Sumerian race were determined by sculpture. Sumerian remains were translated into statues, and statues were translated into the flesh of Sumerians. Sumerian sculpture therefore documented an absent Sumerian body, and a desire to materialize the Sumerian race motivated the examination of monuments. Most of the finds retrieved from Sumerian sites during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries lacked archaeological context. The reliefcarved stone slabs installed along the walls of Neo-Assyrian palaces had allowed architectural plans to be easily traced, but the presence of ephemeral mudbrick in Sumer often went undetected or unexcavated. In the early years of fieldwork at the site of Tello, for example, excavation largely consisted of procuring as many finds as possible. Scientific methodologies for archaeological excavation and modern recording techniques that enabled the use of material remains for establishing chronological sequences only began to emerge at the turn of the twentieth century. Such work was pioneered by German archaeologists and culminated in the establishment of an early Mesopotamian chronology by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The objects

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 retrieved in early excavations were nevertheless of great value because their historical framework was provided by texts. Sculpture in the round  – above all, the head  – provided the clearest evidence among monuments for establishing racial classifications. The numerous inscribed statues of Gudea, however, were missing the heads, which Heuzey admonished Sarzec to find (see the epigraph to this chapter). A few fragmentary male heads were correctly recognized as early and date to what is now called the Early Dynastic period (2900–2350 BC). Two additional male heads were correctly recognized as later, and subsequently they have been attributed to the ruler Gudea of Lagash (ca. 2100 BC) (Figure 11). Detailed measurements resembling those of contemporary cranial studies were taken of the heads and record data no longer considered relevant today: length of the head including thickness of fabric, 230 mm; lower half [of the head] beginning at the base of the nose, 121; nose, 58; mouth and chin, 63; width above the turban, 240; width at the level of the ears, 165; [width] at the level of the cheekbones, 145; [width] at the level of the jawbone, 140; mouth, 52; eye, 37 by 16; tear line (line along the bone of the socket), 7.78 The racial characteristics of the two heads were addressed by various scholars. Their analyses exemplify a willingness to project data to a foreordained conclusion, especially given the stylistic similarities of the heads, which allow them both to be attributed to Gudea. In 1891, for example, the British Assyriologist Theophilus G. Pinches (1856–1934) found it “greatly to be regretted” that the nose and other important facial features of the heads were not preserved and that the headdress of one came too far down on the forehead to allow for taking certain measurements. Deeming the heads nevertheless “most valuable from an anthropological point of view,” Pinches identified each as representative of a distinct nationality in a paper entitled “Upon the Types of the Early Inhabitants of Mesopotamia.” Beginning with the “nobler of the two,” Pinches described “a head with prominent cheek-bones, firm lips, and a square chin, a young-looking, dignified, self-conscious face, the face of a man not ashamed to look out, with a certain amount of pride of race into the world.”79 This head was representative of a Sumerian.80 The second head represented a different race. Pinches’s reconstruction of the nose was self-fulfilling, for he concluded that “the addition of a Semitic Babylonian or Assyrian nose has produced a thoroughly Semitic Babylonian or Assyrian face” (Figure 12).81 No consensus was reached regarding the evidence yielded through the examination of monuments, and not everyone accepted the validity of such an approach. Heuzey, for example, found it improbable – too fortuitous – that of

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11. Girsu (Tello), Fragmentary diorite heads now attributed to the ruler Gudea of Lagash, ca. 2100 BC. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Départment des Antiquités Orientales, AO 12, 13. From Sarzec 1884-1912, Plate 12.

the two later heads from Tello, one would be Sumerian and the other would be Semitic.82 Another scholar described the monuments from Tello as “well-drawn portraits of the people who lived on the Sumerian plain six thousand years ago,” while another countered that the monuments were “too rude to be regarded as representing accurately an ethnological type.”83 Other scholars argued that ancient monuments were instead interpretations of physical features and could not be considered portraits. Pinches had presented his paper at a meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and the ensuing discussion exemplifies the cultural, aesthetic, and racial reception of Sumerian monuments. Edward B. Tylor, then president of the Institute, questioned whether the joined eyebrows on the two heads were significant. Tylor queried specifically whether they might be explained by a popular European folklore belief: “that the person is a vampire or witch, whose soul appears in the form of a butterfly (that is, in the

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12.  T. G. Pinches, Reconstruction of a fragmentary diorite head from Girsu. From Pinches 1892, Figure 2.

joined eyebrows) ready to take flight from the body.”84 Following his thesis in Primitive Culture (1871), Tylor presumably was implying that those with joined eyebrows hold the most rudimentary animistic beliefs, which are preserved in the superstitions of peasants and the illiterate – the so-called modern “primitives.”85 Pinches countered that joined eyebrows might have been considered handsome. Still another colleague suggested that joined eyebrows might reflect “seriousness and pride of race.”86 Sumerian monuments continued to be closely scrutinized for physical traits. The individuals depicted on other monuments from Tello were classified principally on the basis of hair. The crucial distinction was between individuals who were bald and shaven and those who were long-haired and bearded. The latter were taken to be representations of Semites based on biblical admonishments against shaving, which later Assyrian figural representations of long-haired and bearded figures seemingly confirmed.87 Building on earlier observations, the German historian Eduard Meyer (1855–1930) argued in 1906 that he could distinguish three different races on the basis of physical appearance: Sumerians who were shaven; Semites (Assyrians and Babylonians) with long hair and beards; and Bedouins with shorter hair and a shaved upper lip.88 The English Assyriologist L. W. King (1869–1919) further articulated markers such as a Sumerian fringed mantle and a Semitic plaid.89 Although it was accepted that civilization originated with the Sumerians, there remained the questions of when they had arrived in southern Iraq and whether they had been the first inhabitants of the region. Just as the distinction between Sumerians and Semites was established in the visual evidence, associated imagery was scrutinized for clues that might reveal the Sumerian homeland. For example, it was reasoned that the Sumerians must have come from

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture somewhere else because the same cuneiform sign is used to write both country and mountain in Sumerian (kur). Sumerians built ziggurats, which were described by some early scholars as temple complexes resembling mountains, and their deities are represented standing on mountains. Sumerians, so it was reasoned, are from the mountains or at least from far beyond the flat alluvial plain of southern Iraq. On the other hand, the monuments from Tello represent Sumerians as round-headed and shaven, but their deities are bearded and therefore Semitic. It was reasoned that, since man forms god in his own image, the Sumerians must have encountered and then conquered an indigenous Semitic population when they invaded southern Iraq; Semitic deities subsequently were adapted for the Sumerian religion. This demonstrated for some that a fully developed Semitic civilization in southern Iraq had predated the arrival of the Sumerians.90 World War I interrupted excavations. By the 1920s, the Sumerian problem had an increasing amount of archaeological data that might either support or refute its various solutions. The arguments of the early twentieth century remained inconsistent regarding the conclusions that could be drawn by using monuments to determine Sumerian racial characteristics. One scholar, for example, found the “ethnic type of the Sumerians” – consisting of “odd shaven heads with their big noses” – to be “strongly marked in their statues and reliefs.”91 Others, however, were critical of those who placed “too much stress upon the ‘strongly developed nose’ of the Sumerians [ . . . ] for this is due to the limitations of the primitive sculptor rather than indicative of a racial characteristic.”92 Additional evidence moved the arguments over the Sumerian problem increasingly toward the conclusion that the populations were already mixed at the time of the earliest surviving evidence for a Sumerian race. The Sumerian problem increasingly was left open. A final surge of interest in the Sumerian problem, however, was stimulated by excavations in the 1920s, which yielded skeletal remains that were examined in light of the racial criteria that had been established in linguistic and visual analyses. The identification of ancient skeletal remains as Sumerian was at best hazy. In most instances, the identification depended on the date of the burial. If the burial was very old, it was probably Sumerian. The classification of so-called Sumerian skulls within the cephalic index  – proportionally long (dolichocephalic), wide (brachycephalic), or average (mesocephalic)  – was the subject of much debate. Particularly disappointing for those who believed that skeletal remains could provide a solution to the Sumerian problem was that the shape of so-called Sumerian skulls appeared to be different from the shape of Sumerian heads on monuments. In much the same way that Pinches concluded that his reconstruction of a Semitic nose produced a Semitic face, the study of Sumerian skulls was a self-fulfilling science in which findings tended to support

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 preconceived arguments. The metric data produced from these studies has since been discredited.93

“Sumerian” Skeletal Remains In reality, so-called Sumerian skeletal remains were scant, and few skulls, in particular, were complete. By the 1930s, the only Sumerian skulls that had been published were those excavated at the sites of Jamdat Nasr, Tell al-‘Ubaid, Ur, and Kish.94 While skeletal remains were sometimes excavated in relatively large quantities, their poor condition usually did not allow the full set of requisite measurements to be taken. Of the some seventy graves excavated from the Y cemetery at Kish, for example, only some eight associated skeletons and crania were recovered and sent to the University of Oxford, and some seven were sent to the Field Museum in Chicago. Heated candle wax had been poured over some of the Kish skulls in order to extract them from the ground because the bones “were so soft that they crumbled like damp sawdust, or bent as though they were made of putty.” Upon their arrival at Oxford, for example, it proved difficult to remove the wax and dirt. In some cases, the bones had to be moistened with hot glue and water so that they could be bent into position.95 Only some of the standard measurements could be taken; the possibility for accurate measurement, in general, was diminished.96 During the period 1850–1930, the study of the Sumerian problem in general was aligned with particularly conservative strains in racial science because it was predicated on the designation of a pure race with immutable physical features. In the 1890s, the anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942) had challenged the stability of skull form and the inferiority of miscegenation.97 However, the study of so-called Sumerian skeletal remains was led by Arthur Keith (1866– 1955), a leading human anatomist and paleontologist, whose study of race directly opposed that of Boas. As president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boas publicly protested Keith’s theories in 1931. The protest made headlines, reflecting the stature of Keith.98 As an expert on Paleolithic human remains, Keith was famously involved in the reconstruction and authentication of the Piltdown remains.99 Known within the scientific community for his conservatism, his views of evolution diverged from contemporary thought. Keith consequently was an exception to the generally held belief that races had formed during a distant and closed episode in human history. In publications and lectures, such as a 1930 address entitled “The Place of Prejudice in Modern Civilization,” Keith argued that evolution was a by-product of warring nations and racial conflict. Consequently, races evolved in situ. The races themselves were very ancient, but their original forms both differed from and paradoxically resembled their modern descendants.100

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture Sumerian skulls were a side interest for Keith. Why, then, was Keith interested in Sumer? The University of Oxford and the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History sponsored the Kish excavations from 1923 to 1933. Keith was a professor at Oxford, and one of his students was Henry Field, the grand-nephew of Marshall Field, founder of the Field Museum. When Henry Field first visited Kish in the winter of 1925–26, he was accompanied by L. Dudley Buxton, who was also Field’s professor and Keith’s colleague in the Department of Human Anatomy at Oxford. Buxton instructed Field on the recording of anthropometric data.101 Keith subsequently became involved in the study of Sumerian skulls. Field was the common tie among these individuals and studied Sumerian skulls himself. These three men oversaw all the studies of Sumerian skeletal remains up to the 1930s: Keith at Ur and al-‘Ubaid, Field at Jamdat Nasr, and Buxton at Kish. According to Keith’s analysis of the skeletal remains, the Sumerians were “large-brained with strong facial features and answer well to the ideal which anthropologists expect to find in a race of pioneers.”102 Contributing to this impression was the Sumerian nose, which, Keith observed, often emerged straight from the forehead as it did in classical sculpture.103 Geographically situated in a “racial watershed or zone of transition” between the Semites and the Iranians, the Sumerians furthermore represented a transitional type.104 More Iranian than Semitic, Keith traced the “ancient Sumerian face” ultimately to the Indus Valley.105 In other words, the visual image of Sumerians deduced from skeletal remains corresponded to the linguistic genealogy of the Sumerian language: as a Turanian language, Sumerian was the ancient precursor to the IndoEuropean/Aryan languages of Europe. Accordingly, the Sumerians were of Caucasian stock and belonged to the same racial classification as Europeans. Keith found that Sumerian skulls closely resembled the skeletal remains from Neolithic long barrows in England and Neolithic burials in the south of France. More specifically, according to Keith, the Sumerians resembled “the long-headed races of Europe,” and “the young Sumerians were not unlike” – but had a slightly higher cranial capacity than – the average modern Englishman.106 Consequently, the vault of the skull, the width of the nasal opening, the palate, the prominence of the cheeks, and other features of the Sumerians were comparable to the English. The Sumerians further rivaled the English in depth of chin, which Keith noted was thought to indicate force of character in popular belief.107 After examining the photographs of “living Mesopotamians” that Buxton had shown at a meeting of the British Association at Oxford, Keith concluded that the “Sumerian type of man has come down to our time” also among the Arab population.108 The Sumerians were therefore Proto-Arabs.109 Unlike the strong-chinned Sumerians and their modern counterparts among the English, however, Keith observed that “the modern Arab clings to Sumerian features.”110 Keith’s analysis of Sumerian skeletal remains resembled his own theories. Race

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 had evolved in situ, and the Sumerians both differed from – and paradoxically closely resembled  – their modern descendants. According to Keith’s understanding of survival of the fittest, modern Arab populations “are not the equals of their distant forefathers; selection has favored the survival of more persistent but less intellectual strains; but nevertheless their racial nature, as measured by anthropologists, has not changed.”111 Keith suggested that the modern population of Iraq was “exhausted” from having been subject to “prolonged civilization” (see the epigraph for this chapter).112 The Arab population inhabiting the same geographical coordinates as the origins of civilization made the West’s own narrative problematic. The modern inhabitants of the southern Iraqi marshes were known as the Marsh Arabs, or Mi’dan. A historical prejudice against the Mi’dan, the result of various factors, including their links to Iran, compounded the pejorative view held by some Western scholars toward Arab populations in general. If the Sumerians were the earliest inhabitants of southern Iraq and if race was immutable and had evolved in situ, then the Mi’dan were the outcome. Such a possibility seemingly contradicted the belief that the Sumerians were the forerunners of Western civilization. As with Keith’s hypothesis, efforts were made to distinguish between a Sumerian race and a local indigenous “swamp Arab” race, both ancient and modern.113 As I discuss, the disassociation of the Sumerians from an indigenous population is a modern narrative. As such, it is analogous to the disassociation of “Mesopotamia” from a region that had been known as Iraq since the medieval Islamic period.114 Measurements of the workmen nevertheless supplemented the ancient data excavated at Kish.115 Field identified one of the Kish workmen as having a “head and face closely resembl[ing] features portrayed in Sumerian art” (Figure 13).116 The measurements of the Kish workmen formed part of the research for Field’s dissertation, published by the Field Museum as Arabs of Central Iraq: Their History, Ethnology, and Physical Character (1935). The measurements of 667 individuals were recorded. Some fifty biometrics were documented for each individual, including fourteen body measurements and the calculation of nine indices. In some instances, hair samples were taken; the condition of teeth and the presence of warts, moles, scars, and tattoos were noted. Keith, who marveled that Field had recorded a total of some 33,000 measurements, provided a lengthy introduction to the metrical data; the director of the Kish excavations contributed a history of the site.117 In reviews, Arabs of Central Iraq was described as a landmark publication, and the photographs were hailed as “a truly magnificent series of race-types.”118

Biblical, Ethnographic, and Civilized Time in Sumer When the archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656) concluded that the biblical creation had taken place in the night preceding October 23rd of the year 4004 BC,

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13.  “Arab (No. 26), Kish Area.” From Field 1935, Plate 128. © The Field Museum, CSA76485.

he was further refining the accepted biblical genealogies, which maintained that the earth had been created some 6,000 years ago.119 Into the mid-nineteenth century, the biblical account of human genesis was widely accepted as historical fact, but it had long been a struggle to fit the much longer chronologies of some ancient peoples within it.120 A revolution in the study of human antiquity occurred when ancient remains were discovered in 1858 in a limestone cave overlooking the fishing port of Brixham in Devonshire, England.121 Some 1,600 bones ultimately were recovered from Brixham cave, including those of extinct mammalian species. Flint tools associated with the bones indicated a contemporary human presence. These findings “expanded the corridor of man’s past backward into geological time.”122 Although it was not causally connected, Darwin published On the Origin of Species the following year.123 Certain phenomena long had suggested that the earth might be much older than 6,000 years.124 The separation of geological history from human history had been a compromise that allowed biblical chronology to survive intact. Geological time thus was the first to supersede the 6,000-year marker. In the nineteenth century, 6,000 years continued to serve as an important chronological marker even when biblical chronology was refuted by finds such as those of Brixham cave. And with the mid-nineteenth-century archaeological discoveries

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Mayan cultures, the 6,000-year chronological marker was increasingly reserved for “civilization.”125 The 6,000-year chronological marker subsequently was adopted for the appearance of Sumerian civilization. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the arrival of the Sumerians in southern Iraq  – and by association the beginning of civilization – therefore was anchored to about 4000 BC.126 The significance of 4000 BC as a chronological marker for civilization and its achievements persisted well into the twentieth century. In the 1919 presidential address to the American Oriental Society, James Henry Breasted (1865–1935) argued that “the primitive character of Sumerian art,” which is “not as good as those of the Maya of Yucatan at a practically Stone Age stage of culture, shows that the beginnings of the civilized stage of Babylonia are not likely to have gone back very far in the fourth millennium B. C.”127 In 1942, it was determined that writing first appeared around 4000 BC, in part through a complicated mathematical formula in which levels were dated on the basis of an assumption that temples were replastered annually.128 Early excavators often fit the archaeological sequences of their respective Sumerian sites within a 6,000-year framework. The earliest finds from Tello were initially dated to around 4000 BC.129 The entire occupational sequence at Kish, comprised of some sixteen meters of accumulated strata, was thought to span 6,000 years.130 The earliest levels at Tell al-‘Ubaid were dated to the “beginning of the fourth millennium BC or earlier.”131 Pivotal events, most commonly natural disasters, were also typically anchored to the 4000 BC chronological marker. The site of Jamdat Nasr, for example, was believed to have been destroyed by a fire that occurred 6,000 years ago.132 Comparative stratigraphy – the comparison of excavated strata or levels – could in no way reconcile these disparate relative chronologies. Although Sumer had no biblical connections, evidence of flooding, manifest as dense layers of silt at certain Sumerian sites and also recorded in cuneiform texts, was equated with the biblical flood.133 For example, Woolley identified a layer of water-laid clay encountered during the 1928 season of excavations at Ur as the biblical flood.134 The water-laid clay was up to 3.70 m thick and sealed a lower level in which painted pottery and other material remains were encountered. Largely on the basis of associated “primitive stone tools,” Woolley initially interpreted this level as evidence of “non-Sumerian barbarians” who had been “drowned out” by the flood before the arrival of the Sumerians.135 Woolley’s identification of primitive stone tools before the flood and Sumerian civilization after the flood resembled a model popular among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century “catastrophists” who promoted the theory of an antediluvian tool-making race that had been eradicated by the biblical deluge.136 Despite some continuity in material culture, the stratigraphic break at Ur represented

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture by the flood was “sufficient to account for the disappearance of most that is primitive.”137 This interpretation in essence provided a 1.70-meter-thick barrier between “primitive” and civilized. Some nineteenth-century interpretations of climatic and environmental data maintained that southern Iraq had been uninhabitable until around 4000 BC. The physical geography of southern Iraq reflects a process of progradation, which is the outward advance of the shoreline as a result of the accumulation of the alluvium deposited by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and their tributaries. At its most extreme, nineteenth-century opinion regarding the original location of the shoreline put the entirety of Iraq south of the city of Samarra under water. At its less extreme, nineteenth-century attitudes nevertheless maintained that marshlands, of which the southernmost portion of Iraq was comprised, were an inherently uninhabitable wasteland. Although the precise location is still a matter of debate, today the consensus is that the shoreline never moved as far inland as the most extreme nineteenth-century views maintained.138 The painted pottery encountered at Ur “before the flood” belonged to a diagnostic type of ceramic first excavated in 1920 at the site of Tell al-‘Ubaid. Once the four cultural phases for the earliest-known remains were established, the painted pottery was dated to the Ubaid period. One theory regarding the appearance of this pottery type envisioned a “painted pottery folk” who had preceded the Sumerians. Although there was no consensus as to the identity of the painted pottery folk, the very designation of “folk” evoked the image of a local, indigenous population rather than the forerunners of civilization.139 At Kish, a clay head with traces of paint was found in a context post-dating the evidence for flooding. Believed to represent “a real Sumerian or a proto-Sumerian of the period 4,000 BC,” the head was dated to before the flood and designated an heirloom in part because its medium paralleled painted ceramics.140 In the mid-twentieth century, some scholars still favored the model of an indigenous long-headed “swamp Arab” population ruled by short-headed Sumerian invaders. Associating the Sumerians with Ubaid painted pottery, others theorized a Sumerian presence since the very beginning of human settlement in southern Iraq.141 In 1960, Joan Oates definitively reoriented this discourse. Oates argued for cultural continuity from the Ubaid period onward but also maintained that the earliest “Sumerian” inhabitants of southern Iraq were representative of a heterogeneous population. The hunting and fishing potential of the marshlands could have attracted populations that did not rely solely on agriculture, and the abundance of reeds could have been exploited for export. Marsh-dwelling communities therefore likely assumed a role in the formation of Ubaid culture.142 More recent analysis of satellite imagery has supported the view of southern Iraq as a deltaic heartland, and it has been argued that the exploitation of marshland resources facilitated urban developments.143 As a result, the marshes are now seen as an important factor in the emergence

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 of urban centers during the Uruk period. The research model for the growth of urbanization in Sumer therefore now fully acknowledges an Ubaid precursor. In other words, Uruk culture is rooted in the Ubaid period of the sixth and fifth millennia BC.144 Most solutions to the Sumerian problem equated the arrival of the Sumerians with the arrival of civilization. However, the consensus reached today is that there is no such thing as a Sumerian race per se and that the many groups potentially living in the region of Sumer were in all likelihood politically, culturally, and linguistically disparate. The notion of Sumerians fighting Semites thus has given way to mixed populations. The speakers of any given language, moreover, cannot be associated with the modern definitions of race formulated for the examination of the Sumerian problem. Even the impression that Semiticspeaking people had only gradually infiltrated Sumer by the Early Dynastic period had to be revised in the 1960s when it was found that approximately half of the Early Dynastic Sumerian texts from the site of Abu Salabikh were composed by scribes with Semitic names.145

Conclusion: Sculpting the Sumerian Body The Sumerian monuments from Tello caused a sensation when they arrived in Paris. Some thought that Sumerian art had achieved a level surpassing later NeoAssyrian art. Late nineteenth-century narratives, constructed on notions of history, progress, and evolution, were disrupted by this high opinion of Sumer.146 The ambivalent reception of the aesthetics of Sumer was materialized at the 1889 Universal Exposition as the Gudea display, part of an exhibition chronicling the progress of civilization through the history of human labor (Figure 1). Intended as a “noble preface” to the exposition itself and entitled Exposition rétrospective du travail et des sciences anthropologiques (Retrospective Exposition of Labor and of the Anthropological Sciences), plaster casts and waxworks of life-sized prehistoric families and modern “primitive” peoples were reconstructed in realistic tableaux for the exhibition.147 The scenes of human labor were supplemented by a section on anthropology, with craniological displays of comparative anatomy, “casts of typical faces (living),” and maps showing the distribution of races.148 The reconstruction of Gudea was set in the center of a pavilion, a living body comprised of a clothed and painted plaster cast based on ancient sculpture and the modern human skull of an Arab from around Baghdad. The modern seat was made of wood. An elaborate base for the seat consisted of four sections of an ancient brick column. The walls of the pavilion were decorated with a pastiche of later imagery, including a stone relief-carving of the Neo-Assyrian period. A vitrine of Sumerian implements stood nearby.149 The Gudea of the 1889 Universal Exposition was sculpted by Jules Hébert (1854–1952), who spent his career making ethnographic sculpture at the Musée

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture d’Ethnographie of Paris housed in the Palais du Trocadero.150 Hébert collaborated on many of the displays for both the 1878 and the 1889 Universal Expositions. The plaster, wax, and real materials, such as hair, of Hébert’s sculpture belonged to the science of ethnographic documentation.151 He was assisted in his endeavors by a wigmaker experienced in theatre costume and a workshop specializing in painted glass eyes. Hébert’s skills were known internationally. In 1886, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., acquired his Arab sheikh as well as four Africans in native costume. Another component of nineteenth-century ethnographic sculpture belonged to the realm of fine art. For example, Charles Cordier (1827–1905) sculpted busts of north Africans based on research conducted during a government-funded mission to Algeria undertaken in order to study indigenous peoples from an artistic point of view. Categorizing his own sculptures as racial types, Cordier had a series of them photographed according to the standard conventions for documenting the living ethnographic body. Cordier both exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1857 and presented the data of his own sculptures to the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1862.152 Although Cordier’s sculptures were intended to provide precise information concerning race, they were considered different from ethnographic sculpture of plaster casts and waxworks.153 The materials used by Cordier included combinations of bronze and colored marbles, the durable materials of fine art. Cordier used polychromy to manipulate the surface for an aesthetic effect, but ethnographic sculpture used polychromy to facilitate the accuracy of scientific copy. Cordier sculpted independent busts; Hébert situated his scientific copies within realistic tableaux. It was through the science of ethnographic documentation that Sumer was encountered in the 1889 Universal Exposition. As Bohrer observes, the Gudea display provided “a framework that explicitly disavowed aesthetic evaluation.”154 The statues of Gudea are carved principally from diorite, a dark, hard stone. This was, essentially, the durable material of fine art. The cast of Gudea fleshed out and clothed for the 1889 Universal Exposition negated the aesthetics of stone sculpture. This seeming paradox was not unique. Although a champion of Sumerian art, Heuzey nevertheless found the Gudea display at the 1889 Universal Exposition so “instructive” that some twenty-three years later he preferred it as the departure point for Les Origines Orientales de l’Art (The Oriental Origins of Art, 1891–1915).155 In 1933, around the end of the period under consideration in this chapter, two new exhibitions meant to illustrate the history of humankind opened at the Field Museum in Chicago. The same three men responsible for studying Sumerian skulls  – Field, Buxton, and Keith  – participated in the conceptualization of these exhibitions. The story of human evolution began in the Hall of the Stone Age of the Old World and culminated in the Hall of the Races

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14. Malvina Cornell Hoffman, Arab from Kish, 1932 (bronze). Collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada, B.65.70.8.

of Mankind with some 101 life-sized “types” cast in bronze by the American sculptor Malvina Hoffman (1887–1966).156 Down to the disheveled hair, the Arab from Kish exhibited in the Hall of the Races of Mankind is based on a 25-year-old workman from the Kish excavations who was measured by Field during the 1927–28 field season (Figure 14).157 A bust of Keith was said to be the self-proclaimed Nordic, Great Britain.158 Frederick Blaschke (1881–1938) is the largely unknown sculptor who worked on the Hall of the Stone Age of the Old World, the production of which was overseen by Keith.159 Set in realistic tableaux, the figures were modeled over plaster casts of skulls to which hair and glass eyes were added. According to one contemporary critic, the tableaux were meant to show “how your own ancestors lived when THEY [original emphasis] were ‘primitive men.’”160 In contrast, the statues in the Hall of the Races of Mankind were permanent representations principally of the vanishing modern “primitives” transformed into “durable monuments.”161 A similar distinction between ephemeral and durable materials was achieved when Katharine Woolley cast a bronze sculpture of Hamoudi, the famous Arab foreman of the Ur excavations, around the same time that she sculpted Shub-ad in plaster and wax (Figure 3).162 The early modern images of Sumerians were comprised of casts over which features were modeled in wax and real hair was added. In other words, they were supplemented with traces of the body itself.163 The result created an immediacy,

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture a living body occupying a modern space. The casting of Sumerians as ethnographic sculpture, in media supplemented with traces of a living body, was neither distancing nor memorializing like the durable materials of stone and metal. Rather, it emphasized the Sumerians as a kindred ancestor. What this tension among media suggests is that the visual culture created by the early reception of the Sumerians was complicated by the unique positioning of the Sumerians vis-à-vis the West. In an allochronic paradigm, the observation of modern “primitives” becomes the observation of distant times, and cultural difference becomes equated with temporal difference. Fabian links allochronism with visualism, in which the visual perception of a society is equated with an understanding of it.164 In a circular manner, knowledge is based on and validated by visualism. So-called modern “primitives” provided valid information about the ancient condition of humanity, but modern civilization also provided valid information about the ancient condition of humanity when it comprised the Sumerian civilization. As a forerunner to Western civilization, the “primitive” quality of Sumerian civilization had an ambivalent reception. Certainly, differences from modern “primitive” populations were emphasized. As a result, Sumerian civilization as it was studied from around 1850–1930 did not culminate in modern civilization as much as it a priori closely resembled it. Calling for the analysis of the role of monuments in validating the overt relationship between race and aesthetics in ancient Near Eastern studies, Bahrani frames the art historian of non-Western cultures as an ethnographer, an observer and translator of culture.165 The art historian as ethnographer to my mind provides a model for dealing with much of the early scholarship on Sumerian sculpture. Until well into the twentieth century, the concept of the art historian as ethnographer is a literal manifestation vis-à-vis the material remains of Sumer. A division between the ethnographic and the aesthetic therefore cannot be maintained in the early reception of Sumerian sculpture. The early reception of Sumerian sculpture was ethnography. From the first available visual evidence of the Sumerians and into the early twentieth century, the Sumerian body was materialized largely in ethnographic terms. The search for the Sumerian body among ancient monuments underscored a desire to see the Sumerians. The desire to see and the desire to know were conflated by the study of difference in contemporary methodologies. Racial science was a legitimate field of inquiry in the period under review here. Yet science, because it is practiced by people, is a socially embedded activity.166 The aim of reviewing the racial science in early scholarship on the Sumerians is not merely to point out that such scholarship was flawed. Pinches, for example, was a major scholar of his day and was later instrumental in establishing that Sumerian was indeed the correct name of a legitimate language.167 Ironically, one of his criteria for doing so was the ability to distinguish between Sumerians and Semites on the monuments from Tello. The countless examples

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Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930 in this chapter suggest that the desire to see the origins of civilization in ancient Sumer reflected prevalent and persistent attitudes. Many early scholars thus imposed their own cultural norms on the Sumerians, producing an origins myth that could comfortably culminate in the West. Early Sumerian studies belong to the scientific data of archaeology, but archaeology is not a neutral record. This is recognized by most scholars, who today would disregard much of the early data on Sumerians in any serious approach to the ancient Near East. Reflecting on the importance of the early twentieth century for formulating the aims of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, however, Bär observes that “many of these early theories and propositions still have an effect on current research, even when in the present state of knowledge they are out of date or no longer of relevance.”168 Trigger advocates a study of the history of archaeology, in general, as a means for understanding how “specific views about the past can persist and influence archaeological interpretation long after the reasoning that led to their formulation has been discredited and abandoned.”169 To skirt the data included in the early publications of ancient Near Eastern archaeology denies an intellectual history that produced the archaeological record we still use today. By recognizing this data rather than disregarding it, we can revisit the origins of the field itself in order to scrutinize the methodologies that currently underlie our approach to certain object worlds. With this aim in mind, the next chapter considers the emerging aesthetics of Sumerian sculpture in the 1930s.

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A rt H i s to ry, E t h n o g rap h y, a n d B eau t i f u l S c u l p t u r e

I hope you will forget your natural taste and appreciation of beautiful things and develop a real Arab sense for broken pots, metal objects and ugly Sumerian statues.1 – Leon Legrain, letter from the field (1925) You probably don’t know about sculpture in the early (First Dynasty of Ur) period  – but nor does anyone else; because up to now very little has been found, other than a few battered fragments of ugly old men.2 – Seton Lloyd, letter to his mother after excavating the Asmar hoard (1934)

Introduction: The 1930s as a Transitional Period in the Study of Sumerian Sculpture In 1930, the Ubaid, Uruk, Jamdat Nasr, and Early Dynastic periodization had been formulated on the premise that distinct cultural assemblages are contemporary wherever they are encountered.3 However, an uninterrupted, stratified sequence of these assemblages within a single excavated context would have been preferable so that archaeologists could refine the chronology by observing subtle changes from level to level. The Early Dynastic (ED) period, in particular, was an ill-defined time variously referred to as prediluvian, Lagash, pre-Sargonid, plano-convex, and early Sumerian. In 1930, the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago began excavations in the Diyala region of Iraq, east of Baghdad. Over seven seasons of fieldwork, the Iraq Expedition excavated numerous uninterrupted, stratified assemblages.4 In 1935, Henri Frankfort (1897–1954), field director of the Iraq Expedition, subdivided the Early Dynastic period into ED I, II, and III on the basis of the Diyala excavations.5

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15.  Early Dynastic temple sculpture excavated in the Diyala Region by the Iraq Expedition, 1933–34. From Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 1935, Figure 44. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Hundreds of surviving examples of Early Dynastic sculpture were excavated in temples at the Diyala sites of Tell Asmar, Khafajah, and Tell Agrab (Figure 15). Two final volumes on the Diyala sculpture were published by Frankfort in 1939 and 1943. Abbreviated here as Sculpture and More Sculpture, respectively, they represented a departure from earlier studies.6 Rather than a racial typing of the representations, two broad Early Dynastic sculpture styles were recognized and considered chronologically significant (Figures 16, 17). The hoard of twelve well-preserved statues buried in the Abu Temple at Tell Asmar was designated the prime example of an earlier sculpture style, characterized by the abstraction of corporeal forms into geometric shapes. The sculpture style of the Asmar hoard was dated to ED II; a later, realistic sculpture style was dated to ED III.7 As discussed in Chapter 1, the strand of aesthetic analysis that had been pres­ent in the reception of Sumerian sculpture ever since its discovery was overshadowed in ancient Near Eastern studies by the belief that sculpture could contribute to an understanding of the racial issues comprising the Sumerian problem. In the early twentieth century, an aesthetic reception of Sumerian sculpture was, however, increasingly in the air.8 The reorientation of the study of Early Dynastic sculpture toward art-historical methodologies is explored here through Frankfort. It was Frankfort who published the largest corpus of Early Dynastic sculpture. It was also Frankfort who established the Early Dynastic subdivisions, which relied on the chronological significance accorded to an earlier

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture

16. Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture hoard, stone statue of the abstract style (gypsum, shell, black limestone, bitumen). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Fletcher Fund, 1940 (40.156). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

abstract and a later realistic sculpture style. It is therefore primarily Frankfort’s treatment of Early Dynastic sculpture to which we still respond today. Given that the Diyala excavations yielded such a great quantity of Early Dynastic sculpture, one might suppose that Frankfort adopted art-historical methodologies in order to deal with the sudden appearance of a large number of statues. From the point of view of quantity, however, the Diyala sculpture just as easily might have been utilized for a definitive study of the Sumerian problem, especially since craniology was increasingly subject to statistical analysis in the early twentieth century. This is all the more plausible given that the anthropological shift from physical to cultural terms of difference arrived comparatively late to ancient Near Eastern studies. The failure to establish a consistent Sumerian skull shape was still cited in the mid-twentieth century as the principal reason for abandoning cranial analysis in the study of sculpture.9 Rather than recognizing the flaws of cranial analysis and adopting new

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17.  Khafajah, Nintu Temple, Early Dynastic stone statue of the realistic style. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, 37–15–28. Reproduced courtesy of Richard L. Zettler, Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near East Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

conceptualizations of race, such reasoning revealed vestiges of the old paradigm in which race was visible on the skull as a fixed category of difference. The quantity of Early Dynastic sculpture that was retrieved in the Diyala excavations must also be tempered by the importance accorded to one specific corpus: the Asmar hoard. Citing developments in Egypt, Frankfort maintained that “the human figure was for the first time sculptured in the round in stone for a monumental purpose” in the third millennium BC.10 The significance of the Asmar hoard was that, as the earliest-stratified corpus of “monumental stone sculpture” in Mesopotamia, another body of evidence was now available for “understanding of the phenomenon of art itself.”11 Contextualized among the oldest monumental stone sculpture in the history of art, the Asmar hoard

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture represented the “foundation of all sculptural achievement.”12 With the qualification of “oldest monumental stone sculpture,” Frankfort thus oriented the Asmar hoard – and Early Dynastic sculpture in general – within a well-established discourse on the origins of art. Under the influence of social Darwinism, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century concerns surrounding the origins of art fell within the domain of many disciplines. At that time, the origins of art were sought in a primordial impulse toward ornament, the vestiges of which were believed to have survived among modern “primitive” cultures. By adapting methodologies originating in the study of two-dimensional ornament for the study of three-dimensional sculpture, Frankfort’s reception of Early Dynastic sculpture mirrored the early twentieth-century Western reception of the “primitive” as an aesthetic property of sculpture in general. Already in a 1956 review, Porada, with characteristic insight, accused Frankfort of being under the spell of cubism in his esteem for the Asmar hoard: “admiration for the geometric style was doubtless caused by its relationship to Cubism, which has shaped the taste of many people from his generation to the present.”13 Yet the theoretical orientation underlying Frankfort’s reception of Early Dynastic sculpture was, like the early twentiethcentury reception of “primitive art,” much more than an admiration of Picasso and his contemporaries. The relationship between Early Dynastic sculpture styles and early twentieth-century aesthetics has gone largely unrecognized.14 This is partly owing to the nature of archaeology, which in its use of style and iconography as chronological indices often divorces art-historical analysis from art history as a discipline with its own distinct history. It is not a matter of whether the sculpture in the Asmar hoard has geometric or abstract forms per se. Rather, it is that this characterization of the Asmar hoard did not emerge in a vacuum. The discursive shift from ethnographic to art-historical methodologies in the study of Early Dynastic sculpture was predicated on the shift in early twentieth-century aesthetic thought regarding the “primitive” in general. The formulation of Early Dynastic sculpture styles therefore should be interrogated as a product of the early twentieth-century milieu in which it was conceived. As such, it cannot be disentangled from the ethnographic discourse treated in Chapter 1. Building on this awareness ultimately will allow us to ask different questions of Early Dynastic sculpture, which is what I aim to do in subsequent chapters.

Henri Frankfort, the Oriental Institute, and Physical Anthropology With the financial support of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Iraq Expedition excavated an average of four months a year for seven consecutive winters (1930/31–1936/37). It was devoted exclusively to archaeological fieldwork; its

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture members did not have additional responsibilities at the University of Chicago and were not required to reside there. Instead, the Iraq Expedition, sponsored by the United States, was comprised of an international team of scholars that included Frankfort (Dutch), Seton Lloyd (English/1902–1996), Thorkild Jacobsen (Danish/1904–1993), and Pinhas Delougaz (Ukrainian/1901–1975).15 Its work was fundamental to the foundation of ancient Near Eastern archaeology and delineated a cultural history of Mesopotamia from about 3200 to 1800 BC. Among the first stratigraphic excavations in Mesopotamia, the improved digging and recording techniques of the Iraq Expedition stressed the importance of locating objects in context. Many of the accomplishments of the Iraq Expedition were a testament to the skills of Frankfort, who received his MA at the University of London (1924) and his PhD at the University of Leiden (1927). Beginning with the first publication of his MA thesis, Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East I (1924), and until his untimely death, Frankfort was recognized as a leading scholar of the ancient Near East.16 Seminal publications by Frankfort, including Kingship and the Gods (1948), The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (1951), and contributions to The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946), combine the interpretation of texts and material culture. At a 1983 colloquium in memory of Frankfort, his contributions were put into perspective by Jacobsen: His achievements were fundamental. He introduced dating by pottery into Mesopotamian archaeology and established the first datable series. Later he did the same thing for cylinder seals assigning them to their various periods. His excavations in Khorsabad and the Diyala Region were a model for their time and did much, by their example, to help improve archaeological method in Mesopotamian archaeology. It is difficult now, fully to realize how little was known in 1930. The Early Dynastic Period, which Frankfort cleared up and subdivided, was then a dark mystery. It did not even have a name then.17 In ancient Near Eastern studies, the full extent of Frankfort’s engagement with art-historical methodologies is often overshadowed by his skills as a field archaeologist. Known also for his “superb feeling for, and insight into, art and its values,” Frankfort received a Guggenheim Fellowship for The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (1954), which was still going through press when he died at the age of 57; it has since been revised and is still a core text.18 In both his fieldwork and his writings, it is clear that Frankfort considered art history as one important component of ancient Near Eastern studies. In 1936, Frankfort wrote a statement for the Oriental Institute entitled “The Place of Archaeology at our Universities.” Criticizing classical studies as “no more than history of art,” which he traced back to Winckelmann, Frankfort instead advocated a consideration of the entire archaeological record. An archaeology curriculum, he proposed,

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture should be divided between lectures on excavation technique and lectures on material culture, including sociology, cultural history, and art history.19 It was sculpture – among other objects looted from the site of Khafajah and appearing in the markets of Baghdad – that had aroused the Oriental Institute’s interest in the Diyala region.20 In the fall of 1929, Frankfort made a preliminary trip to Iraq for the Iraq Expedition. En route home, on a train from Aleppo to Istanbul, Frankfort wrote a letter to a friend in which he described an unnamed Diyala site as “an early Sumerian city, extremely interesting, with beautiful sculpture (if God wills).”21 Frankfort’s “beautiful sculpture” is ambiguous. As I will discuss, a shift occurred in Frankfort’s publications upon the excavation of the Asmar hoard in 1934. Earlier publications and anecdotes demonstrate that Frankfort, like so many of his contemporaries, studied sculpture because it potentially could resolve aspects of the Sumerian problem. Sculpture predating the reign of Gudea of Lagash (ca. 2100 BC) was generally referred to as early Sumerian sculpture and was unknown in great quantity before the Diyala excavations. At the site of Ashur, excavations in the Ishtar Temple from 1903 to 1914 sponsored by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft produced the first corpus of what is now called Early Dynastic sculpture. Level G of the Ishtar Temple yielded some sixteen statues restorable from fragments and preserved well enough to determine their subject in addition to numerous other sculpture fragments.22 Although Ashur is located in northern Iraq, many scholars assumed that Sumerians were represented because the statues had affinities with sculpture from Sumer proper.23 Citing the criteria Meyer and others had formulated, Walter Andrae (1875–1956), director of the Ashur excavations, instead tentatively identified two different racial types among the Ishtar Temple G sculpture.24 Frankfort used the evidence of race provided by the Ishtar Temple G sculpture in early publications such as Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East I (1924), “Sumerians, Semites, and the Origin of Copper-working” (1928), and Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem (1932).25 In the last of these publications, Frankfort reviewed the archaeological data available at the time, including human figural representations on monuments. Identifying what he considered characteristic Sumerian elements in Early Dynastic material culture, Frankfort attempted to trace the arrival of the Sumerians back through time. Ultimately, Frankfort argued on the basis of cultural continuity that the Sumerians had been present in southern Iraq since the Ubaid period. The different racial types identified among the Ishtar Temple G sculpture therefore confirmed to Frankfort what the relatively late date already suggested: Sumerians and other races already were detectable in the archaeological record by the Early Dynastic period. When Frankfort presented the text of Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem at the Eighteenth International Congress of Orientalists, held at Leiden in 1931,

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture sculpture had been excavated at the Diyala site of Khafajah.26 Frankfort identified a brachycephalic Armenoid type and a dolichocephalic Mediterranean type among the statues of male figures.27 By using the terms Armenoid and Mediterranean, Frankfort avoided locating the statues within the Sumerian– Semitic paradigm. Frankfort also rejected the interpretations of the Kish excavators, who had equated their archaeological evidence of predominantly brachycephalic cranial remains seemingly superseded by dolichocephalic cranial remains with Sumerians being conquered by Semites.28 Instead, Frankfort countered that the Kish skeletal remains, like the Ishtar Temple G sculpture, were indicative only of a racially mixed population because he found no definitive proof that Sumerians indeed had brachycephalic skulls. This view was not necessarily that of the consensus. According to correspondence between Frankfort and Breasted, the Oriental Institute opposed publishing Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem unless Frankfort gave further consideration to the evidence provided by the cranial analyses at Kish. The correspondence indicates the extent to which Frankfort’s scholarship was considered equivalent to a collective Oriental Institute stance on the Sumerian problem. Although Frankfort had offered his paper to the Oriental Institute for publication, it is apparent that he should not (and did not want to) publish it elsewhere. In January 1932, an exchange between Breasted and Frankfort unfolded while the Iraq Expedition was in the field. It began with Breasted’s response to the manuscript of Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem: It happens that you have written this paper at a critical juncture in such researches. The last number of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute contains an article by Leonard Halford Dudley Buxton and Talbot Rice discussing all the anthropological data from Kish, and I take it you have not yet seen this material. Furthermore, Henry Field of our Chicago group has been carrying on rather extensive anthropological studies of the modern population of Iraq, which he is about to publish. Sir Arthur Keith has written an introduction of nearly a hundred pages on the whole field of Near Eastern physical anthropology, which is to be included in Field’s volume, and the manuscript is here. Additional results at Kish also seem to me to make it desirable for you to check up again with their latest reports. I think, therefore, that it will be the better part of valor if we of the Oriental Institute await the publication of the materials mentioned before we take up a position regarding these exceedingly difficult problems of race and racial origins in Sumerian research. I am sure you will understand that I am writing in your own interest as well as that of the Oriental Institute.29 When the text of Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem was presented in Leiden, it was well received. Frankfort reminded Breasted of this when he responded: This paper was a piece of independent research work which I offered to you for publication as a matter of courtesy and you accepted it. For anybody

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture who saw the acclamation with which the argument was received in Leiden, where special time was voted for its discussion, the idea of further delay seems almost absurd. I thought that you knew that I have written this paper just because we ‘are at a critical juncture in such researches,’ and as I have been working on this subject for some time in the past, I am well aware that its publication will never be more helpful than it is now. [ . . . ] I am certainly not anxious to include further facts of physical anthropology which can still hardly be used in connection with cultural history.30 It could take weeks for letters posted between Chicago and Baghdad  – and then sent on to the Diyala region – to reach the intended recipient. For example, Frankfort wrote his response immediately after receiving Breasted’s letter, but some twenty days had transpired since Breasted had written it. It is perhaps for this reason that on the same day Frankfort received the letter he sent a cable: “PLEASE NOW SEND ORIGINAL DRAWINGS WITH VIGNIERS PHOTOS AND TYPESCRIPTS OF PAPER ON SUMERIANS TO SIDNEY SMITH FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION IN LONDON=FRANKFORT.”31 The next day, Breasted responded by cable that he was holding the manuscript until Frankfort responded to his letter.32 Frankfort responded a few days later that his cable was a response to the letter: MY CABLE CONSEQUENT DIRECTORS LETTER JANY ELEVENTH STOP CONSIDER PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY YET OF RESTRICTED RELEVANCY AND WOULD RATHER SHORTEN CHAPTER SEVEN STOP AFTER FACTO PUBLICATION IN LEIDEN I DESIRE IMMEDIATE PRINTED PUBLICATION WHICH DEIMEL GADD JORDAN LANGDON SMITH ALSO DECLARED MOST HELPFUL AT PRESENT CRITICAL JUNCTURE IN SUMERIAN RESEARCHES33 The next day Breasted responded: IF SUMERIAN ESSAY REPRESENTS INSTITUTE WORK IT MUST NOT BE PUBLISHED UNTIL IT IS BROUGHT UP TO DATE RESPECTING KISH PUBLICATIONS AND PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY STOP IF YOU DESIRE PUBLISH ON OWN RESPONSIBILITY YOU MAY PROCEED BUT I REGARD IT AS HIGHLY UNDESIRABLE34 Frankfort responded with another cable reiterating that his study was up to date and that he could not wait indefinitely for unpublished material.35 Two days later Breasted acquiesced in a brief cabled response: YOUR PUBLICATION PROPOSALS EXCELLENT SHALL PROCEED WITH COMPOSITION GREETINGS BREASTED.36 In subsequent correspondence, Frankfort reassured Breasted that he had incorporated the most recent findings pertaining to physical anthropology.37 In hindsight, the prominence of the Kish excavations is striking. Kish had been an important city in antiquity. According to the Sumerian King List,

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture kingship first descended to Kish after the flood. In the course of the twentieth century, however, the Kish material remains have been of limited value for study because the site was poorly excavated. Consequently, the material remains often cannot be situated within precise stratigraphic contexts.38 When first excavated, in contrast, Kish had greatly influenced research. Before the Ubaid, Uruk, Jamdat Nasr, and Early Dynastic periodization had been settled on, for example, the so-called flood stratum at Kish had led some to suggest that all earlier remains should be referred to as the prediluvian period.39 In addition, it was suggested on the basis of the Kish excavations that a Sumerian I, II, III, and IV chronology should replace the Ubaid, Uruk, Jamdat Nasr, and Early Dynastic periodization.40 As Breasted indicated, physical anthropology at Kish  – with Keith, Buxton, and Field as specialists – had to be addressed in debates over the Sumerian problem. The relevance of physical anthropology  – and of the Sumerian problem itself – was soon dropped from the research agenda of the Iraq Expedition after the discovery of the Asmar hoard. The great impression made by the Asmar hoard cannot be overemphasized. With an apologetic tone, Frankfort wrote to Breasted of the discovery: “[D]evelopments here during the last few days have been quite sensational [ . . . ] I hope you will not mind the somewhat rhapsodic disorder of the story; it is very hard to remain seated at my desk under these circumstances.”41 It was Lloyd who physically excavated the Asmar hoard. He wrote to his mother that “it will take me a long time to forget the intense excitement of lying on my tummy for almost two days, extracting one priceless antiquity after another from a hole in the ground, always with the feeling of awful responsibility.”42 The statues in the Asmar hoard were first published in the popular press, and on May 19, 1934, the two largest statues appeared on the front page of The Illustrated London News. These initial publications included considerations of physical anthropology. For example, one statue published in The Illustrated London News is described as “showing extremely well the physical type of the early Sumerians.”43 Lloyd recalled years later that at the time of the excavation of the Asmar hoard Frankfort was “particularly interested in the non-Semitic characteristics of the Sumerians.” While excavating the Asmar hoard, Lloyd remembered Frankfort kneeling beside him: “I heard his remark  – ‘But man, everything hangs on this,’ and turned to see him pointing triumphantly to the priest’s [i.e., the kneeling belted figure’s] penis.”44 For The Illustrated London News, Frankfort remarked that “the Sumerians, in contrast with the Egyptians and with the Semites, did not practice circumcision.”45 Frankfort’s correspondence with Breasted instead highlights the aesthetics of the sculpture in the Asmar hoard. Remarking that “[n]othing like them is known,” Frankfort wrote to Breasted that “the bearded figures bought and found at Khafajah and here [at Tell Asmar] during the past few years appear now to be

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture late, conventionalized descendants of a much finer, earlier style.”46 The ambiguity of “beautiful sculpture” persists. Frankfort also formulated publication plans tailored to the aesthetics of the Diyala sculpture in general. He proposed a lavishly illustrated volume that would “put our finds into the hands of the increasing number of people who are keen on oriental art.” Comprised of “the merest outline of the ruins in which the statuary was found,” the text would instead focus on “the interest of the sculpture in the history of art.”47 Breasted approved these plans, observing that “[w]orks of art are so buried in our usual publications of field results that they are often lost or very much obscured when sought for by people interested in the higher aspects of ancient life.”48 In Frankfort’s conception of the earlier sculpture style of the Asmar hoard, “the human body is ruthlessly reduced to abstract plastic form.”49 The planes of the body abruptly transition from one to the other so that front, back, and side are distinct. The skirt is a cone; the torso is a square. The face and beard form a triangle framing large, expressive eyes. The hair and beard are patterned with horizontal ridges that are echoed in the lips. The line of the beard begins with a deeply incised crescent along the cheeks, the fingers of the clasped hands form a coil, and the ears are carved as interlocking spiral forms. Clarity of form is key. The result is a series of “bold simplifications which approximate, in a varying degree, the ultimate limit, namely purely geometrical bodies.”50 Statues of the later realistic style, according to Frankfort, have a “new aesthetic orientation” and “actually confront us with a complete contrast.”51 Instead of the “severe reduction of natural forms to geometrical shapes,” the sculptors of the later realistic style “seem fascinated by the physical nature of their ­models.”52 According to Frankfort, the realistic style is softly modeled and demonstrates an interest in human anatomy through the representation of collarbones, nipples, and pectorals. The torso is rounded, and the neck is differentiated from the base of the skull; the head is more accurately proportioned. The skirt has a curving bell shape.53 Formal analysis, the traditional bedrock of art history, had arrived in Sumer.

S culpture , Ornament, and the Origins of Art Because the Asmar hoard was qualified as the earliest monumental stone sculpture, the study of the Diyala sculpture was aligned with the study of the origins of art. Ornament was the most frequently used source for studying the origins of art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Referring to any design encompassing a plane surface, investigations into the origins of art through the study of ornament culminated in an onslaught of major publications around the turn of the twentieth century.54 Beginning with Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East I (1924), Frankfort studied the evolution of ornament in the form of the designs painted on ceramics from the site of Susa on the Khuzistan plain of

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture Iran.55 Frankfort subsequently applied theories on the evolution of ornament to the study of Early Dynastic sculpture. In the mid-nineteenth century, the German architect and theorist Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) assigned an influential and well-defined place to “primitive” cultures as a locus for the origins of art.56 Semper argued for a materialist theory of architectural development in Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten, oder, praktische Aesthetik (1860–63), associating textiles with the origins of certain architectural elements and the weaving of textiles, which produces patterns, with the origins of architectural ornament. It was supposed that such primordial forms originated in an antediluvian world.57 As the most elemental of aesthetic impulses, affinities were sought in the ornament embellishing the utilitarian objects of modern “primitives.” The main sources available for Semper to study were the cultures of Polynesia and New Zealand as exhibited at the 1851 World Exhibition in London.58 A “primitive” that was on the one hand chronological and on the other hand cultural thus was conflated, and the study of the origins of art was principally a study of the ornament of “primitive” cultures. The observations made by Semper in reference to architectural forms were applied by subsequent scholars to a wider range of inquiries. It was assumed that the most stylized, geometric phase of any culture’s visual imagery was necessarily the earliest since it was closest to the technical processes of craft.59 The earliest phase thus was dubbed “geometric style,” a term that initially described the Late Geometric wares from the Dipylon cemetery in Athens and subsequently had a wider generic application.60 The flip side of theories on the origins of art was that primordial art forms were observed directly from nature and therefore were naturalistic. Yet the possibility that the origins of art were to be found in naturalistic forms conflicted with the prevalence of geometric ornament among “primitive” peoples. If “primitive” ornament mirrored the primordial origins of art, why wasn’t it naturalistic? In order to explain this seeming paradox, the geometric ornament of “primitive” peoples was understood by some as a degeneration from naturalism. Experiments were conducted in order to confirm that naturalistic designs became simplified and misconstrued – conventionalized – when they were repeatedly copied over time.61 Conceived of as a biological treatment of art, Alfred Court Haddon’s highly influential Evolution in Art (1895) applied the principles of natural selection to the study of ornament. According to Haddon’s central thesis, ornament was indexical of cultural progress. Degenerate geometric forms therefore persisted among “primitive” societies, which had failed to develop. In Stilfragen (1893), his comprehensive study of ornament, Alois Riegl opposed the application of technical-materialist theories of art subsequent to Semper. Defending the aesthetic significance of the geometric style, Riegl argued that laws of nature – laws concerning symmetry and rhythm – were applicable

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture to geometric shapes that, moreover, are latent everywhere in nature. Geometric forms therefore can be spontaneously generated wherever they appear because they reflect a primal instinct, which Riegl understood as an aesthetic impulse to decorate and adorn.62 Geometric forms that were spontaneously generated from nature therefore differed from geometric forms that degenerated through the repetitive copying of naturalistic motifs. The language Frankfort used first to describe Susa painted ceramics and later to describe Diyala sculpture must be contextualized within this briefly sketched discourse on the evolution of ornament. Frankfort was well acquainted with this body of scholarship and had cited some of it in his own work.63 Criticizing the “terrible laxity” with which certain terms had been applied to the “ornament” or designs on Susa painted pottery, Frankfort grappled with how to define fundamentally opposed concepts such as abstract/naturalistic and stylized/conventionalized. Frankfort argued that abstract refers to a style that renders the essentials  – the geometric forms  – of an object’s appearance, while naturalistic refers to the actual appearance of an object. In his study of Susa painted ceramics, Frankfort concluded that the stylized motifs of Susa I painted pottery represented a spontaneously generated abstract style based on the essentials of nature, whereas the conventionalized geometric forms of Susa II painted pottery had degenerated from naturalistic renderings.64 In Sculpture, Frankfort applied these and other concepts to the sculpture style of the Asmar hoard. In a section entitled “Spontaneous Stylization,” Frankfort explicitly defended the Asmar hoard against degeneration theories and argued that a “misconception commonly met with in archeological writings is the assumption that all geometric forms in art are the outcome of a process of conventionalization.”65 Such archaeological writings assume that the “starting point” for form is “a ‘faithful’ rendering of natural objects, from which the artist moves farther and farther away, simplifying, abbreviating, or merely bungling the original designs until his drawings become unrecognizable.” Frankfort argued that the sculpture style of the Asmar hoard, as the earliest monumental stone sculpture, could not have become conventionalized through repetition because nothing had preceded it. “The essence of the process of conventionalization is a flagging of the artistic impulse,” wrote Frankfort, declaring it “peculiarly inept to postulate the influence of conventionalism when we are confronted with an artistic manifestation of great vigor or even with a new start.” It is small wonder, then, that Frankfort wrote to Breasted in “rhapsodic disorder” upon the discovery of the Asmar hoard in 1934. Here was what Frankfort believed to be the oldest monumental stone sculpture, and it was carved in stylized geometric forms. Echoing Riegl, Frankfort asserted the aesthetic value of the geometric and maintained that the geometric forms in the Asmar sculpture hoard were spontaneously generated. The Asmar hoard therefore represented “a fresh outbreak of creativeness,” one that “takes the form of a vigorous stylization

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18.  “Degeneration of natural representations into geometric designs.” After Frankfort 1928, Figure 1.

which must for this very reason be called spontaneous.”66 Consequently, Frankfort maintained that “[t]here is no question of conventionalization.”67 In a 1928 article, Frankfort illustrated Susa II painted pottery motifs to demonstrate how “a slavish copying of the designs without renewed reference to nature leads to rapid degeneration” (Figure 18). 68 In Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem (1932), Frankfort organized a figure demonstrating how Susa I painted pottery motifs began as stylized geometric forms, whereas Susa II painted pottery motifs began as direct observations from nature, thus confirming that the latter could not be a development of the former (Figure 19).69 The statues published in Sculpture and More Sculpture were not arranged according to archaeological context. Instead, a stylistic evolution unfolded in the Diyala sculpture volumes, with the arrangement of the plates resembling so many other sequential charts produced for the study of ornament: the stylized geometric forms of an abstract style evolved into a realistic or naturalistic style. Early Dynastic sculpture thus became a body of ornament onto which the origins of art were materialized. Frankfort had united the Susa I painted pottery corpus within an overarching abstract style and argued that the tendency toward either abstraction or naturalism is psychological and never shifts “so long as the race of its creators remains free from the admixture of foreign blood.”70 In early publication plans for Sculpture, Frankfort had proposed the title Sumerian Sculpture from Tell

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19.  “The evolution of the goat motive.” From Frankfort 1932a, Figure 8. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Asmar and Khafaje, and his first article on the Diyala sculpture was entitled “Sumerian Sculpture.”71 Yet “Sumerian” was omitted from the title of the final publication, and Sculpture contains no discussion of the Sumerian problem. The Diyala sculpture is instead united through formal qualities. According to Frankfort, the shape of the cylinder is particular to all Mesopotamian sculpture, as manifest in the rounded sculpture base, the encircling gesture of the hands, the patterned edge accentuating the curve of the skirt, and the inverted, conelike face.72 The geometric to realistic development outlined by Frankfort therefore was subsumed within the formal principles of a greater “national style.”73 Regarding race, Frankfort was critical of “a tendency nowadays to overrate the efficacy of the oversimple formula which assigns certain art forms to certain [ . . . ] racial groups.”74 According to Frankfort, abstraction had persisted throughout the history of art but had been obscured by an adherence to the classical ideal.75 In an avantgarde revision of the Great Chain of Art, Frankfort’s cylinder, as an “ideal geometric formula” or “abstract formal ideal” to which Mesopotamian sculpture adhered, essentially usurped the classical ideal.76 Cézanne himself had famously said that every form in nature could be derived from the cylinder,

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture the sphere, and the cone. In Sculpture, Frankfort blamed nineteenth-century aesthetics  – “with the naturalistic and mechanistic conception of art”  – for “the inability of many to realize how completely each artistic rendering is a translation, or how, in Cézanne’s view, a work of art does not reproduce nature but represents it.”77 Only recently, wrote Frankfort, had Western art regained the “ability to represent nature spontaneously in nonperspective, nonorganic forms.”78 It is important to recognize that the vocabulary used by Frankfort to define Early Dynastic sculpture styles was not invented expressly for this purpose. Opposing terms such as geometric/naturalistic, abstract/realistic, and stylized/conventionalized instead were common within a wider examination of two-dimensional surface decoration classified inclusively as ornament. When the Diyala excavations produced the “oldest monumental stone sculpture” in Mesopotamia, it perhaps would have seemed self-evident that the principal discourse long established through the study of ornament was applicable to the literally oldest examples of “art” – stone statues – coming out of the ground. As I will continue to discuss, the vocabulary defining Early Dynastic sculpture styles was permissive. Like the “primitive” in general, it contradicted Western aesthetic norms in an acceptable manner and permitted Early Dynastic sculpture entry into the art-historical canon. As Connelly has demonstrated, the discourse on “primitive” art was framed within a classical tradition.79 Until the early twentieth century, the sculpture of modern “primitive” peoples was at such variance with Western aesthetic standards that it was rarely studied. As a fine art, what was expected of sculpture  – particularly stone sculpture  – remained entrenched in the classical ideal. In the decades before Frankfort applied the principles previously reserved for two-dimensional ornament to three-dimensional sculpture, however, Western artists had embraced “primitive” art in general and “primitive” sculpture in particular. Formal qualities understood by the Western art world as characteristic of the “primitive” were applied to Early Dynastic sculpture styles. In addition to drawing on the study of ornament, Frankfort’s analysis of Early Dynastic sculpture styles therefore also reflected contemporary aesthetic sensibilities.

Sumer, “Primitive” Art, and Modern Art The definition of “primitive” art has had a wide, shifting scope, encompassing Western cultures from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian and Flemish to Romanesque and Byzantine; ancient cultures from Egyptian to Aztec; and, finally, non-Western cultures from Japanese to Persian, to cite only a few examples.80 In the late nineteenth century, Heuzey had detected a quality of “primitive naturalism” in early Sumerian sculpture from Tello.81 Recognizing that such an aesthetic differed from the classical ideal, Heuzey aligned early

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture Sumerian sculpture with Etruscan, Roman, and early Italian Renaissance art, which in contemporary parlance were “primitive.”82 In the early twentieth century, “primitive art” increasingly referred to the visual cultures of Africa and Oceania, which exerted a great influence on early twentieth-century Western artists. Sumerian sculpture and numerous other traditions, however, were still considered “primitive,” too.83 In Sculpture, Frankfort described an unparalleled break in art history that occurred in the fifth century BC. At that time, the Greeks had introduced perspective in drawing and relief-carving and organic unity in sculpture. The innovations of fifth-century BC Greece, according to Frankfort, opposed “the ideoplastic summation of the pre-Greek creative process.”84 It is worthwhile to consider the terms pre-Greek and ideoplastic in more detail. Not only were they concepts that Frankfort returned to repeatedly in his own scholarship, but they also explain one method by which a large body of visual culture that opposed the Western art-historical tradition was designated “primitive.”85 In using the term pre-Greek art, Frankfort drew on a distinction coined by the German Egyptologist Heinrich Schäfer (1868–1957), whose monumental Von ägyptisches Kunst went through four editions.86 Frankfort was deeply engaged with this publication and wrote a critical review of Schäfer’s theories after the publication of the 1930 third edition; portions of the review were reused for Sculpture.87 Schäfer drew on the Akkadian-language myth of Etana to argue that pre-Greek peoples understood perspective as a normal function of human vision.88 In the myth, the legendary Etana, king of Kish, ascends into the sky on the back of an eagle in search of the plant of life. During the ascent, Etana sees the earth grow increasingly distant until it disappears altogether; the description of what Etana sees was interpreted by Schäfer as expressing a conceptual understanding of perspective. Schäfer argued that although perspective was understood among pre-Greek cultures as an optical phenomenon, it was not used in the visual arts because perspective required the rendering of illusion rather than concrete reality. In this respect, the use of perspective was unnatural and was a later discovery of fifth-century BC Greece. In Sculpture, Frankfort accepted that pre-Greek peoples produced visual imagery “without any known alternative because the notions of visual reality and organic unity were both nonexistent.” The sculpture of all pre-Greek peoples therefore has common features – namely, that pre-Greek peoples favor geometric unity and “represent nature spontaneously in nonperspective, nonorganic forms.”89 Egypt and Mesopotamia were understood by both Schäfer and Frankfort as the two great, literally pre-Greek cultures. Yet the term pre-Greek also had connotations beyond cultures chronologically preceding Greece. As an inclusive term, pre-Greek also referred to anyone who had never seen Greek art, such as children and modern “primitive” peoples.90 Thus Schäfer attempted to understand Egyptian art by studying, among other things, drawings by children,

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture and both Schäfer and Frankfort included cultures from central America and Africa among the pre-Greek.91 As for the ideoplastic in Frankfort’s “ideoplastic summation of the pre-Greek creative process,” the German physiologist Max Verworn (1863–1921) coined the term along with its antithesis, physioplastic.92 Like many scholars, Verworn was greatly taken by a perceived shift in which the naturalism in Paleolithic art was replaced by a perceived conventionalization in Neolithic art. In the debate over the significance of geometric and naturalistic forms, Verworn had understood the shift away from natural representation as a reflection of increasingly sophisticated thought processes. Verworn defined Paleolithic art as physioplastic because it is a direct rendering from nature; it is the sensual impression of what one literally sees. He defined Neolithic art as ideoplastic because it is a conceptualization; it is a cognitive processing of what one knows is there. Verworn asserted that the reproduction of what one literally sees is naïve (physioplastic); he therefore studied the drawings of German children in remote mountain villages in an attempt to understand Paleolithic perceptions of the natural world.93 In contrast, the transformation of what has been seen reflects the capacity for abstract thought (ideoplastic). This was a distinction of great significance because Verworn maintained that a shift from physioplastic to ideoplastic art was related to the discovery of the soul.94 In contrast to Verworn, Frankfort referred to all pre-Greek art as ideoplastic. In locating the origins of art as the origins of monumental stone sculpture, Frankfort also circumvented the entire world history of visual imagery predating Sumerian civilization. Such circumvention was not unique in the early twentieth century, although the early date of Paleolithic cave painting by then could no longer be refuted.95 Paleolithic art, in general, was often omitted from considerations of the origins of art because its naturalism did not fit evolutionary models of stylistic development. Indeed, Jacobsen remembered listening to a lecture by Frankfort on “cave-art” in which he had questioned “whether it was not, perhaps, too immediate in its rendering to be truly art.”96 In his formulation of the ideoplastic as a mode of representation stemming from the artist’s mind rather than from the observation of nature, Verworn had touched on larger issues that resonated with the early twentieth-century Western art world. Frankfort likewise touched on such affinities, which exceeded formal analysis and instead described a common mode of perception. In comparison to the cylinder as the fundamental geometric formula of Mesopotamian art, Frankfort described the cube – “cubism” – as the fundamental geometric formula of Egyptian art. Cubism, as defined by Frankfort, delineated an aesthetic expression limited to neither a particular time nor a particular place. Beyond signifying an art movement led by Picasso, Frankfort therefore described a cubism linked by a deeply felt sensitivity to primordial form in both ancient Egyptian and modern art. Declaring that “the particular modern movement denoted by

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture this word is already defunct,” Frankfort hypothesized “‘cubism’ may survive with some such connotation as we have given it.”97 Frankfort sought to establish affinities between ancient and modern art by, for example, taking his Oriental Institute class on Egyptian Art to a Picasso exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.98 Before Chicago, Frankfort and his wife resided in Hampstead, London, a stronghold of the British avant-garde. They knew artists such as Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975), about whom Frankfort contributed an article for Axis: A Quarterly Review of Contemporary “Abstract” Painting & Sculpture. “As a professional archaeologist,” Frankfort wrote that he felt “to some extent qualified to comment” on the sculptor, who placed herself “in line with ancient sculptural traditions.”99 His contribution appeared alongside articles on Brancusi, Moore, and Calder. The author of the Calder article was James Johnson Sweeney, who organized one of the earliest African art exhibitions in America and later became director of the Guggenheim Museum. In Sculpture, Frankfort cited Cézanne from Sweeney’s Plastic Redirections in 20th Century Painting (1934). Typical of the times, Sweeney juxtaposed early twentieth-century European sculpture with African sculpture through shared formal qualities. In the paintings of Seurat, Sweeney found an austerity reminiscent of Sumerian sculpture.100 In describing the “spatial arrangement” and the “contrasting composition” of masses in Early Dynastic sculpture, Frankfort most closely echoed the language of abstraction in early twentieth-century sculpture.101 In 1930, for example, Moore described modern sculpture, including his own, as “component forms [ . . . ] completely realised and worked as masses in opposition.”102 In a 1913 article on “Post-Impressionism and Aesthetics,” Clive Bell included Sumerian sculpture among “primitive” art, which he took as the highest form of expression because “you will find no accurate representation; you will find only significant form.”103 Similarly, E. H. Rothschild, author of The Meaning of Unintelligibility in Modern Art (1934), reviewed a 1928 British Museum catalogue of Babylonian and Assyrian sculpture, declaring that “Sumerian art, in some respects, stands alone in the near eastern tradition for spontaneity and vigor and for a direct and significant expression of plastic power.”104 This was a decade before Frankfort would describe the sculpture in the Asmar hoard as a “spontaneous stylization” with “great vigor” and “extraordinary power.”105 This shared vocabulary of abstraction in sculpture also was reminiscent of the earlier vocabulary of ornament. Frankfort’s earliest publication on the Asmar hoard appeared in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, whose founders, including Roger Fry, had well-known interests in “primitive” art. In contrast, Rothschild had written his review for The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature. As suggested by the thriving art market in Baghdad as well as the publication plans formulated for the Diyala sculpture, a larger early twentieth-century art world

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture embraced the aesthetics of Sumerian sculpture because they saw in it the same affinities Frankfort had seen. This community wrote about, collected, and was influenced by Sumerian sculpture. For example, Pierre Matisse, the prominent art dealer and youngest child of the artist, corresponded with Frankfort about a Sumerian statue in his own collection.106 In another example, Christian Zervos had already begun his life’s work of a catalogue raisonné of Picasso when he published the lavishly illustrated L’art de la Mésopotamie (1935). An advertisement for L’art de la Mésopotamie appearing in the same issue of Axis as Frankfort’s article on Hepworth declared that “the importance and artistic significance of these remarkable sculptures can hardly be exaggerated.”107 The photographs in L’art de la Mésopotamie are taken from oblique angles or focus closely on details, emphasizing form.108 In 1926, Zervos founded the journal Cahiers d’art, praised for its coverage of an eclectic range of subjects, including non-Western, ancient, and modern art. In its scope of coverage, Cahiers d’art was a model for the journal Documents, which ran for fifteen issues in 1929 and 1930.109 Intended as a “war machine against received ideas,” Documents challenged “mainstream” surrealism and aimed to combat prejudices against artworks that did not conform to Western aesthetics.110 According to the journal’s publicity material, “[t]he most irritating works of art, yet to be classified, and certain unusual works, neglected until now, will be the object of studies as rigorous, as scientific, as those of archaeologists.”111 An essay on Sumerian art by the French archaeologist and Louvre curator Georges Contenau (1877–1964) was commissioned as the first article of the premiere issue. Contenau was a poor choice for Documents because few scholars of the ancient Near East embraced avant-garde aesthetic thought in the manner of Frankfort. In a hardly covert disdain for Sumerian art, Contenau’s essay highlights the deep divide in aesthetic sensibilities between the early twentieth-century art world and many scholars. Dismissing any affinities with modern art, Contenau portrayed the aesthetics of Sumerian art as alternately difficult, inaccessible, and ridiculous. Contenau instead characterized Sumerian figural representation as an “exaggeration of the ethnic type that the artists had before [their] eyes.”112 A strong connection between Sumerian sculpture and the earlier ethnographic paradigm therefore persisted. Accordingly, in volume 1 of Manuel d’archéologie orientale depuis les origines jusqu’a l’époque d’Alexandre (1927), Contenau illustrated the Sumerian section of the chapter entitled “Le Milieu Ethnique” with sculpture.113 In the chapter on early Sumerian sculpture, which subsequently appeared in volume 2 of the Manuel (1931), Contenau included a section on “Nouveaux documents ethnologiques.”114 Just as Contenau was critical of the modern appeal of Sumerian sculpture, the art world was critical of scholars of the ancient Near East. Detecting a “patronizing tone” in the British Museum sculpture catalogue he reviewed, Rothschild

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture claimed impatience “with academic canons of taste.”115 In The Meaning of Modern Sculpture (1932), the British art historian R. H. Wilenski addressed the influence of Sumerian sculpture and was dismissive of “the archaeologists’ prattle which describes these figures as ‘portraits.’” Wilenski instead argued that “Sumerian sculptors were obviously not attempting to convert stones into likenesses of Gudea or anyone else.” Rather, ancient sculptors drew on “fundamental threedimensional forms – the sphere, the cube, and the cylinder.”116 This statement was written in the same year that Frankfort first characterized the cube and the cylinder as the fundamental geometric formulas of Egyptian and Mesopotamian sculpture.117 For Wilenski, Sumerian statues still “have meaning four thousand years later because the meaning of their form is permanent in kind.”118 In The Meaning of Modern Sculpture, Moore’s Mother and Child (1931) was therefore juxtaposed with a statue of Gudea in the British Museum (Figure 20). The Gudea statues, first excavated in the late nineteenth century, were celebrated anew with this early twentieth-century aesthetic sensibility.119 Moore’s first book review was of L’art de la Mésopotamie, and he ranked Sumerian among the great sculpture of the world, along with Early Greek, Etruscan, Ancient Mexican, Fourth and Twelfth Dynasty Egyptian, Romanesque, and early Gothic.120 What Moore knew of Sumerian sculpture  – its “contained bull-like grandeur and held-in energy” – he learned from frequent visits to the British Museum.121 Like many artists, Moore considered the sculpture of Gudea the peak of Sumerian art.122 Maurice Lambert (1901–1964), for example, worked in a dark green mottled marble similar to the diorite stone of the Gudea statues in order “to express the kind of formal meaning which the sculptor had experienced in Sumerian sculpture.”123 That the British Museum acquired a Gudea statue in 1931 is a reflection of – not the reason for – this rediscovery, the scope of which extended beyond England. The sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966), for example, studied the statues of Gudea in the Louvre Museum, where he also purchased a plaster cast of a head of Gudea that he kept in his studio throughout his life.124 Maintaining that it was the prototype of a sculpted head, Giacometti repeatedly compared the Gudea head with his own work. As late as 1965, the significance of Gudea was still palpable for Giacometti, who explained that his repeated drawing of the Gudea head had led him to discover that it was a faceted rather than a spherical construction.125 The art historian David Sylvester, who sat some twenty times for his 1960 portrait by Giacometti, recollected that the artist told him on several occasions that he aimed “to get the nose to appear to project from the face as it did in Byzantine art and to give the head the presence of a portrait of Gudea: he several times spoke, alluding to my ancestry, of the ancient relationship between the Jews and the Chaldeans.”126 In such a statement, elements of the ethnographic persist.

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20.  After Wilenski 1932, Plate 8, comparison of a statue of Gudea with Moore’s Mother and Child. Left: Dolerite statue of the ruler Gudea of Lagash, ca. 2100 BC. The British Museum, London, BM 122910. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Right: Henry Moore, Mother and Child (1931) (LH 100). Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation. © 2012 The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved. / ARS, New York / DACS, London.

The admiration for Sumerian sculpture was not unequivocal. Attempts were made at aesthetic improvement. According to a publication announcement, Sculpture was profusely illustrated with 116 plates “in order that they might do justice to the artistic qualities of the sculptures.”127 And the color plate of a watercolor by G. Rachel Levy hand-sewn into each volume opposite the title page “conveys in a remarkable degree the impression received when viewing the statues in favorable light” (my emphasis) (Figure 21).128 In the watercolor, some missing parts and the polychromy of the statues were reconstructed. Polychromy and reconstruction contradicted the traditional aesthetics of fine art. Greek sculpture fragments represented an archaeological purity of form that appealed to aesthetes, who “could see beyond the ruin to a purer truth.”129 Around this time, African artifacts were being stripped of their perishable materials, which made them more durable, raising their market value.130 In the early twentieth century, early Sumerian sculpture in general was described as “polychrome” sculpture.131 Like restoration, polychromy violated long-standing sentiments about the ability to convey mimesis only through the technical skill of carving. Classical sculpture was epitomized by its pure white marble, even though it had been known since the late eighteenth century that brightly colored paint had been applied.132 As late as 1937–38, the Elgin marbles

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21. G. Rachel Levy, 1934 watercolor of sculpture from Tell Asmar, Abu Temple. From Frankfort 1939, frontispiece. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

were cleaned with copper chisels and an abrasive powder in order to achieve a preferred bright white.133 Shortly after entering the British Museum in 1931, the statue of Gudea appears to have been darkened with wax.134 Although the precise reasons for this remain unclear, the effect would have subdued its mottled green stone, approximating the monotone of classical sculpture. Polychromy and reconstruction ultimately aligned Sumerian sculpture with ethnographic representation. The wax and plaster reconstruction of Shub-ad, for example, was flesh-tinted, and a brown chemical patina was applied to Hoffman’s Arab from Kish (Figures 3, 14). Woolley described a nonexistent flesh tint – “a plain wash of colour with no detail and no shading” – as enhancing the “vivid realism” of the sculptures in the Asmar hoard. Ultimately, he suggested that two racial types were identifiable.135

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture Despite the title, Woolley insisted that his book The Development of Sumerian Art (1935) was not intended as a critical appreciation of Sumerian art.136 He was hardly enthusiastic about Sumerian art. In an earlier publication, Woolley detected a “garish element” in the use of multicolored stones and metals, which he suggested reflected a “difference between Oriental and Western taste.”137 And when Woolley traced the roots of art back through time beyond Greece, to Babylon and Egypt, famously declaring “behind all these lies Sumer,” it was only after the seldom-cited qualification: “with due allowance made for date and circumstance.”138 As we have seen, his contemporaries in ancient Near Eastern studies described early Sumerian monuments as crude, careless, limited, stiff, and ugly (see also the epigraphs to this chapter).139 Hints of such attitudes surfaced among the modern art world as well. For example, the British sculptor Leon Underwood (1890–1975) was hired by the London art dealer Sidney Burney to restore the head to the body of the Gudea statue acquired by the British Museum. Underwood sculpted a new piece of plaster to make the join. Burney was pleased with the result, which “looks ever so much better” now that the “rather strained & hunched appearance has quite gone.”140 Yet the new plaster piece was promptly removed when the statue entered the British Museum because the head should have been joined directly to the body.141 It was the Underwood restoration of Gudea that Burney exhibited in his home gallery, where it was admired by a number of sculptors, and that Wilenski illustrated alongside Moore’s Mother and Child.142

Conclusion: Ideals of Sculpture For several decades already, scholars have reflexively examined the processes underlying conceptions of “primitive” art.143 Rejecting the notion that any actual tradition can be defined as “primitive,” it is now recognized that the idea of the “primitive,” like that of the Orient, is located in its relationship with the Western beholder.144 The “primitive” as such is a collection of visual attributes construed by the West as universally characteristic of primal artistic expression.145 The “primitive” therefore promotes comparisons among radically different cultures and is a term created for the circulation of objects designated as such outside their original context. Academic discourse has shifted to the study of primitivism as the multivalent reception of the “primitive” in the Western imagination. While this is a well-traversed topic in, for example, the study of African visual culture, no such recognition occurs regarding Sumerian sculpture. Yet Frankfort’s formal conception of an ideoplastic, pre-Greek art paralleled conceptions of the “primitive.” Connelly has argued that the “primitive” was first defined during the Enlightenment as a set of visual imagery situated along the periphery of the classical ideal.146 The early twentieth-century break from aesthetic norms

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture consequently was framed by the classical ideal, as was the break from what Frankfort described as “nineteenth-century aesthetics.” When methodologies originating in the study of two-dimensional ornament were applied to the study of three-dimensional sculpture, a geometric ideal replaced the classical ideal. Utilizing the common, accepted vocabulary of the avant-garde for Early Dynastic sculpture, Frankfort echoed an aesthetic sensibility that had already embraced “primitive” sculpture in the first decades of the twentieth century. Key terms, such as shapes, masses, forms, power, vigor, and spontaneity, were all part of this collective vocabulary. As Connelly has observed, “the reasons for admiring ‘primitive’ art were just as culture bound as the reasons for rejecting it.”147 The preceding chapter outlined the dual orientation of ancient Sumer as both “primitive” culture and civilized forerunner to the West by tracing the early ethnographic reception of Sumerian sculpture. The repositioning of Sumerian sculpture within the formal analysis of art history deflected questions of race. Yet the ethnography of Sumer continued into art history. Once the aesthetics of Early Dynastic sculpture were defined, ethnographic representation was retained as a sort of anti-aesthetic. In Sculpture, a small statue of a female figure found in a level earlier than that of the Asmar hoard was thus described as follows: It is the earliest representation of the human form in stone, but it makes no pretense to monumentality. It is a lively portrait of a squat female, having the head a little forward, a large hooked nose, heavy breasts, and short, fat legs – a type frequently met with among the Armenians and Assyrians today.148 At the confluence of a new aesthetic and an old ethnography, then, each was defined in opposition to the other. Aesthetics had brought sculpture full circle. A statue judged to be below aesthetic standards was ethnographic. When Edgar James Banks found the statue of the Early Dynastic ruler Lugaldalu of Adab during excavations at the site of Bismaya, he published it in a 1904 article entitled “The Oldest Statue in the World.”149 According to Banks, although “it was generally supposed that marble statues had never existed in Babylonia, and that the Babylonians never sculptured their statues in the round, with the arms free from the body, I was convinced that somewhere in the ruin such a statue did exist.”150 Winckelmann had outlined a material development of sculpture from clay to wood and then to ivory and, ultimately, metal and stone.151 An 1856 posthumous edition of Winckelmann was more explicit: “artists of every nation in which art has flourished have wrought in marble.”152 Despite evidence to the contrary, Banks declared, “I have described the stone of which it is made as white marble, and I shall continue to do so.”153 The statue of Lugaldalu, however, is carved from a gray gypsum or limestone.

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture While these stones are not exactly dissimilar in terms of type, the insistence on “marble” is itself a key signifier of something else. As characterized by Winckelmann and others, marble is a permanent, durable medium, and marble sculpture traditionally has been considered a fine art, an index of high civilization.154 In the early ethnographic reception of Sumerian sculpture, I argued that the Sumerians in some instances resembled the modern Western civilization of which they were cast as the forerunners. Similarly, the early aesthetic reception of Sumer did not culminate in modern civilization as much as it already closely resembled it. The art-historical positioning of Sumerian sculpture was reinforced by the typology of the object in question: a stone statue of a human figure. Residue of the early affinities drawn between Sumerian sculpture and other “primitive” cultures has been expunged from an art-historical narrative that still accords a special position to ancient Sumer at the origins of art. Ironically, however, this position was first enabled through parallels drawn with the “primitive.” Only after these affinities were embraced by the early twentieth-century Western art world was it appropriate to locate them in the Sumerian origins of civilization. The definition of an artwork as a shifting cultural category has been addressed in the study of non-Western arts.155 Yet Sumerian sculpture remains at the beginning of the long art-historical trajectory in which it was first positioned around a century ago. It is an ambiguous positioning. After associating Frankfort’s admiration for the Asmar hoard with modern cubism, Porada characterized the Diyala sculpture as crude and provincial.156 Woolley would have agreed, for he described a quality of “individual characterisation going almost to the length of caricature” among the statues in the Asmar hoard.157 In the mid-twentieth century, Groenewegen-Frankfort described the statues in the Asmar hoard as “an almost pathetically motley crowd.”158 When the 1955–62 excavations of the Inana Temple at Nippur yielded a new corpus of Early Dynastic temple sculpture, the large nose and inlaid eyes of one statue were described by the excavators as “almost comic.”159 At the end of the twentieth century, reflecting on the variations in quality and style among Early Dynastic statues, Collon drew an analogy with the Oxus treasure to suggest that “taste and money certainly did not go hand in hand.”160 The interesting question is not the subjective determination of whether Early Dynastic statues are beautiful but rather why such pointed attempts to pronounce aesthetic judgment are made. In one respect, this can be explained by the process described earlier whereby the original associations made by Frankfort between Early Dynastic sculpture and modern art have been left behind while the encoding of stone sculpture as fine art has remained firmly fixed. That is, the above-cited negative aesthetic judgments seem anachronistic when now dissociated from the original aesthetic evaluations of early Sumerian sculpture. We should ask why stone sculpture must still be defined according to Western

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture aesthetic values. Gell, for example, argues for a methodological philistinism – analogous to a methodological atheism toward religious beliefs in anthropological discourse – in which we dissociate from aesthetic appreciation in the study of objects traditionally categorized as artworks.161 In other words, our own aesthetic judgment, tempered by our own time and place, does not belong to the data of ancient visual cultures and object worlds. Yet, somehow, there persists something permissive of such dialogue – to weigh in on the side of either beautiful or ugly – once an artifact under discussion has become ensconced in the realm of the artwork. As the preceding quotations attest, this certainly has been the fate of Early Dynastic sculpture. Such pronouncements on aesthetics are tied to the mystique of connoisseurship, which Price describes as an intangible quality imparted to aesthetics.162 When Giovanni Morelli formulated a science of connoisseurship in the nineteenth century, he focused on mundane details, such as fingernails and ears. Nevertheless, he insisted that his method was not intended to replace the “gift of divination.”163 In describing the diverse range of Sumerian art, Woolley resorted to “we know what we mean by the expression.”164 One is reminded of Picasso encountering primitive art at the Trocadero: “I stayed. I stayed. I understood something very important: something was happening to me, wasn’t it?”165 A sculpture hoard from the North Temple was discovered during the 1953–54 season of fieldwork at the site of Nippur. The hoard is from a context dating at least to the end of the Early Dynastic period if not the subsequent Akkadian period (ca. 2334–2154 BC) (Figure 22).166 The sculpture in the hoard represents a range of styles, which current methodologies would describe along a trajectory from abstract to realistic. But who determines transitions, degrees of abstraction and realism, and their significance? The connoisseur? Since the Diyala excavations, the corpus of statues described as transitional has been increasing.167 It seems possible to suggest that the treatment of Sumerian sculpture tells us much about what happens when we ask sculpture to be beautiful. The aesthetic claim on Early Dynastic sculpture has preempted it from most discourse. Aesthetic judgment thus has had a peculiar effect on the life of Early Dynastic sculpture. But deconstructing the intellectual background against which Frankfort formulated these ideas so central to our current conceptions of the Early Dynastic temple and its sculpture allows us to proceed by understanding early twentieth-century aesthetic thought as something separate from the archaeological record, however incomplete it may be. It therefore is worthwhile to understand, as I have attempted to do in this chapter, the processes that encompassed Frankfort’s ambiguous “beautiful sculpture.” Traditionally, archaeology and art history have been closely intertwined in their dual pursuit of stylistic development.168 That we still respond to certain constructs formulated during the early reception of sculpture, however, is an issue beyond merely methodological overlap. The dialectic of abstract and

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22. Nippur, North Temple, Early Dynastic hoard of temple sculpture. From McCown, Haines, and Biggs 1978 (3N 402 (1:2), 3N 403, 3N 404, 3N 405, 3N 406a, 3N 406b). Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project.

realistic has controlled the discourse on Early Dynastic sculpture ever since Frankfort defined it. This predisposition toward a way of seeing Early Dynastic sculpture styles thus essentially has not changed in over three-quarters of a century. This is a credit to the intellect of Frankfort, but it is also a credit to the power of an idea, the same idea with which Frankfort himself was so taken. This book aims for a different paradigm and will proceed by exploring three principal areas where I believe that the early reception of Sumerian sculpture still informs our perception of Early Dynastic sculpture. The first area concerns a larger debate over Early Dynastic chronology. If we recognize the epistemological shift whereby sculpture styles are no longer infused with the same weighty questions that were attributed to them in the early twentieth century, then it is possible to understand the problematic ED II subdivision as an early twentieth-century formulation rather than an ancient

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture reality. In other words, the significance accorded to geometric-style sculpture obscured its limitations as a chronological marker. Because of the importance accorded to the Asmar hoard, certain levels in the Diyala temples – and by association corresponding levels at Khafajah  – were all considered contemporary and dated to the onset of ED II, which was characterized as a period of great artistic achievement. If we were to define the Early Dynastic subdivisions today, pottery instead of sculpture would be used in association with other considerations that are more reliable. Had such criteria been used in the Diyala, it would have indicated a different chronology.169 No unequivocally ED II contexts have been identified in greater Mesopotamia subsequent to the Diyala excavations. Throughout this book, I only speak of earlier and later – of ED I and ED III – in the Early Dynastic period, which to my mind reflects the difficulty of making finer chronological distinctions. The second area where I believe we still respond to the influence of the early reception of sculpture is in the ordering of Early Dynastic sculpture according to an abstract to realistic trajectory. That such a trajectory is supported by “stratigraphic evidence” is problematic given that the dates of certain archaeological contexts were determined solely on the basis of the sculpture style they contained, thus producing a circular argument. The designations of an earlier abstract style and a later realistic style should be dispensed with ­altogether.170 The belief that an abstract style of sculpture was evolving toward a realistic style obscured the archaeological evidence, which suggests that temple statues share a common typology and exhibit varying degrees of abstraction throughout the Early Dynastic period. This study therefore proceeds with the understanding that abstraction is a phenomenon of all stone statues dedicated to Early Dynastic temples. Abstraction in Early Dynastic sculpture thus belongs to a long tradition lasting hundreds of years. The definition of realism set forth among early twentiethcentury scholarship in order to define a stylistic evolution in Early Dynastic sculpture was predicated on Western models of artistic development. Frankfort and others defined a mode of artistic production in which the accurate observation of bodily proportions and forms was the intended goal. Yet realism in Early Dynastic sculpture does not approach the mimetic quality found, for example, in classical sculpture. Instead, realism in Early Dynastic sculpture is an idealization of the human form. While I find it preferable to dispense with this terminology altogether, it is worthwhile to recognize that in Early Dynastic sculpture the idealized naturalism defined as realistic is itself a type of abstraction. An object found in a later Early Dynastic context, moreover, is a later Early Dynastic object, regardless of when it was produced. Evidence for the reuse of Early Dynastic sculpture suggests that we place too much emphasis on the “moment of origin” in the life of an individual statue. A fuller consideration of the life and death of Early Dynastic sculpture suggests that statues could

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Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture be disassembled and assembled, made and remade. The assumptions currently guiding notions of stylistic development in Early Dynastic sculpture therefore are problematic. The third and final area where I believe we still respond to the influence of the early reception of sculpture is related to the emphasis on formal analysis in Early Dynastic sculpture studies. In the early twentieth-century response, “primitive art” stood alone, unencumbered and unmitigated by cultural context. The result was a blank slate onto which Western meanings and perceptions were projected, fantasized, and realized.171 Current scholarship on non-Western visual culture is well equipped to criticize such formal analysis for its underlying assumptions of universal aesthetics and its creation of meaning without cultural context. In a similar vein, I believe that the emphasis on formal analysis in the study of Early Dynastic sculpture styles has divorced these objects from a fuller exploration of their use and meaning in the Early Dynastic temple. The equation with artwork has led to Early Dynastic sculpture being treated in temple reconstructions largely as an inert display object. Instead, as I begin to argue in the following chapter, we must effect a fundamental shift in our thinking on Early Dynastic statues to a consideration of the activities surrounding them. In turning to the object world of Early Dynastic sculpture, the next chapter therefore begins to consider the Early Dynastic temple.

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Seeing the Divine S an c t uary, S c u l p t u r e , an d D i s p lay

Introduction: The Early Dynastic Temple as Museum The early reception of Sumer produced a visual culture of Sumerian monuments as ethnographic objects. Throughout the twentieth century, some scholars still visualized the Sumerians according to the ethnographic body materialized through sculpture. In the middle of the century, for example, Pallis saw a “small, thickset people whose large noses with a straight and sharp ridge mark the total impression of them; the mouth is small with thin lips, the eyebrows show large, regular arches; most Sumerians, who all seem to have a predisposition to fatness, shaved off both beard and hair.”1 Sometimes Sumerians are still “with a large cranial capacity,” as Keith had described them. And Puabi has a “prominent nose, certainly one of the characteristics of the statues which have survived.”2 This chapter marks a shift in orientation. Chapters 1 and 2 considered the early reception of Sumerian sculpture. The use of formal art-historical analysis for the study of Early Dynastic sculpture from the Diyala region signified a marked turn away from the earlier ethnographic paradigm. Although these ideas were in the air, so to speak, in the early twentieth century, the study of the Diyala sculpture, specifically, provides the clearest example of this shift and produced the most influential interpretations of Early Dynastic sculpture. As emphasized in the previous chapter, the old ethnography and the new aesthetic closely resembled, and were defined in opposition to, one another. The ethnographic paradigm provided a model for the framing of Sumerian sculpture as “primitive” art. And it was the universal aesthetics of the “primitive” – embraced by the early twentieth-century Western art world in general – that allowed Sumerian sculpture to be defined art-historically.

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Seeing the Divine By the 1930s, the study of Early Dynastic sculpture had entered fully into an art-historical discourse. The study of Early Dynastic sculpture since then has emphasized style as a chronological marker, dominated by attempts to map a stylistic sequence from abstract to realistic based on the definitions first formulated in the Diyala excavations. These attempts have emphasized the formal properties of Early Dynastic sculpture, precluding other avenues of inquiry. In order to understand how we still grapple with the early reception of Sumerian sculpture, Chapter 3 begins to address the archaeological context from which such sculpture was retrieved. This chapter therefore reconsiders our assumptions regarding the role of sculpture in the Early Dynastic temple. An emphasis on formal analysis has precluded a fuller exploration of the function of Early Dynastic sculpture in the temple. In archaeological reconstructions of the Early Dynastic temple, sculpture essentially is treated as a display object, paralleling the exhibition of sculpture as artwork in museums. As I argue in this chapter, our current understanding of the function of Early Dynastic sculpture in temples is bound to the museum display aesthetics that were first reproduced and preserved in early twentieth-century archaeological reconstructions. The modern Western encounter with the ancient Near East in general has been mediated by museums.3 In the early visual culture of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, the most popular image of Assyria was the moment when its monumental sculpture entered European museums.4 Archaeological expeditions during the first one hundred years of ancient Near Eastern archaeology were financed primarily with the understanding that artifacts could be obtained. In return for sponsorship, the ancient Near East was made physically present through the exhibition and display of objects in sponsoring institutions. The division of excavated finds continued after 1936 legislation designated all excavated objects the property of Iraq. Even sponsoring institutions that maintained their participation in fieldwork was not predicated on obtaining finds nevertheless carefully monitored the divisions. By 1941, for example, the Oriental Institute Museum claimed to house some 42,000 objects obtained principally through some fourteen field expeditions.5 The nexus of museum, collector, and university today is scrutinized as a legitimizing system for the antiquities market.6 The current desire for a strict division among museum, collector, and university was not, however, an early twentieth-century concern. For example, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., both provided financial support for the foundation of the Oriental Institute in 1919 and funded its field expeditions. Rockefeller also collected Assyrian reliefs, among other antiquities, which he gifted to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1932. Early Dynastic sculpture acquired by the Oriental Institute through purchase was published in the Diyala final sculpture volumes as if it had been excavated. Frankfort authenticated Early Dynastic sculpture that appeared on

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture the art market.7 To a greater extent than today, early archaeologists assumed roles as the architects, curators, and directors of museums. Museums and ancient Near Eastern antiquities often fall within a single purview when issues of cultural heritage and antiquities laws are addressed. In contrast, the museum as a mediating factor in the scholarly encounter with ancient Near Eastern objects is rarely discussed.8 I belong to a generation of Western scholars who are engaged in ancient Near Eastern studies thus far without firsthand experience of the archaeological sites and artifacts located in Iraq. This will shape the field in a precise manner, which will become significant and increasingly apparent with historical perspective. More generally, the material remains of large portions of the ancient Near East are accessible firsthand only through museums. Fundamentally, archaeology is a destructive process. Mudbrick architecture begins to deteriorate once it has been exposed. Objects obviously do not remain in situ. The data of archaeological excavation are preserved through plans, drawings, photographs, texts, and other recording methods. Some forms of archaeological data have been scrutinized reflexively. For example, the excavation report has been interrogated as a well-established literary genre, the perpetuation of which creates a distinct ordering of data.9 Both preserving and interpreting data, archaeological reconstruction is also scrutinized for its potential to gain autonomy, particularly when it is rendered as a realistic drawing or in three-dimensional form.10 Bilsel, for example, argues that the reconstructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, has come to replace the original instead of merely representing it.11 In other words, archaeological reconstructions potentially orchestrate meaning. Many early reconstructions of the ancient Near East have become permanent fixtures in the archaeological record. Yet they are only versions of the past created under specific circumstances of time and place. As Smiles and Moser observe, visual reconstructions of the past survive longer than the ideas that they were originally meant to support.12 It is obvious that some Early Dynastic temple reconstructions resemble Western religious edifices rather than the archaeological data (Figures 23, 24). More subtle sources for archaeological reconstructions of the Early Dynastic temple, however, draw on the museum and have not been scrutinized. Resemblances to less overt models therefore go unrecognized. Since their origin, museums have been compared to, and deliberately designed to resemble, religious edifices and other forms of ceremonial architecture.13 The temple as museum and the museum as temple are also metaphorical. When it reopened in 2004, for example, Updike declared the Museum of Modern Art in New York the “invisible cathedral.” It was a “temple of the Ideal, of the Other, of the something else that, if only for a peaceful moment, redeems our daily getting and spending.”14 Haraway described the elephants in New York’s American Museum of Natural History as standing “like a high altar in the nave of a great

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23.  Seton Lloyd, 1933 reconstruction of Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Single-Shrine Temple I. From Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Figure 159. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

cathedral.”15 Building on such analogies, Duncan describes the complex totality of the museum as a ritual setting, a privileged space culturally designated for special attention. Drawing on affinities between a liminal stage of ritual and Western perceptions of the aesthetic experience, the mode of receptivity thought most appropriate before works of art is explored as a type of ritual performance. The museum thus constitutes a site of ritual enactment.16 In this chapter, I argue that the metaphorical significance of the museum as temple and the temple as museum influenced early twentieth-century reconstructions of the Early Dynastic temple through techniques of museum display (Figures 25, 26). Comprising the visual culture of museums, display is a genre of

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24. Vatican City, Basilica of St. Peter. Photograph by Sean Molin.

representation that makes objects visible through the formally structured space of exhibition. As Moser has demonstrated for ancient Egypt, museum exhibition and display have influenced scholarly interpretations of the past by providing an interpretive framework for shaping our knowledge and understanding of cultures.17 The academic field of museum studies has interrogated how exhibition and display construct meaning through the arrangement and presentation of objects.18 A new life emerges for objects when they enter a museum, particularly when they are exhibited for viewing. This is what Buck-Morss refers to as the double encasings of the museum, which preserves both objects and the idea of objects as artworks.19 Alpers has termed the latter a museum effect: the

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25.  Walter Andrae, 1919 reconstruction of Ashur, Ishtar Temple G sanctuary. From Andrae 1922, Table 11a.

transformation of objects into artworks by isolating them for attentive looking. The museum effect essentially delineates a distinct way of seeing.20 The aesthetic mode of display, particularly in art museums, isolates objects for a contemplative gaze, suppressing other meanings objects might have.21 The cultural significance of objects therefore is largely restricted in the reductive context of display aesthetics. And as objects increasingly are removed from the activities surrounding them, they increasingly become objects of display. As I will argue, the transformation of the Early Dynastic temple into museum and of the Early Dynastic statue into display object has prohibited certain inquiries into the life of sculpture. Exposure of the museum model underlying reconstructions of the Early Dynastic temple therefore allows us to ask different questions about Early Dynastic sculpture and its functions.

Constructing Sculpture Display in Ishtar Temple G The first reconstruction of sculpture in an Early Dynastic temple was the 1919 reconstruction of the Ishtar Temple G sanctuary excavated from 1903 to 1914 under the direction of Andrae (Figure 25). Because later rebuildings of the Ishtar Temple disturbed the earlier levels, the plan of level G was not fully preserved (Figure 27).22 The core preserved area consisted of a sanctuary preceded by a large main court. Two entrances provided access from streets along the northwest and northeast sides, respectively, of the temple. The northwest

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26.  British Museum, Roman gallery, ca. 1905. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

entrance led to the large main court via a narrow corridor some twenty meters long. The northeast entrance provided access to a smaller secondary court, which in turn provided access to the large main court. Small rooms, at least two of which had ovens, were encountered on the south/southwest side of the main court; additional small rooms were located on the south and east sides of the sanctuary proper. The occupation of Ishtar Temple G had come to a violent end, Andrae posited, when it was plundered and burned in an ethnic conflict.23 While his reasons for the demise of Ishtar Temple G are no longer tenable, a great deal of cultic furniture and equipment nevertheless was retrieved in situ due to a conflagration. An assemblage including stands, braziers, vessels, stepped altars, and a Y-shaped object was found on the floor of the sanctuary in front of a step leading up to its raised north end. These objects were still in a primary context; that is, they were found in a location they had occupied in antiquity.24 According to the final excavation report, a few sculpture fragments were found in the Ishtar Temple G sanctuary, either on the floor or in the debris comprising the fill directly above the floor. The remaining sculpture was found in various locations, with the greatest quantity in the main court before the sanctuary entrance. Because of the sculpture present in the sanctuary, Andrae suggested

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27.  Ashur, plan of Ishtar Temple G with the later remains of Ishtar Temple E overlying it. From Andrae 1922, Table 3.

that the other sculpture found throughout the temple had been removed from the sanctuary – either thrown out, deliberately broken and scattered, or accidentally dropped – by the raiding army that had burned and plundered Ishtar Temple G. Why, Andrae reasoned, would the raiding army bring the sculpture

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture into the sanctuary? It therefore must have been the other way around: the sculpture had been in the sanctuary and was removed by plunderers. In the Ishtar Temple G reconstruction, Andrae therefore returned the statues to the sanctuary.25 As a result, the representation of the cultic equipment in situ is sacrificed to the assumed primary display context of the Ishtar Temple G statues on the low benches against the long walls of the sanctuary. The raised north end of the sanctuary was interpreted as a niche for a cult image.26 While no cult statue had survived, an Ishtar Temple plaque some six inches high was used to recreate a cult image in the reconstruction. A basic model thus was established: the statues of a temple are displayed against the long walls of the sanctuary before the cult statue of the resident deity. The reconstructed placement of the Ishtar Temple G sculpture resembles a formal museum system in which sculpture is displayed in evenly spaced rows parallel to the long walls of an exhibition space (Figure 26).27 This system initially was the preferred mode for displaying classical sculpture and was formalized in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European collections according to aesthetic principles of arrangement. In the engraving Cardinal Mazarin in the Gallery of His Town House (1659), for example, classical busts set at eye level parallel the long wall of the gallery, rhythmically interrupted by full-scale sculpture in niches (Figure 28).28 When the Gudea statues arrived at the Louvre in 1881, they, too, were displayed in rows parallel to the long wall of the Assyrian Museum galleries (Figure 29). In curatorial practice, the concentration of sculpture in rows parallel to the long walls of the museum had the practical advantage of accommodating crowds of visitors.29 Even the framing of the cult image in the Ishtar Temple G reconstruction resembles the successive passageways of museums, which were deliberately planned in order to provide the sense of an itinerary to the visitor (compare with Figures 25, 26).30 The long lines of sculpture also had a metaphorical significance in museums. In the nineteenth century, the new scientific underpinnings of this system were most fully realized perhaps at the British Museum, where visitors encountered successive lines of Egyptian, Assyrian, and classical sculpture displayed in chronological sequences to serialize the progress of ancient civilization.31 The chronological arrangement of long lines of antiquities produced a similar effect at the Oriental Institute Museum, described in 1933 as “looking down a vista of milestones marking the long road over which we have passed and indicating the processes by which we have become what we are.”32 If we recognize the parallels that the Ishtar Temple G reconstruction has with modern museum display, we can reexamine the location of the Ishtar Temple G sculpture vis-à-vis the archaeological data. That a looting and scattering of the Ishtar Temple G sculpture was the result of an invading army engaged in an ethnic conflict with the inhabitants of Ashur was dismissed long ago. In a recent

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28.  Robert Nanteuil, Portrait of Cardinal Mazarin in His Palace, ca. 1658–60 (engraving). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The Bridgeman Art Library.

reanalysis, furthermore, Bär has determined that Ishtar Temple G was not fully destroyed and did not cease to function as a temple subsequent to the Ishtar Temple G occupation as Andrae had maintained. Although evidence of burning indeed was present, portions of Ishtar Temple G were reused, and a new floor was laid in the Ishtar Temple G sanctuary over the leveled burned debris. Bär therefore designated an Ishtar Temple GF phase in which the older Ishtar Temple G was restored.33 It therefore is doubtful that the Ishtar Temple G sculpture had been intentionally scattered during a destruction of the temple. Consequently, we should give greater consideration to the findspots of the Ishtar Temple G sculpture. Despite the prevalence of ethnic conflict in early twentieth-century interpretive models, Andrae remarked in the final report that the scattering of the Ishtar Temple G statues seemed too orderly to constitute a plundering in the proper sense.34 Sculpture indeed is not randomly distributed throughout Ishtar Temple G. The largest concentration of sculpture was retrieved from the main court before the sanctuary entrance. More specifically, sculpture was concentrated near or on the stone threshold of the sanctuary entrance. Sculpture fragments were also found at the two entrances proper to Ishtar Temple G. Finding the quantities too numerous to be insignificant, Andrae concluded from the archaeological evidence that sculpture could have been installed at these various entrances rather than in the sanctuary.35

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29.  Louvre Museum, Assyro-Chaldean Gallery, ca. 1900. Alinari Archives, Florence.

Andrae’s other doubts about the Ishtar Temple G reconstruction suggest he was thinking of a museum model. To his mind, the reconstruction conveyed no sense of monumentality. With the benches only some fifteen inches high, Andrae commented that one would have to squat in order to view the statues at eye level.36 Andrae would have been well acquainted with standard practice in museum display, in which artworks are exhibited at eye level through the use of pedestals and other supports.37 When the final report for the early levels of the Ishtar Temple was published, Andrae already had been appointed Curator of the Near Eastern Department of the State Museums in Berlin. He later became director of the Near Eastern Department of the National Museums and oversaw the installation of the collections.38 In his reanalysis, Bär confirmed that the majority of Ishtar Temple G sculpture was found on the floor of the main court at the entrance to the sanctuary and in some cases directly on its stone threshold. Only a handful of sculpture fragments were attributable to the Ishtar Temple GF phase created by Bär, but the majority also were found in the main court at the sanctuary entrance, thus conforming to the same depositional pattern established in Ishtar Temple G.39

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Seeing the Divine Clarifying the findspots of additional sculpture fragments in Ishtar Temple G, Bär observed that a few fragments and a concentration of eye inlays were found among the assemblage of cultic equipment in situ on the sanctuary floor. Like Andrae, Bär therefore concluded that all the sculpture originally had been installed in the sanctuary. In contrast to Andrae, Bär posited a functional connection between the statues and the cultic equipment by suggesting that some sculpture had stood on the sanctuary floor rather than on the benches.40 I would argue that the model preserved in the Ishtar Temple G reconstruction can be further scrutinized. In the text of the final excavation report, Andrae reasons through the evidence and provides a more nuanced discussion of the archaeological data in comparison to the summary represented by the visual reconstruction. But the conviction that sculpture must have been set up on benches against the long walls of the most important part of the temple was so strong that the archaeological data essentially were discarded for the Ishtar Temple G reconstruction. On the one hand, sanctuaries are indeed possible places for the installation of statues. At Ashur, some statues were installed in the Ishtar Temple G sanctuary, probably in association with cultic equipment. Benches are also possible places for the installation of statues. The entrances to Ishtar Temple G proper had benches on which Andrae thought the sculpture concentrated around these entrances could have been installed.41 To provide other examples, the more recent excavations of the Temple of Ninhursag at the site of Mari in Syria yielded a statue base set into a bench located not in the sanctuary but in a room on the opposite side of the central court; earlier excavations in the same locus had yielded several sculpture fragments at the foot of the benches.42 In level VIIB of the Inana Temple at Nippur, a sculpture fragment preserving the feet and base was found on one of the benches of the bent-axis sanctuary; in level VIIA, a rectangular stone plaque pierced for suspension and a stone double vessel supported by a ram were found on the benches.43 Whether it is possible for sculpture to be installed on benches and/or in the sanctuary therefore is to miss the point. Rather, the point is that issues of placement can be raised for Early Dynastic temple sculpture. Many Early Dynastic statues were hoarded and buried or built into the mudbrick architecture and cultic installations of temples. Other Early Dynastic statues, however, were found in various locations throughout the temple rather than in the sanctuary. As will be discussed further, archaeological evidence indicates four principal findspots – not just one – where Early Dynastic sculpture is concentrated when it is left behind in an occupation level. Our understanding of sculpture in an Early Dynastic temple nevertheless continues to be based on the Ishtar Temple G reconstruction.44 Occasionally, the reconstruction is accepted under the erroneous impression that the Ishtar Temple G statues were found in situ in the sanctuary. Here, the visual has trumped the textual because the assumption

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture that the sanctuary is the sole locus of temple sculpture is contradicted by both archaeological data and textual evidence recorded outside the visual domain of archaeological reconstruction. It is commonly concluded that the findspots of Early Dynastic statues outside of hoards reveal little about their installation. But serious consideration should be given to the notion that in some instances Early Dynastic sculpture is perceived as out of context because it was not found where it was assumed it should be. From the various loci of final deposition, Early Dynastic sculpture is consistently reinstalled in the temple sanctuary. Displayed in static rows against the long walls of the most important part of the temple and set in isolation from other temple objects, Early Dynastic statues behave as if they are objets d’art, performing the exhibitionary setting of the museums for which they ultimately were destined.

Sculpture Display in the Diyala Temples and the Early Dynastic Altar The Ishtar Temple G sanctuary at Ashur was the only Early Dynastic sanctuary that had been excavated before the Diyala excavations of the Iraq Expedition.45 Its reconstruction therefore was the principal source for determining the primary context of the Diyala sculpture. In contrast to the Ishtar Temple G sanctuary, the Diyala sanctuaries did not have benches, and the most famous sculpture corpus, the Asmar hoard, was comprised of twelve statues buried in a hole beneath a floor of the Abu Temple. The Diyala excavators understood the practice of hoarding sculpture as part of a general overhaul and renewal – the necessary disposal of older cultic equipment no longer in use – that occurred when a temple was being rebuilt.46 In Sculpture, Frankfort therefore maintained that “[n]either the architectural features of the ruins nor the locations in which our statues were discovered permit us to draw definite conclusions as to the places they originally occupied.”47 In the Diyala sanctuaries, rectangular mudbrick structures built against the short wall farthest from the entrance in the long wall were identified as altars. On analogy with the raised north end of the Ishtar Temple G sanctuary, the altar was designated the exclusive locus of the divine cult statue. Both at Ashur and in the Diyala temples, an individual entering the sanctuary would have to turn ninety degrees in order to encounter the altar, the presumed focal point of the room. This approach is characteristic of Early Dynastic temples in general and is called a bent-axis approach. Frankfort concluded that “[i]f we do not want to assume that the other statues were crowded round it [i.e., the cult statue] and yet on the analogy of Ashur wish to assign them to a place in the actual shrine, we must imagine them placed along the walls.”48 Frankfort supported the placement by drawing parallels with the function of the later Gudea statues, which

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Seeing the Divine were “to remind the god of his devotee, whose effigy was perpetually before him.”49 Altars were not considered suitable places for Early Dynastic temple statues because of a concern for crowding a hypothetical cult statue. As with the treatment of temple sculpture, the treatment of the cult statue in Early Dynastic temple reconstructions can be contextualized within concepts of collection, organization, and display in museums. As noted, principles of museum display include the exhibition of sculpture in evenly spaced rows paralleling the long walls of an exhibition space as well as the raising of objects to eye level through the use of pedestals and other supports. The isolation of the cult statue also has a correspondence in the museum practice of installing the most important objects in isolation as highlights of an exhibition.50 The desire for orderly displays – for not crowding objects – also more generally resonates with the growth of museums into institutions devoted to the scientific aims of art history, archaeology, and other disciplines.51 Bennett organizes his study of the historical development of museums around such seemingly disparate exhibitionary venues as the world fair, universal exposition, arcade, and department store. All are viewed according to the Foucauldian concept of heterotopias, which are spaces in which other places within a culture can be found, where they are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Foucault describes the museum as a heterotopia at the center of indefinitely accumulating time. In contrast, the fairground is a heterotopia at the outskirts of fleeting, transitory time. The former is permanent, and the latter is ephemeral; one bears the import of an institution, and the other is a pastime.52 Bennett argues, however, that these opposing spaces were not independent of one another. Rather, each formed the discursive coordinates through which the other was defined via a process of differentiation. In other words, the fairground and other popular spaces, as throwbacks to cabinets of curiosity, were reminiscent of the museum’s own prehistory.53 The ordered displays of museums thus visually opposed the chaos of both earlier curiosities and contemporary popular venues. Only the second floor of what is now the Oriental Institute Museum, which opened in 1896, was devoted to its collections, which were exhibited by subject: biblical, comparative religion (including objects related to the Japanese Shinto religion), Assyrian (consisting mostly of casts), and Egyptian.54 Museum visitors were cautioned about jumbled displays of disparate objects. Those visiting local museums in late nineteenth-century Britain, for example, were cautioned that the “orderly soul” of the viewer might quake at the sight of “a Chinese lady’s boot encircled by a necklace made of shark’s teeth, or a helmet of one of Cromwell’s soldiers grouped with some Roman remains.”55 At the turn of the twentieth century, museums were literally stuffed full. Many European museums were at least partially de-installed during World War I, and sparseness would govern the reinstallation of collections, with only the best items

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture on display.56 The sculpture galleries of the British Museum, for example, were thinned out in favor of a fashionable minimalism, making them brighter and more airy.57 The spacious display of paintings at approximately eye level, as discrete elements on neutral walls, is an arrangement so commonplace today that its intentionality has become invisible.58 In the interwar years and in all types of museums, certain objects increasingly were singled out on the basis of their aesthetic qualities and exhibited in isolation.59 Although their developmental histories ultimately differed, the display techniques among various types of museums converged. The exhibitions of the Oriental Institute Museum, for example, were reinstalled in 1926 using cases built in the workshops of the Art Institute of Chicago.60 With the shifting aesthetic tastes of the early twentieth century, discussed in Chapter 2, the displays in ethnographic and natural history museums came to be more aesthetic, and the displays in art museums came to include ethnographic objects.61 Cluttered shelves and overcrowded cases were modernized. In 1935, Moore had observed that “very fine small pieces [ . . . ], exhibited in a crowded collection, can easily be overlooked.”62 The glass and iron cases used to display commodities in department stores were adapted for the storeroom-style display of smaller objects. An emphasis on the evenly spaced rows of sculpture display was echoed both literally and metaphorically in the placement of cases at regular intervals. The intended visual effect structured space itself so that as a visitor peered through long rows of cases, a large number of artifacts became simultaneously visible. The comparative study of both object typologies and cultures thus was promoted, and the practice of connoisseurship was facilitated.63 In excavations, the organization of finds was achieved through documentation, preservation, reconstruction, and publication. The Diyala publications of the Iraq Expedition established a hierarchy by proceeding in a sequence of volumes devoted to architecture, sculpture, pottery, and cylinder seals. An assemblage of disparate finds, including stone vessels, stamp seals, amulets, jewelry, inlays, beads, and tools, was consigned to a catch-all final volume that was never published. Entitled Miscellaneous Small Finds, it was to follow on the heels of a volume devoted to weights.64 In the Diyala excavations and others, certain artifacts were relegated to a secondary status. In some instances, such artifacts were neither recorded nor preserved. In one of the sanctuaries of the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab, for example, two long pegs and a poker-butted spearhead were stuck upright into a slight hollow in the pavement before an altar; a necklace of lapis lazuli, carnelian, and bone beads with wooden spacers was twisted around these implements.65 What must this have looked like? What happened to the seemingly jumbled finds that mirrored the museum’s own past instead of mirroring the new scientific order of exhibitions? The objects themselves were never published. The photographic documentation of the Shara Temple sanctuary shows an empty room with a plastered altar against the short wall.66

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30.  Reconstruction of Khafajah, Temple Oval, House D sanctuary. From Delougaz 1940, Figure 159. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

The cleaning and ordering of the archaeological record also is a type of modern reconstruction. Hierarchical distinctions influenced the interpretation of archaeological remains in the Diyala excavations. For example, the Temple Oval at Khafajah was a monumental complex enclosed by two parallel curving walls. The temple proper of the Temple Oval complex was not preserved. However, a room in House D, situated between the two parallel curving outer walls, contained a white lime-plastered mudbrick altar with rounded sidewalls and a flat central surface. The excavators suggested that the room was a small domestic sanctuary for the private use of the priests who presumably lived in House D and tended the temple proper.67 The plaster had been worn away from the middle area of the flat central surface, suggesting to the excavators that offerings had been presented there.68 Various objects were excavated before the altar, including sculpture, animal-shaped amulets, stone vessels, and seals; some had been “placed carefully side by side near the east corner” of the altar.69 Several of these objects were depicted on the altar in the reconstruction of the House D sanctuary (Figure 30). In contrast, in a 1933 watercolor published in the final volume on Diyala architecture, Lloyd reconstructed the sanctuary of the Single-Shrine Temple I building period of the Abu Temple at Tell Asmar to a monumental effect (Figure 23). Preserved portions of the fallen ceiling of House D had suggested a

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31. Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, “Interior of Single-Shrine Temple I after the Altar Had Been Repaired and a Statue Base Placed on Top of It.” From Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Figure 157. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

system of beams and rafters covered by mats.70 For the Single-Shrine Temple I reconstruction, Lloyd instead favored the evidence preserved in kilns for what he interpreted as small-scale experiments in vaulting.71 The reconstruction depicts a cult image displayed on top of the stepped altar, and statues appear on the two low mudbrick structures against the long wall. The only sculpture retrieved from the level of the Single-Shrine Temple I sanctuary, however, was a fragmentary statue base.72 For the photograph of Single-Shrine Temple I, a statue base found outside the temple proper was placed on the top of the altar in order to suggest a cult statue.73 The archaeological documentation resembles the watercolor or vice versa (compare Figures 23, 31).74 As in the reconstruction of Ishtar Temple G, one encounters the centrality of the cult image, emphasized by its isolation. A limestone slab (110 × 35 cm), however, was set into the lower step of the Single-Shrine Temple I altar. According to Frankfort, it would have provided “an even surface upon which vessels and other offerings might rest.”75 The slab was omitted in the reconstruction. Additional archaeological evidence from the Diyala excavations suggests that various objects were placed on altars. At Tell Asmar, a concentration of objects was found “in the vicinity of the top shelf” of the D 17:8 altar in the

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Seeing the Divine Square Temple before the structure was properly identified as an altar.76 The objects, including statue fragments, a weight with two ram heads, and mace heads, were likely set on the altar. Another group of associated objects, including beads, inlays, amulets, seals, and animal bones, “had evidently fallen from the altar.”77 In the main sanctuary of the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab, a small sculpture fragment preserving the feet and base was found on the altar, which was a massive, multilevel complex with its own “stairway.”78 Two cylinder seals were found in a stone bowl that had been set into one of the lower steps along with a shallow stone “trough” (24 × 45 cm).79 Stone objects identified as stands or bases encountered on the opposite side of the altar were thought to have fallen from its upper surface.80 The head of a female figure apparently was found on the latest rebuilding of the altar.81 In a photograph of the Single-Shrine Temple, one workman sits before the long wall of the sanctuary, reaching out to it with a tool (Figure 31). Workmen are often included in archaeological documentation, with the only obvious purpose being to provide a sense of scale. The second workman, standing with his back to the camera, however, is superfluous. The basket (?) tucked under his arm is useless. The workman performs the same role as the figure in the reconstruction: they are both worshipers (Figures 23, 31). The slightly bent forward posture and staff/walking stick of the worshiper suggest action. In a different photograph of the Single-Shrine Temple taken from the northeast, the same two workmen have items tucked under their arms.82 The workman who had been standing in the sanctuary is now at its threshold. In a performance interwoven among archaeological documentation and reconstruction, both the fictitious worshiper and the workmen are approaching the divine. Given that the installation of sculpture against the long walls of the museum had the practical purpose of accommodating visitors, the use of the museum model for the installation of Early Dynastic sculpture in temples is somewhat ironic: Mesopotamian temples, in general, seem not to have been places of communal worship.83 In the Early Dynastic period, issues of access to the temple are reflected in the architectural plan and dimensions. Although it was the focal point of the temple, the sanctuary was often positioned at the back of a building architecturally subdivided into a sequence of small spaces (Figure 32). The bent-axis plan typical of the Early Dynastic period obscures a direct view of the altar from outside the sanctuary (Figures 33, 34). The sanctuary itself likely was accessible only to a limited few, who catered to the special needs of the god. A small space filled with mudbrick furniture, such as altars, benches, and tables, the Early Dynastic sanctuary also included places for building fires and offering libations. In practical terms, large numbers of visitors could not have been accommodated in the sanctuary, as movement would have been difficult.84 The purpose of some mudbrick structures excavated in or near sanctuaries is ambiguous, but their location would suggest that they impede access. In one of

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32. Nippur, Inana Temple level VIIB, plan representing various subphases. Adapted by Jean M. Evans; Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project.

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33. Nippur, Inana Temple level VIIB, isometric drawing of the sanctuary area representing various subphases. Adapted by Jean M. Evans; Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project.

the sanctuaries in the Square Temple at Tell Asmar, four rectangular mudbrick structures were arranged in a row about a meter before the altar (Figure 34). Rows of similar mudbrick structures also appear in the sanctuary of the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab and the Sin Temple at Khafajah, as well as in the Inana Temple and the North Temple at Nippur.85 Only the structures from Sin Temple IX were found with their upper surfaces preserved. The tops of the structures were rounded and could not have supported offerings as the excavators suggested.86 Regardless of additional functions, the mudbrick structures leave narrow spaces that must be negotiated in order to pass.87 At Nippur, the issues of access surrounding these structures are made explicit. In Inana Temple VIIB, the mudbrick structures are positioned directly in passageways leading to the sanctuaries (Figure 33). Similarly, in North Temple V, they are positioned at the passage from the court to the sanctuary.88 In the other temples, these structures span the width of the sanctuary, by analogy impeding access to the altar. As anyone who has used such terminology would readily admit, we have but a fuzzy idea about the purpose of the Early Dynastic structures called altars.89 Other scholars writing about Early Dynastic temples instead might describe such structures as pedestals or podiums, or else they use the more generic term mudbrick structure/furniture. All this terminology brings with it problems of definition. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “pedestal” is derived from classical architecture and refers to the base on which a column stands; more generally, it refers to a base or support. “Podium” is also an architectural term, originally delineating the raised platform surrounding the arena of an

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34. Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, plan of the Square Temple building period. From Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Plate 22. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

ancient amphitheater; it now has a common usage as a raised platform from which a person is visible to an audience. “Mudbrick structure” is too imprecise, and “furniture” evokes the idea of something portable when in fact such features were permanent fixtures typically rebuilt in the same position from level to level throughout the history of the temple. Etymologically, the term “altar” is from the Latin altāre, literally a “high place,” connoting “a raised structure, with a plane top, on which to place or sacrifice offerings to a deity.” Today, the term altar tends more narrowly to describe the raised structure consecrated to the celebration of the Eucharist in Christian churches. Even in Christian practice, however, the altar more generally serves as a place reserved for devotional observances; it is the site for ritual ceremonies, such as matrimony, and it is

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Seeing the Divine also where the sacred host is stored. In other words, it is a multifunctional focal point. I have chosen to retain the term “altar” in its widest, most generalized application to refer to mudbrick structures in the Early Dynastic sanctuary set against the short wall farthest from the entrance in the long wall. Literally, Early Dynastic altars are high places generally understood as a focal point for the divine and the locus of its attendant ritual activities. To my mind, the specific terminology that we use is less problematic than the restrictions that we impose on it. The idea of a passive pedestal to support the cult statue in isolation is a museum way of seeing Early Dynastic altars. Museum pedestals function only as supports for displayed objects. The Early Dynastic altar did not function solely as a pedestal to support a hypothetical cult statue. Rather, Early Dynastic altars often were massive, elaborate, multilevel structures, with a wide array of associated objects, installations, and activities.90 As will be discussed further, many Early Dynastic altars were equipped with channels, drains, and receptacles for receiving liquids, suggesting that the agency of the altar may be located additionally in rituals of libation. The archaeological evidence thus indicates that Early Dynastic altars are multifunctional loci, even if it is correct to assume that cult statues had existed by the Early Dynastic period and were installed on altars.

Statues, Access, and the Divine Later Mesopotamian texts make explicit that cultic activities were centered directly on the divine cult statue as the embodiment of the resident deity. In an architectural plan from the Ur III period (ca. 2112–2004 BC), the sanctuary functions are relegated to two rooms. The larger would seem to be the sanctuary proper, known as the place of sitting/dwelling (ki-tuš).91 Some would see in this a literal indication of the altar as a seat for the cult statue. In visual imagery, deities usually are depicted sitting and are approached by standing individuals, which some would also understand as a literal approach to the divine cult statue seated on an altar. Others would understand such a seat metaphorically because a deity more generally is said to sit/dwell (tuš/wašābum) in his or her temple or city.92 Of the few surviving cult statues from any period, none are Early Dynastic.93 Nevertheless, it is certainly plausible to infer from textual evidence that cult statues existed by the end of the Early Dynastic period.94 References in the inscriptions of the Early Dynastic ruler Urnanshe of Lagash, for example, state “Urnanshe fashioned” followed by the name of a deity. Various translations have been proposed by inserting additional information so that Urnanshe “formed [a statue for]” or “formed [a statue of]” a deity.95 In these inscriptions, neither the Sumerian term translated as statue (alan) nor a preposition is recorded in the writing. This may be a product of the early stage of writing, although some

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture maintain that only the deity rather than its statue is specified because the cult representation, as an embodiment, was the divine equivalent.96 The roughly contemporary Palace G culture at Ebla, in northern Syria, has points of comparison with Early Dynastic Sumer and provides relatively new evidence for the existence of cult statues. Among the thousands of administrative texts retrieved from Palace G are tablets recording the delivery of gold, silver, and other metals for principally the face, hands, and feet of various cult statues (an-dùl).97 These cult images would have been composite statues, assembled from various media. For a period of some thirty-five years, the annual accounts at Ebla recording expenditures of silver and gold begin also with deliveries of silver for the head of Kura, the city god. Interpreting the receipt of this silver as a renewal of the cult statue, Archi proposes that this was a ritual event marking the beginning of the annual cult cycle.98 The earliest surviving cult statue is an almost life-sized stone statue of a seated goddess dated to the Akkadian period (2334–2154 BC).99 An additional material would have been applied to the face of the statue, and thus it was a composite construction.100 Composite cult statues are also suggested by two tablets in the Ur III archive of the Inana Temple at Nippur recording the receipt of gold and silver, respectively, to be placed on the statue of Inana. One possible translation describes the precious metals as the “skin of the statue of Inana,” literally gold and silver, respectively, applied over a core material.101 The receipt of the gold and silver preceded Inana’s visits to the gods Enlil and Suen on the fifth and seventh days of the goddess’s festival.102 Later texts explicitly state that cult statues were formed by precious metals laid over a wooden core.103 In cultic practices, divine needs were understood in human terms. We know from later textual evidence that the Mesopotamian gods had thrones to sit on, beds to sleep on, and vessels out of which they ate and drank. They possessed clothing, weapons, jewelry, musical instruments, chariots, boats, and treasures.104 A list of gold, silver, copper, and bronze objects recorded on an Early Dynastic tablet from the Inana Temple at Nippur describes the “treasures” of the goddess, paralleling more detailed texts in the later Ur III Inana Temple archive.105 In the late first millennium BC, priests administered to what collectively has been termed the care and feeding of the gods.106 We have glimpses of attendance on the divine already in the third millennium BC. These activities would seem best associated with a divine image in anthropomorphic form. For example, an Ur III tablet also from the Inana Temple lists activities taking place during the annual main festival of Inana; the fifteenth day is devoted to the washing of the deity, understood as the ritual renewal of the cult statue.107 An inscribed vessel dedicated to the god Ningirsu by the Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash is a “vessel of refined silver, out of which Ningirsu consumes oil/fat monthly” (Figure 35).108 Similarly, an inscribed mortar dedicated to Ningirsu by the Early Dynastic ruler Enanatum I of Lagash is “for crushing

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35. Girsu (Tello), Silver vessel of the god Ningirsu dedicated by the Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Départment des Antiquités Orientales, AO 2674. From Sarzec 1884–1912, Plate 43bis.

garlic.”109 One must imagine a full range of utensils given the specific uses of these surviving items. Beginning in the Early Dynastic period, anthropomorphic imagery in other media is marked as divine by the presence of a horned headdress, which is understood as an unequivocal signification of divine status (Figures 36, 37).110 Earlier divine representations may have been symbolic or emblematic forms that continued to appear alongside the anthropomorphic form.111 One early symbolic form is that of the goddess Inana, which appears in Late Uruk visual imagery as a reed bundle or entry post and in the earliest texts as the sign for Inana’s name.112 As the numinous power of the storehouse, Inana perhaps was symbolized by the reed bundle or entry post specifically of the storehouse gate.113 Less literally, the mythical Imdugud originally may have been a symbol of atmospheric forces and perhaps for this reason was depicted with outstretched wings to raise the storm clouds and with the head of a lion to emit a thunderous roar (Figure 35).114 The heraldic composition of the Imdugud grasping animals is associated with Ningirsu in the Early Dynastic period. Chased on the silver vessel of Ningirsu, the Imdugud indicates possession, that the vessel belongs to Ningirsu.115 In the Early Dynastic period, the approach to the divine can be portrayed as the approach to a divine symbol or emblem. In the relief-carved imagery on Early Dynastic mace heads from the city-state of Lagash, the donor is depicted with clasped hands, like a statue, approaching the

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36. Nippur, Early Dynastic stone door plaque dedicated by Ur-Enlil, the dam-gar3 (merchant). Eski Sark Museum, Istanbul, 1944. Photograph by Jean M. Evans.

heraldic composition of the Imdugud grasping various quadrupeds in its claws (Figure 38).116 We do not fully comprehend the significance of the different manifestations of the divine, and the meaning of the symbolic divine form in relation to the anthropomorphic divine form is the subject of debate. The aura (me-lim4) of the deity is also an aspect of the divine that is poorly understood, but would seem to describe a physical emanation.117 Jacobsen described the relationship between deity and temple as an embodiment rather than a habitation. In this respect, the temple itself was a sort of cult image, a representation of the divine aura that was meant to fill it.118 The identity of temple and of resident deity thus blended.119 The temple of the goddess Inana was literally the house of heaven, and Inana was the lady of heaven; the temple of the god Shamash was literally the shining house, and Shamash was the rising sun; and the temple of the god Enlil was literally the house of the mountain, and Enlil was the great mountain. Two large cylinders of Gudea preserve the longest and most complex early Sumerian literary work to survive. In the composition of some 1,363 lines, Ningirsu appears to Gudea in a dream and commands him to build the Eninnu, his temple at Girsu. Cylinder A describes the events leading to the construction of the Eninnu, which is likened to a city, and Cylinder B recounts the rituals by which the temple was consecrated to Ningirsu. Winter observes that in Cylinder A Gudea is the agent of the construction and outfitting of the temple.

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37.  Lagash (Al-Hiba), Ibgal of Inana, copper-alloy foundation figure of the Early Dynastic ruler Enanatum I of Lagash. Iraq Museum, Baghdad. Courtesy of Holly Pittman, University of Pennsylvania, Al-Hiba publication project.

38.  Lagash (Al-Hiba), Bagara of Ningirsu, drawing of the relief-carving on an Early Dynastic stone mace head. Iraq Museum, Baghdad. Courtesy of Holly Pittman, University of Pennsylvania, Al-Hiba publication project.

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture In Cylinder B, when the building has been completed – when it has been ritually consecrated and the deity has been installed – the temple actively emits its own affective properties.120 Moreover, the aura of the deity could so permeate particular architectural elements and cultic implements of the temple that they in turn became divine.121 Winter understands the enlarged eyes of Early Dynastic sculpture as the manifestation of an enhanced response to an awe-inspiring divinity.122 Through the association of form with meaning, enlarged eyes thus function as a visible marker or affective property of viewing. Winter argues that Early Dynastic statues, like individuals, respond to the gods with an awe derived from a direct and intense visual experience. Enlarged eyes thus denote attentiveness toward the divine. In accordance with Early Dynastic temple reconstructions, this is a reciprocal relationship established in the sanctuary. The statues therefore are “standing in direct visual contact with the resident deity,” communicating with their enlarged eyes “an almost eerie sense of absolute and focused attention.”123 I argue that we can problematize what it means to be “standing in direct visual contact with the resident deity.” The centrality of the cult image in Early Dynastic temple reconstructions presupposes a literal line of direct eye contact with the divine cult statue. But the function assigned to Early Dynastic sculpture as a display object installed in the temple sanctuary on pedestal-like benches in the manner of a museum exhibition is a modern construct. As I have argued, it cannot be maintained that the altar, if indeed it supported the cult statue in the Early Dynastic period, served only for the display of the divine presence in sculptural form. The literal line of vision assumed between temple statue and cult statue can also be problematized on an ideological basis. As discussed, the temple in its totality is a manifestation of the divine, however imperfectly understood. The divine was manifest not only throughout the temple but also in symbolic or emblematic forms. The pervasive presence of the divine can be demonstrated by a foundation figure representing Shulutula, the personal god of the Early Dynastic ruler Enanatum I of Lagash (Figure 37). The inscription requests: “[M] ay his personal god Shulutula forever pray for the life of Enanatum to Inana in the Ibgal.”124 The Ibgal is a temple dedicated to Inana that has been excavated at al-Hiba (ancient Lagash).125 The foundation figure of Enanatum I, with its clasped hands and its function of offering prayer, both paralleling temple statues, was excavated from the foundations of the Ibgal, where it assumed additional functions. The figure therefore did not establish a literal, direct gaze at the cult statue in the sanctuary in order to communicate through prayer with the divine.126 Finally, the assumed literal line of vision can be problematized by the findspots of excavated sculpture. In addition to the sanctuary, Early Dynastic sculpture left behind in the occupation level of a temple is found at entrances as well

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Seeing the Divine as in courts and small rooms. In succeeding chapters, some of these findspots will be explored in greater detail. Here, however, I aim to provide a sense of the overall scope. To begin with entrances, we do not know the full extent of sculpture retreived at entrances to temples because often the findspots were imprecisely recorded. This is the case for the Diyala excavations, which usually recorded the findspots of sculpture using the locus number for the room in general. In Ishtar Temple G, as discussed previously, sculpture is concentrated at entrances to the temple proper as well as the entrance to the sanctuary. Andrae thought that some of the sculpture had been set up just outside the northwest entrance owing to the condition of the stone; for two examples, the findspots more precisely are the small area of street excavated before the northwest entrance.127 At Tello, what is most likely a fragmentary statue base was found on the stone pavement at the entrance to the so-called Construction Inférieure, identified as an Early Dynastic temple.128 In level VIIB of the Inana Temple at Nippur, as discussed further in Chapter 6, Early Dynastic sculpture was found on a bitumen-coated pavement of baked brick just inside the secondary entrance to the temple proper.129 The importance of entrances – and the implications of passage – in the Early Dynastic temple were reinforced by a wide array of objects. Some associated specifically with doors are a product of the patronage of the Early Dynastic rulers of Lagash. These include stone door plaques, pivot stones, and small stone lions, the latter evoking a role as entrance guardians, although none of these items have findspots precisely recorded.130 Inscriptions on these objects record the building of temples, which is a royal prerogative. Doors themselves also are a reflection of royal patronage. The Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash, for example, provided the temple of the goddess Nanshe with a door of white cedar.131 The cylinders of Gudea of Lagash later describe the various component parts of the gates of the Eninnu in vivid imagery. The cedar doors are like the weather god roaring, the locks are bulls, and the bolts are fierce hissing snakes. Recumbent lions and panthers are depicted on the lintels.132 The copper-alloy relief of the Imdugud grasping two stags from the Early Dynastic temple at the site of al-‘Ubaid recalls later Ur III textual references to door lintels decorated with the Imdugud with its talons spread.133 As Winter has observed, the elaboration of temple gates in general “constituted an important aspect of its visual impact.”134 Stone door plaques were also dedicated to Early Dynastic temples by private donors (Figure 39). Boese suggested that, when affixed to the wall through the hole in the center and displayed at eye level, the plaques constituted the earliest “wall pictures.”135 Building on an earlier study by Hansen, Zettler instead demonstrated the functional role of stone plaques through a study of sealing practices in the Ur III Inana Temple at Nippur.136 A peg driven through the center of the plaque secured a cord or hook, which in turn secured a door. Together, the

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39. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic stone door plaque dedicated by Lumma the gal-zadim (master stonecutter). Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 66157. Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 133 + 7 N 134).

stone plaque and the peg thus formed a locking device for doors. The impression of one such door plaque was preserved in a mudbrick wall at a height of 130 cm, which is below eye level, in the early second-millennium BC palace at Mari.137 In both the content of the inscriptions and the imagery depicted, the stone door plaques dedicated by private donors differ from those recording the building activities of the Early Dynastic rulers of Lagash.138 The former are typically divided into three horizontal registers. A banquet with seated figures and attendants usually appears in the upper register, with a procession leading up to it. For the few inscribed examples, the dedication is either inscribed among the imagery outside the banquet proper or, in an example where the inscription is placed in the upper register, the appearance of the horned headdress signifying divine status indicates that neither seated banqueter is the donor (Figures 36, 39).139 That these inscriptions also functioned as a sort of label is indicated by one example that appears to be inscribed “son of” between two wrestlers in the lower register.140

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Seeing the Divine On door plaques, perhaps the placement of the inscriptions exterior to the culminating scene of the banquet proper and/or its main characters is a reflection of issues of access in the Early Dynastic temple. The dedication of a gift forming a locking device that in concept literally impedes access in the temple also suggests an awareness of issues of access. In contrast, the prerogative of access was communicated visually on the flip side: the royal practice of embellishing temple entrances with objects recording the building of temples. The prerogative of royal access is further suggested, for example, by the full name given to the Early Dynastic ruler Eanatum of Lagash by the goddess Inana: Eana-Inana-Ibgalakakatum, “Worthy in the Eana of Inana of the Ibgal.”141 Issues of access perhaps also influenced the installation of sculpture at the entrance to the temple and at important points of internal passage. As such, statues would have become part of a larger ensemble of objects associated with these spaces. As I discuss, sculpture installed at entrances and points of internal passage potentially assumed an intermediary role in the encounter between the temple visitor and the divine. Textual and archaeological evidence also supports that some sculpture was located in the courtyards of temples, for which there is ample evidence also in later periods. At Khafajah, the large quantity of sculpture found in the courts of both the Sin Temple and the Nintu Temple would suggest that the statues were installed there.142 In the city-state of Lagash, the Early Dynastic queen Sasa, made offerings to statues (alan) during the festival in the courtyard, which seems to have been part of a larger festival of Bau.143 The dedicatory inscription on the statue of Ninkagina, a late third-millennium BC queen of Lagash, instructs the statue to speak its prayer in the court of Bau.144 The final general findspot for sculpture left behind in the occupation level of a temple is comprised of small rooms often described as storerooms. At Khafajah, a concentration of sculpture was found in R 42:2, a room off the court in the southeast corner of Sin Temple VIII. Although the room was equipped with benches, the majority of the statues were lying on the floor “as if purposely arranged.” The Diyala excavators interpreted the room as a repository for “discarded and damaged statues.”145 Frankfort more precisely considered the room “as a halfway house or ‘limbo’ between the celestial display of the statues in the sanctuary proper and infernal oblivion through burial after having been discarded altogether.”146 The Sin Temple, however, produced no evidence for the practice of hoarding and burying sculpture. As discussed further in Chapter 5, the R 42:2 locus of Sin Temple VIII yielded other cultic equipment that could have been used in association with the statues, suggesting that they had not been discarded or taken out of circulation. The architectural details of R 42:2, moreover, suggest an unlikely place for storage. When the statue is no longer needed for display in the temple sanctuary, the reasoning goes, the statue is discarded through burial. Following this,

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture concentrations of statues in small rooms are statues taken out of circulation because they are no longer being displayed.147 Curses on the statues of the ruler Sargon, founder of the Akkadian empire (ca. 2334–2154 BC), include those against anyone who should “set aside” the statue, which would suggest that a statue being taken out of circulation indeed was a possible fate.148 The storeroom, on the other hand, was not necessarily a “purgatory.” Rather, it potentially was a richly symbolic place. The goddess Inana was the numinous power of the storehouse. The statue of Ninkagina dedicated at the end of the third ~, which can mean either millennium BC was intended either for or in the ne-sag “first-fruit offering” or “storage place/sacristy.”149 Thus, according to one translation, the statue is a “sacristy object.”150 The architectural space filled with offerings in the upper register of the monumental cult vessel from the Eana III precinct at Uruk communicates the idea that the temple storehouse is the sum of the offerings it contains.151 Perhaps statues concentrated in small rooms reflect a time of temporary storage in the life of the statue. Certainly, the small size of most Early Dynastic sculpture suggests its portability, such that the storeroom need not be a sort of no man’s land for statues awaiting burial. If offerings were made to statues at certain festivals, perhaps some statues were only brought out of storerooms on those occasions. Statues also could have been installed rather than stored in such rooms. In the early excavations of the Temple of Ninhursag at Mari, the above-mentioned room yielding the statue base on a bench was designated as a place for storing offerings. The statue, however, seems to have been installed in the room because the base was embedded in the plaster of the bench.152 During Inana’s festival at Nippur during the Ur III period, fish offerings were made to deities, including the deified kings of Ur. Understanding these as offerings made to statues, Zettler and Sallaberger suggest that because the offerings follow on the activities in the courtyard, the statues were probably installed in various rooms in the Inana Temple.153 In considering all these findspots, it is possible to align statues more closely with temple functions. If access to the temple were carefully monitored, then it would seem significant that sculpture is present at entrances and passages. If worshipers were only allowed access to the temple on certain occasions, then it would seem significant that sculpture is present in courts, which could accommodate relatively large numbers of visitors. The presence of sculpture in various other rooms throughout a temple does not necessarily mean that these statues await burial, having been taken out of commission, or that more generally they are not in a primary context. Admittedly, we must proceed with caution because it is often difficult to understand fully the significance of deposition.154 As Schiffer most fully has articulated, a findspot only tells us where an object was located before its discovery in archaeological excavation. A findspot therefore records one specific moment

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Seeing the Divine in the life history of an object. Both cultural and environmental processes move artifacts during their life histories. Therefore no one location can be designated the sole “original context.” When depositional patterns can be identified in the archaeological record, however, archaeological practice maintains that they are a product of meaningful behavior.155 An Early Dynastic sculpture at its location of use is not necessarily reflected in one singular findspot. Sanctuaries, entrances, courts, and small rooms are all legitimate findspots potentially reflecting the life history of Early Dynastic sculpture.

Conclusion: Seeing as a Cultural Construction The “huge staring goggle eyes” of Early Dynastic statues have impressed the modern viewer.156 Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) said that the “wild-eyed” Sumerian statues he encountered at The Metropolitan Museum of Art – including one of the figures in the Asmar hoard that had been purchased by exchange in 1940  – very much influenced Woman I (Figure 40; for the Asmar hoard statue in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, see Figure 16).157 In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1977), the American psychologist Julian Jaynes was struck by the “huge globular eyes” of the Asmar hoard statues “hypnotically staring out of the unrecorded past of 5000 years ago with defiant authority.”158 To Jaynes, the eyes were indicative of the bicameral mind, a primeval cognitive state characterized by a division between a part of the brain that speaks and a part of the brain that perceives such speech as auditory hallucination. In The Social History of the Unconscious (1989), George Frankl perceived in the “huge eyes” of early Sumerian sculpture “a sense of awe and apprehension which obviously indicates the anxiety those people felt in the presence of the gods.”159 Selz suggested that the “bug-eyed appearance with often dilated pupils” of Early Dynastic statues “may even be taken as a specific sign of ecstasy and heightened awareness following the consumption of drugs and alcohol.”160 Early Dynastic temple statues have enlarged eyes. At the same time, it is not as if their enlarged eyes are abstracted or unnatural in juxtaposition to a figural form that is otherwise a mimetic portrait, an accurate representation of an individual. It is therefore problematic to interpret the eyes of Early Dynastic statues as a reflection of the human body with its physiological functions and the human mind with its emotional responses. Other explanations for the characteristically enlarged eyes contextualize meaning within the cultic setting of a temple, in which a quality of attentiveness before the divine is associated with function. Such an emphasis on the enlarged eyes draws Early Dynastic statues into a wider sphere of action. In a well-defined role for artworks, they become the subjects and objects of a gaze.

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40.  Willem de Kooning, Woman I (1950–52) (oil on canvas). Museum of Modern Art, New York / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library. © 2012 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The eerie effect of the enlarged eyes of Early Dynastic statues has often arisen as a question. These eyes are perplexing. But this is largely a contextual issue. I would suggest that it is symptomatic of the manner in which we are used to seeing Early Dynastic statues. Early Dynastic statues are treated in a certain way; they are somehow already museum-like at their moment of inception. But seeing is a cultural construct, learned and cultivated. The practice of seeing is one so familiar that it is paradoxically invisible. Mitchell therefore advocates showing seeing, making seeing visible as a problem for analysis. In doing so, seeing begins to have its own cultural history.161 Seeing  – the gaze  – is also an important element of archaeological reconstructions of the Early Dynastic temple. Particularly important here is the

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Seeing the Divine intersection of seeing and display, of making objects seen. In the reconstruction of Single-Shrine Temple I, overlapping rays create three distinct bands, which integrate a traditional motif for evoking the Christian trinity with the simultaneous framing of an Early Dynastic cult statue. Few in the field of ancient Near Eastern studies would give serious consideration to the entire reconstruction, which resembles a cathedral (Figures 23, 24). As I have argued in this chapter, however, reconstructions of the Early Dynastic temple embody fictions that are less transparent and are not scrutinized. The sculpture against the wall of the sanctuary and the cult statue in isolation on the altar continues to serve as the model for understanding the inner workings of an Early Dynastic temple. Exposing this model is an example of making seeing visible as a problem for analysis. The historically specific display aesthetics preserved in reconstructions of Early Dynastic temples underlie our understanding of how Early Dynastic visual culture was made manifest. Already in 1917, Marcel Duchamp provided one of the most infamous demonstrations of the transformative processes of display when he turned a urinal into sculpture by exhibiting it upside down in an art gallery.162 The irony is that, by now, the burden is on having to prove that the model of museum display superimposed on the Early Dynastic temple is incorrect. With the emergence of museum studies, a methodological framework exists for investigating the politics of the museum. The assumptions implicit in the display of sculpture are recognized as culturally conditioned. I understand the consistently enlarged eyes of Early Dynastic sculpture as part of a deliberate system of abstraction applicable to all components of the donor representation. Enlarged eyes, in other words, are an abstracted form – a large round circle – commensurate with the mode of depicting the entire body. The conelike skirt, the ridged patterning of the hair and beard, and the square form of the torso are all abstractions. As such, they are consistent with the form of the eyes. Reproduced for hundreds of years, the abstracted forms of Early Dynastic sculpture are deliberate. If we integrate the enlarged eyes of Early Dynastic sculpture within an overall system of abstraction, we can begin to interrogate the significance of the underlying deliberation. Currently, there are very few things that in reality we allow Early Dynastic statues to do. Ever since the first corpus of Early Dynastic statues was excavated, it has been erroneously assumed that the primary destination of sculpture is the sanctuary. Statues, however, assumed functions beyond the eternal prayer recorded in the dedicatory act. The dedicatory act, which constitutes the social relationship between the donor and the statue, thus does not necessarily encompass the entire functional potential of the statue itself. Outside the sanctuary, statues become available to, and encounter, a wider audience. I will continue to develop the idea that statues have entanglements beyond the realm of the donor and beyond an assumed display function in the sanctuary. The system

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture of abstraction in Early Dynastic sculpture therefore can be examined as a formal property for the representation of a donor manifest in a larger temple context. In the following chapter, I build on Winter’s observations that enlarged eyes function as a visible marker of affect.163 That is, the formal properties of Early Dynastic sculpture can signify something beyond a direct reciprocal relationship with the divine and beyond the physical appearance or emotional state of the donor. Through the object world of Early Dynastic sculpture, the next chapter foregrounds issues of materiality in the Early Dynastic temple. The constitution of object worlds and their shaping of human experiences are central issues of materiality. I therefore return to the idea that as a material object, a physical presence, an Early Dynastic statue has the potential to shape human experiences. In the processes of materiality, objects embody the qualities of social beings with identities that are not fixed at the moment of production. Rather, objects are processed, repeatedly made and remade, through social interactions. The collective activities of the temple thus constitute the social interactions among which Early Dynastic statues circulate.

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T h e E a r ly Dy na s t i c L i f e of Sculpture

Introduction: Approaching Early Dynastic Sculpture The first-millennium BC Akkadian texts describing the ritual activities performed subsequent to the manufacture of a divine image or symbol are known by the culminating act of mouth-washing (mīš pî ), which is accompanied by the act of mouth-opening (pīt pî).1 The Babylonian version begins in the workshop, where craftsmen ritually disavow having worked on the divine image. A carpenter and then a goldsmith have their right hands bound in wool and symbolically severed with a sword of tamarisk wood. Incantations are recited while the image is taken to the riverbank, where offerings are made to Ea, the river god. The image then remains overnight in an orchard before it is installed in the temple. The divine image cannot eat food, drink water, or smell incense without the mouth-washing and the subsequent mouth-opening, performed repeatedly over the course of two days in order to empower the image as a living entity and a participant in temple ritual.2 Winter has studied the Gudea sculpture corpus in relation to the later rituals for the Mesopotamian cult image. Demonstrating that the statues of Gudea also underwent “rituals of constitution,” Winter argues that “through a process of ritual transformation the material form was animated, the representation not standing for but actually manifesting the presence of the subject represented.” The statues of Gudea thus “were deemed to be living manifestations, empowered to act and speak on the ruler’s behalf.” As elaborated on by Winter, the rituals surrounding the statues of Gudea are those of consecration, installation, and maintenance.3 In contrast to the mouth-washing, Summerian references to the mouth­opening (ka-du8) ritual first appear in Ur III texts. For example, during the third

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture month of the Ur III calendar year, a mouth-opening ritual was performed, probably annually, on the statue(s) of Gudea, who by then was deceased and had been deified.4 These and other references likely do not describe precisely the same highly structured rituals of the first millennium BC. Associating an Early Dynastic incantation with the mouth-opening ritual, Civil nevertheless observed that the later ritual likely preserves a kernel of very old material.5 One translation of the name of an Early Dynastic temple statue from Mari has been associated with an animated, communicative function similar to the results achieved through the later rituals: “statue of great decision/understanding.”6 The name, however, can also be understood in reference to the dedicatory act itself by translating it as: “given with reason.”7 As has been observed more generally, dedicatory objects are named because living things exist by having a name.8 Beginning in the Early Dynastic period, the making of a statue is expressed in Sumerian by the verb tud. Literally meaning “to give birth; to form,” humans and animals are both formed (tud) in the womb and born (tud). Among objects, the Sumerian verb tud is reserved for the making of statues, and a different verb (dim2, “to build, make”) is used for the making of other kinds of objects. The Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash, for example, makes (tud) his statue “Enmetena whom Enlil loves,” but he makes (dim2) a silver vessel of Ningirsu (Figures 35, 41).9 Scholars usually translate tud as “to make; fashion; form” in reference to a statue, but the verb tud also evokes a living being that is gestated and born, thus telling us something about image-making.10 Early Dynastic temple sculpture also provides the earliest examples in which the name for sculpture is recorded on the object. A small number of temple statues have inscriptions in which the name for sculpture is written in Sumerian as alan and in Akkadian inscriptions with the logogram dùl or more rarely an. dùl. All are equated with the Akkadian salmu in later lexical lists. A large body of literature grapples with the ideological and semiotic significance of salmu.11 In later periods, Akkadian words such as tamšīlu (“likeness, resemblance”) and bunnannû (“outer appearance, features”) can be subsumed under the conceptual framework of salmu (salam bunnannıya, “an image of (i.e., having) my appearance”).12 A salmu can also be aniconic. The steles of the late second and early first millennium BC “Stele Row” at Ashur have no figural imagery but bear inscriptions beginning with salmu followed by a personal name.13 Instead of a type of monument, such as a statue, it has been proposed that a better translation of the Sumerian alan and its Akkadian equivalent salmu is “image” or “manifestation.”14 In the Early Dynastic temple, however, the alan signified a specific material image of a donor.15 Some 550 surviving examples are identifiable as Early Dynastic temple statues because they represent primarily a frontal human figure with clasped hands. One of the earliest attestations of alan inscribed on something other than a sculpture in the round is the recently excavated stele of Ilshu-rabi from Tell Abu Sheeja (ancient Pashime), dedicated to the

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41. Ur, diorite statue of the Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash. Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 5. From Woolley 1955, Plate 40, upper left (U.805). Reproduced courtesy of Richard L. Zettler, Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near East Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

god Shuda during the reign of the Akkadian ruler Manishtusu (Figure 42). It is fascinating that, like a temple statue, the relief-carved image on the stele is that of a standing figure with clasped hands. According to the inscription, Ilshu-rabi “brought in the alan,” which could be a reference either to the entire monument or the figure carved on it.16 It is appropriate to understand alan as “image” or “manifestation,” but it should be acknowledged that alan signifies also a consistent representational genre in the Early Dynastic temple: the material form of a frontal human figure with clasped hands. Mesopotamian sculpture in general has come to be understood as a manifestation of the individual represented. We have become accustomed to understanding the Early Dynastic temple statue in particular as an essential form of the donor in a permanent representation dedicated to the divine.17 The significance of such a representation is dependent on the extent to which we are willing to apply the later evidence for Mesopotamian image-making to the Early Dynastic period. The progression from first-millennium BC cult statues to the statues of Gudea and then to Early Dynastic temple statues suggests that we are

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42. Pashime (Tell Abu Sheeja), Area A, alabaster stele dedicated by Ilshu-rabi during the Akkadian period. From Hussein et al. 2010, Figure 18. Courtesy of Mark Altaweel.

able to trace some degree of continuity in Mesopotamian sculpture traditions. Certainly, it would be difficult to interpret the Early Dynastic evidence without the better-understood later evidence, but distinctions potentially are lost through an emphasis on continuity in sculptural traditions.18 Nevertheless, it is a reality that principally three types of statues from throughout Mesopotamian history contribute to our knowledge of Early Dynastic sculpture: the divine cult image of the god, the royal image of the ruler, and the temple sculpture of private individuals. Much of what has been written recently about translating alan or salmu as “image” or “manifestation” can be understood as an effort to move away from treating such representations as we would treat Western artworks. By pointing out that the alan in the Early Dynastic temple consistently refers to a statue of a frontal human figure with clasped hands, it is not my intention to refute the greater traditions of Mesopotamian image-making in general and their

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture potential beginning in the Early Dynastic period. In my own view, however, it is not necessary that we embrace the entire ideological and semiotic range of the Mesopotamian image in order to understand the Early Dynastic temple statue as a real presence in the temple. Rather, I am interested in examining the significance of the Early Dynastic alan as mediated by a specific material form in the temple context. It is therefore the loss of materiality – the loss of the specific physical object – in translating alan as “image” or “manifestation” that concerns me. The appearance of the Early Dynastic temple alan is crucial for an understanding of its life inside the temple. The presence of the alan as a physical, material object in the Early Dynastic temple is therefore the subject of this chapter. Mesopotamian religion was defined by Jacobsen as a communal human response in both thought and action to numinous powers made present through the consecration of divine images, the production of religious literature, the performance of rituals, and the building of temples.19 Such responses to the numinous are what constitute the cultic practices of Mesopotamian religion. Throughout the history of Mesopotamia, it is the vestiges of religious ritual rather than those of religion itself that best survive. The word cult is therefore often used when discussing Mesopotamian religious practices. In its literal sense, cult refers to external forms of religious rituals rather than to underlying beliefs. In an influential statement written in 1964 and entitled “Why a ‘Mesopotamian Religion’ should not be written,” Oppenheim posed the difficulty of comprehending religion from artifactual remains by analogy. If only the monuments and accoutrements of Christianity were preserved for some distant generation, he reasoned, what could they reveal of the essential tenets of that faith? For Oppenheim, the study of Mesopotamian religion was limited because the questions “beyond the description of what we see and beyond the – apparently – obvious functions” could not be answered.20 Oppenheim was overtly aware that his approach to the Mesopotamian evidence as prohibitive of certain inquiries treated religious belief analogously with modern Christianity. More recent methodological approaches to the study of religion have argued that the prioritizing of belief as a private cognitive state rather than a physical activity is, in general, a Christian concept.21 New approaches attempt to distance the study of religion from such models. For example, Keane asserts that beliefs necessarily assume material forms. He further observes that attempts to “try to eliminate the materiality of religion by treating it as, above all, evidence for something immaterial, such as beliefs or prior experiences, risks denying the very conditions of sociality.”22 For the subject under consideration here, the material remains preserved in the archaeological record – the vestiges of religious ritual – do preserve a Mesopotamian religion. Current models would understand such remains as the materialization of religion, as the physical forms of its expression.

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture The materialization of religion provides a methodology through which we can approach Early Dynastic temple sculpture. One consequence is that, as material forms, Early Dynastic statues are not reductive to stable meanings. Rather, they occupy a shifting terrain of meaning. Meskell, for example, distances herself from Western notions of the artwork manufactured solely for viewing by interrogating specific moments in the life cycle of ancient Egyptian sculpture.23 Similarly, it is possible to scrutinize the mechanics of crafting, using, and discarding sculpture in the Early Dynastic temple. The journey of a temple statue from its manufacture to its final deposition can be termed its Early Dynastic life cycle. In the previous chapter, I deconstructed the predominant idea about sculpture display in an Early Dynastic temple. Essentially, the model of the temple as museum vis-à-vis the display of sculpture has obscured our understanding of Early Dynastic statues. Whereas the last chapter began to contextualize Early Dynastic sculpture within temples, this chapter examines what statues are doing, literally and figuratively, in temples. As already discussed, one theory of why so many people dedicated statues to temples in the Early Dynastic period has to do with issues of access. Embodying the worshiper, the statue could represent the donor in the presence of the divine. This life of the statue is separate from the donor. That is, the statue does what the donor cannot do. As material forms, Early Dynastic statues become autonomous from their producers and from their donors, assuming new meanings and potentially shedding former identities.24 As argued in this chapter, an approach to temple statues as material forms provides a multifunctional definition of Early Dynastic sculpture beyond the act of dedication, a definition oriented toward the temple rather than toward the donor.

Dedication in the Early Dynastic Temple Institution In the most comprehensive treatment from the Early Dynastic to the Old Babylonian periods, Braun-Holzinger documents the history, range, and purposes of dedicatory gifts, a description that fits a large number of objects that were given by human donors to the Mesopotamian gods.25 In addition to sculpture, a variety of other objects, including vessels, mace heads, plaques, seals, and animal figures, were also dedicated to temples. Additional items dedicated or offered to temples did not survive because of their media. For example, metal was melted down for reuse, and food items and textiles were perishable. Evidence of their existence is preserved in texts. Inscribed examples indicate that the most common request to accompany a dedication was for a long, healthy, and prosperous life for the donor. In some instances, such a request might be extended also to the family members or the ruler of the donor. Through dedication to the temple, the donor therefore sought the benevolence and protection of the resident deity. A dedicatory object secured

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture the presence of the donor in the temple. Dedications subsequently became part of the temple inventory and ultimately were joined in perpetuity with the physical structure of the temple through various methods of deposition. The purpose of dedication is encapsulated in the names of dedicatory objects, of which the statues of Gudea form the largest corpus.26 The names of the Gudea statues summarize the motives behind the act of dedication by expressing either a wish for the benevolence of the deity to whom the statue is dedicated or the actualization of that benevolence as a statement. One name of a Gudea statue implores, “Let Gudea, builder of the temple, have a long life.”27 Another name recounts, “(Ningishzida) gave life to Gudea, the builder of the temple.”28 The naming of dedicatory objects is a practice known already during the Early Dynastic period. The statue of the Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash, for example, is named “Enmetena whom Enlil loves” (Figure 41).29 The statements encapsulated in the names of objects or otherwise encoded within the dedicatory act are sometimes referred to as prayers.30 For example, the name of the statue of the Early Dynastic ruler Meskigala of Adab is “have mercy on (my) prayers.”31 Some scholars equate the gesture of clasped hands assumed by temple statues with a modern prayer gesture.32 Temple statues therefore are often referred to as “praying statues.”33 Others scholars, critical both of equating ancient and modern gestures and of ascribing a restrictive function of prayer to the statues, attribute a more general connotation of attentiveness to clasped hands.34 Additional functions beyond that of prayer also have been posited for temple statues. In the inscription on Statue B, Gudea instructs his statue to speak “messages” or, more literally, “words” (inim) to Ningirsu (Figure 2).35 The statements that follow are not prayers per se. Rather, they list the good deeds performed by Gudea. In the Early Dynastic period, the inscription on the statue of Enmetena requests that the personal god – not the statue – pray for the life of the ruler.36 I prefer the term temple statues because, with few exceptions, Early Dynastic statues are found in temples. Any considerations of function that we attribute to these statues therefore are mediated by the temple context. Of the some 550 surviving examples of Early Dynastic temple sculpture, around 90 are inscribed.37 In contrast to later periods, Early Dynastic dedicatory inscriptions, whether inscribed on sculpture, vessels, mace heads, or plaques, offer very few details in content. By the end of the Early Dynastic period, dedicatory inscriptions usually contain the name of the donor and the name of the deity to whom the statue is dedicated.38 The relationship between these names is made explicit by a verb of dedication (a–ru/šarākum). Additional details, such as the names of statues, are seldom included. In general, private dedicatory inscriptions are less detailed than royal dedicatory inscriptions, which in the Early Dynastic period record the manufacture, naming, and installation of the statue.

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43. Early Dynastic support in the form of a bull man with clasped hands (translucent greenyellow alabaster). First published in Frankfort 1939, Plate 115E. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

The earliest inscribed sculpture in the round is probably a belted bull man said to be from Umma and first published in 1939 (Figure 43).39 The cuneiform signs of the inscription are not written in their spoken order. The presence of the term lugal (king, ruler) suggests that the inscription concerns a royal dedication. Other cuneiform signs in the inscription may be combined to produce the name of a deity (Enlil), the name of a ruler (Pabilgagi), and a city (Umma). On the basis of other Early Dynastic dedicatory inscriptions, one possible understanding of the inscription is that a ruler of Umma named Pabilgagi dedicated the belted bull man to the god Enlil.40 While the preceding example is quite extreme, Early Dynastic textual evidence in general is of a limited nature. The earliest writing developed in the Uruk period within an administrative context that had already experimented with various recording systems as a means of addressing the problems of information storage.41 For several hundred years thereafter, writing served principally as a mnemonic device.42 Even when early literary texts appear at Early Dynastic Abu Salabikh and other sites, they are written in such a concise

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture manner that they were probably mnemonic aids for a reader who would supply the necessary grammatical elements.43 Analogous with Early Dynastic texts in general, only the most necessary information recorded in a concise manner is included in Early Dynastic dedicatory inscriptions. The details motivating or permitting the act of dedication, which would be of great interest, usually are omitted. Due to their limited nature, Early Dynastic dedicatory inscriptions are often interpreted according to what we know from later sources, much as our knowledge of early cultic practices in general is supplemented by later sources.44 While an emphasis on continuity can elucidate aspects of the dedication of Early Dynastic sculpture, an awareness of the dates of the sources that provide us with our central ideas about Mesopotamian sculpture and religious practice is necessary. The generalization of cultural practices can fail to recognize the distinct qualities of a specific time and place. Stone statues dedicated to temples are a case in point because they are a distinctly Early Dynastic phenomenon. At no other time in the history of the ancient Near East have stone temple statues survived in such abundance. As the evidence now stands, the earliest-stratified corpus of Early Dynastic temple sculpture is still the Asmar sculpture hoard. As discussed in Chapter 6, its context belongs to the Early Dynastic I period. The latest corpuses of temple sculpture are from the sites of Nippur, Ashur, Mari, and Tell Chuera. These contexts have been redated in recent years to late Early Dynastic–Akkadian, reflecting the difficulty in defining the transition from one period to the other.45 By convention, all these statues are still designated Early Dynastic in the literature, but the production of temple sculpture did not simply stop the moment Sargon of Akkad rose to power. It is probably most accurate to say that temple sculpture is largely an Early Dynastic phenomenon that continues into the Akkadian period. The statue of Eshpum from Susa and the recently excavated stele of Ilshu-rabi from Tell Abu Sheeja – both dedicated to temples during the reign of the Akkadian ruler Manishtusu – demonstrate that the stylistic conventions established in the Early Dynastic temples continued into the Akkadian period (Figure 42).46 That both the stele of Ilshu-rabi and the statue of Eshpum are temple dedications could account for their conservative adherence to older traditions. A decline in the quantity of temple sculpture is documented in the Ishtar Temple at Ashur from level G to level GF, but the earlier level G is already dated to late Early Dynastic–Akkadian.47 According to the surviving inscribed examples, temple statues from the Akkadian period onward are dedicated almost exclusively by the ruler as well as by members of the royal family and high-ranking officials who make the dedication both for themselves and for the life of the ruler.48 While the practice of dedicating statues to temples continues throughout Mesopotamian history, the scope of the donor sphere is much

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture narrower after the Early Dynastic period. Dedications by private individuals become comparatively rare.49 Crawford has cogently tied the decline in the dedication of temple sculpture by private individuals after the Early Dynastic period to a shift in the relationship between human and divine.50 As has long been recognized, when archaeological evidence for temple planning reemerges in the Ur III period, the architectural layout of the temple has changed. In comparison to the bent-axis approach to the altar in the Early Dynastic sanctuary, the Ur III altar is placed against the long wall of the sanctuary, potentially allowing it to become visible from outside the sanctuary and in some instances even from outside the temple.51 One result would seem to be that the temple and its functions became more accessible. In the Akkadian and Ur III periods, certain rulers assumed divine status, and the role of the ruler as an intermediary between human and divine, moreover, may have been redefined. Crawford suggests that a more direct relationship between human and divine possibly was encouraged in order to consolidate royal power and foster new royal ideologies.52 Presentation scenes, in which a human is brought before a seated deity, became common compositions on Akkadian cylinder seals, and the deified ruler assumes the same seated position as the divine on Ur III cylinder seals.53 The same worshipers who previously had dedicated statues to deities in the Early Dynastic period, Crawford suggests, are shown being directly received before the divine.54 Around the same time, small domestic shrines emerged, and the role of the personal deity expanded. Alongside a decline in stone sculpture, massproduced clay figurines and plaques are found in quantity in temples beginning in the Ur III period.55 Some of the figurines and plaques from domestic contexts might reflect practices of domestic devotion. Ultimately, Crawford argues that temples no longer had the same level of control over access to the divine as they did in the Early Dynastic period, when the temple statue functioned as an intermediary between human and divine. Crawford roots all these developments in the erosion of temple authority during the Early Dynastic period.56 An understanding of the structure of Early Dynastic society is largely based on the e2-mi2 (“house of the women”) archive. The e2-mi2 archive constitutes not only the most important corpus of Early Dynastic texts but also the earliestknown comprehensive administrative archive of any kind for Mesopotamia. The e2-mi2 archive consists of over 1,600 cuneiform texts, the bulk of which appeared on the antiquities market in the early twentieth century through clandestine digging at the site of Tello. Covering around twenty years at the end of the Early Dynastic period, the institution was administered by the three queens of the last three Early Dynastic rulers of the city-state of Lagash: Dimtur, queen of Enentarzi; Baranamtara, queen of Lugalanda; and Sasa, queen of Uru’inimgina. When the ruler Uru’inimgina usurped the throne of Lagash, he renamed the e2-mi2 institution after its patron goddess Bau, consort of Ningirsu (e2-bau,

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture “house of the goddess Bau”). The functioning of the institution seems not to have been affected, although an increase in its activities coincided with the change in name. Essentially, the e2-mi2 archive records the activities of the household of the queen. As an economic organization, the primary subject is agricultural. Related activities, such as animal husbandry and irrigation maintenance, would have required storerooms, workshops, and other facilities. Textile production also seems to have been part of the household’s undertakings. On the basis of the e2-mi2 archive, early scholars developed the theory of a “Sumerian temple-state” in which the temple was considered the principal owner of agricultural land, thereby controlling the economy with virtually the entire population in its service.57 In the mid-twentieth century, the model of the Sumerian temple-state was under scrutiny. Its central thesis was challenged through revised calculations of temple landholdings and by demonstrating that state and private sectors of the economy did exist. The very existence of a temple archive had to be revised once the e2-bau institution was recognized as a renaming of the queen’s household. Although the temple practice of collecting commodities and redistributing them to its dependents is no longer viewed as constituting the entire economic enterprise of the Early Dynastic city-state, the temple nevertheless assumed an important role. As the home of the god, the temple was a large household that operated like a secular institution with a variety of properties as well as commercial enterprises.58 Current models maintain that the temple was the dominant social institution at the beginning of the Early Dynastic period and that the palace had emerged as a competing social institution by the end of the Early Dynastic period. The course of this development, however, must be tempered by an understanding of certain temple enterprises as royal enterprises executed behind a temple façade. Essentially, the Early Dynastic ruler controlled a citystate in which the temple institution was a major component.59 The model for the secularization of Early Dynastic rule through military victory has been supplemented in recent years by studies that take into consideration the ideologies of charismatic authority.60 In a study of the Early Dynastic Royal Cemetery at Ur, for example, Cohen argues that the ritual activities surrounding the death of the ruler materialized the palace ideologies of early charismatic rule.61 In a study of the e2-mi2 archive, Beld argues that the religious symbolism of royal ideology represented an important mechanism for social influence in the Early Dynastic city-state of Lagash. Beld further understands the transactions recorded in the e2-mi2 archive as the reflection of a ritual economy through which the Lagash rulers allocated local resources to royal institutions. Rule was legitimized through the temple, the building of which was a royal obligation. The ritual cycle of the temple was under royal patronage and revolved around festivals (ezem) tied to the agricultural calendar, ensuring a

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture royal presence in agricultural production. By extension, charismatic control was exerted over the residents of Lagash, who participated in temple festivals.62 In these endeavors, the temple and the palace were not necessarily distinguishable as separate spheres. To return to temple statues, the reasons surrounding the act of dedication in the Early Dynastic temple are ambiguous. While the details of the argument may be debated, Crawford plausibly suggests that the practice of dedicating statues to Early Dynastic temples was related to the operations of the temple itself. When those functions shifted, the practice of dedicating statues declined. I therefore argue that the dedication of Early Dynastic sculpture should be approached as a reflection of how the ideologies of temple rituals were created and manipulated. The large quantity of temple sculpture surviving from the Early Dynastic period should not be equated with the autonomous motivations of the donor. Rather, the act of dedication cannot be separated from our understanding of the temple institution as an operative force behind the authority of the Early Dynastic city-state. Correspondingly, one plausible theory is that the donor had to do something for – or offer something to – the temple to be able to dedicate a statue to the resident deity. The upper right arm of the statue of the ruler Enmetena, for example, records a land transaction between the ruler and the god Enlil, to whom the statue is also dedicated.63 A few other Early Dynastic statues also ­record land transactions.64 One is the sculpture fragment of Enna-il, king of Kish, which was found in the later fill of the Parthian rebuilding of the Inana Temple at Nippur; the inscription concludes by stating that the ruler set up the statue before Inana.65 The inscriptions on the statues of both Enmetena and Enna-il therefore relate the land transaction to the presence of the statue in a temple. Hansen suggested that such statues were dedicated on the occasion of the land transactions they recorded.66 Among royal sculpture, there is also a correlation between the completion of a temple-building project and the dedication of a statue to the resident deity of that temple. And by the end of the third millennium BC, the dedication of royal statues was regularly connected to donations of continuous offerings for those statues.67 Scholars have compared the land transaction recorded on the statue of Enmetena with the offerings recorded on Statue B of Gudea.68 We therefore might infer that the land transactions recorded on Early Dynastic statues were in some manner also connected to the maintenance of the statue itself. Gelb described this as a quid pro quo arrangement in which the continued benevolence of the deity was in proportion to the continued maintenance of the statue. Behind the façade of dedication, the temple therefore benefitted through the income gained in offerings and land donations.69 There are several points of caution that must be kept in mind regarding this theory. The first is that we assume a sort of trickle-down function in which an

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture action occurring in the royal realm – Enmetena being involved in a land transaction – is applicable to dedications by private individuals. The statue inscribed with a land transaction from the North Temple at Nippur, however, would seem to record the name of a private individual as the seller, although the name itself is illegible (Figure 22, left).70 The same is true for the statue of “Lupad, the field recorder of Umma,” which is the final example of an Early Dynastic statue recording a land transaction.71 Braun-Holzinger suggested that some of the Early Dynastic statues recording land transactions are not dedicatory statues per se. Rather, they belong to a larger group of monuments recording land transactions and known in modern literature as kudurru.72 It is interesting here to note that the statue of Enna-il does not carry a verb of dedication. Rather, the verb is gub, meaning “to stand, set up.” That is, Enna-il set up his statue before Inana.73 Similarly, the North Temple statue inscribed with a land transaction seems not to record an act of dedication (unless it is present but illegible). Regardless, the North Temple statue was found among a hoard of temple statues and assumes the dedicatory guise of a standing frontal figure with clasped hands.74 Were these statues recording land transactions dedicated to temples? For that matter, should the hundreds of other statues found in temples lacking either verbs of dedication or inscriptions altogether be considered statues dedicated to temples? As a visual image, all these statues recording land transactions conform to the dedicatory guise of a frontal human figure with clasped hands, and all are carved from stone. Statues are temple statues because they are found in temples. This is another example why I prefer the term temple statues. Any functions that we attribute to them are mediated by the temple context. That said, the primary method known through which a statue enters a temple is the act of dedication, which does not preclude us from ascribing other functions to statues once they have been dedicated.

Materials and Methods of Manufacturing Early Dynastic Sculpture In addition to the ideological significance of Mesopotamian image-making, there is the material matter of how temple sculpture was manufactured. As Bahrani has observed, our lack of evidence for Mesopotamian artistic production has had the effect of collapsing craftsmanship and patronage into a single category of inquiry.75 When the Early Dynastic rulers of Lagash claim to make their own statues, the outcome is similar. That is, the merging of craftsmanship and patronage occurs also in Early Dynastic texts. In general, both the archaeological record and the textual evidence provide little information regarding Early Dynastic temple sculpture production. The names of sculptors are recorded in Early Dynastic texts, but additional

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture information about these individuals and their activities is rare.76 The base of the Early Dynastic stele of Ushumgal, first published in 1937–39, has a partially legible inscription for which “Enhegal, the maker” (dim2) has been suggested.77 If indeed we accept this translation, it would be a rare example where the name of the craftsman is recorded on the object.78 An Early Dynastic text records allotments for craftsmen of barley, emmer, wool, and other items on the occasion when a silver statue (alan) of queen Sasa of Lagash was installed.79 The items were received by Sasa, who allotted them to the appropriate individuals, including the master sculptor (gal:kid2:alan), smiths (simug), a stonecutter (zadim), and silversmiths (kug-dim2).80 These individuals were likely involved in the manufacture of the statue; Moorey reasoned that the sculptor had created the wax model for casting the statue and that the eyes had been inlaid and the surface further ornamented with additional materials by the other craftsmen.81 Although it is not stated explicitly that the statue was intended for a temple, Sasa’s interaction with craftsmen nevertheless suggests some degree of royal involvement in sculpture production. Perhaps on a literal level, other royal claims to have made statues are to be understood similarly. Since they are dedicated to temples, other Early Dynastic temple statues may have been manufactured under the aegis of the temple.82 Essentially, this is an open question of whether attached or independent craftsmen were responsible for the manufacture of Early Dynastic temple statues. Bär speculates that sculpture fragments retrieved from the general vicinity of the residential area at Ashur might indicate that independent craftsmen were involved in the production of the Ishtar Temple G sculpture.83 Ur III administrative texts indicate that the Inana Temple at Nippur, in general, used independent metalworkers of copper and bronze (simug) as well as gold and silver (kug-dim2). Neither metalworkers nor sculptors, moreover, appear on the temple’s ration rolls.84 The Early Dynastic texts from Fara indicate that a variety of craft specialists in general could be either attached to large institutions or working independently within the private sector.85 We know little about Mesopotamian sculptors  – their training, tools, and workshops  – before the first millennium BC.86 An Early Dynastic sculpture workshop at Khafajah was identified in preliminary excavation reports and was realized upon further excavation to be part of the Nintu Temple.87 Room Q 45:4 in the uppermost level VII of the Nintu Temple was identified as a stone sculpture workshop because the quantity of “variously unfinished parts, evidently intended to be dovetailed on to a broken original [ . . . ] suggested that repairs had been here undertaken.” In addition, some of the fragments were embedded in lumps of bitumen, which “would hold firmly that part upon which the sculptor was at work.”88 Stone hammers were also found in Q 45:4 in level VII as well as in the lower levels V and VI of the same room.89

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture In level VII of the Nintu Temple, only room Q 45:4 was preserved because the later houses of the walled quarter disturbed the level. The plan of the Nintu Temple is based on level VI, and only Q 45:4 was excavated in the earlier levels I–V.90 In all levels, however, Q 45:4 bore the characteristics of a temple sanctuary; it had an altar against the short wall that was accessed by a bent-axis approach through the long wall. Even if, given the subsequent replanning of the entire area, it were plausible that Q 45:4 had ceased its function as a sanctuary and had become a workshop in level VII, it would be significant that a sacred space had been converted. The earlier stone hammers of levels VI and V argue against this interpretation because they provide some continuity in the artifact assemblage; sculpture therefore presumably was worked in the Q 45:4 sanctuary of those levels, too. Although it is possible that these tools originated in a workshop elsewhere and had been deposited in the sanctuary, the presence of unfinished statues and statues awaiting repair (or reassembly, as discussed later), also suggests that sculpture was being worked on-site. The designations of temple sanctuary and workshop need not be mutually exclusive functions. The evidence in sanctuary Q 45:4 of the Nintu Temple could indicate that the manufacture of Early Dynastic temple statues involved some element of participation from the cultic sphere for which they were destined. For ancient Egypt, Meskell and others argue that there was an overlap between the tasks of the sculptor and those of the priest, with neither craftsman nor priest operating as a self-contained category.91 Questions regarding the religious status of craftsmen and the nature of their accompanying rituals similarly were raised by Zettler for administrative records indicating that Ur III craftsmen received gold and silver for the cult statue of Inana at Nippur.92 Firstmillennium BC instructions for repairing a cult statue include the kalû-priest singing while the statue is transferred to a workshop.93 Moorey suggests more generally that “craftsmen in all levels of society would have practised the rites thought to ensure success in their work.”94 In some cultures, artists may be responsible for the existence of a given object, but they also may be agents of others rather than the creative agents of Western artistic production.95 Gell reminds us that the origins of objects can be forgotten or concealed, the link between craftsman and object severed.96 We encounter an intentional concealment in the mīš pî rituals, for example, with the symbolic severing of the craftsmen’s hands. Whether craftsmen were independent operatives or attached to palace or temple institutions may have been obscured also in the Early Dynastic period. When Early Dynastic rulers claim to make their own statues, the involvement of craftsmen is subverted to royal agency. Similarly, when Early Dynastic statues are worked in sanctuaries, the involvement of craftsmen – as well as donors – is subverted to the agency of the temple. One area where a distinction in the production of Early Dynastic temple sculpture seems possible is in terms of medium. Metals and precious stones

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture are associated principally with sculpture of the royal realm. The statue of the ruler Enmetena was carved from diorite, a dark, hard stone imported into Sumer, and the statue of Sasa was silver. The administrative texts of Palace G at Ebla record a quantity of lapis lazuli that was seemingly intended for the head of a royal statue.97 Two diminutive composite statues of female figures were recently excavated from the Administrative Quarter in Palace G at Ebla. One is made of silver foil, steatite, and jasper, while the other is made of gold foil, limestone, steatite, grey-bluish stone, and jasper, and both were formed over a wooden core.98 It is also worthwhile to note that when Gudea of Lagash sat with craftsmen in the Eninnu, they were craftsmen working in metals and precious stones.99 In contrast, Early Dynastic temple statues dedicated by private individuals generally were carved from light-colored stones of relatively low value.100 Use of precious materials, such as lapis lazuli, was limited to inlaid pupils and, in rare instances, eyebrows and nipples. In an analysis of some 115 examples available for study, Meyer found that Early Dynastic temple statues from the Diyala region and Nippur were with few exceptions carved from gypsum.101 Among this dataset is the sculpture excavated from the Q 45:4 sanctuary of Nintu Temple VII. Although systematic analysis has not been conducted, lightcolored stone was also consistently used for the temple sculpture at Mari and Ashur.102 Moorey estimates that less than five percent of Early Dynastic temple statues are made from something other than soft, light-colored stones; a small study of Early Dynastic sculpture at the British Museum confirmed a preference for gypsum specifically.103 This trend continues into the Akkadian period; surviving royal sculpture is carved predominantly from hard, dark stones, such as diorite, but the small number of surviving statues of private individuals are generally of soft, light-colored stones.104 Mesopotamian archives in general are silent about stone sculpture production. Archi suggested that the silence in the administrative texts of Palace G at Ebla regarding stone sculpture production was because the stone from which contemporary statues are typically carved – soft, light-colored – was not considered valuable.105 Although largely unexplored geologically, Sumer itself was not wholly devoid of stone. Despite a general lack of source proveniencing, gypsum is considered a relatively low-value stone because of its local ­availability.106 Gypsum beds are exposed in the cliffs of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; gypsum and other stones were available specifically on the Euphrates River at Samawwa and el Khidr, near the site of Uruk, and farther south near the site of Eridu.107 In the early part of the nineteenth century, gypsum was one of the main exports of the Persian Gulf area.108 According to Frankfort, the gypsum of the Asmar hoard statues “is a kind of veined gypsum which is certainly found in the hills near Tuz Khurmatli, less than 100 miles N of Tell Asmar, and probably nearer by in the eastern foothills.”109

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture Meyer found Nippur to have more low-value stone than sites in the Diyala region, which she suggested had access to a wider range of stone owing to its proximity to both the Tigris River and the pass over the Zagros Mountains into Iran.110 Nevertheless, both in the Diyala region and at Nippur, an equally consistent use of gypsum for temple statues was maintained. In contrast, a variety of imported stone was used for other temple objects. In addition to being carved from gypsum, Early Dynastic stone vessels from temple contexts were carved from slate, calcite, diorite, black marble, schist, and stones with translucent qualities; Early Dynastic mace heads were carved from basalt, calcite, chalcedony, hematite, quartz, lapis lazuli, and other stones.111 When compared to the wide variety of stone used for other Early Dynastic temple objects, the consistent use for Early Dynastic temple statues of gypsum and other soft, lightcolored stones that were locally available would seem intentional. The use of metals and precious stones for the temple sculpture of private individuals is known only to a limited extent. A small number of statues associated primarily with the city-state of Lagash were dedicated by private individuals and are carved from hard, dark stones usually described as diorite.112 Early Dynastic temple statues in precious metals did exist, but few have survived. A standing female found among a hoard of sculpture in the late Early Dynastic level VIIB of the Inana Temple at Nippur is a composite statue; the body is carved from a translucent green stone, and the face is formed from sheet gold originally set over a wooden core (Figure 44). The stone resembles a type that was also used for Early Dynastic seals; Moorey suggests a source in the Zagros Mountains.113 The subject of the uninscribed statue is an open question. Given the textual sources mentioning royal statues in metals and precious stones, the surviving dataset for sculpture retrieved from archaeological excavation is obviously incomplete. It is possible that the temple sculpture of private individuals originally contained a larger proportion of sculpture in metals and precious stones. The surviving evidence, however, is not the reflection of an archaeological record in which only temple sculpture carved from relatively low-value stone was dedicated by relatively low-ranking donors. Inscribed examples of surviving temple sculpture indicate that both rulers and high~g ~a) dedicated sculpture carved from gypsum ranking officials (nu-banda3, sag and other soft, light-colored stones.114 Examples of the Early Dynastic temple statues of the most elite donors therefore have survived. The available evidence demonstrates that gypsum statues were dedicated by a full range of donors. Winter identifies three categories of aesthetic experience, encompassing making, appearance, and affect, which are applicable to a range of visual imagery throughout the history of the ancient Near East.115 These categories are attested in textual sources almost exclusively for objects of metals and precious stones. References to alan/salmu, specifically, include media such as gold, silver, copper, lapis lazuli, and carnelian. The value attached to metals and precious stones

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44. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic temple statue of a standing female figure with clasped hands (translucent green stone, gold, lapis lazuli, and shell). Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 66190. Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 184).

remains consistent throughout Mesopotamian history. Expertise in skill of manufacture is often emphasized, sometimes through comparative judgments such as when a salmu is said to be a “surpassing work.”116 Vitality, allure, and radiance are properties ascribed to salmu of metals and precious stones.117 The tradition of aesthetic responses to metals and precious stones first appears in reference to Early Dynastic royal building projects. For example, the ruler Enanatum I of

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture Lagash decorated the Eana of Inana with gold and silver, making it “surpass” (diri) the temples “in all other lands.”118 The aesthetic responses recorded in Mesopotamian texts do not mention either the media or the craftsmanship of objects carved from relatively lowvalue, locally available gypsum and other soft, light-colored stones. At the same time, rare surviving examples of Early Dynastic temple sculpture in metals and precious stones do have parallels in style and iconography with gypsum sculpture. The gold face of the composite statue from the Inana Temple has good stylistic parallels among the gypsum sculpture with which it had been hoarded and buried.119 In contrast, however, the pattern of the garment is carved on the translucent green stone with a relatively high degree of detail, while the majority of garments among the gypsum sculpture from the same context are plain.120 According to the paradigm that traces a stylistic development from abstract to realistic, the detailed articulation of the tufted garment of the figure carved from translucent green stone would classify the statue as “realistic” and therefore later than those statues in the hoard with plain garments. However, the detailed carving also represents a level of craftsmanship corresponding to the relative value of the stone, which had to be imported to Sumer. This would conform to the aesthetic responses in which precious stones and metals – also imported to Sumer – are treated with skilled craftsmanship. The difference in the treatment of the Inana Temple statues then would be consequential to medium rather than chronology. For the Early Dynastic period, specialized craft production is often examined vis-à-vis the legitimization and perpetuation of elite status. Van de Mieroop asserts that a desire to obtain luxury items was a major factor contributing to foreign contacts.121 According to the predominant model, the Early Dynastic elite class sought foreign luxury items – and raw materials – as a means of distinguishing themselves. The elite class and the centralized institutions of complex societies are therefore usually identified as the elements controlling both raw materials and the labor of craftsmen working on luxury items. In such a model defined according to the value of the medium, attached craftsmen produce luxury items whose distribution is controlled, and independent craftsmen produce utilitarian goods that are widely distributed.122 In terms of Early Dynastic temple sculpture, the production of sculpture in metal and precious stones hypothetically would have been closely monitored by a centralized institution; in contrast, statues of local stone hypothetically would have been widely distributed. What little evidence we have for the production of Early Dynastic temple sculpture in metal and precious stones does suggests connections with royal institutions. In this context, royal involvement could be understood as an example of the close connections between the temple and the palace as overlapping spheres of authority. For the Early Dynastic city-state of Lagash, as noted, the

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture cultic aspects of royal ideology represented an important mechanism for social influence and formed part of the ritual economy through which local resources were allocated to royal institutions.123 In contrast, gypsum temple sculpture does not contribute to an elite manifestation of wealth and status through an association with foreign luxury goods. In contrast with the model in which statues of local stone hypothetically would have been widely distributed, the evidence from the Nintu Temple instead suggests that gypsum sculpture production was likewise closely monitored by a central institution: the temple. A common perception about Early Dynastic stone statues is that they are the most expensive type of temple dedication. The variation in style and quality of carving is explained by a romanticized notion of the struggling emerging craftsmen in resource-poor Sumer who had to make due with shoddy materials and had no opportunities for honing their craft. Yet this perception is deficient because the negative aesthetic judgments (summarized in Chapter 2) adhering to this mindset fail to take into account that the majority of Early Dynastic sculpture must be approached as something exterior to the aesthetic value of metal and precious stones recorded in texts. The sanctuary and its cultic installations as well as other important parts of the Early Dynastic temple were plastered with gypsum. We therefore might ascribe a special significance to temple statues of gypsum, despite the relatively low value of the stone. That is, gypsum may have been viewed as a highly appropriate medium for temple sculpture. In addition, the frequent application of gypsum plaster to the sanctuary and its installations suggests ritual renewal and purification, qualities that we might ascribe to gypsum in general. All temple sculpture, moreover, was joined in perpetuity with the temple after dedication and never left its sacred space. The statue remained an eternal possession of the temple and literally was joined to its very fabric through hoarding and burial and being built into mudbrick architecture and cultic installations. A temple statue of gypsum might have borne connotations that prefigured this fate. Finally, as discussed in Chapter 5, the relative value of gypsum for temple sculpture must be considered in relation to the evidence for image-making in media such as clay. As Moorey has observed, what makes sculpture of any type of stone valuable is its orbit within greater organizations.124 The value of Early Dynastic temple sculpture potentially was obtained by the privilege accorded through access, with the temple institution either permitting or denying the act of dedication. This would correspond with the idea discussed earlier that something was required of the donor before he or she could dedicate a statue. This model moves away from the donor as an autonomous agent of temple dedication. Instead, the statue becomes a material witness to an act of dedication, its existence dependent on the temple for which it was destined.

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The Subjects and Objects of Ritual in the Life of Sculpture Winter suggested that standing and seated postures could distinguish the statues of Gudea as either subjects or objects of cultic activity.125 The statues showing Gudea standing would have been placed before a seated deity as objects of dedication, thus paralleling contemporary cylinder seals showing worshipers who approach seated deities. In contrast, the statues of Gudea seated would themselves have been the focus of worship or cultic activity.126 That Statue B of Gudea seated was dedicated to the Eninnu is made explicit in the inscription. Offerings of beer, bread, flour, and groats are also recorded in the inscription ~” (literally “place of along with the request that Statue B “stand at the ki-a-nag water-drinking”), where libations were made to the deceased.127 As Winter observed, whether a statue of Gudea functioned as the subject or object of cultic activities was not necessarily mutually exclusive.128 Some of the standing statues of Gudea also received offerings, indicating that they, too, were potentially both subjects and objects of cultic activity.129 In material studies, traditional dialectics such as subject and object are recast instead as a “co-presence” or a “co-mingling,” transcending their dualism.130 The mutually constructive relationship between subjects and objects imbues things with agency, “the capacity to initiate causal events,” thus participating in the construction and shaping of human experience.131 References to alan in the e2-mi2 archive at Lagash provide an opportunity to collapse the subject/object dialectic by examining the ritual offerings surrounding a small number of Early Dynastic temple statues. Although the primary subject of the e2-mi2 archive is agricultural, some 300 texts deal directly with ritual activities undertaken when the queens of Lagash traveled to different parts of the city-state for various monthly festivals (ezem) tied to the agricultural cycle. The texts are comprised primarily of lists, which record the quantity and type of offering(s) followed by the intended recipient(s). Included among the lists are offerings of flour, beer, wine, oil, dates, figs, fish, and sheep/goats that were made to deities, places, and objects, including statues (alan). The texts typically conclude by recording the name of the individual who registered the offerings, the occasion for making the offerings, and the name and regnal year of the ruler.132 For example, tablet DP 53 records offerings made by queen Baranamtara during the malt-eating festival of Nanshe.133 The offerings were made in the third year of the reign of Lugalanda, when Baranamtara was the head of the e2-mi2 institution. During the festival, Baranamtara traveled to the city of Nina, where offerings were made to deities and cultic objects associated with Nanshe. These included dates and oil offered to a group of deities  – understood by

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture some as statues of deities – and objects, including a musical instrument, a stele, and an alan of Urnanshe, the earliest-attested ruler of Early Dynastic Lagash. These offerings were followed by a separate offering of eight units of dates and oil made to “the alan of the inner room, of which there are eight” (alan e2šag4-ga 8(diš)-ba-kam, literally “eight of them it is”).134 The term e2-šag4 may denote “inner quarters” or “inner room,” although not necessarily the sanctuary proper as is sometimes assumed.135 In the previous year, the same statues had received offerings from Baranamtara on the first day of the same festival, and in the sixth year (?) of the reign of Lugalanda, the same statues received offerings on the third day of the barley-eating festival of Nanshe.136 On the latter occasion, a statue (alan) named “Nanshe is the mother of Lugalanda” (dNanše-Ama-Lugal-an-da) also received ­offerings.137 Analogous with the name of the statue of the ruler Enmetena (“Enmetena whom Enlil loves”) and other statues, the inclusion of the name of the ruler and the deity within the name of the statue would indicate that this is a statue of Lugalanda dedicated to the goddess Nanshe. Lugalanda was succeeded by Uru’inimgina, and his queen, Sasa, succeeded Baranamtara as head of the e2-mi2. Tablet DP 54 records offerings made by Sasa during the festival of the courtyard, which took place during the first day of the festival of Bau.138 The festival of Bau revolved around the patron deity of the e2-mi2 institution and was likely the most important festival in the cultic cycle. Among the many offerings, oil and dates were offered to a statue of Baranamtara and a statue of Sasa. The offerings were made in the third year of the reign of Uru’inimgina.139 This was the same year in which Sasa disbursed items to craftsmen for her silver statue and made payments also to individuals taking part in the funerary rituals of Baranamtara.140 During the fifth year of the reign of Uru’inimgina, Sasa also made offerings during the malt-eating festival of Ningirsu. Tablet DP 66 records three days of festival activities in the city of Lagash.141 Offerings were made to deities, places, and objects. On the third day, an alan of Lugalanda received an offering of oil. The text is poorly preserved and difficult to read, but “never [ceases in his efforts] for the Girnun” (Gir2-nun-še3 nu-[kuš2]) is legible as part of the name of the statue.142 The name resembles that of a statue of Lugalanda recorded in a royal inscription: “Lugalanda-nuhunga never [ceases in his efforts] for the Gir[nun]” (Lugal-an-da-nu-hun-ga2 Gi[r2-nu]n-še3 nu-[kuš2]).143 Given that we accept the unique names of dedicatory objects as fundamental to their existence, the names of the statues of Lugalanda repeating “never ceases in his efforts for the Girnun” would appear to be one and the same.144 Arguing for broad distinctions in the function of temple sculpture, MayerOpificius defined a northern Mesopotamian sphere in which the temple statues at Ashur, Mari, and Tell Chuera were the recipients of cultic offerings to

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture ancestors. In contrast, a southern Mesopotamian sphere was defined in which temple statues from the Diyala region as well as Sumer served a purely dedicatory function by the end of the Early Dynastic period.145 At Mari, for example, containers inserted in the floors of some of the temples were interpreted as receptacles for libations made before the statues of deceased individuals. The majority of Mari sculpture was not found in situ, however, so this connection is speculative. Nevertheless, the names of three rulers – Iplul-il, Iku-Shamagan, and Ishqi-Mari – are recorded among the dedicatory inscriptions on sculpture at Mari.146 Those statues recording the names of Iplul-il and Iku-Shamagan were dedicated by private individuals; the inscriptions begin by naming the ruler. Because these rulers would not all be ruling at the same time, one possibility is that these statues of private individuals remained in circulation attesting to both the dedicatory act of the donor and a (royal?) ancestral cult. The evidence in the e2-mi2 archive for offerings made to the statues of deceased rulers at Lagash would suggest that such practices are not a northern Mesopotamian phenomenon. The ruler Urnanshe, for example, was deceased when offerings were made by Baranamtara to his alan, as was the ruler Lugalanda when offerings were made by Sasa to his alan. I therefore find no reason to make regional distinctions in functions that align temple sculpture in northern Mesopotamia with an ancestral cultic function and temple sculpture in southern Mesopotamia with dedication proper. As discussed earlier, it is not necessary to isolate statues as either subjects or objects of cultic activities, for statues could fulfill multiple functions. As the discussion here makes clear, some texts in the e2-mi2 archive record offerings to alan specifically. Other offerings in the e2-mi2 archive are recorded for individuals and deities unaccompanied by the Sumerian term alan.147 For example, a small group of texts record offerings for individuals described as en-en-ne2-ne (“lordly ones,” “ancestors”).148 In addition, other tablets record deliveries of garments for individuals described as both ancestors and ghosts (gidim).149 Because the dedication of statues plays such a prominent role in the cultic practices of the Early Dynastic temple, it has been suggested that these are references to ancestors and ghosts as they are embodied in ­statues.150 Tablet DP 77, for example, records garments for en-en-ne2-ne during the festival of Bau in the third regnal year of Uru’inimgina.151 The first four individuals listed are described as those who “leave” (e-ta-e3). The fifth individual is described as one who “does not leave the temple” (e2-ta nu-ta-e3). It has been suggested that these refer to statues, with the first four taken outside the temple on occasions such as processions.152 It is further assumed that the physical act of wearing jewelry and garments required the anthropomorphic form of a statue. At the same time, the delivery of such items to inanimate objects is also attested.153 As a rule, deliveries

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture of textiles recorded for deceased members of the court in the administrative texts of Palace G at Ebla also do not mention statues explicitly.154 However, a text listing textiles among the funerary offerings for Rabatum, the queen of the ruler Irkab-Damu of Ebla, includes additional offerings for the “alan of Tinud, woman of the king, for the tomb.”155 It cannot be assumed a priori that references to ancestors are references to statues, but it is one plausible possibility. One must recall here, too, that the inclusion of the term alan was not a necessary component even of an Early Dynastic dedicatory inscription because only a small number of inscriptions include alan or its Akkadian equivalent salmu. In the temple context, the alan of deceased individuals originally may have been dedicated during the lifetime of the individual represented. According to the royal inscription, the statue of Lugalanda was made (tud) by Lugalanda. According to the offerings administered by Sasa, the statue was still in the temple after the death of Lugalanda. The offerings made by Sasa to her own statue and those made by Baranamtara to the statue of Lugalanda named “Nanshe is the mother of Lugalanda” further indicate that statues were also the recipients of offerings during the life of the individual represented. An Early Dynastic statue dedicated during the life of the donor therefore had the potential of being also a statue that was the focus of cultic activities both during and after the life of the donor. Both Selz and Cohen interpret the offerings to deceased individuals of the Lagash royal family (or their statues) as evidence of a royal cult that extended beyond the remembrance of ancestors.156 Sasa made offerings to the statue of Baranamtara on the occasion of the most important festival of the e2-mi2 institution. Because Sasa became head of the e2-mi2 institution after Baranamtara, the offerings may have been related specifically to office. It is possible that the silver statue of Sasa was related to her succession to head of the e2-mi2 institution because all three events (death of Baranamtara, installation of the statue of Sasa, and offerings to the statues of Sasa and Baranamtara) occurred in the third regnal year of Uru’inimgina.157 Conversely, it might also be that Sasa made the offerings to the statues when Baranamtara was still alive although the festival for which the offerings were recorded seems to have occurred at the end of the year. In the e2-mi2 archive, offerings made to alan are located in the temple context. Although only a small number of alan are mentioned overall, the offerings to statues of deceased individuals apply to only a portion of the offerings recorded for alan. These offerings for the deceased were likely one element within a larger scope of practices surrounding the deceased that had additional elements related to funerary and domestic contexts.158 Similarly, as the offerings for alan of living individuals suggest, offerings for alan of deceased individuals were one element within a larger practice of offerings for temple statues. Offerings therefore are one of the activities in which statues dedicated to temples participate.

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture The evidence discussed provides a window into a small number of Early Dynastic temple statues located in the city-state of Lagash. Whether these practices should be viewed as restricted to Lagash or are applicable to Early Dynastic temple statues in general is an open question. Given the composite view of temple practices currently delineated in the scholarly literature, it does seem reasonable to suppose that some Early Dynastic temple statues among the hundreds of surviving examples were the focus of similar activities. In other words, temple statues were the recipients of offerings made by visitors to temples. In Chapter 5, I will consider this idea through the specific example of the Asmar sculpture hoard. In imagining the practice of making offerings to temple statues, the offerings to anonymous statues – described only as alan without naming the individual represented – must be recalled. To my mind, they suggest that an alan could be the recipient of offerings simply because it was an alan and not because of whom it represented. Both Lambert and Selz describe a functional or relative divinity whereby the association of an object with a deity made that object itself to some degree divine.159 Perhaps this suggests one explanation why alan were important even after the link to their donor had been lost. The notion that alan could be significant without a record of the individual represented is also suggested by their rededication to other temples after battle. After sacking the cities of Kish and Anshak, for example, the ruler Enshakushana of Uruk dedicated the alan, precious metals, lapis lazuli, timber, and treasures of those cities to the Temple of Enlil at Nippur.160 Essentially, these are alan that now represent unknown donors identified only by the city-state from which they originated. Presumably, they are valuable because they are the alan – statues of frontal human figures with clasped hands – of the defeated city-state. Rededicated to the Temple of Enlil at Nippur, however, the link to the donor proper would have been lost. The offerings administered by the queens of Lagash also highlight the extent to which temple statues were maintained external to the individual donor. Only in the one example of Sasa did an individual make an offering to the self as embodied in the temple statue. Offerings to statues therefore could occur outside the link between donor and temple statue. As such, offerings to statues formed a social practice. The offerings to statues described only as alan, which received the same types of offerings as deceased rulers, suggest that uninscribed statues were not necessarily treated differently from inscribed statues. It is plausible that all these offerings – to the alan of known personages either living or deceased and to the alan of unnamed individuals – are related conceptually. As representations of the donor in the house of the divine, temple statues act as intermediaries between human and divine realms.161 Similarly, temple statues assume an intermediary function when they form the focal point for offerings that mediate between the living and the deceased. In both instances,

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture this is something that only the temple statue – and not the individuals themselves who are represented by the statue – can do. Only statues can function as intermediaries in the situations described here. As an extension of this, the function of the statue as an intermediary can be extended to that of an intermediary between the temple visitor and the divine. According to the textual evidence, this is possible even when the temple visitor is not the donor of the statue and even when the temple visitor does not know the identity of the donor. It would seem, then, that the visual appearance of a statue of a frontal figure with clasped hands signaled it as an alan regardless of whether it was inscribed and regardless of whether the identity of its donor was known. Following this line of reasoning, the temple statue was the focus of cultic activities only because it was identifiable as an alan: a statue of a frontal human figure with clasped hands. For this reason, I asserted that the appearance of the Early Dynastic temple alan is critical for an understanding of its life inside the temple. As also discussed previously, one reason statues were dedicated to temples likely had to do with issues of access. Embodying the essence of the donor, statues dedicated to temples could go where the donor could not. However, the social practice of making offerings to alan and a variety of other objects was one occasion upon which the temple was entered. According to the e2-mi2 archive, statues were the recipients of offerings when the queens of Lagash visited temples on the occasion of festivals. The textual evidence would therefore support what archaeological context has already suggested: statues were not necessarily sequestered in the most sacred parts of the temple – the sanctuary – where access was limited to the few who catered to the needs of the god. Rather, statues were available to receive offerings in more accessible parts of the temple; they were encountered by an audience larger than that of solely the divine. The primary methodology for the study of Early Dynastic temple statues consists of attempts to relate the alan back to the donor as a representation or essence of that individual on the basis of the ideological aspects of Mesopotamian image-making. References to the alan of unnamed donors demonstrate that it was possible for the link between donor and statue to become lost. In the focus on a life of Early Dynastic sculpture that relates only to the donor, a crucial element of Early Dynastic temple practices is potentially negated. The search for the identity of the donor of a statue denies the embodied experience of Early Dynastic sculpture. The potential extension of the life of the statue – beyond the donor – could be one significant factor in the persistence of abstraction in temple sculpture. In other words, the desire for a stable, recognizable form that resembled an alan more than it resembled any given human donor was one important reason for abstraction in Early Dynastic temple statues. Forming a distinct category within the visual culture of Early Dynastic dedicatory practices, the temple statue was easily identifiable by appearance. As a consistent,

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture material form, the temple statue carved with abstract forms potentially mediated social interactions through time and space and among the realms of living, deceased, and divine.

The Death of Sculpture? In addition to the practices discussed, revolving around the life of the Early Dynastic temple statue, an emphasis on the material, physical form of a stone statue can aid our understanding of the death of sculpture. That is, when did an Early Dynastic statue finish serving its purpose? In one view, the Early Dynastic temple statue exhausted its life cycle once the donor or the donor’s family could no longer provide the requisite maintenance or offerings, at which point the statue awaited disposal through hoarding and burying.162 Yet it also was possible for statues to be maintained in temples after the connection between donor identity and statue had been severed. In this section, I consider an additional manner in which the life of an Early Dynastic temple statue could extend beyond a one-to-one correspondence with a single donor. As would be expected, many more sculpture fragments than complete statues are retrieved in excavation. Yet the frequent presence of drilled holes and the frequent use of bitumen as an adhesive on Early Dynastic temple statues suggest a distinct pattern that cannot be satisfied by the usual explanations of accidental breakage and subsequent repair. Drilled holes are most commonly located at the neck for the attachment of the head, the underside of the skirt for the attachment of the feet, and the waist for the attachment of the torso to the skirt. Sometimes drilled holes are found also at other areas, such as the middle of the skirt (Figure 45). Drilled holes may be accompanied by traces of bitumen, which can also be present at these locations independently as an adhesive for joining two parts of a statue. Around half of the statues and statue fragments from level VIIB of the Inana Temple at Nippur, for example, bear drilled holes and/ or bitumen. A similar ratio can be observed for certain contexts in the Diyala temples, such as the Nintu Temple at Khafajah.163 In Nintu Temple VI, for example, twelve of some twenty-five statues and statue fragments have drilled holes and/or bitumen at the neck, underside of the skirt, and other locations. According to concerns expressed by various excavators, some Early Dynastic temple statues retrieved as sculpture fragments likely were joined incorrectly. Among the Diyala sculpture, for example, Frankfort observed that the heads and other body parts of most female figures and some male figures are disproportionate to one another.164 In these instances, Frankfort objected to attempts to create joins and asserted that a number of statues in the Iraq Museum “have been completed by joining heads and bodies which are not authenticated as belonging to the same figure at all.”165 After reexamining some of the sculpture from Ishtar Temple G at Ashur, Bär concluded likewise that some statues had

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45. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic stone statues assembled from multiple pieces. Left to right: Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 66164, IM 66183; The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago, A31494. Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 162, 7 N 205, 7 N 181).

been restored from fragments that were incorrectly joined.166 The unpublished field notes for the excavation of the Inana Temple at Nippur indicate similar concerns.167 Drilled holes and joins are usually taken as indicators of repair. If this were the case, then the majority of Early Dynastic sculpture was broken and repaired at some point. An alternative to interpreting drilled holes as evidence of ancient repair is that these statues represent composite sculpture assembled from various pieces of stone. As Moorey observed, the presence of drilled holes does not necessarily imply secondary or repair work because they were, at times, evidently part of the original construction of the sculpture.168 In the Diyala sculpture, Frankfort similarly conceded that some temple statues were assembled originally by means of the drilled holes.169 Some sculpture fragments joined by means of drilled holes are carved from different pieces of stone. In the Inana Temple at Nippur, the fragmentary base joined to a statue of a standing male figure, for example, is carved from a different stone than the body, but the two pieces were found together and form a seamless join.170 The excavators suggested that another statue of a standing male figure from the Inana Temple was “composed of fragments of another statue.”171 The head, including the hair and beard, of the smallest standing male figure in the Asmar hoard had been carved from a different piece of stone than that of the body and had been attached by means of a drilled hole.172

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture A composite sculpture tradition involving metals and precious stones is well attested for the Early Dynastic period. Early Dynastic temple sculpture potentially had a composite aspect but maintained a consistent use of soft, lightcolored stone, usually gypsum, as the medium. The evidence for the composite construction of Early Dynastic temple statues begs the question of whether there was a practice of re-using the parts of statues that had been taken out of circulation in the temple. That is, was composite construction, by which temple statues were assembled from component parts, practiced in order to facilitate the use, disassembly, and then reuse of temple sculpture? The Ur III administrative archive, for example, attests to the practice in the Inana Temple of recycling temple objects. This was probably the fate of metal objects received by Ur III craftsmen for the cult statue of Inana, presumably to be melted down and applied to the statue in some fashion as part of its renewal.173 The Palace G texts at Ebla documenting the annual receipt of silver for the head of Kura, the city god – likely for the ritual renewal of the cult statue – perhaps suggest a similar practice.174 If we accept such a practice for metal statues, then we must consider the possibility of a similar practice for stone statues as well. Accidental breakage would have a random pattern. Yet almost half of all Early Dynastic sculpture retrieved in the Diyala temples, for example, is comprised of heads. Roughly half of the sculpture in Sin Temple VIII was comprised of heads (sixteen of thirty-two). Specifically, the Q 42:7 locus of Sin Temple VIII yielded principally heads (eight of nine).175 Eleven of some twenty-five examples of sculpture from Nintu Temple VI consist of heads. Four of the six pieces of sculpture from the P 45:52 sanctuary of Nintu Temple VI specifically were heads; three of the heads were buried in the altar.176 A female head also was found on the altar of the M 14:2 sanctuary in the Shara Temple.177 The only sculpture in the round retrieved from both Square Temple I and Square Temple II is in each level one head.178 In general, the disproportionate number of abandoned heads in Early Dynastic temples evokes practices associated throughout Mesopotamian history with clay figurines. The heads of prehistoric clay figurines, for example, were systematically broken from the body.179 At the sixth-millennium BC site of Choga Mami, this may have been facilitated by forming the heads as separate pieces that were inserted into the body on a cylindrical peglike neck.180 A similar practice was evidenced at late sixth-millennium BC Tell Sabi Abyad, where the excavators suggested that the heads of clay figurines were manufactured separately and attached by means of a hole in the neck.181 The separation of the head from the body in the clay figurine tradition continued throughout greater Mesopotamian history. At the Early Bronze Age site of Umm el-Marra, in part contemporary with Early Dynastic Sumer, the removal of the head was typical for the corpus of some 121 figurines.182 The destruction of clay figurines is generally seen as a deliberate attempt to kill their potency; the efficacy of

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture second- and first-millennium BC magical texts also depended on the destruction of the clay figurines required for their implementation.183 Because of their lengthy chronological span, wide geographical distribution, and many variations, clay figurines likely did not have a single meaning. The large number of deliberately broken female figurines from prehistoric contexts have been interpreted as material witnesses to contractual obligations owing to their association with other administrative materials such as tokens and sealings.184 It should be recalled here that the temple statue itself has been interpreted as a type of contractual obligation: the continued benevolence of the deity was in proportion to the continued maintenance of the statue, with the temple as the ultimate benefactor.185 The disassembly of the head of the temple statue then could be understood as the ending of the obligation. There is some evidence among Early Dynastic temple statues for deliberate breakage. Because the black bitumen coloring in the hair was so well preserved, the Diyala excavators suggested that one of the heads found at a level below Square Temple I had been deliberately broken.186 When a pile of sculpture fragments in the courtyard of Sin Temple IX was sorted out, “some of them could be fitted together so as to form nearly complete statues.”187 Rather than deliberate breakage for disposal, however, the concentrations of heads left behind in Diyala temples may represent a deliberate disassembling of sculpture. In the Early Dynastic temple sculpture tradition, it is possible that the disassembly of a temple statue permitted  – in both ideological and practical terms  – the subsequent reuse of the fragments. The addition of a new head – which would explain the concentration of heads left behind in Diyala temples – might have been sufficient for creating a new statue for a new donor. How did assembling and disassembling affect the sense of the alan as a presence of the donor in the statue? Cult statues, for example, were an impermanent abode of the divine. When a cult statue was damaged, the divine presence could be withdrawn.188 Late third-millennium BC texts refer to provisions for performing the mouth-opening ritual annually on the statues of Gudea.189 These references would suggest that this ritual was not performed just once when the statue was initially consecrated. Rather, the ritual was repeated at intervals. The renewal of the statue potentially was an iterative practice in which an aspect of the individual represented entered the statue repeatedly. Perhaps a reuse of the temple statue for multiple donors could be obtained similarly. It should be noted also that the disposal of sculpture within the temple might not have been limited to hoarding and/or leaving sculpture behind in occupation levels. In these instances, the raw material of the temple statue was recycled for other functions. In the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab, for example, small fragments of sculpture were embedded into the plastered floor of the sanctuary along with thousands of beads as well as amulets and fragments of inlays, forming a sort of

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture pavement.190 In the Inana Temple at Nippur, stone sculpture fragments built into an installation for liquids would have facilitated drainage.191 Other sculpture fragments show evidence of burning. The floor around the pile of fragmentary sculpture and other stone objects in the Sin Temple IX courtyard bore traces of burning, as did some of the objects themselves. Because no other part of Sin Temple IX showed signs of burning, that a fire had destroyed the temple, as the excavators posited, seems unlikely.192 Evidence of burning was also found on the statue of a male figure and the statue of a female figure that had been “carefully placed” in front of the southeast corner of one of the altars in Nintu Temple VI at Khafajah.193 Both of these statues were missing the head at the time of the burning, which the excavators suggested had been deliberate. The heat of the fire was so intense that it baked the nearby floor and wall, and the statue of the male figure had been reduced to powder. In addition to effectively destroying the sculpture, the burning of gypsum statues would have allowed for their subsequent reuse as plaster. The walls, floors, and cultic furniture of the sanctuary as well as other important parts of the Early Dynastic temple were plastered with gypsum. Gypsum plaster is created through a process of calcination in which gypsum is heated, causing the structure of the stone to break down. When the resulting dry powder is mixed with water, it forms a soft paste that eventually hardens. It is possible that sculpture was reused – made into gypsum plaster – in much the same manner that statues of precious metals were melted down for reuse. Gypsum plaster was also sometimes used to model parts of Early Dynastic sculpture, thus creating a link between the stone statue and its subsequent reuse as plaster.194 For example, the hair at the back of the head of a statue of a standing female figure from a grave at Ur – a rare example of a statue found in a context outside the temple – was modeled from plaster.195 These links with gypsum plaster reinforce the special significance, discussed earlier, of the gypsum stone in relation to the temple context. How do we factor this evidence for the life cycle of Early Dynastic temple statues into an evaluation of Early Dynastic attitudes toward sculpture? How do we know when a statue as a material object, a carved stone, had served its purpose? To my mind, the evidence presented problematizes current approaches to style vis-à-vis an emphasis on “original appearance.” If we accept that many statues were in effect repeatedly remade over the course of their life cycle, then we emphasize an original appearance that in reality may have delineated only a relatively short period of time. The reuse of sculpture in composite construction therefore suggests a type of circulation within the temple that moves beyond the notion of the heirloom, which denotes an object held past its point of manufacture. The practice of assembling sculpture speaks rather to the more practical purpose of meeting the supply and demand of a donor practice. Such a practice

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46. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic stone statue of a standing female figure with blue beads (from a beaded necklace?) wedged between the shoulders and hair. Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 66173. Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 164).

dovetails with the potential temple control over the production of sculpture raised earlier. It would be pertinent here also to point out that temple statues likely varied from their present appearance through the use of additional media that have not survived. For example, some Early Dynastic statues were painted. The face and hands of the statue of a female figure from the grave at Ur, for example, still bore traces of red paint when it was first excavated, and the hair and the tufted garment had traces of black paint.196 Traces of red paint were preserved on the plant held in the hand of a seated female figure from the Inana Temple at Nippur, as was black paint on the exposed edge of the left arm.197 Offerings of textiles for the alan of Tinud at Ebla, discussed earlier, also suggest that statues could be dressed in garments. Some statues of female figures were also adorned with jewelry that has not survived. Several statues of female figures have ears pierced to receive earrings, now missing.198 Blue beads wedged between the hair and either shoulder of a female figure from the Inana Temple at Nippur are likely the remains of a necklace originally worn by the statue (Figure 46).199

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture As discussed in the previous section, the desire for a stable, recognizable form that resembled an alan more than it resembled any given human donor was one important reason for abstraction in Early Dynastic temple statues. In addition to potentially mediating social interactions through time and space and among the realms of living, deceased, and divine, the consistent use of abstraction in the Early Dynastic sculpture corpus potentially had a practical aspect in facilitating the steady supply of statues to an elite donor sphere. While this hypothesis can be problematized vis-à-vis the ideological aspect of the alan, the reality is that we already accept such practices as they occur among cult statues as well as other temple statues in metal and metal objects in general. Rather than a singular definitive death of sculpture, a plausible alternative is that Early Dynastic temple statues were continually remade, thus prolonging the life of the statue beyond the representation claimed by any one single donor.

Conclusion: Corporeal Aesthetics and Early Dynastic Temple Sculpture Drawing on parallels with Hindu practice, Winter has explored the notion that vision, as a cognitive and symbolic act, is the primary path to the experience of Mesopotamian cultic practices.200 Hindu practices involving the embodiment of religious images and the worship of cult statues as the earthly vehicle for the divine have also been examined by Meskell in relation to Egyptian practice.201 In the Hindu worship of the divine image by taking darshan, a blessing is conveyed through the eyes. The reception of darshan is thus contingent on the transitive act of taking.202 Indian philosophers viewed the eye as sending out beams or rays through the air, which touched the objects of sight. A materialistic conception of seeing thus creates a physical bridge between one being and another. In sum, darshan denotes “a process of seeing and being seen in which vision acquires a tactility that draws devotee and deity together in an intimate reciprocity.”203 Although both Winter and Meskell recognize that Mesopotamian and Egyptian practices differ in significant ways from Hindu practices, it is the seeming cross-cultural applicability of darshan that interests me here. Pinney argues that darshan can be found outside its cultural instantiation in Hindu practice. It represents a mode of seeing that is “less than universal but more than global” (original emphasis) in its “desire for embodied reciprocity through vision.”204 Ultimately, Pinney adopts a “corporeality of aesthetics,” which constitutes a bodily engagement with images and articulates the body in relation to images.205 Efforts to articulate the cross-cultural applicability of darshan reflect a larger shift in the study of images. It is the considerably wider application of aesthetics that is being reclaimed. Buck-Morss traces the meaning of aesthetics back

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture through Kant to the ancient Greek word aisthitikos (for that which is “perceptive by feeling”).206 Even in the Enlightenment, Baumgarten had defined aesthetics as a discourse of the body traversing human sensation.207 Essentially, this is a shift away from a linguistic paradigm to a material agency of the visual, from a Kantian disinterested aesthetic to a sensual corporeality of cultural practice. Freedberg claimed that all our theorizing about art is an evasion, or repression, of our responses to it, and he traced a discursive thread through the performative aspect of visual culture.208 The animated cult statue in Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures stood at the beginning of Freedberg’s study of the psychological response to images. When Mitchell famously asked What do pictures want?, he was suggesting that the desires and demands of images are in a sense autonomous. His pictorial turn, in which images are approached in and of themselves, was in essence an animation of the image.209 When the Israelites turned aside from the invisible god to a visible idol, claimed Mitchell, they, too, engaged in a pictorial turn.210 Gell most fully displaced meaning and communication by the notion of doing, which is theorized as an object having agency.211 Gell foregrounded the performative dimension of artifacts and used the example of the rituals surrounding the care and maintenance of the Egyptian cult statue to make the point that “[t]he essence of idolatry is that it permits real physical interactions [emphasis original] to take place between persons and divinities.”212 In the works cited here, images from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and other cultures are used to demonstrate the possibility that artworks in general have agency. In some respects, all artworks are theorized as being akin to ancient Near Eastern cult statues when agency is ascribed to them because the animation of cult statues in ancient Near Eastern cultures is fundamental for the theory of agency itself. Yet agency has a literal application when images are animated by cultural beliefs and practices. What happens when this paradigm collapses back onto itself, when the theories produced for artworks are repackaged for the original cultures that suggested such theories? What happens is that the limits of agency are contained. Gell considered images employed in acts of piety, which would include Early Dynastic temple statues, as distinct. They engage in symbolic interactions rather than in the real physical interactions that occur in the activities surrounding the animated cult statue. Winter distinguishes between agency ascribed in the analysis of a given work and agency ascribed by cultural practice.213 The statue only becomes autonomous, Winter argues, when the agency of the donor has been transferred by ritual into the statue, thus creating an empowering link. Meskell writes of the seduction of the magical potential of objects as actors, of boundaries collapsing when the cult statue is considered living. But humans still create object worlds, we are reminded, no matter “how subject-like objects become.”214 Regardless of whether we accept Early Dynastic statues as animated, we do ascribe the qualities of an individual to them when we examine their functions

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The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture within aspects of materiality. The issue then becomes one of where to draw the borders. Rather than reify such delineations, I would prefer to point out that our reluctance to consider the delineation at all may reflect the particular meaning agency assumes when it is applied back to ancient Near Eastern practice. Regardless of whether we accept animation, materiality addresses Early Dynastic statues as members of an object world implicated in the construction of social identities through human interactions.215 Winter asserts that the enlarged eyes of temple statues are directed toward the divine cult statue, structuring ancient space.216 As a possession of the temple, we may also understand the dedicated statue as a structuring element beyond the relationship with the divine cult statue. The textual evidence suggests that we should locate the agency of sculpture in relation to those who visit temples rather than solely in relation to the divine who inhabits it. This idea accords well with the archaeological evidence discussed in Chapter 3 for sculpture positioned at entrances and points of passage, courts, and small rooms. The acts of seeing the divine and of being seen by the divine therefore are just one aspect of the life of the Early Dynastic statue. The object world of the temple statue was a construct manipulated and controlled by a temple administration. As an extension of this, abstraction responded to the need for an object in a consistent and recognizable visual form rather than the need to realize the self-expression of an individual donor. The predominance of temple gifts during the Early Dynastic period cannot be equated with the romantic idea of a democratic (albeit elite) practice. The dedication of objects to temples was a socially constituted practice. The control of gifts, manifest in temple rituals, established and maintained the social hierarchy of this practice. As such, the life (and death) of Early Dynastic sculpture is a reflection of how the temple administration created the ideologies of its cultic institutions. A consistency in representation reinforced the role of sculpture as the product of the temple rather than the product of a donor. Statues were created through the act of dedication but, as the recipients of offerings, they assumed agency by shaping the ritual acts in which temple visitors participated.

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Becoming Temple Sculpture T h e A s mar H oar d

Introduction to the Asmar Hoard The sculpture hoard of twelve statues buried in the Abu Temple at Tell Asmar is still the earliest-stratified corpus of Early Dynastic temple sculpture (Figure 4). As discussed in Chapter 2, the Asmar sculpture hoard made such a great impression upon its discovery in 1934 because it was considered the oldest monumental stone sculpture not only in Mesopotamia but in world art history. In contrast to the building periods of the Sin Temple at Khafajah, which were numbered from one to ten, the Abu Temple building periods were given names that underscored the distinct plan of each. The excavators believed that the Early Dynastic Archaic Shrine, Square Temple, and Single-Shrine Temple building periods of the Abu Temple sequence mirrored widespread cultural shifts. The Asmar sculpture hoard was associated stratigraphically with the Square Temple building period, which signified to the excavators a major architectural innovation. The three building periods of the Abu Temple provided the underlying logic for the tripartite subdivision of the Early Dynastic period into ED I, II, and III.1 The Diyala excavators subsequently used sculpture styles as the deciding factor for dating certain archaeological contexts at Tell Asmar, Khafajah, and Tell Agrab.2 The Early Dynastic periodization was then applied to greater Mesopotamia. Ever since the Diyala excavations, however, attempts to identify ED II contexts have been unsuccessful. The subdivisions of the Early Dynastic period were bolstered by the assumed chronological significance of an earlier abstract style and a later realistic style of sculpture. Proceeding in this manner reified an abstract to realistic trajectory. Studies mapping a stylistic sequence of sculpture fail to recognize the circular argumentation required to establish a chronology of sculpture styles in light

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Becoming Temple Sculpture of a periodization determined in part by the sculpture styles that are being evaluated. If we were to subdivide the Early Dynastic period today, pottery instead of sculpture would be used in association with other chronological indicators. Nissen, for example, has been one of the most recent to criticize the “excessive reliance on art objects” for establishing the Early Dynastic subdivisions.3 While pottery allows us to articulate an Early Dynastic chronology only broadly, the assumed stylistic evolution in sculpture styles is, on the other hand, unreliable. It is important to recognize the epistemological shift whereby sculpture styles are no longer infused with the same weighty questions that were once attributed to them. In the early twentieth century, the delineation of an earlier abstract style evolving toward a later realistic style relied on contemporary theories regarding the origins of art and the aesthetics of the “primitive.” In the discipline of art history, these theoretical orientations have been widely scrutinized through reflexive methodologies that are just beginning to receive consideration in ancient Near Eastern art history. As I have maintained in this book, we can ask other questions of Early Dynastic temple statues. As discussed in the previous chapter, the likelihood that sculpture was recycled – not just held over – in the temple must be factored seriously into any study of Early Dynastic sculpture styles. Abstraction potentially had a practical function of allowing different statue parts – particularly heads detached from bodies  – to be reused for “new” statues. Along with other factors, this would problematize our reliance on a notion of the original – that we can confidently reconstruct an “original statue,” define its lifespan, and situate it within a scheme of stylistic development. Beyond practical functions, abstraction also allowed the temple statue to resemble an alan more than it resembled any given human donor. As a material, physical form, the alan mediated social interactions among the realms of living, deceased, and divine. Abstraction therefore was an important visual quality of temple sculpture throughout the Early Dynastic period. I have addressed elsewhere the problems regarding the Early Dynastic periodization as it was formulated on the basis of the Diyala excavations.4 Here, I am interested instead in how the periodization has influenced our interpretation of the earliest-stratified corpus of Early Dynastic temple statues: that of the Asmar sculpture hoard. Early Dynastic temple statues, in general, have been assigned to a distinct category as objets d’art. The Asmar hoard, in particular, has never been fully integrated with the Abu Temple context. In adopting a formal analysis of Early Dynastic sculpture, Frankfort’s characterization of the sculpture style of the Asmar hoard as a spontaneous stylization derived from natural geometric forms had the effect of decontextualizing the hoard from its archaeological context. In addition, the combination of the oldest monumental stone sculpture represented by the Asmar hoard with the

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture innovations of the Square Temple plan suggested to the excavators a cultural break between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple building periods of the Abu Temple. This seemingly confirmed the decontextualization of the Asmar hoard statues because it suggested that neither the hoard nor the Square Temple had affinities with that which had preceded it. Evidence for cultic practices in the Abu Temple sequence therefore has been obscured by the perceived cultural break between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple. I will argue, however, that the emergence of Early Dynastic temple sculpture can be understood by examining the Abu Temple levels preceding the burial of the Asmar sculpture hoard. Leaving aside the arguments about where to draw the Early Dynastic subdivisions, I instead am interested in placing the archaeological data in a stratigraphic sequence that defines context in relation to the remains above and below it. Consideration of the stratigraphic sequence of the Abu Temple allows the agency of the Asmar hoard statues to be localized within cultic practices. As I will argue, the representation of the human donor in sculptural form was stimulated by a shift in temple practices related to rituals of libation. In addition, a deliberate shift to abstraction for temple statues of frontal human figures with clasped hands can be established by considering the sculpture style of certain subjects that stratigraphically precede the Asmar sculpture hoard. A shift to the human figure as a deliberate subject also can be established. Such an approach allows us to understand the Early Dynastic temple sculpture tradition represented by the Asmar hoard as an outcome of factors specific to the context from which it was retrieved.

Locating the Asmar Hoard To begin, the stratigraphic context of the Asmar sculpture hoard must be established. This is not, however, a straightforward exercise. According to the Diyala publications, the Asmar hoard was excavated between the altar and the long north wall of the D 17:9 sanctuary of the Square Temple (Figure 34).5 The 31.85-m findspot elevation for the Asmar hoard, however, is some 45 cm below the earliest Square Temple floor (Square Temple I at 32.3 m). Poorly recorded levels in the Abu Temple were excavated among the published sequence of Archaic Shrine, Square Temple, and Single-Shrine Temple. More specifically, at least three floor levels were present in D 17:9 between the latest-recorded floor level of the Archaic Shrine (Archaic Shrine IVC) and the earliest Square Temple floor level (Square Temple I). This is where the Asmar hoard should be located. That is, the burial of the Asmar hoard is stratigraphically earlier than the Square Temple.6 The exact location of the cut for the hole containing the Asmar hoard is unknown. Clay packing over the hole dug for the Asmar hoard, however, plausibly suggests its location.7 The statues in the Asmar hoard were placed in a hole

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Becoming Temple Sculpture dug especially for their burial; they were stacked in rows of three or four statues each, with the largest statues at the bottom. Tablet clay was then packed into the hole. Unlike a dirt fill, clay packing would have prevented a depression from forming where the hole had been dug. It would be necessary to use clay packing if the hole for the Asmar hoard were being dug in relation to a floor that was either in use or intended for use. It would be reasonable to expect therefore that the 31.85-m findspot elevation for the Asmar hoard would correspond to a floor level encountered during excavation. This is confirmed by the published description of the hole for the Asmar hoard, which was packed for “30 cm beneath the actual pavement” with clay rolled into balls.8 An unpublished field notebook of the Abu Temple excavations, maintained by Lloyd, records the elevation of this “pavement.” Lloyd wrote that the Asmar hoard was “buried in a hole beneath a pavement (?) (31.81) the spaces between filled with spherical lumps of tablet clay and covered in with the same material.”9 The 31.81-m “pavement” roughly corresponds with the 31.85-m findspot elevation of the Asmar hoard; in all likelihood, they are one and the same.10 Some details are available for the poorly recorded remains that were encountered in the northern area of the Abu Temple between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple building periods. According to Lloyd’s field notebook, a small mudbrick structure below the D 17:9 altar of Square Temple I and a circular hearth full of ashes some distance before it belonged to a 32.16-m floor level.11 Below the 32.16-m level was the 31.81-m “pavement” roughly corresponding with the findspot elevation of the Asmar hoard. Finally, a third level between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple, for which no elevations were recorded, was designated the “predecessor” to the Square Temple.12 Beginning with the earliest, the three levels of remains in the northern area of the Abu Temple between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple therefore are: (1) a predecessor to the Square Temple; (2) a 31.81-m “pavement” roughly corresponding with the findspot elevation of the Asmar hoard; and (3) a 32.16-m floor level on which a small mudbrick structure and a hearth were excavated. While the burial of the Asmar hoard should be associated with the remains encountered in the D 17:9 area between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple, a more precise context for the Asmar hoard is difficult to define. The statues in the Asmar hoard could have been dedicated, hoarded, and buried either during the span of time represented by the 31.81-m pavement or earlier. Although no temple sculpture was retrieved from the Archaic Shrine, two fragmentary statues of seated male figures were found in the adjacent locus D 17:15 at a level corresponding to Archaic Shrine IV.13 The most coherent remains between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple comprise the predecessor to the Square Temple. Because it was poorly understood and poorly recorded, however, its significance within the Abu Temple

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47.  Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, plan of Archaic Shrine IVC with plan of the predecessor to the Square Temple (solid lines) superimposed. Adapted by Jean M. Evans from Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Plate 21b. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

sequence went largely unrecognized. The plan of the predecessor, included in dotted lines on the Square Temple plan, is significant because it provides continuity from the Archaic Shrine to the Square Temple (Figure 34). The Square Temple consists of a central space surrounded by rooms, three of which are sanctuaries with the characteristic bent-axis approach of the Early Dynastic period. Central space D 17:7 and sanctuary D 17:8 of the Square Temple are rebuildings of corresponding loci in the predecessor, and the predecessor altar was incorporated into the D 17:8 altar.14 Some elements of the predecessor also follow the plan of the earlier Archaic Shrine, with certain predecessor walls built in roughly the same position as the Archaic Shrine IVC walls (Figure 47). Two small trapezoidal rooms in the predecessor also represent an irregular partitioning of space such that the overall regularity in shape that gave the Square Temple its name has not yet been achieved. The predecessor to the Square Temple therefore highlights a degree of continuity from the Archaic Shrine to the Square Temple. We therefore could expect the other poorly recorded remains between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple to have affinities with both of these Abu Temple building periods. In the Square Temple, loci D 17:9 and E 16:40 were regarded by the excavators as a new, northern extension of the Abu Temple.15 The predecessor to the Square

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Becoming Temple Sculpture Temple, with fragmentary walls in the D 17:9 and E 16:40 loci, the 31.81-m “pavement,” and the 32.16-m floor level, all indicate, however, that architectural remains were already present in the northern area of the Abu Temple prior to the Square Temple. Loci D 17:9 and E 16:40 of the Square Temple therefore do not represent a new, northward extension of the Abu Temple. The Diyala excavators compared the smaller altar encountered at the 32.16-m floor level below D 17:9 of the Square Temple with an earlier altar in Archaic Shrine IV A–B.16 The Archaic Shrine IV A–B altar was set against the west wall of an enclosed area directly in front of the entrance to the temple proper. The excavators understood the altar as “perhaps a place for making a preliminary offering before entering the temple” and suggested that the small altar encountered at the 32.16-m floor level represented a “survival of the function of the tiny shrine near the entrance.”17 The north wall of D 17:9 was founded only a few centimeters below the earliest Square Temple floor, further confirming that the area had been configured differently in the levels between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple.18 It is therefore possible that, during the time of the poorly recorded levels between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple, the entrance to the Abu Temple proper was in the same position as it had been during the time of the Archaic Shrine. It already has been established that the burial of the Asmar hoard preceded the construction of the Square Temple. The impression that the Asmar hoard had been buried on the north side of the D 17:9 altar of the Square Temple may have been influenced by expectations of sculpture display in the sanctuary. As I argued in Chapter 3, the assumption that the sanctuary is the sole locus of temple sculpture is contradicted outside the visual domain of archaeological reconstruction by archaeological data and textual evidence. In the Abu Temple, specifically, the archaeological evidence refutes the association of the Asmar hoard with the D 17:9 sanctuary of the Square Temple. As discussed earlier, there is evidence for sculpture concentrated at the entrances to temples. If we accept that the locations of object hoards are significant, then the burial of the Asmar hoard near the entrance to the Abu Temple is not coincidental. It is reasonable to suggest that the statues in the Asmar hoard had been positioned in the D 17:9 area during their lifetime. That this area still comprised the entrance to the Abu Temple at the time when the Asmar hoard was buried is supported by various evidence, including the persistence of a small altar, which was located at the 32.16-m floor level but resembled the altar at the entrance to the earlier Archaic Shrine. As with other archaeological and textual evidence, the location of the Asmar hoard at the entrance to the temple suggests that the agency of temple sculpture should be contextualized in relation to those who visit the temple rather than solely in relation to the divine who inhabits it.

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Actors, Agency, and Rituals of Libation The remains encountered between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple comprise genuine occupation levels, albeit poorly preserved and poorly recorded, in the Abu Temple sequence. When these remains are taken into account, the perceived novelty of the Square Temple plan diminishes. Rather, it is possible to trace an organic development from the Archaic Shrine to the Square Temple if the predecessor to the Square Temple is taken into account. The Square Temple plan therefore does not signify a radical replanning of the Abu Temple as the Diyala excavators maintained. The degree of continuity provided by the predecessor suggests that we can examine the material remains and cultic installations of the Archaic Shrine in order to establish a sequence that will allow us to understand better the emergence of Early Dynastic temple sculpture in the Abu Temple. Cultic practices can be identified in the archaeological record when they involve attention-focusing devices. Special artifacts used in restricted spaces may also signify cultic practices.19 In this respect, temples are restricted spaces in which attention-focusing devices and special artifacts are used for cultic practices. Patterns identified in the archaeological record, moreover, are a product of meaningful behavior.20 Significant cultic practices in the Archaic Shrine are represented by some 660 solid-footed goblets that were deposited in room D 17:26 of Archaic Shrine III (Figure 48). Solid-footed goblets are a fortuitous example with which to identify cultic practices in the archaeological record because they are a well-known vessel type and a reliable chronological indicator (Figure 49). A diagnostic ceramic type, solid-footed goblets are mass-produced conical vessels found in large quantities in the middle of ED I.21 Solid-footed goblets flare slightly at the rim, and the narrow, solid foot is usually elongated by a twist of the hand when taken off the wheel. The base is string-cut. Because of the narrow foot and the high frequency of distorted examples, solid-footed goblets often cannot stand on their own; they are also relatively thin-walled and easily broken. Retrieved from various contexts, solid-footed goblets seem to have been multifunctional.22 The use of solid-footed goblets in cultic activities is suggested by a handful of early temple statues representing standing figures holding cups. In the Asmar hoard, the largest male and female figures as well as two additional male figures hold cups resembling solid-footed goblets (Figure 4).23 In the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab, a sculpture fragment is comprised of the torso of a standing female figure holding a vessel precisely carved as a solidfooted goblet: the characteristically narrow foot and string-cut base are clearly articulated (Figure 50).24 It is a general misconception that a statue of a standing figure holding a cup is a common type of Early Dynastic temple statue. Statues of standing figures holding cups are usually lumped together with statues of standing figures

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48.  Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, plan of Archaic Shrine III. From Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Plate 20b. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

holding vegetation and statues of seated figures holding a cup and/or vegetation, and all are associated with banqueting imagery.25 However, these are separate iconographies. As I discuss in Chapter 6, banqueting iconography is largely restricted to female figures when it is utilized for sculpture in the round. In contrast, standing figures holding cups are attested only at the beginning of the Early Dynastic temple sculpture tradition and are attested only in the Asmar sculpture hoard and in the one fragmentary example in the Shara Temple. In both of these contexts, the standing figures holding cups are among the earliest-stratified examples of temple sculpture. Standing figures holding cups then drop out of the Early Dynastic temple sculpture corpus. According to the Abu Temple sequence, the distinct iconography of standing figures holding cups is restricted to a period of time that is stratigraphically later than that of the numerous solid-footed goblets deposited in Archaic Shrine III. As discussed earlier, how precisely we can define this sequence is an open question. Because the cups resemble solid-footed goblets, standing figures holding cups nevertheless should be considered in relation to the function of solidfooted goblets in temples. The large quantities of solid-footed goblets in Archaic Shrine III coincided with the first appearance in the Abu Temple sequence of provisions for offering liquids in the sanctuary (Figure 48).26 The upper surface of the Archaic Shrine III

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49. Early Dynastic solid-footed goblets from the Diyala region. From Delougaz 1952, Plate 46. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

50.  Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture fragment of a standing figure holding a solid-footed goblet. Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 41578. From Frankfort 1943, Plate 31, no. 265 (Ag. 35:899). Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

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Becoming Temple Sculpture altar sloped downward toward its northwest corner, where a chase would have directed surplus liquids into a jar set in the floor.27 The altar partially obstructed the entrance to room D 17:26, which was about 1.3 m wide at the west end and tapered to a width of some 75 cm at the east end. With the exception of two cylinder seals, only the some 660 solid-footed goblets were retrieved from room D 17:26.28 Because of its narrow dimensions and obstructed entrance, the room likely had always served as a repository, possibly with the solid-footed goblets slowly accumulating over time. Because their appearance coincided with the outfitting of the altar for liquid provisions and because they were deposited in proximity to the altar, the solid-footed goblets in D 17:26 were likely used to pour libations on the sanctuary altar. A similar development associated with solid-footed goblets can be outlined for the Sin Temple at Khafajah. As in Archaic Shrine III, the appearance of large quantities of solid-footed goblets in Sin Temple V coincided with the first appearance in the Sin Temple sequence of provisions for offering liquids in the sanctuary. In the Sin Temple V sanctuary, an oblong mudbrick table was placed before the altar. A cylindrical pottery vessel was partly embedded in the floor near the table, recalling the jar meant to catch liquids running off the altar in Archaic Shrine III.29 The “fragments of many” solid-footed goblets in and around the two large circular kilns in Q 42:17 of Sin Temple V further suggest that the vessels were manufactured there.30 In Sin Temple VI, “fragments of many” solidfooted goblets were also retrieved, and two pottery vessels now were embedded in the sanctuary floor at the front corners of the altar proper.31 In an architectural analysis of Sin Temples I–VI, Meijer argued that, over time, the temple gradually became more segregated from the community. This was manifest in the increasing architectural differentiation of an expanding temple space, access to which was increasingly controlled.32 An examination of subsequent Sin Temple levels reveals that access also was increasingly articulated with respect to interior space. From Sin Temple VII onward, the sanctuary altar was no longer outfitted with liquid installations. In Sin Temple VIII, the entrance to the sanctuary proper was equipped with a door, suggesting that this space could be closed off to restrict access. Similarly, in Ishtar Temple G at Ashur, three stones purposefully set at the south end of the stone threshold to the sanctuary entrance were understood as the facing for a pivot stone, thus providing the sanctuary with a door.33 In both Ishtar Temple G and Sin Temple VIII, the shutting of the door would have allowed a separation between the activities occurring inside the sanctuary and those outside it. In Sin Temple VIII, the court now was equipped with an altar, which had “a small trough-like vessel at its right corner,” probably to catch liquids (Figure 51).34 The liquid installations first associated with the Sin Temple sanctuary therefore shifted to a location exterior to the sanctuary.

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51.  Khafajah, plan of Sin Temple VIII. From Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Plate 10. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

In the Sin Temple sequence, the earliest-stratified corpus of temple sculpture is that of Sin Temple VIII. The Sin Temple VIII sculpture was concentrated in rooms Q 42:7 and R 42:2 off the court and in room Q 42:2, which was equipped with an altar and functioned as an antechamber to the main sanctuary.35 The earliest-stratified corpus of Sin Temple sculpture therefore is not concentrated in the sanctuary, which could be closed off from the remainder of the temple by using the door. Rather, the Sin Temple VIII sculpture is concentrated in the more accessible parts of the temple. In addition, like the statues among the earliest-stratified sculpture corpus of the Abu Temple sequence (i.e., the statues in the Asmar hoard holding cups resembling solid-footed goblets), the deposition of Sin Temple VIII sculpture reveals a connection to cultic libations. Almost half of the Sin Temple VIII sculpture (sixteen of thirty-four examples) was retrieved from room R 42:2, which contained additional objects as well as a large vat. The excavators associated the vat with liquid storage for libations because in Sin Temple IX the room yielded three vats as well as a spouted copper vessel of the type depicted in Early Dynastic libation scenes.36 In Sin Temple VIII, room R 42:2 had a particularly wide entrance, in the middle of which was a round pillar-like structure, probably to support the roofing. The accessibility of room R 42:2, as indicated by its wider entrance, makes

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Becoming Temple Sculpture it an unlikely place for storage, which is the function that was usually assigned by the Diyala excavators to small rooms with concentrations of objects. Perhaps cultic activities were performed in the room, with the statues as the subjects and/or objects of libations. The objects in room R 42:2 also could have been brought out into the court for additional uses on festival occasions, in conjunction with the court altar equipped to receive liquids. The sculpture in Sin Temple VIII does not include standing figures holding cups resembling solidfooted goblets. An association with rituals of libation, however, is still a tangible aspect of the Sin Temple VIII sculpture through its association with equipment intended for that purpose. While access to interior space within the Sin Temple was negotiated exterior to the sanctuary, access to interior space within the Square Temple was negotiated instead among the multiple sanctuaries (Figure 34). The “shrine” at the Archaic Shrine IV A-B entrance, which appears to have continued into the time of the poorly recorded remains between the Archaic Shrine and the Square Temple, was an accessible space that became confined within the temple proper when it became sanctuary D 17:9 of the Square Temple. The construction of the D 17:9 sanctuary therefore can be understood as a territorial expansion of the Abu Temple, subsuming an exterior space. The statues in the Asmar hoard, which are associated with this space, were hoarded and buried before the space became confined within the Square Temple proper. After the building of the Square Temple, it is the D 17:8 altar – not the D 17:9 altar – that is outfitted with liquid provisions. A bitumen-lined path leading from the D 17:5 “ablution room” to the D 17:8 sanctuary suggests that D 17:8 – not D 17:9 – was frequently visited. In contrast, the four mudbrick rectangular structures arranged in a row before the D 17:9 altar obstruct a direct approach to it. Only four sculpture fragments were retrieved from the Square Temple proper, and they were all retrieved from D 17:8.37 Statues therefore were maintained in a relatively accessible part of the Square Temple – a path leads to D 17:8, and there are no structures obstructing its altar – and in the only sanctuary outfitted for the pouring of liquids. As in Sin Temple VIII, sculpture from the Square Temple proper does not depict individuals holding cups resembling solid-footed goblets, but an association with rituals of libation is maintained through the proximity of the sculpture to an altar outfitted for that purpose. Large quantities of ceramics are no longer present in the Abu Temple sequence after Archaic Shrine III, suggesting a shift in cultic activity. If it is recalled that solid-footed goblets often cannot stand on their own and must be held in the hand, then the shift is that, after Archaic Shrine III, libations are no longer being offered by the numerous visitors suggested by the large quantities of hand-held ceramics. Yet any number of visitors could have been making offerings to the statues of standing figures holding cups that subsequently appear. That is, the statues in the Asmar hoard do not necessarily represent only acts of

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture dedication. As discussed earlier, the dedicatory act, which comprises the social relationship between the donor and the statue, does not encompass the entire functional range of the statue itself. On the basis of findspot, the statues in the Asmar hoard conceivably also assumed agency for the libations to be offered on behalf of other temple visitors. The temple statues of standing figures holding cups therefore were potentially both the subjects and objects of cultic activity. Later textual sources suggest that some libations are part of the rituals associated with bringing offerings before – and effectuating communication with – the divine.38 The preceding discussion again allows us to reconsider what is meant when it is maintained that statues were dedicated to Early Dynastic temples because of issues of access. In both the Abu Temple and the Sin Temple, the appearance of various installations in relatively accessible spaces suggests that temples were visited in a limited and prescribed capacity. The growth and movement of these installations suggest that access was negotiated with respect to particular spaces within the temple. The presence of doors, obstructions, and paths suggests that movement in the temple was carefully controlled. The association of temple sculpture with accessible spaces therefore provides a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between statues and access. In both the Abu Temple and the Sin Temple, temple sculpture begins to appear in quantity as issues of access are increasingly articulated.39 Rather than simply being installed in places where temple visitors could not go, statues instead delineated the terrain of access. Here, then, is another example of how the statue mediated the encounter between the temple visitor and the divine. Statues were created through the act of dedication, but they assumed agency by shaping the rituals in which temple visitors presumably participated. The Asmar hoard was buried outside the performative space of sanctuary ritual. If solid-footed goblets represent ritual containers, then the emergence of sculpture in which standing human figures hold ritual containers signals a conceptual shift in the execution of a particular cultic practice: an individual who pours a libation is replaced by a statue of an individual who will pour a libation. Solid-footed goblets are ritual containers, but the standing figures with cups are, like their human counterparts, the actors in that ritual. Standing figures holding cups then drop out of the temple sculpture corpus. Although the dedicatory guise of a frontal figure with clasped hands becomes the norm, the sculpture in both the Square Temple and in Sin Temple VIII retains an association with rituals of libation through its proximity to equipment and spaces reserved for that purpose. As will be discussed in Chapter 6, some of the sculpture of the Inana Temple at Nippur also has a connection to installations for liquids. By the time of the e2-mi2 archive at Lagash, as discussed in Chapter 4, temple statues are the recipients of offerings most commonly comprised of dates and oil. Perhaps we can imagine similar offerings that would have allowed the Asmar hoard statues

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Tradition, Heirlooms, and Diyala Sculpture Temple statues of frontal human figures with clasped hands are attested in limited numbers before the time of the Asmar hoard. A standing female figure from Sin Temple IV is depicted wearing a long skirt and clasping the hands.40 The long hair, bound by a band, falls along the face and neck before hanging loosely down the back. The features of the face are poorly preserved, but the eyes and eyebrows are carved in relief. The feet merge with the base. The Sin Temple IV female figure was retrieved from an Early Dynastic context but is closely associated with earlier Uruk and Jamdat Nasr traditions.41 Two diminutive figures – statues? – in the storeroom depicted on the cult vessel from the Eana III precinct at Uruk provide good parallels for the Sin Temple IV statue.42 The material remains retrieved from the Early Dynastic Diyala temples were divided by the excavators into two general groups.43 The first group consisted of artifacts considered contemporary with the context from which they were retrieved. The second group consisted of heirlooms that had survived into later levels of the Diyala temples. Initially, the beginning of the Early Dynastic period (ED I) was characterized as a transitional period largely devoid of cultural developments. Essentially, this was a continuation of a perceived qualitative distinction that defined Jamdat Nasr visual culture as one of decline after the high level of artistic achievement associated with the Late Uruk period. A lengthy cultural abyss with little innovation thus was said to follow the Uruk period. The material remains retrieved from Early Dynastic I contexts often were designated “heirlooms,” particularly when they belonged to the realm of artworks and were of a quality corresponding to the artistic achievements associated with the Late Uruk period. Or, the levels themselves were dated to Early Dynastic II by the presence of temple sculpture and associated material remains because ED II was believed to mark the emergence from this cultural abyss. Early Dynastic I, however, has come to be recognized as a period of great importance and a time of innovation in visual culture.44 If we take into consideration the continuity gained in a rejection of the tripartite subdivision imposed on the Abu Temple building remains, moreover, then perceived cultural breaks are minimized, and an element of continuity becomes a definable quality of the objects retrieved from the Early Dynastic Diyala temples. For example, temple and herd cylinder seals, which are largely restricted to the Diyala region, combine the temple façade and animal files first known from Late Uruk cylinder seals (Figure 52). Concentrated in the Sin Temple at Khafajah and the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab, temple and herd cylinder seals first appear in Jamdat Nasr levels and continue into the Early Dynastic period.45 In certain

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52.  Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, modern impression of an Early Dynastic cylinder seal carved with a “temple and herd” composition. From Frankfort 1955, Plate 83, no. 877 (Ag 35:730). Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 27175. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

instances, however, the temple and herd seals retrieved from Early Dynastic contexts have qualities that distinguish them from those in Jamdat Nasr contexts. For example, the direction of the animal files is broken up, the types of animals are more varied, and the compositions are denser. The lack of a common ground line, the diverse horns, and the “hanging” legs of the animals on the temple and herd seal illustrated here have parallels with animals painted on Early Dynastic I scarlet ware vessels.46 This would suggest that not all temple and herd seals in the Early Dynastic Diyala temples can be considered heirlooms. A series of relief-carved stone vessels with predominantly animal imagery are considered characteristic of the Late Uruk and Jamdat Nasr periods.47 However, numerous relief-carved stone vessels and vessel fragments were retrieved from Early Dynastic Diyala temples.48 Some of these vessels have forms resembling a characteristically Early Dynastic I gray ware vessel with a convex base, sharp carination, and a flat-ledge rim; the occasional use of two registers of reliefcarved imagery accommodates this form.49 The bases of two fragmentary stone cups from the Shara Temple have relief-carved imagery in which a central figure grasps lions, which in turn attack bearded bulls (Figure 53).50 If the compositions on the cups are “rolled out,” they resemble Early Dynastic I glyptic in which a male figure attacks quadrupeds, which in turn attack a central figure of prey.51 The cups therefore are not heirlooms.52 An object may be an heirloom when it is retrieved from a context that is later than its date of manufacture. Certainly, artifacts could be held beyond their date of manufacture, and heirlooms are frequently found in temples. It is on the presence of such heirlooms that the continued production of certain iconographies, styles, and object typologies is predicated. Some of the so-called Diyala temple heirlooms, however, are not heirlooms at all. Rather, they continue earlier traditions but differ from them in a definable way. Pottery forms and painted pottery designs, as well as glyptic compositions, indicate that certain temple objects

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53.  Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic stone vessel fragment with belted heroes mastering animals. From Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Figure 189 (Ag. 35:674). Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 27905. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

categorized as heirlooms were not manufactured in levels earlier than the Early Dynastic contexts from which they were retrieved. These objects instead reflect a degree of continuity in the material assemblages of the temple. They suggest that in the Early Dynastic period some of the glyptic, relief-carving, and sculpture from the Diyala temples closely follows earlier traditions. In the Diyala temples, a small corpus of sculpture and associated objects datable to the time before the Asmar hoard has affinities with earlier Uruk and Jamdat Nasr traditions.53 Although sometimes referred to as heirlooms, these statues are contemporary with the Early Dynastic contexts from which they were retrieved. In contrast to the Sin Temple IV female figure, this sculpture falls outside the temple sculpture tradition of frontal human figures with clasped hands. The first example is the kneeling figure from the Asmar hoard (Figure 54). Nude but for a belt of four strands encircling the waist, the figure functions as a support, literally wearing a hollowed-out headdress in the shape of a small vessel, the rim of which is not preserved.54 Although the hands are clasped, the kneeling figure is different from the other figures in the Asmar hoard not only because it functions to support a vessel but because it is carved entirely in the round with the underside articulated. The fleshy forms of the modeled legs are also incongruous with the Asmar hoard, as is the medium of semitranslucent, amber-hued alabaster from which the kneeling figure is carved.55 Most importantly, the kneeling figure is not a human figure. Rather, it is a semidivine

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54.  Tell Asmar, Abu Temple, Early Dynastic sculpture hoard, statue of a kneeling belted hero with clasped hands and a hollowed-out headdress in the shape of a small vessel. Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 19767. Frankfort 1939, Plate 27, no. 16 (As. 33:443). Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

mythological “nude hero” or, more accurately, “belted hero.” On the basis of later evidence, the belted hero is identified with the lahmu, originally a protective being of the rivers who masters wild animals and tends domesticated herds.56 A sculpture related to the Asmar hoard kneeling figure depicts a belted hero wearing a double-stranded belt and kneeling on one knee, with the other leg up (Figure 55). Poised to lift a vessel above his head, the pose suggests the strain of balancing and preparing to stand.57 Retrieved from the Shara Temple, the sculpture is dated to the Early Dynastic I period by its vessel type.58 Although heavily restored, the angles of the preserved portions of the arms and legs and the right calf carved against the underside indicate that the sculpture was conceived entirely in the round.59 The legs in particular again are carefully modeled. The final example is a statue from either Sin Temple VI or Sin Temple VII – its precise stratigraphic context is unclear – that captures the moment in which a

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55.  Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic stone statue of a crouching belted hero holding a vessel. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago, A18067 (Ag. 35:657). Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

crouching, nude male prepares to stand, grasping a strap against his forehead in order to steady a load on his back (Figure 56).60 The nude load-bearer is a different subject than the belted heroes of the Shara Temple and the Asmar hoard. These three Early Dynastic statues nevertheless are related by poses portraying movement, accurate proportions, and careful modeling. They also depict subjects that stand outside the dedicatory tradition of clothed frontal figures with clasped hands. The load-bearer is poorly preserved, but it appears also to have been sculpted entirely in the round. Describing an implicit naturalism in the figure, Porada suggested that the load-bearer was carved in an Uruk tradition but could be identified as Early Dynastic by the lively posture and slender, accurate proportions.61 Evidence suggests that these statues precede the appearance of the earlieststratified corpuses of temple sculpture at Tell Asmar and Khafajah. The kneeling belted hero in the Asmar hoard is probably older than the temple statues with which it was buried. Retrieved in a fragmentary state, it was reconstructed in modern times from two halves that do not seamlessly join. Frankfort suggested

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56.  Khafajah, Sin Temple VI–VII, Early Dynastic stone statue of a crouching nude male figure bearing a load. Iraq Museum, Baghdad. From Frankfort 1939, Plate 69, no. 92 (Kh. V 209). Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

that the statue had been repaired already in antiquity, with the stone apparently having been reworked in order to fit the two fragments together. Another possibility is that the two fragments were not meant to be joined; rather, they are fragments from two different belted heroes originally forming a pair.62 The bull men said to be from Umma, discussed later, also form a pair. The stratigraphic context of the Sin Temple VI–VII load-bearer more definitively dates this small group of sculpture. The load-bearer is roughly contemporary with the solidfooted goblets deposited in Sin Temples V–VI and is earlier than the first corpus of temple sculpture in Sin Temple VIII. Because this group of sculpture is roughly contemporary with the large quantities of solid-footed goblets deposited in temples, a plausible function for this sculpture should be sought in relation to the cultic activities discussed earlier. Like solid-footed goblets, the statues of belted heroes are containers. The articulated undersides of the belted heroes suggest that, as containers, they were

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Becoming Temple Sculpture meant to be held in the hand like solid-footed goblets. The articulated underside of sculpture in general is associated with its potential handling in rituals.63 A statue carved fully in the round would be visible from many viewpoints when handled in ritual activities. When tipped to pour a liquid, the underside in particular would become visible. Perhaps the belted heroes are elaborate versions of solid-footed goblets, to be held by certain visitors or temple personnel in the performance of libations. The statues under discussion here form a corpus that can be rounded out by the addition of the two fragmentary stone cups from the Shara Temple. Related to the sculpture in the round by subject matter and function, both cups have relief-carved imagery depicting the belted hero mastering animals (Figure 53).64 In addition, two unprovenanced bull men, including the one inscribed with the name of a ruler of Umma, are also related to this group (Figure 43).65 These bull men are composite statues in which the beard, hair, horns, tail, and lower legs would have been attached in a different material. A vertical hole in the top of the head suggests that they supported another item, such as a small vessel. The careful modeling of corporeal forms defines the Umma bull men, just as it does the belted heroes in the Diyala sculpture.66 The Umma bull men are also related to the kneeling belted hero in the Asmar hoard by the use of a relatively highvalue stone. In contrast to gypsum temple statues of frontal human figures with clasped hands, the Umma bull men are carved from a translucent yellow-green alabaster with rust-colored veins.67 Beginning with texts of the Akkadian period, the lahmu is associated with the kusarikku, traditionally identified with both the human-faced bull and bull man, although bison may be a better translation.68 Both the lahmu and the kusarikku assume an apotropaic function in their role as temple guardians and doorkeepers.69 Although there is debate about when belted heroes and bull men came to be associated with these later identities, belted heroes and bull men are associated with one another in the Early Dynastic period both with the cultic equipment discussed here and as participants in combat scenes carved on cylinder seals. In the I d/e dump at Fara, combat scenes with belted heroes and bull men are associated specifically with door sealings, perhaps in an early evocation of the later roles of the lahmu and kusarikku as temple guardians and ­doorkeepers.70 Something of a common guardian function also is evoked with the cultic containers discussed here: the belted heroes and bull men essentially guard the vessels they support.71 While the style of the Diyala belted heroes and nude load-bearer recall earlier Uruk traditions – and while the belted hero is a distinctly Mesopotamian subject – another quality of this small group of Diyala sculpture is the visual manifestation of the region as it is positioned along the so-called piedmont route running north from the Khuzistan plain of Iran, east of the Tigris River and before the foothills of the Zagros Mountains. A small group of sculpture from the

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57.  Susa, second archaic deposit, stone statue of a crouching male figure holding a vessel, Uruk or Proto-Elamite. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Départment des Antiquités Orientales, Sb 71. Photo by Jean M. Evans.

Shara Temple was likely imported to the Diyala region from the site of Susa on the Khuzistan plain.72 In general, the sculpture from the so-called archaic deposits of Susa provides good parallels for the belted heroes and load-bearer (Figure 57).73 The Susa archaic deposits were not retrieved in a stratigraphically controlled manner and are usually dated stylistically to either the Uruk period or to the Proto-Elamite period of Iran, which is generally considered contemporary with the Jamdat Nasr period and the beginning of the Early Dynastic period.74 Kneeling and crouching poses; the representation of figures with large, distinct vessel forms; and the articulation of the underside of the figure represent formal qualities drawn from the Susa corpus.75 Belted heroes continue to appear as supports in Early Dynastic metalwork, which has often been cited for a type of naturalism contingent on medium.76 However, the style of belted heroes is also a reflection of their location exterior to the temple sculpture tradition of frontal human figures with clasped hands. Throughout the history of Mesopotamia, a greater naturalism is implicit in the representation of animals, of which belted heroes and bull men contain

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Becoming Temple Sculpture an aspect. The use of stone other than gypsum for the Asmar hoard belted hero and the Umma bull men also reflects a location exterior to the temple sculpture tradition of frontal human figures with clasped hands. The statues discussed here are important because they reveal that relatively naturalistic forms and high-value stones were used for some sculpture during the time in which the temple sculpture tradition was emerging. Essentially, they were used for cultic equipment, which here I have associated with libations. Judging by the stratigraphic context of the Sin Temple VI–VII load-bearer, these stone statues and cups dropped out of the Diyala material assemblage around the same time or just after the decline in solid-footed goblets. The representation of the donor as a frontal human figure with clasped hands subsequently became the norm. When representation shifted in favor of the donor image, the temple sculpture corpus became defined in contrast to the cultic equipment that had preceded it. Abstraction was adopted, gypsum emerged as the common medium, and the frontal figure was set on a base, prohibiting the movement associated with crouching and kneeling subjects. These shifts, understood here as deliberate, would characterize the Early Dynastic temple sculpture tradition for hundreds of years.

Becoming Human: Style, Identity, and the Asmar Hoard In the Shara Temple, the earliest-stratified sculpture includes two copper belted heroes in the guise of standing frontal figures with clasped hands (Figure 58).77 These standing belted heroes in the guise of temple statues are unique. They differ from other belted heroes in the round, which either hold or adorn vessels as well as function as stands.78 The copper belted heroes assume a dedicatory guise, suggesting that they should be included within the tradition of temple statues proper. However, they are not human figures. The stratigraphic position of these belted heroes suggests that they form a bridge from belted heroes as cultic equipment to frontal human figures as cultic performers. That is, the Shara Temple copper belted heroes bolster the connection between cultic equipment with belted heroes, which I associated with containers for libations, and the subsequent appearance of the temple sculpture tradition, which I associated with the performance of those libations. A copper nude female figure found in the same room as the two copper belted heroes is related on the basis of size, style, and technique of manufacture (Figure 58).79 The female figure is depicted with the left hand against the right breast; the right arm, the hand of which is not preserved, is outstretched. As with the belted hero, the nude female appears as a subject on relief-carved stone vessels from Diyala temples.80 The best-preserved example is from Sin Temple V (Figure 59).81 The Sin Temple V context, although earlier than that of the Sin Temple VI–VII load-bearer, is roughly contemporary with the solid-footed

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58.  Tell Agrab, Shara Temple, Early Dynastic copper statues of belted heroes with clasped hands and of a nude female figure. Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 31391, IM 31390; The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago, A21572. From Frankfort 1943, Plate 56, nos. 307–9 (Ag. 36:70; Ag. 36:140; Ag. 36:141). Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

goblets deposited in Sin Temples V–VI and earlier than the first corpus of temple sculpture in Sin Temple VIII. Only the lower support component of the Sin Temple V stone vessel is preserved. Carved in two registers, nude female figures clasping the hands are preserved in the upper register. A bovine, with the head turned out, appears on either side in the lower register, and a stepped motif is carved on the short sides. Like the belted heroes with clasped hands, the nude females form a bridge to Early Dynastic temple sculpture proper. The relationship of these subjects to the temple sculpture tradition can be clarified by examining the two largest statues – a male and a female figure – in the Asmar sculpture hoard (Figures 4, 21). When first excavated, the largest figures in the Asmar hoard were identified as deities principally on the basis of size, unnaturally large eyes, and identifying elements of the base. Although missing the head, the relief-carved image on the base of the male figure preserves a bird grasping quadrupeds, which Frankfort reconstructed as the lion-headed Imdugud. Frankfort then proposed that the largest male figure in the Asmar hoard was

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59.  Khafajah, Sin Temple V, Early Dynastic relief-carved stone vessel with a nude female figure with clasped hands. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago, A17113. From Frankfort 1936a, Figure 27 (Kh. V 272). Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

a cult statue of the god Abu complemented by the symbolic form of the deity on the base.82 Similarly, the fragmentary feet and base of a small figure set into the base of the largest female figure in the Asmar hoard were understood as an identifying feature. The feet and base were reconstructed as a long-haired and beardless standing male figure, which is how the excavators imagined a child would be depicted (Figure 21). The combination of a large female figure with a child

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture seemingly confirmed the purely conjectural identification of a mother ­goddess.83 The smaller statue set into the base of the standing female figure is indeed unusual. There are no examples of children represented in Early Dynastic temple sculpture, however, thus making this reconstruction dubious. It is likely that the exposed breast of the largest female figure in the Asmar hoard also suggested the mother goddess identification prevalent among prehistoric clay figurines of nude females. The concept of a universal “mother goddess” is no longer considered appropriate.84 The identification of the largest male and female figures in the Asmar hoard as deities is no longer accepted.85 One difficulty in determining the identity of the largest figures in the Asmar hoard is that they stand at the beginning of a tradition. In particular, the largest male and female figures in the Asmar hoard still bear vestiges of the subjects that preceded the earliest corpuses of frontal human figures with clasped hands. Formal similarities suggest affinities between the Shara Temple copper nude female and the largest female figure in the Asmar hoard. Both figures are relatively flat and wear the hair in a braid or roll that encircles the head as a raised band. The breasts are depicted as distinct circular appliqués. There is no parallel in the temple sculpture tradition for the extended right arm and the left arm crossed over the chest, against the breast, of the copper nude female. But the Asmar hoard female does not clasp her hands either. Unlike other figures, which grasp the cup in two hands, the left arm of the Asmar hoard female rests against the body, perhaps reminiscent of the Shara Temple nude female. The representation of the largest male figure in the Asmar hoard has elements recalling a belted hero. Although the figure is now clothed, a double-stranded belt encircles the waist. The hair is worn loose, rather than falling forward on either shoulder as is customary among other male figures in the temple sculpture tradition. Nor is the male figure a precisely frontal representation. Rather, a slight twist in the upper body shifts the right shoulder forward.86 Something of the sense of movement represented among the kneeling and crouching figures therefore is evoked. Regarding the largest male figure in the Asmar hoard, Jacobsen posed the question of whether it represents a god or a worshiper.87 A possible answer is that it is neither. Semidivine, mythological beings, such as belted heroes, stand outside the binary division of human/divine. That the image on the base of the statue nevertheless is closely related to the male figure itself is suggested by the fact that the heads of both have been mutilated. Specifically, an examination of photographs reveals that the nose of the largest male figure in the Asmar hoard has been broken off.88 That the break did not occur from the pressure of the statues being stacked one atop the other in the hole containing the hoard can be confirmed by an anecdote – recorded outside the domain of official archaeological data – in the 1957 memoir of Mary Chubb.89 In a section recounting her time as a member of the Iraq Expedition, Chubb included a story intended to illustrate the archaeological skills of Lloyd,

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60. Mari, Ishtar Temple, stone statue of a standing male figure dedicated by Ishqi-Mari, ruler of Mari (M 174). National Museum, Aleppo, 10406. Permission to publish granted by the Directorate General for Antiquities and Museums of Syria; photograph courtesy of Pascal Butterlin, Director of the French mission to Tell Hariri-Mari, Syria.

who excavated the Asmar hoard. As a workman was sweeping in the area where the hoard subsequently was discovered, Lloyd picked something up from the debris – “a chip of whitish stone, triangular in shape, smooth except for the base” – and put it in his pocket. According to Chubb, when the Asmar hoard was discovered the next day, Lloyd recognized the stone fragment as the nose of the largest male figure.90 Mutilation of the nose, specifically, has been associated with royal ­sculpture.91 The temple statue of the ruler Ishqi-Mari of Mari, for example, is well preserved but for the nose (Figure 60). That these practices should not be associated exclusively with royal sculpture, however, is indicated by the numerous examples of temple sculpture in general that are missing the nose.92 In addition, as established in Chapter 4, the practice of removing the head among the sculpture of private individuals is suggested by the preponderance of sculpture fragments of heads and the presence of drilled holes meant to join heads to bodies. There is no reason to conclude that the absence of either the nose in particular or

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61. Ur, Seal Impression Strata, drawing of the design from an Early Dynastic cylinder seal. From Legrain 1936, Plate 20, no. 387 (U.14790, U.15019, U.18404). Reproduced courtesy of Richard L. Zettler, Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near East Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

the head in general is intentional for royal sculpture but accidental for private sculpture. It is further unlikely that the largest male figure in the Asmar hoard should be interpreted as a royal representation. The heroic quality of the belted hero has been associated with kingship, but early royal iconography does not literally draw on the iconography of the belted hero.93 Rather than a nude, belted individual with loosely worn hair, the Late Uruk royal image is bound by a distinct hairstyle and headdress; a garment known as the net skirt and a headdress with a rolled or bulging brim are clear signifiers of royal status. These attributes may continue into the Early Dynastic period, although the identification of the royal image is difficult to discern at the beginning of the period. In the Early Dynastic period, loosely worn hair instead is associated in the male realm with deities, heroes, and mythological beings. In later texts, the sage (abgal) is recognized by his loose hair.94 Accepting nevertheless that the image on the base of the statue is closely related to the male figure, it is worth noting that Early Dynastic seal impressions from the Seal Impression Strata (SIS) at Ur also depict a bird with outstretched wings grasping quadrupeds. In the SIS examples, which are roughly contemporary with the Asmar hoard, the composition of the bird grasping quadrupeds is placed over an architectural structure. The architectural structure in the cylinder seal reconstructed here is framed by divine symbols, thus orienting the composition at a sacred entrance (Figure 61). The association of the bird grasping animals with entrances to temples is significant given the association of the burial of the Asmar hoard with the entrance to the Abu Temple. If indeed the image on the base is related to the male figure, perhaps it is meant to indicate the function of the statue rather than its identity. The composition of the bird grasping quadrupeds is reminiscent of the Imdugud in heraldic composition. On both the SIS seal impressions and the

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture yet become separate and distinct. In reality, the Asmar hoard therefore is an eclectic ensemble of sculpture.

Conclusion: Models for the Human Donor in Temple Sculpture In a study of female figurines, Dales made the interesting observation that some of the traits of clay figurines are preserved in Early Dynastic temple sculpture and reemerge in the clay figurine tradition when it is well attested again in the subsequent Akkadian period.96 In comparison to the rich repertoire of prehistoric periods, clay figurines are poorly attested from the Uruk period to the end of the Early Dynastic period.97 A few clay figurines of nude females were retrieved from the Diyala temples, however, and are attested more specifically in Archaic Shrine III and Sin Temple V, the same levels as the large concentrations of solid-footed goblets (Figure 62).98 Shortly after this, as discussed previously, the first corpuses of temple sculpture appear. The clay figurine tradition that responded to the numerous needs for figural imagery throughout Mesopotamian history has points of comparison with Early Dynastic temple statues. Details of clay figurines generally are concentrated on the head, with the body schematically rendered. This has parallels in Early Dynastic temple sculpture, where inlay is reserved to draw attention to the eyes, and the hair is bitumen-colored, in contrast to the plain conical skirt of the lower half of the figure. Certainly, enlarged eyes are characteristic of the clay figurine tradition. The stumplike projection of the arms of the Early Dynastic female figurines in the Diyala temples also has parallels with the diminutive forearms and hands of the Asmar hoard sculpture in general. In addition, bodily markings frequently appear on the shoulders and upper arms of clay figurines. With the Early Dynastic I clay figurines in the Diyala temples, pellets are applied to the right shoulder (Figure 62). Beaded bands also encircle the right arm of some figures in Early Dynastic sculpture (Figures 45 left and 55). Early Dynastic sculpture is implicated more generally when, according to Dales, inscriptions are also found on the right shoulder and upper arm of a statue.99 The general affinities between the clay figurine tradition and Early Dynastic temple sculpture raise larger questions of media and stylistic influence. The “spontaneous stylization” posited by Frankfort is still often cited as the source for abstraction in Early Dynastic temple sculpture. In an idea first advanced in 1938, others have attributed abstraction to the influence of the medium of wood.100 Yet any sort of model exterior to a stone sculpture tradition would have long antedated the appearance of Early Dynastic temple statues. A variety of sculpture styles were contemporary with one another already in the Uruk and Jamdat Nasr periods. This can be confirmed by representations of the ruler figure, which depict the same subject in disparate styles.101

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62.  Khafajah, Early Dynastic clay figurines of nude females. Left: Khafajah, Houses 8 (Iraq Museum, Baghdad [?]). Right: Khafajah, Sin Temple VI (The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago, A17106). From Frankfort 1936a, Figure 57 (Kh. V 171a, Kh. V 257). Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

The serial exploitation of sculpture media was developed by Winckelmann and elaborated on by other scholars as a sort of universal art-historical development. For many cultures, it has often been assumed that wood was the primordial medium of sculpture because it is cheaper and easier to work than stone. In particular, the positing of a wooden prototype resembles theories for the origins of Greek sculpture.102 In Mesopotamia, however, sculptors were adept at working in stone already in the Uruk period; that wooden sculpture is inherently abstract is refuted by the surviving wooden sculpture from Palace G at Ebla.103 With the emergence of temple sculpture modeled on the image of a human donor with clasped hands, Early Dynastic dedicatory practices required a large quantity of figural imagery. The clay figurine tradition provided one model for meeting such a requirement. That the clay figurine tradition is a source for certain iconographic details of the temple tradition of stone sculpture suggests that certain stylistic and iconographic elements are not exclusive to particular media.104 For example, Early Dynastic bitumen figurines from Kish also exhibit some of the same characteristics as Early Dynastic clay figurines from the Diyala

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture region.105 Stylistic similarities between stone and clay sculpture are also evident among examples recently retrieved from sites in Syria.106 In addition, some clay figurines from the late Early Dynastic Ash Tip at Abu Salabikh wear garments that parallel those of temple statues of male figures; one clay figurine depicted with clothing is also known from the Seal Impression Strata at Ur.107 The representation in the clay figurine tradition of clothing paralleling that of Early Dynastic temple statues suggests that iconographic influence traveled both ways.108 Clay figurines are usually found in ordinary settlement debris and thus express various community practices.109 No trash dumps associated with the Diyala temples have been excavated. This is partially a reflection of excavation methods in which the limits of the trench often were defined by the exterior walls of the temple context being excavated. Many of the post-Ubaid clay figurines from Ur, however, are from the Seal Impression Strata, which is associated with the discard of a temple administration.110 Woolley interpreted the clay figurines in these rubbish layers as discarded temple objects.111 Similarly, the late Early Dynastic Ash Tip at Abu Salabikh has been interpreted as rubbish derived from a temple complex.112 Postgate suggested that the Abu Salabikh clay figurines were representations of individuals placed in a temple to function much like stone statues of frontal human figures with clasped hands.113 When Meijer observed that the relatively closed character of Early Dynastic temples kept unwanted elements out but also kept certain wanted elements within, he was referring to the great many precious materials associated with temples.114 The rubbish layers at Ur and Abu Salabikh suggest that Early Dynastic clay figurines were items to be discarded. If this rubbish indeed is derived from temple contexts, then it is significant that clay figurines were retrieved from temple discard on the exterior. Stone temple statues were treated differently because the practice of hoarding as well as leaving sculpture behind in occupation levels was a method of discard on the interior. This would suggest that stone temple sculpture in gypsum obtained a hierarchical position above clay figuring in terms of value. The perception of local stone as relatively low value in comparison to the Early Dynastic practice of an elite importing metal and precious stones is therefore relative, too, if we join the stone sculpture tradition to a larger practice of image-making that extended to other media. Before the peak of solid-footed goblets, amulets and cylinder seals were retrieved in great quantities from Diyala temples. At Khafajah, the numerous animal amulets – birds, frogs, bulls, lions, fish, and others – from Sin Temple III have been interpreted as dedications akin to temple statues.115 Around threequarters of the 149 cylinder seals retrieved from the subsequent Sin Temple IV were carved in the glazed steatite style, which draws on a limited number of abstracted design elements.116 Although such seals formed part of the administrative toolkit at other sites, the quantity of seals suggests that they were

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Becoming Temple Sculpture dedications in Sin Temple IV. In later levels of the Shara Temple, the temple and herd seals, which similarly draw on a limited number of design elements, are associated with the sanctuaries, and the majority specifically with the altars, emphasizing their special status.117 Amulets and seals bear a tangible vestige of the donor through the potentially close association with the body because amulets and seals could be worn.118 The Proto-Elamite sculpture imported into the Diyala region is also easily held, and some examples have holes or loops for suspension, perhaps also to be worn on the body as pendants.119 Both belted heroes sculpted in the round and solidfooted goblets were meant to be held. The large quantity of solid-footed goblets present in temples suggests an element of personal participation in cultic practices. The emergence of the temple sculpture tradition is thus, through the depiction of the donor, potentially both a continuation of the personal element expressed in earlier dedications and a formalization of the appearance such an expression could assume. The paradox, then, is that at the moment the donor begins to figure in the temple – literally in the form of sculpture – he or she is becoming increasingly removed from direct participation in cultic practices. The visual culture of Early Dynastic statues, including enlarged eyes, frontal representation, and uniformity, has been interpreted here thus far as structuring elements in the human encounter with sculpture. An Early Dynastic temple statue of the human donor does not need to be held; it has its own base, emphasizing its autonomy as a discrete object in contrast to the preceding hand-held objects and objects of personal adornment. Early excavators intrinsically understood from this an aspect of display, but the base also allows for the encounter with the statue exterior to a single donor or a single participant. Bearing in mind the evidence of the e2-mi2 archive, discussed in Chapter 4, I have therefore suggested that temple statues first emerge with the Asmar hoard as objects to be tended at the entrance to the temple as potential recipients of cultic offerings from visitors. In art-historical analysis, frontal and profile views are formal properties of an image. The frontal image is confronting; it potentially dominates a composition. Pinney understands the choice of frontal and profile views as an embodiment. What matters most, according to Pinney, is “practical efficacy.”120 As an example, he cites the study of Christian imagery in the United States by Morgan, who found that images of Christ are chosen in rituals of domestic devotion because the profile, for example, allows the devotee to whisper in the ear, or because the direct frontal image, for example, provides protection when hung above the bed.121 In the Early Dynastic period, frontality is reserved almost exclusively on relief-carving for depictions of goddesses. In a study of these images, AsherGreve suggests that frontal representation provided goddesses with an element of accessibility.122 The entire corpus of Early Dynastic temple sculpture is also a

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture genre of frontality. Frontality exceeds the limits of representation itself because it directs the image into the surrounding space. Frontality is thus a pose of confrontation, offering accessibility and communication; it is a mode of presencing frequently used for ritual drama. In the reorientation of the agency of Early Dynastic temple sculpture in relation to those who visit temples rather than solely in relation to the divine inhabitant, frontality becomes the posture of the intermediary, ultimately facilitating interaction between the human visitor and the divine. The examination of the circumstances under which the Asmar sculpture hoard appears is informative regarding temple practices in the Diyala region. As the earliest-stratified corpus of temple sculpture, the Asmar hoard belongs to a specific time and place. As discussed in the preceding chapters, we rely on composite evidence for our general understanding of temple sculpture. It would be problematic, however, to apply wholesale the specific observations regarding the Asmar hoard to greater Mesopotamia. Certainly, the earliest-stratified Early Dynastic sculpture hoards in any given temple are not all contemporary with one another. In the Inana Temple at Nippur, for example, the earliest sculpture hoard dates to the time of the Fara texts (ED IIIA), while the Asmar hoard is associated with ED I pottery. The Sin Temple IV statue and related imagery, moreover, suggest that earlier corpuses of temple statues are yet to be discovered. The dedication of statues to temples is a widespread practice. I would argue nevertheless that it is possible to take a similar approach in the examination of other contexts in which temple statues first appear. As argued here, such an examination suggests that temple statues evolved from a need to depict the donor in human form. This need was stimulated by a shift in cultic practices, discernible in the equipment, installations, and architectural layout of the Abu Temple. How and when exactly this shift was effected likely would have varied from temple to temple.

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G e n d e r a n d I d e n t i t y i n E a r ly Dy na s t i c T e m p l e S tat u e s

Introduction: The Donor as a Social Persona The emphasis thus far has been on the consistent use of abstraction in the Early Dynastic sculpture corpus. Despite this, the representation of the individual is not absent altogether in the Early Dynastic temple statue tradition. Foremost, inscribed examples link donors to temple statues. The gender of the donor also is a primary representational distinction.1 The representation of the donor is further articulated in a limited number of temple statues through dress and variations on the dedicatory guise of a standing frontal figure with clasped hands. The aim of this chapter therefore is to address a potential imbalance by examining how representational distinctions were constructed among the donors of Early Dynastic temple statues. Certain representational devices among Early Dynastic temple statues are divisible along gender lines. For a small number of male figures, the title or occupation of the donor is depicted. For a small number of female figures, banqueting iconography is used. These representational devices are most fully attested among the sculpture from the site of Mari, a city far from the traditional centers of Sumer. In Sumer proper, the only temples to have produced corpuses of Early Dynastic temple sculpture are those of Nippur, the holy city of Sumer. The Inana Temple at Nippur, which was continuously rebuilt and ritually renewed for thousands of years, has yielded the most substantial corpus. In comparison to Mari, the Inana Temple sculpture demonstrates a greater continuity or conservatism in sculpture styles. The abstraction characterizing the Asmar hoard persisted in some of the Inana Temple sculpture; at Mari, a new style prevailed. Similarly, the traditional dedicatory guise of a frontal figure with clasped hands is maintained at Nippur, while at Mari representational variations are more

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture frequent. The temples of Mari and Nippur therefore provide counterpoints from which representation among Early Dynastic temple statues may be examined. In conventional methodologies, abstract-style sculpture is usually dated to an early developmental phase. Its persistence is then explained by assuming that abstract-style statues in late Early Dynastic levels are heirlooms held over from their time of production.2 Certainly, temple sculpture is a category of object that is curated; in other words, temple sculpture is not always a product of the level from which it was retrieved. However, other factors also influenced the representation of the donor in temple sculpture. As discussed, the notion of an “original” statue is problematic and complicates any examination of stylistic development within the temple sculpture tradition. Abstraction, moreover, is a phenomenon of all Early Dynastic temple sculpture. In this chapter, I argue that certain representational distinctions are related to the social performance of cultic duties. Because these distinctions are organized according to gender, it must be asked whether cultic activities themselves can be delineated on the basis of gender. Instead of attempting to situate a male and a female presence in the Early Dynastic temple as equivalents, I raise the possibility that male and female donors to some extent may have maintained their own distinct spheres of cultic activity within the Early Dynastic temple. The potential to relate representational variations to cultic practices would suggest a collective element to representation within the Early Dynastic sculpture corpus. That is, the manipulation of dress, posture, and gesture among Early Dynastic temple statues articulated a social persona. Representation therefore signified an individual, but one cast in the role of the donor.

Male Donors, Occupation, and Identity The site of Mari, located near the modern border between Syria and Iraq, some 2 km from the Euphrates River, played a vital role in ancient Near Eastern history from the beginning of the third millennium BC until its destruction by Hammurabi of Babylon in the eighteenth century BC. The temple sculpture from Mari initially guided excavation of the site after fragments were found there in 1933. The first season of excavation (1933–34) was intended as an exploratory mission. A temple dedicated to the goddess Ishtar was discovered at the western edge of the site. Finds associated with the Ishtar Temple included the inscribed statue of the ruler Ishqi-Mari, which identified modern Tell Hariri as Mari, one of the cities in the Sumerian King List (Figure 60).3 Full-scale excavation of the site was subsequently planned and continues to the present day.4 Ultimately, large corpuses of temple sculpture were found strewn among the destruction debris of the Ishtar Temple and the temples of Ishtarat and Ninnizaza. These temples belong to Ville II of Mari, which is contemporary with the later Early Dynastic to Akkadian periods.5 Burned levels in all three temples

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63. Mari, Temple of Ninni-zaza, stone statue of a standing male figure dedicated by the cupbearer (sagi) of the ruler (M 2315, 2332, 2777). National Museum, Aleppo. Courtesy of the Directorate General for Antiquities and Museums of Syria; photograph courtesy of Pascal Butterlin, Director of the French mission to Tell Hariri-Mari, Syria.

contribute to the evidence for a general destruction of Ville II, the extent and cause of which are the subject of debate.6 Because of the nature of the early excavations and their publication, it is difficult to determine a precise findspot for many of the objects retrieved. Repeated names preserved in the dedicatory inscriptions nevertheless suggest a relatively short period of production for the sculpture.7 The style of temple sculpture at Mari is often described as realistic.8 Mari temple sculpture is carefully modeled and accurately proportioned, but it is also distinctly stylized by a marked reliance on surface patterning in which, for example, the beard erupts into an elaborate pattern of curls, coils, wavy strands, and drilled holes (Figure 63). Facial characteristics in Mari sculpture offer little variation, and attempts to find in them the accurate rendering of individual physical characteristics are unconvincing.9 These factors complicate

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64.  Girsu (Tello), Early Dynastic stone stele fragment of the ruler Eanatum of Lagash. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Départment des Antiquités Orientales, AO 50. From Sarzec 1884– 1912, Plate 3bis.

notions of “realism” in Mari temple sculpture, particularly when attempts are made to align them with Western concepts of mimesis. As I have argued, I find it preferable to dispense with this terminology altogether because an underlying abstraction defines the entire corpus. That is, the Mari style represents a type of idealized realism or naturalism that itself is also an abstraction. Other representational devices that would more closely align donor and image, however, are known in other Early Dynastic media. On his stele, the Early Dynastic ruler Eanatum of Lagash is distinguished as a royal warrior by a helmet, which has a headband and chignon rendered in relief, and a tufted garment, which leaves the right arm and shoulder free (Figure 64). The significance of the hairstyle and garment is not clear. Perhaps they are meant to communicate that the royal role in battle is divinely sanctioned because both the chignon and garment are worn by deities on contemporary relief-carvings (for example, see Figure 36).10 In contrast, the temple statue of the Early Dynastic ruler Enmetena of Lagash is distinguished by the dark diorite stone that, as discussed earlier, appears among elite donors at the end of the Early Dynastic period and is the

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65. Mari, Temple of Ninni-zaza, stone sculpture fragment of a male figure holding a musical instrument dedicated by Urnanshe, the nar-mah (exalted singer/musician) (M 2272, 2376, 2384). Courtesy of the Directorate General for Antiquities and Museums of Syria, Museum of Deir ez-Zor, Syria 21077. Photograph by Anwar Abdel Ghafour. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

preferred stone of later royal sculpture as well (Figure 41). Regardless, the ruler otherwise is represented in the dedicatory guise of a standing frontal figure with clasped hands. In Sumer, the use of metals and precious stones did not affect the dedicatory guise (see also Figure 44). In contrast, the dedicatory guise itself was sometimes altered at Mari, while the medium of light-colored stone remained relatively consistent. The statue of the ruler Ishqi-Mari of Mari departs from the usual dedicatory typology (Figure 60).11 The royal attributes depicted on the stele of the ruler Eanatum of Lagash have been translated into the round. The tufted garment of Ishqi-Mari leaves one shoulder free, and the hairstyle resembles the helmet of Eanatum on his stele: a band encircles the head, and the hair is bound at the back into a chignon. The gesture of grasping the clenched right wrist with the left hand departs from the usual clasped hands. While Sumer does witness a limited iconographical development in Early Dynastic royal sculpture, the variation on the temple sculpture tradition represented by the statue of Ishqi-Mari is not restricted to the royal realm at Mari.12

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture Inscribed statues of overseers, scribes, singers, cup-bearers, inspectors, and other donors are known from Mari. Around half of the inscribed Early Dynastic temple statues known from excavated contexts come from Mari.13 Recent excavations have added to this already substantial corpus. At Mari, all of the inscribed temple statues are dedicated by male donors. Only a handful of inscribed statues of female donors are known for the Early Dynastic period in general. Inscribing temple sculpture therefore seems to have been a practice largely restricted to the male donor sphere. With the exception of Mari, other corpuses of Early Dynastic temple sculpture do not show a similar prevalence of inscribing. For example, some seven inscribed statues but some twenty-six inscribed stone vessels were found in level VII of the Inana Temple at Nippur.14 At Mari, in contrast, some thirty inscribed statues but three inscribed stone vessels were found in the Ishtar Temple and the temples of Ishtarat and Ninni-zaza.15 Only a few other contemporary dedicatory objects at Mari are inscribed.16 Although no other site yielding temple sculpture exhibits a similar emphasis on inscribing statues, the identification of the male donor by title or occupation is characteristic of inscribed Early Dynastic sculpture in general.17 A statue from the Sin Temple at Khafajah, for example, is inscribed “Urninkilim, ugula.”18 Some inscriptions on the Inana Temple statues similarly consist of only the name and occupation of the donor, such as “Lugal~g ~a [of] Enlil” or “Seskina, nu-banda .”19 hursag, sag 3 At Mari, the relationship between title/occupation and representation is established by two inscribed statues dedicated in the Temple of Ninni-zaza by Urnanshe, the exalted singer/musician (nar-mah).20 In a departure from the usual dedicatory typology, the more fragmentary example depicts the upper body of a figure holding the remains of a stringed instrument (Figure 65).21 Both examples represent Urnanshe shaven and with long hair. The combination parallels the figure accompanying a musician in the upper register of the banqueting side of the so-called Standard of Ur. Cheng associates the long hair of Urnanshe with wildness, citing the connections between music and animal behavior.22 The representation of Ishqi-Mari as a royal warrior and Urnanshe as a singer/ musician suggests that the alignment of donor and representation would occur through the titles/occupations of other individuals who dedicated temple statues at Mari. Small sculpture fragments  – for example, a hand holding an unidentifiable item or feet carved in the round – do hint at other unusual representational variations at Mari.23 Many of the restored statues were assembled from numerous fragments, however, and the typical dedicatory guise of a frontal figure with clasped hands undoubtedly guided restorations.24 When the signifier is not as obvious as that of a musical instrument, moreover, the association between representation and title/occupation is tentative.

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66. Mari, Ishtar Temple, stone statue of a seated male figure dedicated by Ebih-il, the nubanda3 official (M 177). Musée du Louvre, Paris, Départment des Antiquités Orientales, AO 17551. Photograph courtesy of Pascal Butterlin, Director of the French mission to Tell Hariri-Mari, Syria.

One statue from Mari, for example, was dedicated by an individual whose name is not fully preserved but who bears the title of cup-bearer (sagi) of the ruler (Figure 63).25 On the door plaques of the Early Dynastic ruler Urnanshe of Lagash, the cup-bearers Anita and Sagantuk are depicted alongside the royal family, attesting to the importance of the occupation.26 The skirt of the Mari cup-bearer is plain, lacking the tufted tiers typical of the Mari sculpture corpus. Although plain and tufted skirts have been interrogated for their chronological significance, other factors likely influenced garment types. In other media, for example, cup-bearers are identified because they either hold a cup or extend the arm to receive a cup, and they sometimes wear plain skirts that are distinguishable from the more elaborate garment of the seated individual they serve.27 Perhaps the plain skirt – unusual within the corpus of Mari temple sculpture, in which the tufted skirt is the norm – is meant as a representational device signifying the occupation of cup-bearer.

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67. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic stone statue of a seated male figure dedicated by Seskina, the nu-banda3 official. Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 66182. Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 202).

Other Mari temple statues demonstrate variations on the dedicatory guise of a standing frontal figure with clasped hands that more generally are relatable to the high rank of the donor. The unusual seated posture of the inscribed figure of Ebih-il can be understood as a visual indicator of status corresponding to the donor’s high-ranking title of nu-banda3 (Figure 66).28 Attesting to the importance of the title, the Early Dynastic ruler Urnanshe of Lagash claimed to have captured six nu-banda3, among other high-ranking individuals, during his defeat of Umma.29 Although nu-banda3 is not the only Early Dynastic profession represented in a seated pose, it is noteworthy that a second surviving Early Dynastic statue dedicated by a nu-banda3  – from the Inana Temple at Nippur – also depicts a seated male figure (Figure 67).30 The high-ranking title of nu-banda3 therefore is expressed visually through the prerogative of sitting. The seated posture of the nu-banda3 from Nippur, however, is otherwise subsumed into the dedicatory guise of a frontal figure with clasped hands. In contrast, the statue of the nu-banda3 Ebih-il is carved to highlight the seated posture. For example, sitting has allowed the sculptor to carve the feet of Ebih-il in the round. The tightly woven horizontal rows of the seat and the loose, wavy

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Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues tufts of the skirt, moreover, create an interplay of contrasting textures. The deliberate choice of contrasting styles for the seat and skirt is supported by the fact that the wavy tufts of the skirt of Ebih-il are generally reserved for the fur of animals; regimented tiers of tufts instead are typical of the Mari sculpture corpus.31 Unusual details in the representation of Ebih-il therefore are consequential to a seated posture, reinforcing the link between donor and representation. Parallels for some characteristic features of the Mari sculpture style can be located exterior to the temple sculpture tradition in Sumer proper. Many parallels come from the Royal Cemetery at Ur, the largest corpus of Sumerian visual imagery outside the Early Dynastic temple context. Parallels for the stylized Mari beard, for example, are provided by the bulls decorating the sound boxes of lyres, the wavy strands of their beards ending in coils and separated by patterned spaces.32 The wavy strands, drilled holes, coils, and curls comprising the stylized Mari beard are also found on an ivory human-headed bull or bison from Kish.33 The intersection at Kish of elements of the Mari sculpture style with a quintessentially Sumerian image – apparently, the ivory was one of four human-headed bulls or bison forming a support in which the forelegs would have rested on foliage rising from a common platform – visually recalls a route proposed for the transmission of Sumerian culture to the Syro-Mesopotamian world.34 Significantly, a recumbent human-headed bull with the characteristic beard resembling that of the male figures depicted among Mari temple statues is attributed to either level b or level c of the Ishtar Temple.35 In other words, it precedes the large concentration of temple sculpture in level a of the Ishtar Temple. Such elements largely exterior to the temple sculpture traditions of Sumer subsequently were used for a distinct style of temple sculpture at Mari. Other parallels for individual elements of the Mari style are discernible among the visual imagery of greater Mesopotamia. In addition to the Royal Cemetery at Ur, the visual culture of Palace G at Ebla, for example, also represents an important source for the Mari sculpture style. The result is an eclectic quality, with the Mari sculptors drawing elements from diverse sources and assimilating them into the temple sculpture tradition. Mari temple sculpture forms a coherent corpus carved in a distinct style, defined by modeling, proportion, and a technical mastery over rendering elements in the round. Some Mari statues are anomalous in pose, gesture, and garment. The frequent break at Mari from traditional modes of dedicatory representation should not be undervalued. This relative freedom is remarkable within the Early Dynastic temple sculpture tradition. Selz relates certain offices and functions reflected in divine names to the concept of the Sumerian me, an ambiguous term conventionally rendered as divine powers.36 Physical objects and abstract concepts were both designated by the term me. In a similar vein, the functions and concepts of offices were represented by and also inherent in titles and their insignia.37 That is, occupations and titles could be reflected in both physical objects and abstract concepts.

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture Royalty, for example, was signified by the tufted garment leaving one shoulder free and the hair bound at the back in a chignon, just as it was contained in the royal title of lugal. In ensuring the continuity of social operations, titles and occupations might seem more important than the individuals holding them. The visual representation of the donor in title/occupation, however, was a representation of the self in a permanent social role. In this respect, the representation of the donor in title/ occupation can be understood as an expression of perpetuity. This would accord well with the fundamental dedicatory purpose of temple sculpture. Longevity – of prayer, offerings, life – was the most frequent request to accompany the dedication of a temple statue. The emphasis on title/occupation therefore was one tangible method by which individual identity was potentially represented to varying degrees in the temple sculpture of male donors. As a marker of identity, the social role of the male donor therefore did have a personalizing effect, albeit one that conformed to the greater representational devices of the Early Dynastic period.

Female Donors: Gender, Banqueting, and Cultic Practices While temple statues of male figures are sometimes distinguished on the basis of title or occupation, banqueting iconography – most commonly a seated figure clasping a cup and/or vegetation – forms a subset among temple statues of female figures (Figure 68, right).38 Statues of seated female figures with a cup and/or vegetation draw on an iconography also common to that of banqueters in relief-carving. The human participants in relief-carved banqueting scenes are likely members of elite and royal realms if the media, materials, and inscriptions associated with banqueting are considered.39 Individuals wearing the horned headdress can be identified as divine (Figure 36). Both textual sources and visual imagery indicate that banquets were celebrated on a variety of occasions.40 On Early Dynastic relief-carved door plaques, male and female banqueters sometimes hold vegetation specific to their own gender.41 The upper register of an Inana Temple plaque depicts male and female seated banqueters holding a cup as well as the male date spathe and the female date cluster, respectively (Figure 39).42 In the Inana Temple, a seated female banqueter in the round holds the cup and vegetation precisely rendered as a date cluster, which bears traces of red coloring (Figure 68, right).43 In contrast, a rare example of a male banqueter in the round from the Shara Temple depicts the seated male figure holding a cup as well as vegetation precisely rendered as the male date spathe.44 The correspondence between the gender of the seated individual and that of the vegetation suggests that banqueting iconography is itself gendered.

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68. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic stone statues. From left to right: Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 66172, IM 66163, IM 66178. Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 163, 7 N 161, 7 N 186).

As discussed in Chapter 5, banqueting iconography is distinct from standing figures holding cups, which are limited to the Asmar sculpture hoard and one other example from the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab. In contrast to standing figures holding cups, banqueting iconography is largely a female iconography in temple sculpture. That is, while we have examples of both male and female banqueters on Early Dynastic relief-carved plaques, inlays, and cylinder seals, banqueting iconography among temple statues is with few exceptions associated with female figures.45 This is another example of Early Dynastic temple sculpture as a distinct genre of representation. The greatest frequency of banqueting iconography among temple sculpture is found in the Mari corpus, although female banqueters also form a distinct subset of the temple statues of female figures at other sites. The ratio of banqueting female figures to standing female figures with clasped hands can be thought of as analogous to the ratio of inscribed male figures to uninscribed male figures. That is, female banqueters and inscribed male figures both form a small, select part of the temple sculpture corpus in the Early Dynastic period. A few male banqueters in the round do exist, just as a few inscribed statues of female donors exist. Banqueting iconography nevertheless is principally a female prerogative among Early Dynastic temple sculpture just as inscribed sculpture is principally a male prerogative among Early Dynastic temple sculpture.

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture Some archaeological analyses reflexively relate bodily practices to representational practices. Images are thus produced to serve both as models for embodiment and to commemorate it.46 Statues of banqueting females find a literal correspondence with Early Dynastic bodily practice. In the Royal Cemetery at Ur, cylinder seals with banqueting imagery were often worn on the bodies of elite females.47 This literal correspondence between the skeletal, physical body and the stone, sculptural body neatly dovetails with the notion that a statue embodies something essential of the donor. Similar to male donors having inscribed statues and female donors having banqueting iconography, additional dedicatory practices also can be delineated according to gender. Female donors did have access to other types of dedicatory inscriptions. For example, female donors dedicated the majority of inscribed stone vessels. And, in general, inscribed stone vessels were dedicated to goddesses.48 In contrast, male donors dedicated the majority of inscribed stone mace heads. The greatest concentration of Early Dynastic mace heads are the hundreds that were deposited at Tell Agrab in the Shara Temple, dedicated to a god associated with warfare.49 Certain classes of dedicatory objects therefore were gendered, both in terms of who dedicated them and whether a god or a goddess was the recipient of the dedication. During the Diyala excavations, statues of female figures played a smaller role than male figures in the study of sculpture. Numerous statues of female figures were published in the sculpture volumes of the Diyala excavations. Yet Frankfort maintained that “the figures of women were not treated as a serious sculptural problem at all” and believed that the ancient sculptor considered statues of female figures as “no more than charming bibelots.”50 Frankfort claimed that the bodily proportions of female figures were at such variance that it was impossible to reconstruct statues of female figures from fragments.51 As a result, the sculpture fragments belonging to female figures were more likely to remain fragments, whereas many statues of male figures were reconstructed.52 This attitude obscured a full assessment of Early Dynastic dedicatory practices in the Diyala region with respect to gender. Therefore, when the Diyala excavators characterized the sculpture from Sin Temple VIII as “but few” and “inconclusive” in terms of style, this was correct only insofar as it reflected the excavators’ own attitude toward the sculpture of female figures. A great deal of sculpture actually was retrieved from Sin Temple VIII, but it was disregarded because some twenty of the twenty-two sculpture fragments in which the gender is determinable are from female figures.53 As a consequence, it has gone unobserved that the majority of sculpture dedicated to Sin Temple VIII is comprised of female figures. In contrast, Nintu Temple V and Nintu Temple VI yielded predominantly sculpture of male figures. Specifically, all eleven statues and statue fragments from Nintu Temple V and some twentytwo of twenty-five statues and statue fragments from Nintu Temple VI belong

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Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues to male figures. The Sin Temple and the Nintu Temple were both nestled among the domestic structures surrounding the monumental Temple Oval complex at Khafajah. The donor practices surrounding temple sculpture suggest that these small, neighborhood temples were distinguished according to gender. Did men and women frequent different temples within the neighborhood surrounding the Temple Oval?

Depositional Patterns at Nippur As the center of Sumerian religious life, Nippur was the home of Enlil, the chief Sumerian deity. The Temple of Enlil dominated the city, but at Nippur there were also temples dedicated to other deities. The Inana Temple was prominently located just southwest of the Temple of Enlil, along the canal that ran through the city. Excavations of the Inana Temple area conducted from 1955 to 1962 provide the longest continuous archaeological sequence for a Mesopotamian site, with more than twenty building levels dating back to the Middle Uruk period.54 In existence by ED I, the temple itself was thereafter continuously rebuilt until the Parthian period, some three thousand years later. The final publication of the Inana Temple excavations is forthcoming. Four sculpture fragments were catalogued from level VIII proper of the Inana Temple. Some sixty statues and statue fragments, many of which formed joins, were retrieved from level VIIB and from a hoard below the earliest floor of level VIIB. Of these, some eighteen female figures and sixteen male figures are preserved; one additional statue is of a male and female figure seated together. Other sculpture fragments are too poorly preserved to determine the gender of the donor. The subsequent Early Dynastic level of the Inana Temple, level VIIA, yielded fewer finds overall and only four sculpture fragments. A stratigraphic sequence for the Inana Temple sculpture can be reconstructed beginning with the hoard below the earliest level VIIB floor, then the sculpture built into cultic installations of level VIIB, and finally the sculpture on the level VIIB floors. All these contexts are dated to EDIIIA by their association with Fara tablets. The earliest is the hoard of objects – including some ten statues – buried in the southwest corner of sanctuary 179 below the earliest level VIIB floor. The elevation for the top of the deposit was above the latest floors of level VIII; the lowest floor of level VIIB sealed the hoard. The sculpture therefore presumably originated in level VIII and was deposited as a hoard when the level VIIB foundations were put in place. The bent-axis sanctuary of level VIII corresponds to its position in level VII. The hoard therefore can be associated with the level VIII sanctuary. The best-preserved sculpture of level VIIB proper was built into cultic installations (Figures 32, 33).55 Some eight pieces of sculpture were buried in the

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture benches against the short west wall of bent-axis sanctuary 179. Along with other objects, the sculpture had been laid out and covered with plaster. It is unclear from the excavation notes whether all of these objects were deposited at the same time or were deposited at different times, whenever a periodic replastering of the benches occurred. The statues in the bench of sanctuary 179 therefore do not necessarily comprise a single act of hoarding. Some eight statue fragments were among the objects that had been built into the base or foundation of an installation for liquids in room 173. The installation itself is the culmination of a sequence of installations that would have been encountered along the approach to the core sanctuary area of the Inana Temple from court 162 via loci 163, 165, 199, 201, and ultimately 173. As a sort of last stop before entering the sanctuary area, the passageway from room 173 into locus 176 of the sanctuary area was obstructed in one subphase by two rows of low mudbrick structures (Figure 33). The level VIIB installation in room 173 originally consisted of a baked brick platform with a bitumen surface that sloped toward a stone jar set in the center. The installation was rebuilt twice during the time of level VIIB. At the time of the first rebuilding, the statue fragments were deposited under the baked brick platform. The largest concentration of Inana Temple sculpture on the floors of level VIIB proper is associated with locus 171 (Figure 32).56 In some parts of the Inana Temple, “high” and “low” levels in level VIIB could be distinguished. Level VIIB high in locus 171 is represented on the plan of Figure 32, although the plan itself represents various subphases. In level VIIB high, a well some 60 cm in diameter surrounded by a bitumen-coated pavement of baked brick was designated locus 171. The bitumen-coated pavement extended into entry vestibule 170 and also merged with the contemporary floors in court 162 and southern bay 169, which was delineated by a low wall. A secondary entrance into the Inana Temple was gained from vestibule 170 into court 162 via locus 171. Fragmentary sculpture was found lying on the pavement near the well of locus 171. Of this sculpture, four fragments were catalogued.57 The four catalogued sculpture fragments do not reflect the full extent of sculpture retrieved from locus 171. The stone of additional sculpture was in such a poor, powdery condition that the statues could not be preserved; although they were not catalogued, mention is made of them in the field notes. The stratigraphic sequence for the Inana Temple sculpture therefore begins with the hoard below the earliest level VIIB floor of sanctuary 179, then the sculpture built into the locus 173 cultic installation of level VIIB proper, and finally the sculpture on the “high” pavement of locus 171 near the secondary entrance to the Inana Temple proper. If we accept again that the location of object hoards is significant, then sculpture begins to appear outside the

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Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues sanctuary proper during the span of time represented by level VIIB. That is, after a period of time in which sculpture was associated almost exclusively with the bent-axis sanctuary of the Inana Temple, it subsequently is located also exterior to the sanctuary principally in loci 171 and 173. Meanwhile, the Inana Temple sculpture maintained an association with the sanctuary through the sculpture – b ­ uried periodically? – in the VIIB bench. When sculpture begins to appear exterior to the sanctuary, it is worth noting that the two major findspots of sculpture are associated with installations for liquids. As discussed in Chapter 5, a similar association between sculpture and installations for liquids is discernible in the Abu Temple at Tell Asmar and the Sin Temple at Khafajah. This would suggest that, regarding the Inana Temple, the building of stone sculpture into the locus 173 installation did not fulfill only a practical purpose of facilitating the drainage of liquids. Rather, the locus 173 installation suggests a location for the sculpture before it became a construction material. The significance of burial within the 173 installation is reinforced by the depositional pattern of the sculpture fragments belonging to the statues buried within it. Five of the eight sculpture fragments built into the 173 installation were comprised of the majority of a statue with additional smaller fragments removed to locus 194. For three of these statues, the fragments in locus 194 were comprised of a part of the shoulder/arm and a part of the head. The pattern suggests a purposeful separation of sculpture into precise fragments and their subsequent removal to separate loci. Locus 194 contained a bread oven in the northwestern corner and a large number of object fragments in general. It is unclear why the fragments had been collected there. Perhaps they were there as raw materials to be recycled. The six inscribed statues retrieved from level VIIB and below are associated with either the locus 173 installation or sanctuary 179. Two standing male figures – one inscribed with only the name and the other with a name and uncertain title – are from the hoard below the VIIB floor in sanctuary 179.58 Another standing male figure inscribed with an uncertain name and title was built into the locus 173 installation.59 In addition, the largest fragment of a standing male ~g ~a of Enlil” was also built into the 173 figure inscribed “Lugal-hursag, the sag installation (Figure 69).60 The seated nu-banda3 and the sixth inscribed male figure were buried in the bench in sanctuary 179; the latter is inscribed “Iti~g ~a of Enlil” (figure 45 [center]).61 lum, the sag ~g ~a is that of a high-level temple official. For example, before The title of sag his accession to the throne, the Early Dynastic ruler Enentarzi of Lagash was the ~g ~a of Ningirsu.62 The two sag ~g ~a of Enlil who dedicated statues to the Inana sag Temple during the time of level VIIB were presumably affiliated with the Temple of Enlil, but may have also held positions in the Inana Temple. According to later

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69. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic stone statue of a standing male figure ~g ~a official of Enlil. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, dedicated by Lugal-hursag, sag New York, Rogers Fund, 1962 (62.70.1a–b). Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 136, 7 N 155).

Ur III administrative texts, three individuals named as chief administrators of the Inana Temple were also high-ranking functionaries of the Temple of Enlil, which would suggest at least informal administrative or structural links with the Inana Temple; in general, the temples at Nippur seemed to have pooled labor resources.63 A fragment preserving the feet and base of a statue was found on a bench in sanctuary 179.64 During the time of level VIIB, benches against the west wall of sanctuary 179 were replaced by a three-step construction, formed in stages (Figure 33). The southernmost bench was built first. Just above it, an arched niche – measuring some 52 cm wide, 27 cm high, and 15 cm deep – was set into the wall. A sculpture fragment preserving the feet and base was found on the bench in front of the niche. It was joined to fragments from the 173 installation ~g ~a of and from locus 194 in order to reconstruct one of the statues of the sag Enlil (Figure 69). The excavators, however, expressed uncertainty as to whether these fragments formed a true join with the base. Recent examination of the statue supports that they were incorrectly joined.65

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Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues The fragmentary feet and base nevertheless form a pattern with two other bases from sanctuary 179. Neither base could be joined with other sculpture fragments. The bases were found in roughly the same position but at earlier and later levels. A base with three dowel holes for the attachment of a body was in a corresponding position but on a lower floor of level VIIB before the time of the bench.66 It is unclear whether the base belonged to a statue that had been set up on the floor before the bench was built over it or whether the base had been placed in that location during the construction of the bench. A third statue base was found on the level VIIA floor against the west wall of the sanctuary at a location roughly corresponding to that of the two other bases.67 The three statue bases raise questions discussed in Chapter 4 vis-à-vis both the installation and the potential reuse of sculpture. Each of the three bases suggests the installation of a statue; at some point the body was removed and the base was left in place. Were the statue bases left in place so that the statue of another donor could be installed there? Installed at the west end of the sanctuary – and in one subphase, framed by a niche – the statues would have assumed primary positions as the potential witnesses and participants in cultic activities focused on the altar against the opposite end of the sanctuary. It would seem significant also to note that the west end of the sanctuary would have afforded a position facing the Temple of Enlil, because the Inana Temple is southwest of it. ~g ~a of Enlil in the Inana Temple would suggest that this The presence of the sag orientation is not merely coincidental.

Female Donors and the Inana Temple Winter has traced back to the Early Dynastic period, on the basis of visual evidence, the office of the high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur, a post later held by the daughters of rulers beginning with Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon of Akkad.68 Long-haired female figures on Early Dynastic relief-carvings are identified as goddesses and priestesses, with goddesses wearing the divine horned headdress and priestesses a distinctive rolled-brim cap.69 Related to this iconography are three statues of female figures with long, unbound hair among the Inana Temple sculpture (for example, Figures 46, 68 left).70 All other female figures among the Inana Temple sculpture wear the hair up, braided, or otherwise secured with bands. The three statues of female figures with long, unbound hair were found in the hoard below the earliest VIIB floor of sanctuary 179. If we accept the association between long, unbound hair and priestesses, then the statues of females may signify that they are religious personnel in the Inana Temple even though they lack further identifying iconography. ~g ~a of Enlil, the statues of female figures with long, Like the statues of the sag unbound hair potentially can be understood as “local” religious officials. They

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture form only a small portion of the overall sculpture retrieved from sanctuary 179 and the Inana Temple in general. It might be necessary to look farther afield for the origins of other sculpture in the Inana Temple. Sculpture taken as booty and rededicated to Enlil at Nippur, recorded, for example, in the royal inscription of Enshakushana discussed earlier, may have arrived in the Inana Temple through the sharing or recycling of offerings among the two temples, which is a practice documented for the Ur III period.71 That this already may have been occurring ~g ~a of during the Early Dynastic period is suggested by the statues of the sag Enlil, which attest to the presence of officials from the Temple of Enlil already in the Early Dynastic Inana Temple. Other sculpture potentially was dedicated because of Nippur’s special status as the center of Sumerian religious life. The bringing to Nippur of offerings from other city-states is attested in Early Dynastic texts. A tablet from the e2-mi2 archive, for example, records offerings of varieties of saltwater fish that queen Sasa of Lagash brought to Nippur.72 Fish were one of the chief export products of the city-state of Lagash, and texts pertaining to trade between Lagash and Nippur also mention fish being exported to Nippur. The offering of saltwater fish by queen Sasa of Lagash therefore may have signified an official or diplomatic venture. It is possible that other elite individuals potentially brought gifts, including sculpture, from their own city-state to Nippur. As I suggested in Chapter 4, sculpture in precious metal and stone does have some connections with royal institutions, raising the possibility that these individuals could procure their own statues for dedication. A surviving temple statue from Sippar, in contrast, seems to have been obtained locally by a donor from Mari. The statue was dedicated to the god Shamash by an individual who identifies himself as an attendant or courtier of the ruler of Mari.73 Although fragmentary and missing the head, the statue was not carved in the Mari style of sculpture. It has broad, blocky forms, and the thick arms are pressed against the sides with a deep bend at the elbows. The surface patterning characteristic of Mari is absent. The statue therefore was likely procured at Sippar rather than brought there from Mari. A mixture of “local” dedications, the rededication of plunder, and the special status of Nippur as the recipient of dedications from farther afield therefore might account for the rather disparate styles of sculpture retrieved from the Inana Temple. This range is apparent among media, from the gypsum statues of “local” personnel to the composite statue of translucent green stone, gold, lapis lazuli, and shell buried in the bench of sanctuary 179 (for example, compare Figures 44 and 68 left). As was recognized by Hansen, stylistic variations in the Inana Temple sculpture are more prominent among female donors than among male donors. It also would seem that female donors in general had a special relationship with the Inana Temple.74 This can be inferred by the number of female

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Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues donors – slightly more than male donors – dedicating sculpture. In addition, female donors dedicated the majority of inscribed stone bowls retrieved from level VIIB of the Inana Temple. The deposition of sculpture in level VIIB of the Inana Temple suggests additional distinctions according to gender. The sculpture from sanctuary 179  – both below the floor and in the bench – is distributed fairly evenly according to gender. More interesting, however, is the distribution of gender outside the sanctuary. Seven of the eight sculpture fragments built into the 173 installation for liquids are from male figures; the eighth fragment is a base. In contrast, the four sculpture fragments catalogued from the bitumen-coated pavement surrounding the well of locus 171 are from female figures. These findspots therefore are divided according to gender: the sculpture built into the 173 installation signifies a sphere of male activity, while the sculpture on the 171 pavement signifies a sphere of female activity. The relationship of locus 171 to the secondary entrance to the Inana Temple raises several intriguing possibilities, however hypothetical they may be, regarding gendered donor activity. On the basis of accessibility, many more temple visitors could have been making offerings to the statues in locus 171 than to the statues either associated with the locus 173 installation or with sanctuary 179. That the statues in locus 171 are female figures corresponds with the special relationship that female donors in general had with the Inana Temple. The statues of female figures in locus 171 potentially fulfilled special cultic duties on behalf of other visitors, who presumably were female given the quantity of sculpture and stone vessels associated with female donors. We know from later texts, for example, that females assumed special roles in temples, including acting on behalf of others. For example, priestesses prayed on behalf of others. The ruler Lipit-Ishtar describes his daughter, an ēntu-priestess, as she “who stands to say the king’s prayers.” According to the inscription of Enanedu, high priestess of Nanna at Ur, the gods “placed in my pure mouth a prayer of life, and grasped my hand stretched out [to pray for] the prolongation of the life of Rim-Sin my twin [?] brother.”75 According to Postgate, one function of the high priestesses culled from the royal family “was to remain inside the temple as representatives of their male (and perhaps also female) relatives [ . . . ] a sort of living worshiper statue.”76 We might be able to understand the concentration of female figures near the secondary entrance to the Inana Temple in a similar vein. That is, females assumed special cultic duties on behalf of others. We might consider the Lagash texts similarly. Studies of the e2-mi2 archive are sometimes preceded by the disclaimer that although the queen was the authority of the e2-mi2 institution, its autonomy nevertheless may have been an administrative fiction and was instead under the control of the king. Some scholars therefore use the archive to analyze

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture what is assumed to be a parallel, similarly functioning household for the king – that of the palace.77 The authority of the queen is suggested, however, by the appearance of queen Dimtur in the administrative records after the death of her king Enentarzi, suggesting that she was probably still in charge of the e2-mi2 institution when the ruler Lugalanda assumed power.78 Instead of assuming the presence of an identical corresponding male role at Lagash on the basis of the e2-mi2 archive, it might be that the cultic duties of the queen varied from those of the king. That is, it should not be assumed that the king maintained exactly the same schedule as the queen during monthly cultic festivals. In ritual texts from Palace G at Ebla concerning the cultic activities surrounding deities and deceased kings, for example, the queen assumes a more active role than the king in the first part of the text recording activities at the “house of the father” and the Temple of Kura. Subsequent sacrifices are attributed to the king; it is only in the middle part of the text that the king and queen perform their duties together.79 Some duties, moreover, may have been performed solely by the royal women of Lagash. Queen Baranamtara, for example, conducted gift exchanges with the queen of Adab, potentially indicating diplomatic relations between these two women.80 A large part of ancient Near Eastern visual culture is self-referential.81 The most common offerings to alan recorded in the e2-mi2 archive are oil and dates, which could correspond to the cup and vegetation of seated female figures in the round. We tend to see banqueting. That this iconography is special when it is represented in the round, however, is already suggested by its restriction principally to female figures. An indicator of high status, the seated posture of the banqueter also may be an indicator of the roles assumed by female donors as both the subjects and objects of ritual. In other words, statues of seated female figures holding a cup and/or vegetation may be a reflection of the special status of women, who assume cultic duties on behalf of others. In the Royal Cemetery at Ur, the unusual configuration of PG 800  – the grave of Puabi – was explained by Woolley on the basis of the nearby plundered tomb PG 789, identified as that of her king. Woolley posited that Puabi wished to be buried next to her king, and thus the location could be “easily explained by the affection of a widowed queen.”82 However, it has since been demonstrated that these two graves are unrelated.83 An analogous interpretation has befallen statues of male and female figures seated together (Figure 68, center). Like the misperception that Puabi was buried next to her king because she so loved him, statues of male and female figures seated together are usually understood as dedications by husbands and wives with an underlying sentimental expression of romantic love. Statues of male and female figures seated alongside one another do not necessarily provide a commentary on Sumerian marital bliss. A single sculpture with two figures would suggest a collective

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70. Nippur, Inana Temple, level VIIB, Early Dynastic relief-carved stone vessel with a male and a female figure. Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 66141. Courtesy of the Nippur Publication Project (7 N 203).

dedication, analogous to Early Dynastic dedicatory inscriptions recording wishes also for the lives of family members of the donor. Attested among both male and female donors, collective dedications suggest that dedications in general could be offered collectively, just as cultic activities could extend beyond the donor proper. Some of the female figures in the Inana Temple clasp their hands in a minor variation on the dedicatory gesture. Instead of folding one hand inside the other, the right hand grasps the left wrist and the thumb rests along the forearm (Figures 46, 68 left). In the Inana Temple, this gesture only appears among the statues of female figures. The gendered significance of the gesture is emphasized on a relief-carved vessel: a male figure with clasped hands faces a female figure grasping the left wrist with the right hand, the thumb resting along the forearm (Figure 70). It is the latter gesture that is reproduced collectively by the seated male and female from Nippur (Figure 68 center). Despite the great stylistic variation between the two statues, this gesture is also created by a seated male and female from Mari (Figure 71). This gesture, otherwise reserved for female figures, suggests that statues of seated male and female figures may be situated within the gendered iconography of females. That is, the collective element of the dedication is localized in the female sphere of temple activity.

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71. Mari, Ishtar Temple, stone statue of a male and a female figure seated together (M 303). National Museum, Aleppo, 10104. Courtesy of the Directorate General for Antiquities and Museums of Syria; photograph courtesy of Pascal Butterlin, Director of the French mission to Tell Hariri-Mari, Syria.

Conclusion: Collective Identity and Early Dynastic Sculpture In the alignment of representation with gender, I have suggested that there is a collective element to identity in Early Dynastic temple sculpture. Its most distinguishing aspects – banqueting iconography for female donors and inscriptions for male donors – appear most frequently at Mari. No other site exhibits a similar emphasis on inscribing sculpture of male figures, and no other site exhibits a similar emphasis on using banqueting iconography for female figures. Despite the adaptation of a wide array of sources for Mari sculpture, temple statue traditions were ever-present. That is, the emphasis on inscriptions for male donors and banqueting iconography for female donors still adheres to larger temple traditions. ~g ~a of Enlil from the Inana Temple are different from the donors at The sag Mari because the title relates these officials directly to the temple administration. The inscribed male figures at Mari are instead directly linked to the king: their

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Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues inscriptions begin with the name of the king, provide kinship to the king (“brother of the king”), and record the profession in relation to the king (“cup~g ~a officials bearer of the king”).84 In contrast to Mari, the alignment of the sag with the Inana Temple administration may reflect the position of Nippur as the center of Sumerian religious life. The ties to the ruler at Mari as opposed to the ties to the temples at Nippur may tell us something about the different cultic activities focused on these respective corpuses of statues. More generally, marked social distinctions have been posited between the Sumerian city-states and those of the Syro-Mesopotamian world.85 While the precise nature of the practices cannot be distinguished, the Inana Temple VIIB sculpture in loci 171 and 173 is distributed according to gender. Given the preponderance in the Inanna Temple of dedicatory gifts from female donors, it is plausible that the female figures in locus 171 might have been tended by female visitors who sought intercession with the goddess through offerings made at the secondary entrance to the temple. The statues of male figures in locus 173, in contrast, might represent local religious offi~g ~a of Enlil. cials because at least one inscribed example was dedicated by a sag If we accept the association between long, unbound hair and priestesses, then it is also noteworthy that the Inana Temple statues of female figures potentially signifying religious personnel are located in the sanctuary proper as is ~g ~a of Enlil. the other statue of a sag It is possible to suggest that the distribution of sculpture in the Inana Temple adds another dimension to our understanding that statues were dedicated to temples in great numbers during the Early Dynastic period owing to issues of access. In this interpretation, access to the Inana Temple by visitors who tended the statues of female figures was restricted to going no farther than just inside the secondary entrance to the temple. In contrast, the temple officials presumably held an office that granted them greater access to the temple, and their sculpture was found either in the sanctuary or nearby. Once again, rather than simply going where the donor could not, temple statues instead defined the topography of access. The archaeological evidence suggests that, in general, certain cultic practices were aligned according to gender in the Early Dynastic temple. For example, a distribution according to gender is discernible by comparing the sculpture of predominantly female figures in Sin Temple VIII with the sculpture of predominantly male figures in Nintu temples V and VI at Khafajah. Some temple dedications are also gendered. Just as inscribed statues signify elite male donors, I have suggested that statues of female figures in the guise of banqueters potentially signify elite female donors. The special status of female banqueters is communicated further by the seated pose. The question of why there are so few images of females in ancient Near Eastern visual culture must be tempered by a modern reality. That is, in some

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture instances it is instead that so few females are depicted in the early scholarship of the ancient Near East rather than in the ancient Near East itself. Through choices made during the publication of early excavations, biases were perpetuated. This is one reason why the primary data of archaeological excavations should be continually revisited.

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Conclusion M at e r i al i t y, A b s t rac t i o n, an d E ar ly D y nas t i c S c u l p t u r e

The scene in the upper register of the Eana III cult vessel from Uruk is reminiscent of later texts that record a ritual that celebrates the bringing in of the harvest as a meeting between the goddess Inana and the ruler at the lapis lazuli door of the storehouse.1 The elaborate procession of figures to the storehouse in the upper register of the Uruk vessel is a theme that also continues to find parallels in relief-carved compositions portraying offerings brought before an architectural facade. For example, an Early Dynastic door plaque found at the site of Ur in a later level of the residence and administrative center of the high priestess of the moon god Nanna has a composition organized in two registers (Figure 72). The lower register represents the procession, offering, and libation before a temple façade; the upper register presumably shows the libation rituals performed before the resident deity  – identified by the horned headdress  – within the temple. That this is a temple facade is made explicit by the presence of divine symbols, which evoke the sacredness of the space they frame. By evoking an inaccessible space, the facade both reveals and conceals the temple within. The facade on the Ur plaque also incorporates an entrance, a point of passage and separation, a place of mediation between one physical space and another. In the classic formulation of ritual, the performative element of a rite of passage is described as a liminal stage, a literal and metaphorical threshold.2 A procession culminating before the facade approaches but never accesses the sacred space behind it. The presence of the façade betrays an awareness that the processional performance references something that is withheld. Early Dynastic processions are portrayed with a consistent iconography, much as procession itself uses discrete elements in order to create a distinction from everyday movement through space.3 One method for understanding the consistency in the iconography of procession therefore is through theoretical

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72. Ur, Early Dynastic stone door plaque. The British Museum, London, BM 118561 (U.6831). Photo by Jean M. Evans.

constructs exploring the relationship of performance to social reality.4 From this viewpoint, consistency represents patterning or scripting, which fundamentally distinguishes between performance and everyday behavior. The concept of patterning or scripting suggests that we examine not the imagery but its repetition as a major feature of the visual culture of ritual acts. As documented in Early Dynastic texts, festivals were scheduled regularly, and their character became fixed.5 In fact, we encounter the use of repetition in much of the imagery associated with Early Dynastic temples. For example, the bottom register of a stone door plaque from the Sin Temple at Khafajah is completed by a fragment now in the Iraq Museum.6 On the left are two men with long hair and beards; one plays a harp, and the other, his arms crossed, sings or dances. A clean-shaven man to the right holds a staff and watches as two men, both with long hair and beards, wrestle. Significantly, it is among the revelers outside the banquet proper that identity is articulated by the inscription of a name, only partially complete.7 Instead of emphasizing the upper register as the culmination of a narrative sequence whose outcome is a feast or banquet in which the donor participates, door plaques are better understood as dedications by the individuals who participated in the performance of temple festivals, rituals, and celebrations exterior to the banquet proper. As observed in Chapter 3, the dedication of a stone plaque forming a locking device for doors that would hypothetically impede the donor’s own passage through the temple suggests an awareness of issues of access.

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Conclusion Inscribed dedications from the Inana Temple at Nippur hint that such a social hierarchy might be distinguishable among certain acts of dedication. The middle register of a stone door plaque from the Inana Temple bears a dedication from Lumma, the gal-zadim (chief stone cutter; Figure 39). The proximity of the inscription to a male figure accompanying a horned bovine suggests that the donor of the plaque is to be located – is represented? – outside the banquet occurring in the top and bottom registers. Fragments of a stone bowl preserving the same dedication by Lumma, the gal-zadim, were also recovered from the Inana Temple.8 The Lumma who dedicated a door plaque and a stone bowl belonged by profession to a group of individuals who would have participated in the cultic activities of the Inana Temple presumably only to a limited degree ~g ~a of Enlil, who dedicated statues to the Inana Temple in comparison to the sag (Figures 45 center, 69). On the door plaque from Ur that began this discussion,the frontal female figure in the lower register and the three female figures in the upper register have a consistent iconography of long robe, unbound hair, and headdress with a rolled brim, which identifies them as priestesses.9 The two figures approaching the priestess in the lower register can be identified as donors bearing offerings, and they are represented by employing the repetitive iconographies associated with procession. The female figure likely offers a piece of jewelry, and the male figure offers an animal. A fragment of a door plaque preserving part of a similar composition bears an inscription above the two figures corresponding to the donors in the lower register of the Ur plaque. The text is not completely legible, but its placement localizes the dedication of the stone door plaque also exterior to the culminating scene, which portrays the divine rituals.10 The position of the priestess between the donors and the ritual libation before the facade reflects her function as an intermediary connecting the human and divine worlds. In her frontality, the priestess on the plaque resembles a goddess as well as a statue; as was observed by Hansen, in the cult performance all are one and the same.11 After the meeting between the priestess and the donors at the temple façade, the participation of the donor ends, and the significance of the act of dedication is realized. The frontality of the priestess confronts the donors and has a visual counterpart in that it forces the viewer’s eye to stop. The depiction of that which is secret alludes to the secret without exposing it.12 The element of inaccessibility suggested by the façade is reinforced in its upper register by the uniformity of the priestesses and the repetition of the libation. In other words, no new information is revealed. The spatial separation into two registers is a literal separation between exterior and interior, which unfolds behind the façade through a series of passageways. The two scenes unfolding in two separate registers depict disparate realms. In the upper register, the clear size differences among the deity, the nude male figure administering libations, and the priestesses establish an otherworldly hierarchy that contrasts with the

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture lower register, in which everyone is the same size. This contrast further reinforces the fabrication of the temple interior and is a nod to its concealment. The continuous rebuilding of a temple created a powerful site of collective memory. When a temple was to be rebuilt, the mudbrick walls would be leveled down to just a few courses of brick, which left behind a part of the earlier building as well as the materials deposited inside it.13 Certainly, there must have been knowledge of this concealment, knowledge that dedications entering the temple would never exit. Stone is a medium of commemoration because it is permanent. But what does it mean to dedicate something that will be buried someday: to perform an act of remembering and forgetting through a dedication that will exist behind the facade? Patterns generate relationships of abstracted complexity that resist quick decipherment.14 Abstraction therefore is a visual quality of secrecy. The persistence of abstraction in Early Dynastic sculpture is a culturally encoded representation that is repetitive and consistent from one statue to the next. It is inherent in abstraction that it creates patterns. Early Dynastic temple statues represent the greatest quantity of surviving temple sculpture throughout ancient Near Eastern history. The corpus creates a pattern through repetition and thus communicates the presence of a secret. The secret that this style of sculpture communicates but does not reveal is the ritual that is inaccessible to the donor. This inaccessibility is mediated by a dedication offered at the threshold where donor and statue separate. The separation between donor and alan at the threshold is the performance and encapsulation of a secret. In a way that the donor proper cannot, the statue assumes a role within the temple. If we accept the public, collective element of temple festivals, processions, and rituals, then we have to shift our emphasis if we want to understand the experience of the statue. The life of the statue is different from that of the donor. This book has been concerned with the former. I have argued that if we wish to consider the statue, we must examine its life as a material object. The beginning of this book therefore was organized around the study of Sumerian sculpture as both ethnographic document and fine art during the formative phase in the discovery of Sumer. I contextualized the early reception of Sumerian sculpture within the unique power of sculpture to document the body. It was at the confluence of the old ethnography and the new aesthetic that one was defined in opposition to the other. So successful was the end result that the characterization of abstraction as a spontaneous stylization of the earliest monumental stone sculpture in a world art history is rarely questioned. My study left aside the treatment of the Early Dynastic statue as an aesthetic object intended solely for viewing by approaching a life cycle in which manufacture, use, and discard were considered. I argued that the status of Early Dynastic temple sculpture was likely inherent in the very existence of the statue itself, in the privilege of access to dedication. As a possession of the temple,

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Conclusion statues formed a distinct artifactual category within the visual culture of dedication. Abstraction therefore was a response to the need for a statue to have a consistent and recognizable visual form: identifiable by appearance, the alan resembled a distinct category of temple object more than it resembled any given human donor. By achieving a degree of consistency, abstraction was a structuring element for the encounter with the temple statue. The extended life of the statue beyond any one single donor is another significant reason for the persistence of abstraction in temple sculpture. Abstraction, like that of the gypsum medium, therefore was appropriate for statues dedicated to temples. When representation shifted in favor of the donor image, the sculpture style of the cultic equipment that had preceded the Asmar hoard was abandoned and abstraction thus became a quality of temple sculpture. It has long been assumed that the agency of the Early Dynastic statue is comprised solely of an eternal gaze directed toward the divine. I have argued that archaeological and textual evidence also locates the agency of sculpture in relation to those who visit a temple rather than solely in relation to the divine who inhabits it. I have therefore maintained that statues assumed additional functions beyond those recorded in the dedication. The dedicatory act therefore does not delineate the full functional range of the statue. That is, statues assumed lives beyond the act of dedication. Temple statues are thus material witnesses to the practices associated with them in addition to the individuals who donated them. In viewing dedicatory statues as material witnesses, I elaborated on the issues of access regarding Early Dynastic temples. It is commonly maintained that one reason statues were dedicated to temples had to do with issues of access. Embodying the essence of the worshiper, statues dedicated to temples could in this respect go where the donor could not. Textual evidence, however, supports the existence of a collective social practice of tending to temple statues through offerings. According to texts, offerings could be made to statues because they were statues and regardless of the identity of their donor. The growth of cultic installations and their movements within the temple also suggest that Early Dynastic temples were visited and that access was negotiated with respect to particular spaces within the temple. Through offerings, the statue mediated the encounter between the temple visitor and the divine, just as the statue mediated the encounter between the donor of the statue and the divine. In the archaeological record, an association between temple statues and entrances reflects the intermediary function of statues for those who sought intercession with the divine. Another pattern in the archaeological record is the association between statues and installations for liquids. An association with libations is made explicit by the Asmar sculpture hoard, which stratigraphically follows the appearance of large quantities of containers and the earliest provisions for offering liquids on the sanctuary altar. The containers held by some

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The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture of the figures in the Asmar hoard suggest that the libations once in the domain of human activity became a performative aspect of a statue positioned at the entrance to the temple. Statues were created through the act of dedication, but they, in turn, assumed agency by shaping the acts of devotion in which temple visitors participated. Rather than simply being installed in spaces to which temple visitors were denied access, statues ultimately negotiated the very terrain of access at a time when we see the increasing exclusivity of the Early Dynastic temple. But what does that leave us with in terms of our understanding of Early Dynastic sculpture? What is the image that we can use to supplant the iconic archaeological reconstructions of the early twentieth century (for example, Figure 25)? Poised as we are at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is unlikely that a single image could represent the knowledge we possess of Early Dynastic temple practices. Certainly, however, we can supplant the image of a static row of statues displayed in the sanctuary before the divine cult statue with a dynamic view taking into account the entire life cycle of Early Dynastic sculpture. Such an image would depict statues installed at various locations throughout the temple, where they are accessible to the visitors who tended them. The statue as the signifier of a single donor would be tempered by our evidence for the reuse and recycling of temple statues as a composite construction of parts. One could say that we live in the age of the materiality and agency of images, signaled by a shift away from the new art history that dominated the field beginning in the 1980s. Essentially, this is a shift from a linguistic paradigm to a visual culture, from a Kantian aesthetic to a material corporeality of cultural practice. In the past two decades, the study of objects, including images, has intensified. The introduction of visual culture into art history has signaled not only a more inclusive corpus for study but also a more inclusive community of scholars engaged in the study of this corpus. In this respect, my study is very much a reflection of its own time, just as the shifting perceptions addressed in the first half of this book were a reflection of other times. The materials of archaeology and visual culture are indeed being continuously remade. One reason why I found the study of Early Dynastic sculpture to be a rich avenue of research was because it is still entrenched in many of the ideas formulated around its early reception. My aim has been to suggest that in some instances a reflexive approach to ancient Near Eastern artifacts can overcome some of the perceived limitations of the data. Indeed, an understanding of how the dominant discursive practices in which we currently engage were delineated liberates us from their restraints.

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N ot e s

Introduction 1 Mason 1890, 32. 2 Heuzey 1891–1915, 212. 3 Woolley 1934, 85. See also Illustrated London News 1928 (“must approximate closely to the physical type of the period”); Woolley 1954, 66 (“reproducing faithfully the character of the early Sumerians”). 4 See now Marchesi 2004, 193–94. 5 For a history of plaster casting, see Musée d’Orsay 2001; for the concept of semiophores, see Pomian 1990, 26–34. 6 Davis 1997, 6–8. 7 Ibid., 7–8. See also Kopytoff 1986; Gosden and Marshall 1999. 8 The literature on materiality is vast, but for further bibliography see Miller and Tilley 1996; Miller 1998; Buchli 2002; Meskell 2004; Miller 2005. 9 Thomas 1991. 10 Meskell 2004, 2–3. 11 Mitchell 2002; Pinney 2006. 12 Alpers et al. 1996, 25. 13 Miller 1998, 4; see also Pinney 2006. 14 In particular, see Attfield 2000; Nemerov 2001; Rampley 2005. 15 Hodder et al. 1995; Bahrani 2003a, 51. 16 Buchli and Lucas 2001, 12. 17 Said 1978. 18 Mitchell 1989. 19 Bhabha 1994. 20 For example, see Marchesi and Marchetti 2011.

Chapter One. Sumerian Origins, 1850–1930: Making the Body Visible 1 Heuzey in Sarzec 1884–1912, 141. 2 Keith 1934, 240. 3 For an overview, see Kramer 1963, 3–32; Jones 1969, 3–24.

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Notes to Pages 16–20 4 Bernhardsson 2005, 130. 5 In the early twentieth century, remains identified as Sumerian were excavated at sites including Fara (1902–3, 1931), Bismaya (1903, 1903–4, 1904), Kish (1912, 1923–33), Uruk (1912–13, 1928–39), Ur (1918, 1919, 1922–34), Eridu (1918, 1919), Tell al-‘Ubaid (1919, 1923–24, 1937), and Jamdat Nasr (1925–26, 1928). Excavations at Tello also continued into the early twentieth century (1903, 1904, 1905, 1909, 1929, 1929–30, 1930–31, 1931–32, 1932–33). Some of these sites had been explored briefly in the mid-nineteenth century. For all these excavations and a preliminary bibliography, see Pallis 1956, 340–81. Pallis (1956, 334–37) isolates 1918–39 as a distinct period principally because of the excavation of Sumerian sites and the resulting growth of knowledge of Sumerian culture and history as well as the growing interest in prehistory. Bernhardsson (2005, 10–11) defines a first period of archaeology in Iraq that is “international” and lasts up to World War I; a second period of archaeology in Iraq is “national” and lasts from 1921 to World War II. In terms of Sumer specifically, I treat the period of about 1850–1930 as a single period culminating, particularly with regard to the Early Dynastic period, in the Diyala excavations (1930–37); see Chapter 2. 6 The chronology was further legitimated when it was presented to a wider audience at the Eighteenth International Congress of Orientalists at Leiden in 1931. See Frankfort 1932a, vii, 1–5, 48–51; Woolley 1935, 30–31; Speiser 1939, 17. Certain refinements to this chronology, including the subdividing of the Early Dynastic period, followed in the next few years; see Evans 2007; Chapter 2, n 5. 7 Kramer 1963, 5–6. 8 Larsen (1996) chronicles the period from 1840 to 1860 in the rediscovery of Assyria. See also Bohrer 2003; Collins 2008, 9–16. 9 Bahrani 2003a, 50–58. 10 The earliest-known written documents are the clay tablets excavated in the 1920s at the site of Uruk. The Uruk tablets probably record the Sumerian language, but it is impossible to state this definitively owing to the nature of the writing. See Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993; Cooper 2001; Woods 2010. Beginning in the 1940s, a hypothetical pre-Sumerian substratum was identified among the Uruk tablets, raising the possibility that the earliest writing did not record Sumerian but instead recorded the language of earlier inhabitants in Sumer. Rubio (1999) documented the flaws of the theory, which is still discussed in the literature; for example, see various contributions in Van Soldt 2005. 11 For a comprehensive treatment of the Sumerian problem, see the volume edited by Jones (1969), which, by compiling and translating into English the major scholarly contributions, presents a history of the issues up to Oates 1960. See also Speiser 1950–51; Roux 1964, 80–84; Potts 1997, 43–47; Rubio 1999; Whittaker 2005; Bahrani 2006, 52–53. 12 Stocking 1987, 57–58. 13 Jacobsen 1939. 14 Jacobsen 1995, 2747–48. 15 Bunsen 1854, vol. 1, 64. 16 Müller 1854. For Turanian languages, see Brace 1863; Minorsky 1913–38; Mosse 1978, 35–50; Stocking 1987, 56–62; Kuper 1988, 51–53; Masuzawa 2005, 206–56. 17 Brace 1863, 36; see also Minorsky 1913–38, 878–80; Cooper 1991, 48–49. 18 Minorsky 1913–38, 881; see also Brinton (1895, 74), who remarks that “[w]ho these Turanians were is not always clear.” 19 In 1852, Rawlinson (Kramer 1963, 20; Jones 1969, 22) described the unknown language recorded in the bilingual tablets from Nineveh as Turanian and, in 1854,

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Notes to Pages 20–24 Oppert (1875, 267) already had posited a Turanian origin for the language he would identify as Sumerian in 1869. See also Lenormant 1874; Johnston 1893. The Sumerian language was still considered Turanian until well into the twentieth century; for example, see Woolley 1928, 6. 20 Jackson 1868, 123. 21 Halévy 1874. See also Cooper 1991; 1993a. Although Halévy’s arguments were eventually disproven, they do reflect a reality in that Sumerian seems to have died out as a spoken language as early as 2000 BC but continued to be used in the cultic and dedicatory texts of temples as a type of prestigious, sacred language; see Biggs 2005, 109. 22 Cooper 1991, 50–54; see also Pallis 1956, 180. 23 See Becker 1985; Carena 1989; Cooper 1991; Larsen 1989a; 1989b; Bahrani 2003a; 2006. 24 Halévy 1900; see also Cooper 1991, 49. 25 Halévy 1874, 479–81. 26 Stocking 1987, 59. 27 Jackson 1868, 122, 123. 28 Savage 1997, 8. 29 Eagleton 1990, 13. 30 Sloan 1995, 121; Bravo 1996, 347–51. 31 Connelly 1995, 11–36. 32 But see Marchand (1996, 7), who observes “Columbus to the undiscovered continent of the Greeks he [Winckelmann] was not.” 33 Potts 1994, 33–46. 34 Winckelmann [1764] 2006, 333–34. 35 Potts 1994, 156. 36 Winckelmann [1764] 2006, 204. 37 Bernal (1987) argues that this contributed to the Aryan model of Greek history, which he considers a product of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. However, Bindman (2002, 90–91), following Potts (1994, 159–63), emphasizes that Winckelmann did not equate Egyptians with Africans, as Bernal claims. 38 Winckelmann [1764] 2003, 75 (“wohlgebildete Menschen [ … ] folglich hatte die Kunst von seiten der Natur alle Vorteile”); see also Winckelmann [1764] 2006, 148. 39 Winckelmann [1764] 2003, 37–38; [1764] 2006, 121. 40 Potts 1994, 155. 41 Ibid., 20. 42 In general, eighteenth-century authors believed that favorable climatic conditions created ideal human beings, but Winckelmann privileged the climate of Greece above all others; see Bindman 2002, 83. 43 Bindman (2002) summarizes much of the literature. For a nuanced reading of Winckelmann and race, see also Potts 1994, 159–63. The role  – some would say inadvertent  – of Winckelmann and the classical ideal in racialist thought is also addressed by Mosse 1978, 10–16, 21–34; West 1982; Mirzoeff 1995; Challis 2010, 96–98. 44 Bindman 2002, 11; Chaouli 2006. 45 Stepan 1982, xx–xxi. 46 Omi and Winant 1994, 55–56. 47 Koerner 1996. 48 Marks 1995, 6–7, 49–50. 49 Schiebinger 1993, 119; other categories of Homo sapiens were included in the tenth edition of 1758.

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Notes to Pages 24–30 50 Buffon 1749, 432–33. 51 Sloan 1995, 128; Marks 1995, 51–53. 52 Marks 1995, 55–60, 113–16. See also Kuhn 1962; Sloan 1995; Cook 2006. 53 Haskell and Penny 1981, 148–51; Potts 1994, 118–32; Callen 2002. 54 Callen 1995, 10–11; 2002. See also Schiebinger 1987. 55 Potts 1994, 126–27. 56 Ibid., 155. 57 Ibid., 155–58. 58 Gould 1996, 56; see also Stepan 1982, xviii. 59 Bindman 2002, 201. Camper sought to link scientific observation with artistic practice and, because it was pertinent to both aesthetics and anthropology, gave his lecture on the facial angle to the Amsterdam Drawing Academy in 1770, the Paris Royal Academy of Sciences in 1777, and the London Royal Society in 1785. See Meijer 1999, 5; Bindman 2002, 206–9. Meijer (1999, 167–77) argues that it was largely because of misinterpretations of Camper that the facial angle became a diagnostic tool for race in the nineteenth century. 60 Camper 1792, 49–50 and Plate III. Bindman (2002, 203) notes that the plate seems to represent the first scientific attempt to associate the archetypal European skull with the classical ideal. 61 Camper posited that ancient sculptors had formulated the 100-degree facial angle in order to compensate for optical distortions. According to Camper (1792, 8), the classical ideal (“Beau ideal”) of Winckelmann “is in fact founded on the rules of optics” (“est véritablement fondé sur les règles de l’optique”). See also Meijer 1999, 159–60; Bindman 2002, 208. 62 Stepan (1982, 20), for example, argues that phrenology was “a genuine science of the mind which happened to be wrong, one whose ideas, though rejected by many leading experimentalists, nevertheless shaped the views of a generation of scientists in Britain.” 63 For a visual analysis of the portraits made by Lavater, see Stemmler 1993. For a discussion of Lavater in the context of race and aesthetics, see Bindman 2002, 92–123. 64 Bindman 2002, 123. 65 Musée d’Orsay 2001, cat. no. 90. 66 Stepan 1982, 18–19; Dias 1998; Zimmerman 2001, 86–107; Bindman 2002, 221. 67 Stepan 1982, 83–84; Zimmerman 2001, 86–107. 68 Prichard 1836–47, vol. 1, 303–4. 69 Knox [1850] 1862, 48. 70 Stocking 1987, 70–73. 71 Stepan 1982, 83–110; Stocking 1968, 42–68. 72 Schiebinger 1993, 149–50; Savage 1997, 10; Leoussi 1998, 3–24; Jahoda 1999, 73; Meijer 1999, 139–44; Bindman 2002, 209–21; Coffey 2006, 190. 73 Bindman 2002. For example, a permanent exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, slated to open in conjunction with the 1932 Third International Congress of Eugenics, included a case entitled “Our Face from Fish to Man,” which culminated in a cast of the head of Apollo Belvedere. See Gregory and Roigneau 1934, 61; Coffey 2006, 190–92 and Figure 8.2. 74 Hopwood 2006, Figure 9. 75 Mirzoeff 1999, 60; McFee and Tomlinson 1999, 95; Bindman 2002, 225–27. 76 According to Savage (1997, 9), the Apollo Belvedere sustained a dual status, at once an ideal representation and a material reality, a divine essence and a measurement of humanity.

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Notes to Pages 30–36 77 78 79 80

Ibid., 12. Heuzey in Sarzec 1884–1912, 143, 144. Pinches 1892, 87. Ibid., 88, using Akkadian to indicate Sumerian, as was common in the nineteenth century, maintained that the head “is a portrait of a man of Akkadian race with an admixture of Semitic (Babylonian) blood, and I have therefore made the nose slightly curved.” 81 Ibid., 91. That the head was representative of the Semitic race first seems to have been suggested by Heuzey in Sarzec (1884–1912, 143–44). 82 Heuzey in Sarzec 1884–1912, 143–44. 83 Brinton 1895, 91; King 1910, 41. 84 Pinches 1892, 97–98. 85 Harris 1968, 201–4, 207. 86 Pinches 1892, 99 fn 1. 87 Heuzey in Sarzec 1884–1912, 145. For example, in Leviticus 21:5, Moses is instructed that the priests “shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard.” 88 Meyer 1906; see also Jones 1969, 49–50. 89 King 1910, 42–43. 90 Meyer 1906; King 1910, 49–52; Hall 1913, 171–72; Jastrow 1915, 106–7; Woolley 1928, 7. Jones (1969, 49–73) summarizes much of the evidence. 91 Hall 1913, 173; 1928, 14. See also Langdon 1924, 60–61. 92 Breasted and Luckenbill 1914, 130. 93 Pestle, Torres-Rouff, and Daverman 2008. 94 For Jamdat Nasr, see Field (1932, 969), “one skull (J.N. 4) is the only complete specimen yet found.” At Tell al-‘Ubaid, Keith (1927) published seventeen skulls; at Ur, Keith (1934) studied the skeletal remains of nine individuals from the Royal Cemetery. For Kish, see Buxton (1924) and Buxton and Rice (1931), who record a total of fifteen skulls. The date range for “Field’s skulls” from Kish is 2500–1600 BC (Cappieri 1970, 20). T. K. Penniman eventually took over the study of the human remains at Kish (Langdon 1930, 602; Penniman 1934). Skulls also were retrieved from Tepe Gawra, but very few measurements were taken (Cross in Speiser 1935, 143). For an overview of all this material, see Cappieri 1970. 95 Penniman 1934, 67–68. 96 Buxton 1924, 125; Cappieri 1970, 21. 97 Stepan 1982, 141–42, 162–63. 98 New York Times 1931. For a brief biography of Keith, see Spencer 1997, 560–62; see also Stepan 1982, 92–93, 108–9. 99 The Piltdown remains, so-called after their discovery (1912–15) in a gravel pit near Piltdown Common in East Sussex, England, were comprised of a portion of a modern-looking human skull and the incomplete right half of an apelike mandible. The two fragments were joined together in reconstruction. The result seemingly provided the missing link of an early human ancestor in the evolution from ape to human. In the 1950s, the Piltdown remains were exposed as a fraud; see Spencer 1997, 821–25. Various theories, including some that implicate Keith, have attempted to identify the accomplices to the forgery. For example, see Langham 1979; Spencer 1990; Tobias et al. 1992. 100 Keith 1931. 101 Field 1935, 9. 102 Keith 1927, 216. See also Keith (1934, 408): “Sumerians had big, long, and narrow heads, with strongly marked facial features.”

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Notes to Pages 36–39 103 104 105 106

Keith 1927, 233, 236. Ibid., 215–16. Ibid., 216. Ibid., 221, 225–26. Keith (1927, 226) determined this by adding a few millimeters to the measurements taken of the al-‘Ubaid skulls, which he deemed necessary because “extreme wear of the front incisor teeth” had distorted the actual measurements. 107 Ibid., 227. 108 Ibid., 214, 215. 109 Sumerians and Semites therefore belonged to the same racial stock; the notion of the Sumerians as Proto-Arabs was developed in the report on the al-‘Ubaid human remains (Keith 1927, 240), which provided the basis for the subsequent study of the Ur human remains (Keith 1934, 408). For the wrong reasons, Keith (1934, 408) ultimately concluded that the differences between Sumerians and Semites were linguistic and political rather than racial. 110 Keith 1927, 233. 111 Ibid., 215. 112 Ibid., 240. According to Keith (in Field 1935, 76), “[t]he average cranial capacity of the ancient Mesopotamian or Arab exceeded that of the average modern inhabitant of central Iraq.” 113 McCown 1942, 36 fn 48; Perkins 1949, 73 fn 212; Speiser 1950–51, 354–55; Frankfort 1951, 46. 114 See Bahrani 2003a, 58–65. 115 Buxton and Rice 1931, 59. 116 Field 1935, nos. 26, 116, 442, Plates IV/Figures 7, 8, CXXVIII, CXXIX. 117 Keith in Field 1935, 11–76; Langdon in Field 1935, 79–82. In addition, an appendix presented a summary of the results of a 1934 expedition undertaken by Field, during which he measured some 3,056 individuals in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Caucasus; see Field 1935, 458–63. 118 Krogman 1937, 190. In another review of Field 1935, Coon (1936, 669) wrote that he “sincerely admires the author’s success in measuring large numbers of Northern Arabs, which is not an easy anthropometric assignment.” Even after he had retired to Florida, Field continued to publish cranial studies of ancient Mesopotamian remains in an Occasional Papers series that he edited and published from Miami; see Cappieri 1970. 119 Grayson 1983, 27. 120 Harris 1968, 147; Stocking 1987, 12; Trigger 1989, 138–47. 121 Gruber 1965; Grayson 1983, 179–85; Spencer 1997, 215–20. 122 Gruber 1965, 396. 123 Stocking (1987, 76) argues that the discovery “established at least two essential preconditions for the development of a Darwinian view of man” because it helped to bridge the temporal discontinuity between man and animal forms thought to be earlier and separate, thereby providing an expanded temporal framework that made gradual evolution more plausible; see also Gruber 1965, 375, 396–97; Grayson 1983, 210–12; Trigger 1989, 146–47. 124 Already in Epochs of Nature (1778), for example, Buffon had abandoned biblical chronology for a history of the earth spread over 75,000 years. Nevertheless, his last epoch reflecting the appearance of humans on earth in its current form began 6,000 years ago; see Grayson 1983, 31–36. 125 Stocking 1987, 71. 126 For example, see Banks 1912, 241.

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Notes to Pages 39–42 127 Breasted 1919, 173–74. 128 Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 134–35) therefore date the beginning of the Protoliterate period variously to “about 4150 (or 3875) BC” and “between the end of the 41st and the middle of the 38th century BC,” which puts this date more or less at 4000 BC. 129 Pinches 1892, 86. 130 Langdon 1930, 609. 131 Keith 1927, 214. 132 Field 1932, 967. 133 Evidence for ancient floods reflects a history of heavy flooding on the southern plain, and the ancient flood myths preserved in cuneiform sources suggest a lengthy tradition behind the biblical flood. The various data for ancient flooding were not contemporary, and identification was often contentious. For summaries of the flood data, see Lenzen 1964; Mallowan 1964; Raikes 1966. 134 Woolley 1929, 327–30. 135 Ibid., 330; 1935, 32. Woolley (1935, 32–33) later revised his interpretation when it was clear that Ubaid material remains continued above the flood stratum; nevertheless, Woolley (1935, 53) concluded that the flood “had weakened the al ‘Ubaid race morally as well as physically.” Woolley never fully abandoned his attempts to conflate the flood layer at Ur with the flood known from the biblical tradition and with the flood known from Sumerian sources. For the final report dealing with the flood layer, see Woolley 1955, 15–19, 162; see also Woolley 1956. It has been suggested (Stone 2008) that Woolley exaggerated the implications of the Ur flood strata in popular publications because such ideas secured widespread support and funding for his research; see also Trigger 1989, 158. Such a distinction regarding popular publications as opposed to scholarly preliminary reports and final publications is not, however, apparent regarding the Ur excavations. 136 Trigger 1989, 141–44. See also Gruber 1965, 377; Grayson 1983, 77–79, 126–30. 137 Woolley 1929, 329. 138 For a summary of these issues, see Potts 1997, 1–42; Pournelle 2007. 139 Conversely, the origin of the painted pottery folk also was sought elsewhere, including to the north because of the existence of later Assyrian painted wares. A location north of Assyria led, predictably, to the Caucasus. It was but a short step to the suggestion that the painted pottery folk were Caucasian, which ensured that they were the worthy forerunners of a civilization culminating in modern Europe; see Speiser 1932, 35. 140 Langdon 1930, 610. 141 Pallis (1956, 452–57) summarizes much of this evidence. 142 Oates 1960, 44–50. 143 Pournelle 2003; 2007. See also Algaze 2007. 144 Gibson 2010. 145 Biggs 1967; 1974, 27. 146 For the reception of Sumer in nineteenth-century France, see Bohrer 2003, 228–39. For the reception of Assyria in the nineteenth century, see Bahrani 2003a; Bohrer 2003. 147 Mitchell 1989, 220. See also the Introduction. 148 Berger 1890, 160. 149 For a description of the tableaux, see Heuzey 1891–1915, 209–22; Bohrer 2003, 246–48. 150 Heuzey 1891–1915, 212; Le Normand-Romain 1994, 20. The impetus for the foundation of the museum had been the 1878 Universal Exposition, for which the Palais du Trocadero was constructed.

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Notes to Pages 42–46 151 152 153 154 155

Blühm 1996, 83–92; De Margerie and Papet 2004, 127; Larson 2005, 716. Larson 2005, 716. Blühm 1996, 85–86; Larson 2005. Bohrer 2003, 244–48. Heuzey 1891–1915, 209; the Gudea display also served as the frontispiece and was the subject of one chapter. 156 Teslow 1998; 2002; Kinkel 2001; Rosen 2001; Kim 2006. 157 Field 1933, 23, no. 24; 1935, no. 74, 143–44, Plates IX/Figures 1, 2, CXXXIV, CXXXV. 158 For Keith as the model for the sculpture Nordic, Great Britain, see Teslow 1998, 71; Kinkel 2001, 100–2. According to Kinkel (2001, 100–2), when Hoffman was being considered for the commission, she produced a portrait of Keith as a trial submission. After sending the finished plaster cast to Keith, he recommended that she “color it lightish,” which she did. Later, Hoffman cast the portrait in bronze. When considered for exhibition, however, a question arose regarding which racial type Keith represented. Hoffman initially had designated Keith as Anglo-Saxon, but she later wanted it changed to Celt when she found out that Keith had been born in Scotland. After an inquiry from the Field Museum, Keith replied that he considered himself Nordic. 159 Kim 2006, 185–86. 160 Ibid., 168. 161 Teslow 1998, 56, 60–61. Nochlin (1984, 110), for example, describes “an appalling concentration on surface detail, resulting in a kind of waxworks realism in bronze” in the sculpture of Hoffman. 162 Mallowan 1960, 3. The bronze medium must have suited a portrait of Hamoudi, always remembered with respect and great affection by the Woolleys. See Woolley 1934, 8, 9; Mallowan 1960, 2–3. Woolley (1953, Plate 12) later illustrated the bust of Hamoudi alongside a second-millennium BC stone sculpture of a ruler. In contrast, Keith (1927, 214–15) detected certain facial features in Hamoudi that he identified with “the facial outlines of the skulls recovered at Ur and at al-‘Ubaid.” One wonders whether Keith oversaw the sculpting of the portrait of Hamoudi just as he oversaw the sculpting of Shub-ad. 163 Sandberg 2003, 59. 164 Fabian 1983, 32, 106–7. 165 Bahrani 2003a, 75–84. 166 Gould 1996, 53–54. 167 Jones 1969, 40; Pinches 1900. 168 Bär 2003b, 143. 169 Trigger 1989, 24.

Chapter Two. Art History, Ethnography, and Beautiful Sculpture 1 Bernhardsson 2005, 143. 2 Lloyd 1986, 44. 3 See Chapter 1, n 6. 4 Delougaz 1940; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942; Delougaz, Hill, and Lloyd 1967. 5 Frankfort 1935b, 79–87; 1936a, 35–59, and the “Chronological Table” at the end of the volume with comments preceding it. The tripartite subdivision of the Early Dynastic period was first presented by Frankfort at the 19th International Congress of Orientalists in Rome in September 1935. See Frankfort 1935b, 87 fn 19; 1936a, vii–viii.

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Notes to Pages 47–52 6 Frankfort 1939; 1943. The manuscript for Frankfort 1939 was completed in 1935, and portions of it were published as Frankfort 1935c; see Frankfort 1939, vii. Portions of Frankfort 1932b were also drawn upon for Frankfort 1939. 7 Frankfort 1935b, 55–78; 1935c; 1939, 19–36; 1943, 1–16; 1954, 23–31. 8 See Bär 2003b, 144 fn 28. Around the same time that the Diyala excavations provided an archaeological framework for establishing the Early Dynastic period and its subdivisions, Moortgat (1935, 6–44; 1940, 8–18; see also 1967a, 26–50) formulated a chronology that is art-historical in conception. In terms of Early Dynastic sculpture, the Moortgat system defines an abstract style that was followed by a transitional style and developed into a realistic style. See also Strommenger 1960; Braun-Holzinger 1977. 9 Potts 1997, 46. 10 Frankfort 1939, 1. 11 Ibid. 12 Frankfort 1935c, 121. See also Frankfort 1936a, 41; 1939, 1, 18, 39–40; 1943, 1. 13 Porada 1956, 121–22. 14 In contrast to the ancient Near East, such inquiries have been explored in the archaeology of other ancient fields; see, for example, the cultural history of Knossos by Gere 2009. 15 Of the abovementioned, however, only Lloyd had no further association with the University of Chicago beyond the fieldwork of the Iraq Expedition. Jacobsen had received his PhD from the University of Chicago; after the Iraq Expedition he was affiliated with the University of Chicago first as professor and then as Chairman of the Department of Semitic Languages and Literature, the Director of the Oriental Institute, and ultimately Dean of the Division of Humanities. He later joined the faculty at Harvard University. Delougaz joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1949 and eventually became curator of the Oriental Institute Museum. He later became a professor of Near Eastern archaeology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Frankfort was appointed Research Professor of Oriental Archaeology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in 1932, but he did not reside in Chicago until 1937; he was later Director of the Warburg Institute and professor of the history of preclassical antiquity at the University of London. 16 Delougaz and Jacobsen 1955; Jacobsen 1987b, 1; Van Loon 1995, 1; Wengrow 1999; Gibson 2006, 248. 17 Jacobsen 1987b, 1. 18 Ibid. 19 Frankfort to Breasted, March 25, 1936. 20 Frankfort, Jacobsen, and Preusser 1932, 1–3; Frankfort 1934b, 71; 1935c, 110; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 2–3, 218–19. Early Dynastic sculpture, some of which may have originated in the Diyala region, was acquired by purchase for the British Museum as early as 1851 (Reade 2000, 84). 21 Van Loon 1995, 42, April 30, 1930, letter to “Bram” van Regteren Altena. One can infer that Frankfort is referring to either Tell Asmar or Khafajah because excavations at these sites began in the fall of 1930; see Frankfort, Jacobsen, and Preusser 1932. 22 Andrae 1922, 58; see also Bär (2003a, 84), who catalogues some fifteen examples of standing figures and six examples of seated figures in addition to some sixty-six other sculpture fragments. 23 Bär 2003b, 144 fn 23.

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Notes to Pages 52–57 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Andrae 1922, 8–9. See also Bär 2003a, 84–85; 2003b, 143–44. Frankfort 1924, 88–90; 1928, 227; 1932a, 9–10. See also Frankfort 1933, 79. Frankfort 1932c. Frankfort 1932a, Figure 1. Ibid., 9–10. Breasted to Frankfort, January 11, 1932. Frankfort to Breasted, January 31, 1932. Frankfort to Breasted, January 31, 1932. Breasted to Frankfort, February 1, 1932. Frankfort to Breasted, February 5, 1932. Breasted to Frankfort, February 6, 1932. Frankfort to Breasted, February 9, 1932. Breasted to Frankfort, February 11, 1932. Frankfort to Breasted, February 17, 1932; Frankfort to Breasted, April 30, 1932. Breasted to Frankfort, March 23, 1932, reiterated: “We have here some specialists in the anthropology of Western Asia, like Henry Field of the Field Museum of Natural History. As a matter of self-protection I think you will want to check up your tables again with results at Kish.” The discussion of Sumerian skeletal remains by Frankfort (1932a, 40–47) is indeed heavily documented. 38 For research on the Kish excavations, see Gibson 1972; Moorey 1978; Algaze 1983–84. 39 Childe 1928, 126–27, which Frankfort (1932a, 49) dismissed as “senseless.” 40 Frankfort to Breasted, February 9, 1932: “Another point which did not reach the discussion stage because of lack of time, was a proposal by Watelin to change the nomenclature for the early periods, and to use as main divisions not Al-‘Ubaid period, Jemdet Nasr period etc., but Sumerian I, II, etc.” 41 Frankfort to Breasted, February 1, 1934. 42 Lloyd 1986, 44. 43 Illustrated London News 1934, 774. 44 Lloyd 1986, 45. 45 Frankfort 1934a, 802. 46 Frankfort to Breasted, February 1, 1934. 47 Frankfort to Breasted, April 17, 1934. 48 Breasted to Frankfort, May 2, 1934. 49 Frankfort 1935b, 73; see also Frankfort 1939, 20. 50 Frankfort 1939, 19. 51 Ibid., 28. 52 Frankfort 1935b, 73; 1939, 28. 53 For descriptions of the sculpture styles, see Frankfort 1935b, 55–78; Frankfort 1935c; 1939, 19–33. 54 For reviews of this material, see Riegl 1893, 1–33; Goldwater [1938] 1967, 15–43; Fraser [1957] 1971; Gerbrands 1957, 25–52; Steadman 1979, 103–23; Kroll 1987; Connelly 1995, 55–67. 55 See also Woolley (1935, 55), for example, who refers to the “painted geometric ornament” of the Ubaid period. 56 Semper 1860–63. See Goldwater [1938] 1967, 18–19; Barasch 1998, 199–209. 57 Semper 1860–63, vol. 2, 129–31. 58 Ibid., vol. 1, 238. 59 Goldwater [1938] 1967, 18–19. 60 Conze 1897. For the geometric style, see also Gerbrands 1957, 29; Riegl 1893, 1–32; Frankfort 1924, 17.

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Notes to Pages 57–61 61 Augustus Pitt Rivers (1827–1900) conducted some of the first experiments on degeneration through copying. See Gerbrands 1957, 36–37; Haddon 1895, 311. Pitt Rivers (1875, Plate 22) applied the results to his ethnographic collections, which were famously arranged typologically and sequentially. 62 Riegl 1893, 1–32. 63 For Riegl, see Frankfort 1924, 16; 1932b, 44. For Haddon, see Frankfort 1924, 15 fn 3. 64 Frankfort 1924, 15–21. 65 Frankfort 1939, 19–20. According to Frankfort’s personal copy of Sculpture, now housed at the Warburg Institute, London, a subsequent statement that “this explanation may be applied mechanically to geometric designs whenever such are encountered” contains a typographical error. Frankfort corrected this by writing “not” in his personal copy – “this explanation may not be applied mechanically to geometric designs whenever such are encountered.” 66 Ibid., 19. 67 Ibid., 20; see also 21, “how directly this stylization aims at a translation of nature and how far removed we are from that slackness and lack of restraint which lie at the basis of conventionalism.” 68 Frankfort 1928, 217–18, following a study by Abbé Henri Breuil (1877–1961), a specialist principally on the Paleolithic, cited as early as Frankfort 1924, 16 fn 2. 69 Inquiries into the development of ancient Near Eastern ornament were not unique to Frankfort. In 1929, for example, Watelin (1929, 109 and Figure 3) illustrated the evolution of the cervid motif – “executed in deep line or ornament” (“exécutés en traits profonds ou des ornements”) – from geometric to naturalistic on cylinder seals from Kish. 70 Frankfort 1924, 18; see also 15, 28, 42. Frankfort (1924, 43) therefore maintained that Susa I and Susa II pottery could in no way be related because “an absolutely opposite mentality underlies the contrast between abstract and naturalistic art.” 71 Frankfort to Breasted, April 17, 1934; Frankfort 1935c. 72 Frankfort 1939, 2, 34–35, 40. 73 Ibid., 34–35. In general, early twentieth-century attempts to escape the geometric/ naturalistic divide were superficial; see Gerbrands 1957, 49. Schäfer (1974, 356), for example, had objected to a lengthy list of other terms before settling on the famously cumbersome geradvorstelling/schrägansichtig. In these studies, the existence of two opposing categories was never questioned. Instead, the precise terminology for describing it was addressed. This line of thought continued into the second half of the twentieth century when, for example, Gombrich (1960) observed that making comes before matching. Spycket (1981, 52) proposed austere (“austère”) and smiling (“souriant”) as alternatives to the abstract/geometric and realistic/naturalistic Early Dynastic sculpture styles, but this is not used in the literature; see Winter 1984, 105. 74 Frankfort 1939, 40. 75 Wilhelm Worringer, whom Frankfort cited, similarly argued that classical art was but a brief interlude in a line of artistic development culminating in the Gothic and prefiguring, in its abstraction, modern art; see Goldwater [1938] 1967, 28–29. For Worringer, see Frankfort 1924, 16 fn 1; 1932b, 39. 76 Frankfort 1939, 36. 77 Ibid., 19. Frankfort (1924, 20–21; see also 27, 29) similarly cited a prejudice against stylized geometric forms, which he blamed on the “aesthetic principles of naturalism” that had governed Western artistic production since the Renaissance. 78 Frankfort 1939, 2. 79 Connelly 1995, 11–36, 58, 61.

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Notes to Pages 61–65 80 81 82 83

Rubin 1984, vol. 1, 2. Heuzey in Sarzec 1884–1912, 107, “naturalisme primitif.” Ibid. Rubin (1984, vol. 1, 3) asserts that by the 1920s “Japanese, Egyptian, Persian, Cambodian, and other non-Western court styles ceased to be called Primitive, and the word came to be applied primarily to tribal art, for which it became the standard generic term.” The discussion here, however, indicates that this is inaccurate. 84 Frankfort 1939, 2; see also 36, 53. See also Frankfort 1932b, 36; 1935c, 110 fn 1. 85 Frankfort 1948a, ix, 61, 362 fn 4; 1954, 25, 267 fn 87. 86 Frankfort 1939, 2 fn 2; see also Schäfer 1919. The 1963 fourth edition of Von ägyptisches Kunst was translated into English as Principles of Egyptian Art; see Schäfer 1974. 87 Frankfort 1932b. Schäfer also had made his unpublished manuscript of the 1922 revised edition available to Frankfort for his MA thesis; see Frankfort 1924, 17 fn 2. 88 Schäfer 1919, 48–49; see also Frankfort 1932b, 35. 89 Frankfort 1939, 2. 90 Schäfer 1919, 46–48; Frankfort 1932b, 35–36. 91 Frankfort 1932b, 40. 92 Verworn 1908, 17, 20; see also Barasch 1998, 231–40. 93 Verworn 1907, 14. 94 Ibid., 31. 95 Gerbrands 1957, 39–40; see also Rampley 2005, 256. 96 Jacobsen 1987b, 1. 97 Frankfort 1932b, 39 fn 1. Nevertheless, the shifting taste for Egyptian art from the 1920s onward was in part attributable to modern aesthetics; see Hardwick 2011. 98 See also Frankfort 1924, 18 fn 1 on avoiding use of the term “expressionism” because of its association with modern art. The exhibition to which Frankfort took his students must have been Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, which appeared at the Art Institute of Chicago from February 1 to March 3, 1940; see Barr 1939. See Jacobsen (1987b, 1), who recounted that Frankfort “was as knowledgeable about Picasso’s blue period as about the Ancient Egyptians.” 99 Frankfort 1935a, 14. 100 Sweeney 1934, 10, referring to Sumerian sculpture as “Chaldean.” 101 Frankfort 1939, 28, 34. 102 Moore 2002, 188; see also Wilkinson 2002, 17. 103 Bell 1913, 228. 104 Rothschild 1929, 218. 105 Frankfort 1939, 18, 19–20, 22. 106 The statue was in the possession of the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, in 1937 and then entered the collection of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; it was first published in 1938. In 2007, the statue was among the group of antiquities de-accessioned by the Albright–Knox Art Gallery and auctioned at Sotheby’s, New York, on June 7; see sale N08325 (Egyptian, Classical, and Western Asiatic Antiquities, including Property of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery), lot 81. Among documents in the file for the statue examined by the author in spring 2007 at Sotheby’s was a letter dated May 8, 1941, written to Matisse by Frankfort, who believed that the statue was from the Sin Temple at Khafajah. 107 Axis 1935, vol. 3, end page.

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Notes to Pages 65–69 108 Frankfort (1948b, 272) later criticized these manipulations of scale by Zervos (1935) as “absurdities.” 109 Kelly 2007, 3. 110 Ades and Baker 2006, 11. 111 Kelly 2007, 2. 112 Contenau 1929, 8 (“une exégaration du type ethnique que les artistes avaient devant les yeux”); for example, the rendering of the cranium and the saber-like nose were considered by Contenau distinct of all Sumerian heads. 113 Contenau 1927–47, 103–5. 114 Ibid., 576–82. 115 Rothschild 1929, 218. 116 Wilenski 1932, 135. Wilenski had appended a lengthy subtitle to his book, which ironically both recalled an Enlightenment treatise and made plain his disdain for its aesthetics: an essay on some original sculpture of the present day, together with some account of the methods of professional disseminators of the notion that certain sculptors in ancient Greece were the first and the last to achieve perfection in sculpture. 117 Frankfort 1932b, 40, 47–48. 118 Wilenski 1932, 135–36. 119 Wood 2003, 70. 120 Moore 2002, 101. 121 Ibid., 103, 104. 122 Ibid., 101. 123 Wilenski 1932, 136; see also Wood 2003, 77–79. 124 Hohl 1998, 56. 125 Braschi 2007, 223. 126 Sylvester 1994, 82. 127 Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 1939, 15. 128 Ibid. 129 Jenkins 1992, 29. 130 Errington 1994, 204–5. 131 For example, Woolley 1935, 62. 132 Blühm 1996, 62–63; Mirzoeff 1999, 58–62. 133 St. Clair 1999; Jenkins 2001. 134 Wood 2003, 77, 82 fn 33. 135 Woolley 1935, 61–62. 136 Ibid., 9. In a review of the book, Frankfort (1936b) noted that the title was a misnomer. 137 Woolley 1928, 43. 138 Ibid., 192–93. 139 Breasted and Luckenbill 1914, 130; King1910, 68; Hall 1928, 14. See also the texts cited earlier. 140 Wood 2003, 74; see also 81 for the relationship between the Gudea sculpture and Underwood’s Cathedral (1930–32). 141 Wilenski 1932, 135. Smith (1931, 31) noted that the tilting head “may be too much backward” when he published the British Museum acquisition of the Gudea statue. 142 Wilenski 1932, 134; Wood 2003, 68. 143 Of the large body of scholarship on the subject, I have found the following, which provide bibliographies for further reading, most useful: Clifford 1988; Price 1989;

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Notes to Pages 69–78 Miller 1991; Errington 1994; Connelly 1995; Connelly 1998; Antliff and Leighten 1996; Myers 2006. 144 Connelly 1998, 89. 145 Connelly 1995, 5. 146 Ibid., 11–36. 147 Connelly 1998, 91. 148 Frankfort 1939, 18. The assessment of this statue was later amended to avoid reading any racial characteristics in the features, particularly in the damaged nose. See Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 26 fn 29; Frankfort 1943, 1. 149 Banks 1904. 150 Banks 1912, 137. 151 Winckelmann 1764 [2006], 114. 152 Winckelmann 1856, 215. 153 Banks 1912, 196. See also Banks 1904, 57 (“marble”); 1912, 137 (“a white, marblelike stone”). When Hormuzd Rassam sent a group of sculpture fragments from his 1892 explorations of Sippar to the British Museum, he also used “marble” for a variety of stones, including alabaster and limestone (Reade 2000, 82). 154 See also Errington 1994, 204–6. 155 Clifford 1988; Price 1989; Errington 1994. 156 Porada 1956, 122. 157 Woolley 1935, 61. 158 Groenewegen-Frankfort 1951, 161. 159 Hansen and Dales 1962, 81. 160 Collon 1995, 62. 161 Gell 1992, 40–43. 162 Price 1989, 7–22, 90. 163 MacGaffey 1998, 221, “Divinationsgabe.” 164 Woolley 1935, 29. 165 Flam 2003, 33. 166 McCown, Haines, and Biggs 1978, 22 and Plates 3A, 32, 67–70 (3N 402–6). 167 Strommenger 1960; Braun-Holzinger 1977; Marchetti 2006. 168 Ackerman and Carpenter 1963; Conkey and Hastorf 1990. 169 Evans 2007. 170 Winter (1984, 105) stated that she was “not entirely happy” with the geometric/ naturalistic terminology. Marchetti (2006, 12) most recently suggested that sharp distinctions cannot be maintained between the abstract/naturalistic sculpture styles but nevertheless found the reconstruction of the stylistic features valid in general. For a detailed argument against the validity of the abstract to realistic trajectory, see Evans 2005; Evans 2007. 171 For example, see Errington 1994, 215; Steiner 2002, 136–39.

Chapter Three. Seeing the Divine: Sanctuary, Sculpture, and Display 1 Pallis 1956, 332–33. 2 Crawford 2004, 148. 3 For the early history of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, see Kuklick 1996; Larsen 1996; Marchand 1996, 188–220; Bernhardsson 2005. See also Shaw 2003. 4 Hinsley 1989, 89. 5 Oriental Institute 1941, 13; see also Bernhardsson 2005, 187, 190–91. 6 Gottlieb and Meier 2003. 7 See Chapter 2, n 106.

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Notes to Pages 78–86 8 For exceptions, see Winter 2000c, 129–30; Bahrani 2003a, 188–89; Feldman 2009, 50–51. 9 Hodder 1989; Pluciennik 1999; Bradley 2006. 10 For archaeological illustration in general, see Piggott 1978; Adkins and Adkins 1989; Jones 2001; Smiles and Moser 2005. 11 Bilsel 2003, 36; see also Bernbeck 2000, 113–14. 12 Smiles and Moser 2005, 6. See also Berman 1999; Bahrani 2001b. 13 Duncan 1995b, 7; see also Shaya 2005, 423–25. 14 Updike 2004, 106, 108. 15 Haraway 1984–85, 23. 16 Duncan and Wallach 1980, 448–52; Duncan 1995a; 1995b. 17 Moser 2006, 2, 6; see also Newhouse (2005, 108–41), who analyzes the “Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids” exhibition (1999–2000) as installed in Paris, New York, and Toronto. 18 Moser (2006, 1–6) provides a comprehensive bibliography for various aspects of museum studies. Of particular relevance here, see Forster-Hahn 1995; Macdonald 1998; Merriman 1999; Hooper-Greenhill 2000. 19 Buck-Morss 1996, 29. 20 Alpers 1991, 27. 21 Duncan 1995a, 17. See also Price 1989, 82–99; Davis 1997, 17–26; Newhouse 2005, 108–10. 22 Consequently, the excavators produced no comprehensive plan of the Ishtar Temple that shows level G in isolation. See Andrae 1922; Bär 2003a. 23 Andrae 1922, 22, 28. Others attributed this conflict to Sumerians being overtaken by Semites; see Bär 2003b. As discussed in Chapter 2, the presumption of ethnic conflicts in the third millennium BC in general has long since been abandoned. 24 For the problematic nature of primary context or original location, see Schiffer 1987, 17–18. 25 Andrae 1922, 61–62. 26 To support his reconstructed placement of the cult statue, Andrae (1922, 34) noted parallels with later cylinder seals depicting stepped altars between a seated deity and approaching human figures, identified as worshipers by analogy with sculpture. For example, see Frankfort 1955, no. 987 (Akkadian); Nippur, Inana Temple 6 N 270, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1959, 59.41.37 (Ur III). 27 This system of sculpture display is most explicitly articulated by Moser (2006, 148, 187). When the galleries for Greek art of the archaic and classical periods at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York were renovated, reopening in 1999, certain design elements still resembled this system; see Wills 1999. 28 For another example, see the 1678 illustration of the collection of the Jesuits in Collegio Romano displaying classical busts aligned along the walls (Moser 2006, 28–30, Figure 1.7). 29 Moser 2006, 78. 30 For “organized walking” as a regulating technique in museums, see Bennett 1995, 44–45, 100, 179–86. 31 Jenkins 1992, 56–74, 160; Moser 2006, 151–53, 177–83. 32 Breasted 1933, 104. 33 Bär 2003a; Bär 2003b. 34 Andrae 1922, 62 (“Ganz ordentlich ist es dabei wie bei einer richtigen Plünderung nicht zugegangen”). 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid.

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Notes to Pages 86–90 37 For example, see Jenkins 1992, Figures 46, 47, 90; Moser 2006, 79. 38 Andrae and Boehmer 1989. Opened in 1930, the Pergamon Museum houses the Vorderasiatisches Museum, which comprises the collections of the ancient Near East. During thirteen years as a field archaeologist, first at Babylon and then at Ashur, Andrae left Iraq only twice. Once was in 1908 to attend the premiere of “Sardanaplus” at the Royal Opera House in Berlin, for which he had contributed the set design (Andrae and Boehmer 1989, 109). According to Andrae, the performance was to incorporate “the latest knowledge of true Assyrian style,” but some decisions had to be made “based on modern intuition rather than Assyrian art” (Andrae and Boehmer 1989, 161–62). When later designing the installations of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Andrae drew on stage design and was assisted by technicians from the same opera house (Andrae and Boehmer 1989, 130; see also Bilsel 2003, 172, 198). 39 Bär 2003a, 96. 40 Ibid., 96. 41 Andrae 1922, 62. 42 Margueron 2004, 238 and Figures 224, 226; Margueron et al. 2007, 29. Spycket (2007, 263) identified the fragment embedded in the bench as belonging to a female figure. For the earlier excavations, see Parrot 1940, 17. 43 7 N 155 (sculpture fragment), 6N 406 (rectangular stone plaque/pendant pierced for suspension), 6N 422 (stone double vessel supported by a ram); for the sculpture fragment (7N 155), see Chapter 6. 44 For example, Hallo 1968, 75; Braun-Holzinger 1977, 11; 1991, 237–38; Spycket 1981, 50; Winter 1989, 581–82 and fn 23; Crawford 2002, 49. For Frankfort 1939; 1943, see below. 45 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 300. 46 Frankfort 1939, 4; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 69, 94, 191. 47 Frankfort 1939, 10. 48 Ibid. Frankfort (1939, 10–11) suggested that the statues would have been set on mats or rugs or, in the example of the Single-Shrine Temple, that the two square mudbrick bases against the south wall of the sanctuary were used. On the basis of evidence provided in the inscriptions on the later statues of Gudea, Frankfort left open the possibility that Early Dynastic statues could have been installed in other locations. 49 Ibid., 11. 50 Moser 2006, 79, 180–81. 51 Jenkins 1992, 9. 52 Foucault 1986. 53 Bennett 1995, 1–5. See also Jenkins 1992, 9; Zimmerman 2001, 172–73. 54 Meyer 1905, 493–94. 55 Cited in Bennett 1995, 2; see also Moser 2006, 200. 56 Bazin 1967, 265. 57 Jenkins 1992, 229. 58 Staniszewksi 1998, 61–62; see also Newhouse 2005, 22–23. 59 Goldwater [1938] 1967, 9–11; Staniszewski 1998, 99. 60 Breasted 1933, 105. 61 Goldwater [1938] 1967, 13. In ancient Near Eastern excavations, these two categories of artifacts in some instances were relegated to separate museums altogether. Assemblages from the same contexts at Ur, for example, were separated after they arrived in London: skeletal remains were sent to the Natural History Museum, and artifacts were sent to the British Museum. Only when bones were so closely

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Notes to Pages 90–95 associated with artifacts that they could not be divided safely did the assemblages remain together; see Irving and Ambers 2002, 209–10. 62 Moore 2002, 102. 63 Zimmerman 2001, 178–86. See also Baker 1996, 152; Moser 2006, 198–200. 64 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, front matter and 136 fn 101. 65 Ibid., 256. 66 Ibid., Figure 199. 67 Delougaz 1952, 56–57. 68 Frankfort, Jacobsen, and Preusser 1932, 103; Delougaz 1952, 48–49. 69 Frankfort, Jacobsen, and Preusser 1932, 103. 70 Delougaz 1952, 74. 71 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 196. 72 Frankfort 1939, no. 178. In the catalogue of objects in Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 212–13), finds from below Single-Shrine Temple I were combined with finds from Single-Shrine Temple I under the heading “Single-Shrine Temple I and Foundations (ca. 33.50–35.50 M.).” See the catalogue of sculptures in Frankfort 1939; Frankfort 1943; see also Evans 2005; 2007, table 3. 73 Frankfort 1934b, 46; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 194. 74 The watercolor is dated to 1933, which would correspond to the end of the 1932–33 season, in which the sanctuary was excavated; it was first published as the frontispiece of Frankfort 1934b. The parallels between the watercolor and the excavation photograph indicate that, regardless of which came first, one suggested the other. 75 Frankfort 1934b, 42; see also Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 300. Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 195) further suggested that the stone was for “sacrifices.” 76 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 183. 77 Ibid., 181. 78 Frankfort 1943, 43, Ag. 35:548. The sculpture fragment was neither photographed nor preserved, and it was not discussed in any of the Diyala volumes. 79 Frankfort 1955, nos. 860, 861; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 233. 80 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 233–34. 81 Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 239) state that “it is hard to say” whether the head (Ag. 35:550) had been “resting upon the top of the altar pedestal belonging to the later occupation of the main level or simply had been trodden into the floor of some later building.” Frankfort (1943, 31, Ag. 35:550, no. 287), however, lists the findspot as “on altar; belongs to later rebuilding.” In addition, the unpublished Tell Agrab, Season I (1935) Field Register also lists the findspot of Ag. 35:550 as “upon altar.” I therefore accept the findspot as that of the altar. 82 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Figure 154. 83 Oppenheim 1944, 56, 60; Jacobsen 1976, 16; Lambert 1990, 118; Meijer 2002. For the Early Dynastic temple, see Tunça 1984; for the Mesopotamian temple in general, see Heinrich 1982. 84 Crawford 2002, 48–49; Hansen 2003, 29. 85 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Plates 12, 22, 26; Gibson, Hansen, and Zettler 2001, Figures 4 and 5; McCown, Haines, and Biggs 1978, Plate 29B. See also the rectangular structures around the altar in the court of Sin Temple IX (Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Plate 11) and in the court of the Temple Oval, where one example with a preserved top was also rounded (Delougaz 1952, 83 and Plates IV, VII). 86 Frankfort 1939, 11; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 74, 188. Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 188) also suggested that the mudbrick structures “might have been bases for the vertical members of a wooden ‘rood screen,’” which would better conform to the function of restricting access, although there were “no signs of the imprint of a post.”

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Notes to Pages 95–99 87 Frankfort (in Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 300–1) stated that they “separate the altar from the remainder of the room,” and regardless of whether they had a function as offering tables they were “clearly meant at the same time to set the altar somewhat apart from the rest of the room.” Tunça (1984, 159) similarly understands these structures as defining spaces restricted to certain activities; Forest (1996, 101) sees a similar restricting function. Crawford (2002, 48) also associates these structures with issues of access while at the same time accepting their identification as offering tables. 88 McCown, Haines, and Biggs 1978, 13. 89 For example, Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 12, 34, 300; Tunça 1984, 153–59. 90 For a typology of Early Dynastic altars, see Tunça 1984, 148–59. 91 Postgate 1992, Figure 6:8 and 313 fn 178. 92 Ibid., 117–18. 93 Spycket 1968a; Seidl 1980–83. 94 Selz 1992, 246; Walker and Dick 2001, 5–6; Schaudig 2012. 95 Spycket 1968a, 36–38; Steible 1982, Urn 25, 26, 34, 50, 51; Cooper 1986, La 1.6, .9, .11, .20; Frayne 2008, E1.9.6a, .6b, .9, .11, .20. 96 Pettinato 1969, 212–16; Hallo 1983, 9–10; Selz 1992, 247–48; Walker and Dick 2001, 6; Dick 2005, 49. See also the translation by Biga (2003) of the ritual text TM.75.G.756+771+815 from Ebla Palace G, in which offerings and textiles for deities are understood as being placed in front of the statue. 97 Archi 1990; 2005. Fragments of a larger than life-sized composite statue from the site of Tell Chuera were tentatively identified as a composite statue of the Syrian weather god on the basis of additional factors, including context and associated finds (Krasnik and Meyer 2001, 387). Composite sculpture, however, is not necessarily indicative of divine status. 98 Archi 2005, 81. 99 Spycket 1968b, 16; but against this, see Braun-Holzinger 1991, 3 fn 20. See also Spycket 1968a, 14 and Figure 4 for a fragmentary head from Mari. 100 Spycket 1968a. 101 Zettler 1990, 88, 6 NT 39 obv. 11, restored as [su al]an dinana-ka on the basis of 6 NT 460, but see Zettler and Sallaberger (2011, 23), who understand this as gold and gold objects to be placed on the statue of Inana. 102 Zettler and Sallaberger 2011, 2–3, 23. 103 Renger 1980–83, 310–11. 104 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 5. See also Postgate 1992, 118–20; Potts 1997, 188–90; Zettler 1992, 144–47. 105 Zettler 1992, 146, 6 NT 1164; see also Civil 1983, 234. 106 Oppenheim 1964, 183–98. 107 Civil 1980, 6 NT 254 rev. 17; see also the reedition of 6 NT 254 by Zettler and Sallaberger (2011, 24, 25–28), who understand line 17 as the deity bathing or washing herself. 108 Steible 1982, Ent. 34; Cooper 1986, La 5.7; Selz 1993, 108; Frayne 2008, E.1.9.5.7. 109 See Steible 1982, En. I 18; Cooper 1986, La 4.4; Frayne 2008, E1.9.4.4. For sum (garlic), see Stol 1987. 110 For a survey of archaeological evidence for the cult image, see Seidl 1980–83. Spycket (1968a) surveys both philological and archaeological evidence for cult statues up to the First Dynasty of Babylon. 111 Spycket 1968a, 99–100; Jacobsen 1976, 6–9, 14; Hallo 1988, 57; Green 1993a, 246–48.

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Notes to Pages 99–104 112 Szarzyńska 1987–88; Woods 2010, 49–50. For a different interpretation of the symbol of Inana, see Steinkeller 1998. 113 Jacobsen 1976, 7. 114 Ibid., 7, 128–29; Black and Green 1992, 107–8; Wiggermann 1981–82, 243. 115 Such imagery persists such that, for example, when Gudea sees the god in a dream, Ningirsu has the wings of the Imdugud and a lion at either side (Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.7.CylA iv 17, 19). 116 See also the mace head dedicated for the life of Enanatum, Early Dynastic ruler of Lagash, now in the British Museum, BM 23287 (Steible 1982, En. I 19; Cooper 1986, La 4.19; Frayne 2008, E1.9.4.19). 117 Winter 1994, 125–27. 118 Jacobsen 1976, 16. 119 Ibid., 16–17; Potts 1997, 196–97. 120 Winter 2007, 43. 121 Lambert 1990, 129; see also Selz 1997. 122 Winter 2000b, 36. The interpretation is part of a larger inquiry into an ancient Near Eastern tradition of visual attentiveness and the power of visual experience. For example, the Sumerian term u6-di, which can be translated as “wonder” or “marvel,” is translated by Winter (200b, 30–31) as “admiration” because “ad + miration” etymologically reflects, for the purposes of cultural analysis, the sense of “augmented viewing leading to positive response” present in the term. 123 Ibid., 22. 124 Hansen 1970, 247–48; Steible 1982, En. I 35; Cooper 1986, La 4.5; Frayne 2008, E1.9.4.5. 125 Hansen 1970; for ibgal, see Krecher 1976–80. 126 For the relationship between foundation figures and temple statues, see also Ellis 1968, 72–75; Van Driel 1973, 67–68; Braun-Holzinger 1991, 221. 127 Andrae 1922, 62; Bär 2003a, SK 3, 8. 128 Crawford 1987, 71. 129 See locus 171 in Figure 32; see also Chapter 6. 130 Cooper 1986, La 1.2, .3, .4, .5, .26, La 4.1 (stone door plaques), La 1.21, .22, .23 (pivot stones), and La 1.24, .25, La 2.1 (small stone lions). For the role of lions as entrance guardians, see Cooper 1986, La 4.3, the lions/dogs “that he installed for him there as gatekeepers, he offered? to Ningirsu.” 131 Steible 1982, Ent. 27; Cooper 1986, La 5.20; Frayne 2008, E1.9.5.20. 132 Edzard 1997, xxvi 20–27. 133 Winter 2003, 413–14; Hall and Woolley 1927, Plate VI. 134 Winter 2003, 414 fn 18. 135 Boese 1971, 5 (“Wandbild”). 136 Hansen 1963; Zettler 1987. 137 Hansen 1963, 152. A related type of locking device was found in situ in a secondmillennium BC context at Isin, some 70 cm above floor level; see Zettler 1987, 211 fn 28. 138 For a discussion of dedicatory and building inscriptions, see Braun-Holzinger 1991, 16–17. 139 See the inscribed examples of Early Dynastic plaques catalogued in BraunHolzinger 1991, 308–12, W 12, 13, 14, 15, 17; see also Boese 1971, K 7, CS 7. See also 7N-251 from level VIII of the Inana Temple at Nippur. 140 Boese 1971, K 7, which joins with CS 7 from Sin Temple IX at Khafajah; this plaque fragment is also discussed in the conclusion.

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Notes to Pages 105–109 141 After Cooper 1983b, 47 fn 1; 1986, La 3.1, 38 fn 6. See also Steible 1982, Ean. 1. Frayne (2008, 126) summarizes much of the literature; see also EI.9.3.1 iv 21–22, “Into [?] the E-ana of the goddess Inana of the Great Oval I brought him.” The Eana is probably the larger sacred precinct in which the Ibgal was situated; see notes 124 and 125, this chapter. 142 This sculpture is catalogued in Delougaz and Lloyd (1942). Braun-Holzinger (1991, 238) accepts the evidence for the installation of Early Dynastic sculpture also in courts but ultimately leaves open the question of placement owing to insufficient evidence (“entzieht sich unserer Kenntnis”). 143 Förtsch 1914, DP 54; Beld 2002, 182. See also Chapter 4. 144 Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.12.6. 145 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 68–69; see also Braun-Holzinger 1991, 237. 146 Frankfort 1939, 10. 147 In the Shara Temple at Tell Agrab, the Diyala excavators suggested that the rooms L 14:1 and M 14:3–4 off the sanctuary M 14:2 once formed a single large room that was later divided into “store chambers or repositories for valuable objects connected with the temple ritual.” Based on the “number and quality” of finds, M14:4 specifically “was definitely the treasury of the temple.” See Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 240 and Plate 26). Two pits, however, also were dug into M14:4. With the exception of the few findspots described in the text of the final report, individual artifacts cannot be assigned to the two pits, the occupation floors, or the fill between the occupations. See Evans 2005. Tunça (1984, 189) concluded that the M 14:4 finds were all from one large pit dug later and that the M 14:4 objects are from a hoard rather than from a storeroom or treasury. 148 Gelb and Kienast 1990, Sargon C 4, Sargon C 6; Frayne 1993, E2.1.1.2 120–31, E2.1.1.7 26–37. See also Winter 1992, 38 fn 19. ~ as “sacristy,” see Heimpel 1994. 149 For ne-sag 150 Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.12.6. 151 Hansen 1975a, Figure 69a–b. 152 Parrot 1940, 17. 153 Zettler and Sallaberger 2011, 7–8. 154 The history of the life-sized wax votive portraits known as boti in the Santissima Annunziata in Florence provides an interesting example (Warburg [1902] 1999). Popular in Florence beginning in the thirteenth century, the Annunziata had emerged as the principal Florentine votive sanctuary in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century, the patrons complained that the boti obstructed the view, so they underwent a major rearrangement in the nave. By the sixteenth century, so many boti had accumulated that they were also hung from the entablature, and the walls had to be reinforced with chains. The boti fell and injured visitors, so they were moved to a side court. In the late eighteenth century, it was decreed that they be melted down. If the boti had been excavated at any one of these stages in their life cycle, disparate conclusions would have been reached. 155 Schiffer 1987. 156 Honour and Fleming 1982, 31. 157 Yard 1980, 188. 158 Jaynes 1977, 169. 159 Frankl 1989, 170. 160 Selz 2004a, 194. 161 Mitchell 2002, 166. 162 Newhouse 2005, 8. In another example, the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron were invited to contribute to the Artist’s Choice exhibition series of the

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Notes to Pages 109–17 Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2006. Clips of film and media were played on screens suspended from the ceiling in an effort to create a kind of perception machine that would offer a spatial alternative to the existing galleries. Yet this alternative was in some respects more traditional than the contemporary displays they criticized, for it also evoked the curios hung from the ceilings of the earliest cabinet collections; for example, see Moser 2006, Figure 1.1 for the cabinet of curiosities of Ferrante Imperato (1550–1625), in which an alligator, shells, and aquatic creatures are among the objects pinned to the ceiling. 163 In the realm of royal sculpture, Winter (1989, 582–83) also has demonstrated that formal properties act as signifiers for the attributes of ideal kingship.

Chapter Four. The Early Dynastic Life of Sculpture 1 Jacobsen 1987a; Berlejung 1997; 1998; Boden 1998; Walker and Dick 1999; 2001. 2 Berlejung 1997, 45, 71–72. 3 Winter 1992, 13. 4 Sallaberger 1993, 281, Table 101. Selz (1997, 177) suggests that Gudea Statue R mentions the mouth-opening, but see Sallaberger 1993, 281 fn 1303; Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.7.StR iv 4. 5 Civil 1967, 211. See also Renger 1980–83, 313; Cunningham 1997, 41, 76, 163; Selz 1997, 178; Walker and Dick 2001, 18. 6 Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 25, dùl umuš.gál mu-šù; see also Selz 1997, 200 fn 202. 7 Braun-Holzinger 1991, St. 32. 8 Gelb 1956, 69; Radner 2005. 9 Steible 1982, Ent. 1, Ent. 34; Cooper 1986, La 5.7, La 5.17; Frayne 2008, E1.9.5.7 16, E1.9.5.17 iii 10. 10 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 221; Winter 1992, 21–22. 11 Morandi 1988, 105–6; Beran 1989; Winter 1992, 15; 1997, 364–69; Bonatz 2002; Bahrani 2003a, 121–48; Feldman 2009, 46–48. 12 Oppenheim 1962, usage b-3. 13 Miglus 1984, 132. 14 Winter 1997, 365; Bahrani 2003a, 123; Feldman 2009, 46. 15 For alan as “statue” from the Early Dynastic to the Ur III periods, see also BraunHolzinger 1991, 231. 16 Hussein et al. 2010, 57–58. 17 Bahrani 2001a, 101–4; 2003a, 121–48; 2003b, 16; Winter 2000b, 22; Feldman 2009, 46–48. 18 For example, the evidence regarding the ritual transformation of the royal statues of Gudea and the Ur III rulers could be a reflection of their divine status rather than of the general nature of Mesopotamian image-making; see Winter 1992, 34. 19 Jacobsen 1976, 3–17. 20 Oppenheim 1964, 172–73. 21 Asad 1983, 247. See also Keane 2008; Morgan 2009. 22 Keane 2008, s124. 23 Meskell 2004, 5, 87–115. 24 For the material forms of religion in general, see Keane 2008, 124. See also Keane 2003 for the concept of “bundling.” 25 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 1–2; the inscribed examples of dedicatory objects up to the Old Babylonian period are also catalogued in the publication. 26 Gelb 1956; Braun-Holzinger 1991, 16.

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Notes to Pages 117–19 27 Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.7.StC iii 18–iv 1. 28 Ibid., E3/1.1.7.StI v 3–5. 29 Steible 1982, Ent. 1; Cooper 1986, La 5.17; Frayne 2008, E1.9.5.17. 30 Hallo 1968, 75. 31 Cooper 1986, Ad 6; Frayne 2008, E1.1.9.2001. However, see also Braun-Holzinger 1991, St 88. The translation of relevant Sumerian terms for prayer can also create ambiguity. The inscription on the late third-millennium BC statue of Ninkagina, for example, requests that the statue “speak my prayer” or “bring offerings.” The term siškur2 can mean either; see Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.1.2.6 ii 2-6; Suter 2006, 60. 32 Strommenger 1960, 8; Braun-Holzinger 1977, 11. 33 Braun-Holzinger 1977; 1991. 34 Mayer-Opificius 1988, 252; Suter 2000, 261–62; Winter 2000c, 130–31. 35 Edzard 1997, vii 21–25, 47–48. For later examples of the prayer or more generally the communicative function of statues in the early second millennium BC, see Braun-Holzinger 1991, 228. 36 Steible 1982, Ent. 1; Cooper 1986, La 5.17; Frayne 2008, E1.9.5.17 iv 4–10. 37 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 225. 38 Braun-Holzinger (1977, 16–28; 1991, 220–22) provides an overview of the content of dedicatory inscriptions on Early Dynastic statues; see also Cooper 1986, 7–13. For the problems surrounding the paleographic analysis of lapidary inscriptions, see Biggs 1973a, 46. 39 Frankfort 1939, no. 206. 40 Cooper 1986, Um 1; see also Steible 1982, Umma: Enp. 1 (“Enlilpabilgagi, king of ‘Umma’”). See also Marchesi 2004, 196–97. 41 See Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993; Zettler 1996, 17–19; Woods 2010, 34–35, 86–87, and Table 3.1. To the end of the Early Dynastic period, the major corpora of excavated texts from Sumer are, in chronological order: Uruk IV; Uruk III/Jamdat Nasr; the ED I texts from Ur SIS and Inana Temple IXA at Nippur; ED IIIA texts from Fara and Abu Salabikh; and the EDIIIB e2-mi2 archive from Lagash. In greater Mesopotamia, important texts include those from Ebla, Mari, and Tell Beydar. The texts from Fara are considered the earliest that are well understood. 42 Bottéro 1992, 67–86. 43 Biggs 1974; Biggs 2005, 112. 44 Jacobsen 1976, 25. 45 For the dating, see McCown, Haines, and Biggs 1978, 22 (North Temple at Nippur); Bär 2003a, 38 (Ishtar temples G and GF at Ashur); Margueron 2004 (Ville II at Mari). Although the majority of sculpture fragments from Tell Chuera were found strewn over the debris of the domestic structures north of the Kleiner Antentempel, two sculpture fragments were found in level 2 of the temple proper (Moortgat 1965, 23; Moortgat 1967b, 14, 21). Levels 1–3 of the Kleiner Antentempel belong to the Chuera ID phase, now dated ED IIIB or ED IIIB-Akkadian (Pruss 2000, Figures 2, 11). 46 For the statue of Eshpum, governor of Elam during the reign of the Akkadian ruler Manishtusu, see Braun-Holzinger 1991, St 95. Some scholars place the statue itself at the beginning of Early Dynastic sculpture production, suggesting that the statue was already an antiquity when it was inscribed in the Akkadian period. However, there are no direct parallels for some stylistic elements of the statue. As Braun-Holzinger (1991, 220) observes, the statue may attest to the survival of older traditions and thus was carved at the time it was inscribed. For the stele of Ilshurabi, governor of Pashime during the reign of the Akkadian ruler Manishtusu, see Hussein et al. 2010, 56, 61, and Figure 18. Gibson (in Hussein et al. 2010, 56 fn 13)

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Notes to Pages 119–24 accounts for its style as “the carrying over of Early Dynastic style into early Akkadian.” 47 Bär 2003a, 96. 48 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 222–26. 49 Ibid., 15, 18; Suter 2000, 3. 50 Crawford 2002. 51 In addition to Crawford 2002, 48, see also Frankfort 1954, 53, Spycket 1968a, 9–11, Hallo 1988, 59–60, and Hansen 2003, 28–29 for the changes in temple architecture. See also Heinrich 1982. 52 See also Michalowski 1991, 64–68. 53 For Ur III presentation scenes on seals, see also Winter 1986. 54 As noted, we can understand such imagery metaphorically because a deity is said to sit/dwell (tuš/wašābum) in his or her temple or city (Postgate 1992, 117–18). 55 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 3. 56 Crawford 2002, 51–52. 57 For a review of this literature, see Maekawa 1973–74, 81–87; Foster 1981; Beld 2002, 5–7, 36–39; Gibson 2010. 58 Oppenheim 1964, 187–88; Postgate 1992, 109–36. 59 Postgate 1992, 109–36; Cohen 2005, 118–25; Gibson 2010, 86. 60 For the military model, see Jacobsen 1957; see also Charvát 1982. The concept of charisma was developed by Michalowski (1991, 64–68), primarily for the Ur III period. For the Early Dynastic period, see Beld 2002; Cohen 2005. 61 Cohen 2005, 3–4, 154. 62 Beld 2002, 36–44; see also Cohen 2005, 112–13. 63 Steible 1982, Ent. 1; Cooper 1986, La 5.17; Frayne 2008, E1.9.5.17 v–vi. See also Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting 1991, no. 26. 64 These statues are catalogued in Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting 1991, nos. 21, 25, 26; all three inscriptions are dated to the time of the Fara tablets. 65 Ibid., 23, 92. For the Parthian rebuilding (SB Level II) of the Inana Temple, see Zettler 1992, 50–54; Gibson, Hansen, and Zettler 2001, 556. 66 Hansen 2003, 29–30. 67 Zettler and Sallaberger 2011, 14; see also Winter 1992, 29–30. 68 Cooper 1986, 63 La 5.17 fn 3; Braun-Holzinger 1991, 222; Winter 1992, 30. 69 Gelb 1987, 138. 70 McCown, Haines, and Biggs 1978, 72, no. 1; Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting 1991, no. 21. 71 Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting 1991, no. 25. 72 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 221–22. 73 The verb gub is also known from an inscribed temple statue excavated at Mari. See Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 4; Frayne 2008, E1.10.19. 74 The final statue recording a land transaction and the name of a private individual – the statue of Lupad found at Tello – does not have a precise provenance. Like the North Temple statue, an act of dedication is either illegible or not recorded. 75 Bahrani 2001a, 98. 76 Sjoberg 1995, 170. 77 Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting 1991, no. 12. 78 For another example dated to the time of Gudea of Lagash, see Loding 1981, 7; Moorey 1994, 22. 79 Spycket 1968a, 34–35; Moorey 1982, 29; Braun-Holzinger 1991, 232; Steinkeller 1990, 22 fn 30; Selz 1992.

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Notes to Pages 124–28 80 Selz 1992, 250, R 7 6; Steinkeller 1990, 22 fn 30; Marchesi and Marchetti 2011, 230. 81 Moorey 1982, 29; see also Moorey 1994, 260. 82 Crawford 2002, 49. 83 Bär 2010, 16. 84 Zettler 1990, 85–86; Zettler 1992, 158–60, 226–31. 85 Zettler 1996, 20. 86 Moorey 1994, 31; for artifacts that might be categorized as artist’s studies, see Winter 1996. 87 Henrickson (1981, 70; 1982, 18) identified a workshop principally for stone mace heads in House XXXVIII of Houses 4 at Khafajah, but this has not been accepted in the literature; for example, see Moorey 1994, 31. 88 Frankfort 1934b, 73; see also Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 80. 89 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 149–51, Kh VIII 278 (Nintu V), Kh VIII 11 (Nintu VI), Kh III 908, 947 (Nintu VII); see also Kh III 52, 54 from Q 45. 90 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 82–104. 91 Meskell 2004, 105. 92 Zettler 1990, 86; see also Chapter 3, n 101. 93 Farber 2003. 94 Moorey 1994, 36. 95 Thomas 2001, 5. 96 Gell 1998, 23. 97 Archi 2005, 88. The Ebla archives record statues (an-dùl) that came directly from Mari; they seem to have been set on thrones and decorated (?) with gold. Archi (2005, 89, 90) suggests that they are cult statues. 98 Matthiae 2009. The two female figures apparently belonged to a larger ceremonial object along with a bronze incense burner and other component parts. 99 Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.7.CylA, xvi 25–30. 100 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 232. 101 Meyer 1981, 284 and Appendix B. 102 For Mari, see Spycket 2007, 261 (gypsum). See also Parrot 1956; 1967. For Ashur, see Bär 2003a, 85 (alabaster). 103 Moorey 1994, 25. 104 Ibid., 27. 105 Archi 1990, 102; 2005, 90. 106 Meyer 1981, 284; Moorey 1994, 25. 107 Meyer 1981, 340–41; Potts 1997, 100–2; Moorey 1994, 21, 37. Various stones were also carried south in the annual flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, having eroded from their banks. Moorey (1994, 21) observed that some Mesopotamian sculpture in general appears to have been carved from eroded boulders rather than quarried blocks (see also Meyer 1981, 340–41). 108 Van de Mieroop 2002, 128. 109 Frankfort 1935b, 59. 110 Meyer 1981, 223–26. 111 Ibid., 266–68, 289–300, and Appendix B; Braun-Holzinger 1991, 42–45, 115–50. 112 Moorey 1994, 25. For another exception, see also the Shara Temple sculpture fragment carved from “serpentine” (Frankfort 1943, no. 262). 113 Moorey 1994, 24. 114 See the examples catalogued in Braun-Holzinger 1991, 240–56. 115 Winter 1995; 2003. 116 Winter 1995, 2571, 2576.

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Notes to Pages 128–32 117 For radiance, see also Winter 1994. 118 Steible 1982, En. I 29; Cooper 1986, La 4.2; Frayne 2008, E1.9.4.2 iii 7–9–iv 1. See also Winter 2003, 407. 119 For example, see 7 N 182. 120 7 N 183, 7 N 186, 7 N 202, 7 N 205. 121 Van de Mieroop 2002, 130–31. 122 Stein 1996. 123 Beld 2002, 36–44. 124 Moorey 1994, 23. 125 Winter (1992, 25), also citing Steible, who observed that ten of the statues from Tello seem to form pairs of sitting and standing statues according to the deity to whom they are dedicated. However, this is not entirely tenable. Of these ten statues, two seated and two standing Gudea statues are dedicated to Ningirsu (B, D, G, K) and a seated and a standing Gudea statue are dedicated to Bau (E, H). The remaining statues are dedicated to Ninhursag (A, standing), Inana (C, standing), Gatumdu (F, seated), and Ningishzida (I, seated) and therefore do not form pairs. 126 Winter 1992, 25. ~, see Michalowski 1977, 221; 127 Edzard 1997, E3/1/1/7/StB i 1–16, vii 55. For ki-a-nag Sallaberger 1993, 282. It has been suggested that the first column of the inscription on Statue B recording the offerings may have been inscribed later than the remaining text because the columns are narrower, the writing is of smaller script, and the text infringes on the border of the garment (Braun-Holzinger 1991, 229; Suter 2000, 59). 128 Winter 1992, 33. 129 Edzard 1997, E3/1.1.7.StE ix 11–12, E3/1.1.7.StK, iii 7–10. 130 Meskell 2005, 4; Miller 2005, 15. 131 Gell 1998, 19. 132 For the texts discussed here, preliminary bibliographic citations are provided. These texts are also available through the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary. For royal statues mentioned in the e2-mi2 archive, see now also Marchesi and Marchetti 2011, Appendix B. 133 Förtsch 1914, 105–12, DP 53; Cohen 1993, 51–52; Beld 2002, 158–59. In addition to the texts discussed here, tablets in the e2-mi2 archive recording the regular monthly distributions of barley and emmer also list offerings (sa2-dug4) to alan in the temple of Bau from the second to the fifth years of the reign of Uruinimgina (Deimel 1928; Spycket 1968a, 34; Kobayashi 1984, 47–48; Beld 2002, 12 fn 27; Marchesi and Marchetti 2011, 235–36). Sasa and later an agrig-official named Urmud made the offerings. In addition, tablet DP 55 records offerings of oil made to the alan of Enmetena, Ninhilisud (probably the wife of Enmetena), and Irkununna (an unidentified individual). They were among recipients including deities and other objects, but no further information regarding the date, occasion, and who registered the offerings is preserved; see Förtsch 1914, 171–73, DP 55. 134 Förtsch 1914, 110, DP 53 obv. ix 14; Sjoberg 1995, 163. 135 Marchesi and Marchetti 2011, 231 fn 5. 136 For the offerings in the previous year, see Genouillac 1909, 1–6, TSA 1. For the offerings on the third day of the barley-eating festival of Nanshe, see Förtsch 1914, 115–22, Ni. 23; Cohen 1993, 44–46; Beld 2002, 117–18. 137 Förtsch 1914, 121, Ni. 23 rev ii 3. 138 Ibid., 139–44, DP 54; Cohen 1993, 53–54; Beld 2002, 182–83. 139 The third year of the reign of Uru’inimgina is the second year of his reign as lugal; he reigned during his first year under the title of ensi2.

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Notes to Pages 132–39 140 For the death rituals of Baranamtara, see Selz 1992, 254–55; Cohen 2005, 157–59. 141 Förtsch 1914, 145–48, DP 66; Cohen 1993, 48–49; Beld 2002, 161–62. 142 Förtsch 1914, 147, DP 66 rev i 7. 143 Steible 1982, Lug. 15; Cooper 1986, La 8.2; Frayne 2008, E1.9.8.2 iii 3. 144 Lambert 1956, 106; Spycket 1968a, 32. 145 Mayer-Opificius (1988) builds on arguments made by Moortgat (1968); see also Pfälzner 2001. 146 Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18. 147 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 228–30; Bär 2003a, 85. 148 Deimel 1920; Kobayashi 1984, 48–50; Cohen 2005, 105 fn 34. 149 For example, Bauer 1972, 167 (Fö 163), 471–74; see also Bauer 1969. For gidim, see Talon 1974. 150 Potts (1997, 228) and Cohen (2005, 104–5), for example, understand these offerings as offerings to statues; Kobayashi (1984, 49–50) and Braun-Holzinger (1991, 231) do not. 151 Deimel 1920, 43, DP 77; Bauer 1969, 110. 152 Bauer 1969, 110; Potts 1997, 228; Cohen 2005, 105. 153 Selz 1997, 175–76. 154 Archi 2002, 183–84; Matthiae 2009, 309–10. 155 Biga 2007–8, 264; Matthiae 2009, 310. 156 Selz 1997; 2004a; 2007; Cohen 2005, 108–13. 157 Selz 1992, 254–55. 158 Cohen (2005, 16–17) further examines the domains of death rituals in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia according to activities surrounding the mourners, the corpse, and the ghost. 159 Lambert 1990; Selz 1997. 160 Steible 1982, Enšak. v. Uruk 1 and 3; Cooper 1986, Uk 4.1; Frayne 2008, E1.14.17.1. 161 Gelb 1956, 69. 162 Frankfort 1939, 10; Gelb 1987, 138. 163 Based on examples catalogued in Frankfort 1939; 1943 as well as examples examined by the author in April 2011 in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. I would like to thank Dr. Richard L. Zettler for discussing this sculpture with me. For examples of such “repairs” at Ashur, see Bär 2003a, 87–88. 164 Frankfort 1939, 31. 165 Ibid., 31 fn 12. 166 For example, Bär 2003a, 102, SK 55. 167 7 N 85, 7 N 163, 7 N 183, 7 N 140. Some questioning of the joins among Inana Temple sculpture fragments were raised, however, because the fragments were in different states of preservation, having been retrieved from different locations within the temple. 168 Moorey 1994, 33. 169 Frankfort 1939, 38–39. 170 7 N 171. 171 Hansen and Dales 1962, 80, statue 7 N 136. 172 Frankfort 1939, 24, no. 11. The feet are missing but likewise would have been secured by pegs inserted into drilled holes on the underside of the skirt. 173 Zettler 1990, 86; Zettler and Sallaberger 2011, 23. 174 Archi 2005, 81.

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Notes to Pages 139–44 175 The Sin Temple VIII sculpture is catalogued by findspot in Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 143–45) and published in Frankfort 1939; 1943. 176 The Nintu Temple VI sculpture is catalogued by findspot in Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 149–50) and published in Frankfort 1943. 177 See Chapter 3, n 81. 178 Frankfort 1939, nos. 63, 66. This can be determined by comparing the findspot elevations for sculpture to the elevations for the Square Temple building periods; see Evans 2007, Table 3. 179 Oates 1966, 151; Akkermans and Verhoeven 1995, 25–26; Wengrow 1998, 786. 180 Oates 1969, 129. 181 Akkermans and Verhoeven 1995, 26. 182 Petty 2006, 54. It is interesting to note further that the Early Bronze Age figurines from Umm el-Marra were frequently broken across the body; some of the sculpture from the Inana Temple at Nippur and elsewhere is comprised of two fragments joined at either the middle of the skirt or at the waist. For intentional breakage of Middle and Late Bronze Age figurines, see Pruss 2006, 541–43. 183 Moorey 2003, 10, 17. 184 Oates 1996, 167; Wengrow 1998, 786. 185 See note 69, this chapter. 186 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 191; Frankfort 1939, no. 13. 187 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 65. 188 Walker and Dick 2001, 7–8. 189 Sallaberger 1993, 281 and Table 101. 190 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 239. 191 Hansen and Dales 1962, 79. 192 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 65, 72, 123; see also Frankfort 1936a, 41. 193 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 89–91; Frankfort 1943, no. 241 and Kh IX 179. 194 Fragments of Late Uruk monumental sculpture from the site of Uruk also were modeled from gypsum plaster; see Strommenger 1973. 195 Woolley 1955, 239. 196 Ibid. 197 7 N 186. 7 N 307 is a fragmentary sculpture of a seated female figure that likewise has traces of red paint on the plant. 198 For example, Frankfort 1943, no. 287; Bär 2003a, 90. 199 7 N 164. 200 Winter 1991; 1994; 1999; 2000a; 2000b. 201 Meskell 2004, 106–14. 202 Gell 1998, 116–21; see also Eck 1981. 203 Pinney 2006, 138. 204 Ibid., 141. 205 Pinney 2001, 137–38; 2006, 160–62. 206 Buck-Morss 1992, 6; see also Pinney 2001, 137–38. 207 See Chapter 1, n 29. 208 Freedberg 1989. 209 Mitchell 2005. 210 Mitchell 2002, 173. 211 Gell 1992; 1998. 212 Gell 1998, 135. 213 Winter 2007. 214 Meskell 2004, 3.

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Notes to Pages 145–52 215 For materiality and material studies approaches in general, see the Introduction, n 8. 216 Winter 1991, 67; see also Winter 2000a.

Chapter Five. Becoming Temple Sculpture: The Asmar Hoard 1 Frankfort 1935b, 79, 86, 87 n 19; 1936a, vii, 35–59. See also Evans 2007 for the details of the summary presented here. 2 Evans 2007, 600–3. 3 Nissen 2007, 21. 4 Evans 2007. 5 Frankfort 1935b, 13; 1939, 3; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 189–90. 6 This conclusion has been reached also by other authors through a consideration of various criteria. For example, see Hrouda 1971, 112; Behm-Blancke 1979, 57; Tunça 1984, 192; Marchetti 2006, 26–27. 7 For further considerations regarding the stratigraphic location of the Asmar hoard, see Evans 2007, 621–25. 8 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 189. 9 Evans 2007, 623. 10 The 31.81-m pavement recorded in the field notebook also corresponds to the 31.8-m “construction pavement” described by the Diyala excavators in publications, but for a discussion of why this was not a surface from which the Square Temple was constructed, see Evans 2007, 611. 11 Ibid., 612. See also Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 191 and Figure 130. In the caption to that figure, the smaller altar (a) is said to rest on the floor of the Square Temple (b). However, the identification of (b) as the Square Temple floor is incorrect; see Evans 2007, Figure 8. 12 For a fuller consideration of the predecessor to the Square Temple, see Evans 2007, 609–13. 13 Frankfort 1939, no. 97; 1943, As. 33:631. The relationship between D 17:15 and the Archaic Shrine is unclear because they do not directly communicate with one another. 14 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 172, 174, and Figure 131. 15 Ibid., 173. The limits of the predecessor, however, “are not altogether certain” (Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 172). 16 Ibid., Plate 21A. 17 Ibid., 167, 191. 18 Ibid., 191. 19 Renfrew 1994, 51–53. 20 Schiffer 1987. 21 In temples, solid-footed goblets are found in the greatest quantities in Archaic Shrine III at Tell Asmar, Sin Temple V and VI at Khafajah, and Inana Temple XI at Nippur. See Delougaz 1952, 56–57; Wilson 1986, 63. For solid-footed goblets in general, see Delougaz 1952, 56–57; Hansen 1965, 209; Moon 1987, 17–19. 22 Delougaz 1952, 136. 23 Hrouda 1971, 112; Behm-Blancke 1979, 57; Porada et al. 1992, 105. In contrast, see Braun-Holzinger (1977, 44), who maintains that only the Shara Temple sculpture fragment depicts a solid-footed goblet. 24 The Shara Temple figure can be identified as female on the basis of the garment. The sculpture fragment (Frankfort 1943, no. 265) is from M 14:4 at 31.5 m, which is the findspot of a concentration of objects, including cylinder

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Notes to Pages 152–60 seals (Frankfort 1955, nos. 833–37), fragments of temple sculpture (Frankfort 1943, no. 265 and Ag. 35:895), a recumbent bovine (Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Ag. 35:880), a relief-carved stone bowl (Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Ag. 35:900), and pottery (Delougaz 1952, B.203.510). The findspot elevation of 31.5 m for these objects is below the large pit in M 14:4, which ranged from 33.0 to 31.6 m; see Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 245. These objects therefore can be assigned to either the second occupation of the Earlier Building or the Intermediate Foundations. The earlieststratified Shara Temple sculpture otherwise can be assigned to the Intermediate Foundations on the basis of findspot elevation; see Frankfort 1943, nos. 271, 274, 275, 283. Sculpture from the second occupation of the Earlier Building (Frankfort 1943, nos. 289, 306–10) falls outside the Early Dynastic temple sculpture tradition and will be discussed later. The Shara Temple levels were dated to ED II principally on the basis of abstract-style sculpture (Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 260). The pottery from the Shara Temple, however, dates the Earlier Building to ED I (Delougaz 1952, 60; see also C.526.373a, buried from the Earlier Building second occupation). For the stratigraphy of the Shara Temple, see Evans 2005. Another fragmentary Shara Temple statue of a standing female figure (Frankfort 1943, no. 275) is often referred to in the literature as holding a cup, but examination of the fragment, now in the Oriental Institute Museum, revealed no evidence of a cup. 25 Frankfort 1939, 46–47; Braun-Holzinger 1977, 10; Asher-Greve 1985, 71–72; Selz 2004a, 193–95; Marchetti 2006, 143. 26 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 165–66; see also Wilson 1994, 68. 27 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 165 and Figure 121. 28 For the two cylinder seals, see Frankfort 1955, nos. 445, 446. 29 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 33. 30 Ibid., 34; Delougaz 1952, B.077.700a. 31 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 42 and Figures 36, 37; Delougaz 1952, B.077.700a. 32 Meijer 2002. 33 Bär 2003a, 56. 34 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 55–56. In addition, a bitumen-plastered rectangle against the north wall of the court connecting to a drain leading outside the temple was associated with ablutions. 35 Ibid., 55. For the appearance of mudbrick structures in the corresponding room Q 42:10 of Sin Temple VI, see Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 43. For the Sin Temple VIII sculpture, see Frankfort 1939; 1943. 36 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 58, 69–70. 37 Frankfort 1939, nos. 63, 66, 93, 94, 95. For corrections to the findspots, see Frankfort 1943, 23; see also Evans 2007, Table 3. All of the other sculpture catalogued with a Square Temple findspot is, like the Asmar hoard, from below Square Temple I (Evans 2007, Table 3). 38 Danmanville 1955. 39 Similar developments in provisions for liquids in the Shara Temple and the Nintu Temple also can be articulated; see Delougaz and Lloyd 1942. 40 Frankfort 1943, no. 208. 41 Frankfort 1943, 1; Strommenger 1960, 14–15; Braun-Holzinger 1977, 10 fn 1; Porada et al. 1992, 105. For the ED I date of Sin Temple IV, see Wilson 1986. 42 Heinrich 1936, W 14873, Plates 2, 3, 38. 43 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 4–5. 44 Porada et al. 1992, 103–7; Nissen 2007, 20–24, with relevant bibliography. 45 Frankfort 1955, 15–17. 46 Delougaz 1952, C.517.273, Plates 55d, 137a.

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Notes to Pages 160–65 47 Heinrich 1936, Plates 22, 23. 48 Catalogued in Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, they are variously referred to as “carved vase,” “carved bowl,” “carved vessel,” and “sculptured vase.” 49 Published examples include Basmachi 1950, Plate I/9; Behm-Blancke 1979, abb. 10. For the pottery form, see Delougaz 1952, 58 and Plate 48c–d; Hansen 1965, 209. 50 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Figures 189 (Ag. 35:674) and 193 (Ag. 35:200). In the literature, one is referred to as a support or stand and the other is referred to as a cup, but this distinction is only a reflection of their state of preservation. 51 For example, see Hansen 1971, 49–50, no. 1, Plate 17, from Nippur, Inana Temple IXB. 52 For the Shara Temple cup as an heirloom, see Frankfort 1954, 12; Hansen 1975a, no. 73. For an Early Dynastic date, see Behm-Blancke 1979, 38–39 fn 230, 58; BraunHolzinger 1999, 161. 53 For other types of sculpture in the Diyala temples at the beginning of the Early Dynastic period, see also the stylized marble figurine with Anatolian origins found below the Square Temple; a similar figurine from the same level is possibly a local imitation (Frankfort 1935b, 27–29 and Figures 24, 28; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 183 and Figure 144). Another example of this figurine type was found out of context at Khafajah; see Frankfort 1934b, 71–73 and Figure 63. For the figurine type, see Moorey 2002. 54 Frankfort 1939, 12. 55 Ibid., 25. 56 Wiggermann 1981–82; Wiggermann 1992, 164–66. For objections, see Ellis 1995. For the early history of the belted hero, see Costello 2010. 57 Wilson in Aruz 2003, cat. no. 17. 58 Hansen 1975b, no. 36a; Porada et al. 1992, 105. For the pottery form, see note 49, this chapter. 59 Frankfort 1943, Plate 34b. 60 Initially, Frankfort (1939, no. 92) attributed the statue to Sin Temple VII, but subsequently this was corrected to Sin Temple VI–VII; see Frankfort 1943, 23. Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 52, 143) assigned the statue to Sin Temple VII in the text and to Sin Temple VI–VII in the catalogue of objects. 61 Porada, Hansen, and von Beckerath 1968, 303. In contrast, Strommenger (1960, 15) and Braun-Holzinger (1977, 10 fn 1) date the Sin Temple VI–VII crouching figure to Uruk III. 62 Frankfort 1935b, 59; 1939, 25. A drilled hole was taken as evidence that the two fragments had been joined by repair, but see Chapter 4. 63 For example, see Porada 1981, 499. With the kneeling figure in the Asmar hoard, two small copper loops on the belt in the back might have facilitated its handling; see Frankfort 1939, 25. 64 See note 50, this chapter. On one of the cups (Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Ag. 35:674), the belted hero also wears upturned shoes, which bear a general highland connotation. 65 One of the bull men is now in a private collection and was first published by Frankfort (1939, no. 206); for the inscription, see Chapter 4, n 40. The other bull man is in the Iraq Museum and was first published by Lloyd (1946, 1–5); see also Hansen 1975b, no. 16. 66 Porada 1956, 122–23; Porada et al. 1992, 105. 67 Aruz 2003, no. 18. 68 Wiggermann 1992, 166, 174–79; Ellis 1989, 126–29.

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Notes to Pages 165–71 69 A bronze fragment of the lower half of a belted hero holding a gatepost is inscribed with the name of the Akkadian ruler Naram-Sin (Frayne 1993, E2.1.4.10). In later texts, representations of the lahmu are said to stand in the temple at the dub-la2, probably indicating a gateway (Wiggermann 1981–82, 95; Wiggermann 1992, 166). For dub-la2, see Cooper 1983a, 248 fn 131. 70 Matthews 1991. In contrast, Matthews (1991, 7) found “a far more even distribution of iconographic types, with a substantially greater representation of design seals and deity/banquet seals” on container sealings. 71 See also Braun-Holzinger 1984, 18. 72 Frankfort 1943, no. 289; Behm-Blancke 1979, 29 (Ag. 35:779, Ag. 35:880, Ag. 36:101). See also Pittman 2006. 73 For the archaic deposits, see Le Breton 1957, 109–12 and Figures 31, 32; Amiet 1976, 62–63 and Plates 18, 19; Pittman 2002; 2006. For the relationship between the archaic deposits and the sculpture under discussion here, see Evans 2011. 74 See Pittman 2006, with relevant bibliography. 75 The similarity between the Abu Temple belted hero and kneeling female figures from Susa is especially striking in terms of posture and medium; see Evans 2011, Plate Vd. 76 Frankfort 1939, 39–42; 1943, 11–13. 77 These statues were retrieved from room M 14:12 of the second occupation of the Earlier Building of the Shara Temple. Delougaz and Lloyd (1942, 257) stated that the many finds from room M 14:12 were “incorporated in the debris with which the room was packed for a matter of about 70 cm, from the 31.00-meter floor level up to the underside of the later filling,” by which is meant the filling of the Intermediate Foundations. Room M 14:12 was adjacent to, but did not connect directly with, sanctuary M 14:15, and subsequently was overlaid by the Intermediate Foundations and then the M 14:2 sanctuary of the Main Level. The copper figures are either stratigraphically earlier or roughly contemporary with the Shara Temple sculpture fragment of a figure holding a solid-footed goblet; see note 24, this chapter, in which Frankfort 1943, no. 265, is assigned to either the second occupation of the Earlier Building or the Intermediate Foundations. 78 The presence of the belt also situates these figures outside the male nudity associated with religious ritual; see Bahrani 2001a, 55. 79 Braun-Holzinger 1984, 18–19. 80 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 38 fn 41 Shara Temple at Tell Agrab and Sin Temple at Khafajah (although not from an earlier period as they assume). 81 Frankfort 1936a, 35 and Figure 27; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 38 and Figure 33. 82 Frankfort 1939, 13–16. 83 Ibid., 15–16. 84 For the concept of the mother goddess in a wider context, see Bahrani 2001a, 46–48. 85 Jacobsen 1989 provides relevant bibliography for this debate. 86 Frankfort 1939, 22. 87 Jacobsen 1989. See also Selz (1997, 181), who suggested that the statues embodied both god and worshiper. 88 Frankfort 1939, Plate 2. 89 For example, Frankfort (1939, 24) noted that no. 10 in the Asmar hoard had the “tip of the nose [ … ] crushed by superimposed statues.” 90 Chubb 1957, 142. 91 Kaim 2000, 517–18.

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Notes to Pages 171–77 92 For the mutilation of royal statues, see Brandes 1980; Nylander 1980; Kaim 2000; Bahrani 2003a, 149–84; Feldman 2009, 45–46; Woods 2012. For examples of statues in the Diyala region that are missing the nose, see Frankfort 1939; Frankfort 1943. According to Frankfort (1939, 38), nos. 23, 54, and 169 either had been prepared to receive or had received a “new nose.” 93 Asher-Greve 1997, 443–44; Costello 2010, 33. 94 Baadsgaard 2008, 242. 95 However, the position of the Imdugud above temple entrances is recorded in later texts; see Chapter 3, n 133. Hall and Woolley (1927, 116, Plate 38) similarly reconstructed the Early Dynastic copper-alloy Imdugud relief over the entrance of the Temple of Ninhursag at Tell al-‘Ubaid. 96 Dales 1960, 134, 154, 202–7. See also Petty 2006, 29–30; Pruss 2006. 97 McAdam in Green 1993b, 88–89. 98 Frankfort 1939, 3, 18; Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, Sin Temple V (Kh. V 257, Kh. V 297, Kh. V 358), Archaic Shrine III (As. 34:54). See also Delougaz, Hill, and Lloyd 1967, Houses 8 (Kh. V 171a), Houses 7 (Kh. V 167). 99 Dales 1960, 154. 100 Porada 1956, 122 and fn 7; Strommenger 1960, 37–38. 101 Evans in Aruz 2003, cat. no. 8. 102 Donohue 1988, 206–18, 231. 103 Matthiae 1980, TM.74.G.1000, TM.74.G.1011. 104 See Donohue 1988, 213–14. 105 Watelin 1934, 9, 46, and Plate 12; note the enlarged eyes and stumplike arms. 106 For example, see Pruss 2006 (16259.M.24, identified as a “sculptor’s model”); Kelly-Buccellati 1998 (A1.23). It should be noted also that a seated female from Nippur published by Van Buren (1930, Plate IX/4) as a clay figurine is actually a modern cast of a stone statue; I would like to thank Dr. Richard L. Zettler for locating this cast for me. 107 McAdam in Green 1993b, 84, nos. 262–69; Woolley 1955, 190 (U.18419 from SIS 4–5). See also Woolley 1955, U.12764, Plate 23, from “the rubbish stratum underneath the Royal Cemetery.” 108 Clothing also is common for Early Bronze Age figurines in general; see Pruss 2006, 537. 109 Moorey 2003, 20. 110 Woolley 1955, 174 and Plate 24, U.8292; 190 and Plate 21, U.18415–21. For the Seal Impression Strata, see Charvát 1979, 16; Cohen 2005, 60. 111 Woolley 1955, 37. A fragmentary limestone head (Woolley 1955, 174, U.8472, Plate 24) may have been retrieved from the same levels as the clay figurines. It is catalogued as being from the “Royal Cemetery area,” but elsewhere Woolley (1955, 37) identifies the findspot as “the rubbish into which the graves of the Royal Cemetery were dug.” 112 Green 1993b, 18–21, although it should be noted that comparisons to the administrative building of Area C at al-Hiba are unwarranted because the latter clearly is not a temple; see Bahrani 1989. 113 Postgate 1994, 180. 114 Meijer 2002, 225. 115 Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 18. 116 Pittman 1994. 117 The Shara Temple seals are published in Frankfort 1955, with more specific findspot details also provided in Delougaz and Lloyd 1942.

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Notes to Pages 177–84 118 As observed by Moorey (2002, 232), the Anatolian figurines cited in n 53, this chapter, also are easily held and also could have been suspended, perhaps to be worn as personal amulets. 119 Pittman 2006, 31. 120 Pinney 2006, 138. 121 Morgan 1998, 152–80. 122 Asher-Greve 2006, 35.

Chapter Six. Gender and Identity in Early Dynastic Temple Statues 1 See also Bahrani 2001a, 117–20. 2 Evans 2007, 627–28. 3 Parrot 1935, 12. 4 For the history of the Mari excavations, see Margueron 2004. 5 For the dating of Ville II, see Margueron 2004. For the sculpture from the Ishtar Temple and the temples of Ishtarat and Ninni-zaza, see Parrot 1956; Parrot 1967. 6 Margueron 2004, 310–12. 7 Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 12, 13, 14 (Iplul-il); MP 9, 10, 11 (Iku-Shamagan); MP 5, 6 (Idi-narum); MP 4, 20 (Kunduri). 8 For descriptions of the Mari style of sculpture, see Strommenger 1960; Hansen 1975b; Braun-Holzinger 1977; Spycket 2007. 9 For example, signs of age are not present in the statue of Iddi-narum “the elder” (Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 5), and there is no basis for another male figure to have been dubbed the “Bedouin” (Parrot 1967, 59); see also Margueron 1997. 10 For the chignon as an Early Dynastic royal hairstyle, see Moorey 1996. 11 Parrot 1956, 68–70, no. 1; Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 17. The inscription on the statue of Ishqi-Mari refers to the ruler as the “chief ensi2 of Enlil,” which first appears in the epithets of late ED III rulers in Sumer; the title continues into the Akkadian period with Sargon (Hallo 1957, 47–48). This would suggest that IshqiMari ruled Mari toward the end of Ville II, confirmed now by sealings of IshqiMari from the final level (P-1) of the palace (Margueron 2004, 311). 12 For example, see an unprovenanced statue in the Iraq Museum (IM 5572), first published in 1934, inscribed with the dedication of Meskigala, ensi2 of Adab, who is attested first under the late Early Dynastic ruler Lugalzagesi of Uruk and then under the ruler Rimush of Akkad. For the statue, see Braun-Holzinger 1977, Plate 29 c–d; Spycket 1981, 85 fn 209. For the inscription, see Cooper 1986, Ad 6; Frayne 2008, E1.1.9.2001. Problematic, however, is the development in royal iconography outlined by Marchetti (2006), which begins with the largest male figure in the Asmar sculpture hoard. As argued in Chapter 5, this is unlikely to be a royal figure. 13 Inscribed Early Dynastic sculpture is catalogued in Braun-Holzinger 1991; for the inscribed sculpture from Mari, see also Gelb and Kienast 1990. 14 Published examples are catalogued in Goetze 1970; Braun-Holzinger 1991. 15 Inscribed sculpture and stone vessels are catalogued in Braun-Holzinger 1991; see also Gelb and Kienast 1990. 16 Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 3, 10, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40. 17 For example, very few Early Dynastic statues at all were inscribed in the Diyala region (Frankfort 1939; 1943), and none of the Ishtar Temple G sculpture from Ashur is inscribed (Bär 2003a). 18 Steible 1982, 212. 19 Goetze 1970, 7 N 136, 7 N 202.

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Notes to Pages 184–88 20 Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 14, 15. The inscription on the more fragmentary statue is used to complete the partially preserved inscription on the other figure; see Boese 1996. 21 Parrot 1967, Figures 132, 133. 22 Cheng 2009, 168–71. Asher-Greve (1997, 438) suggested that the representation of Urnanshe is ambiguous in terms of gender because of “an effeminate face and bulging breasts” – leading her to suggest that these features reflect castration. The sharp ridges delineating the chest of the better-preserved figure are characteristic of the carving in general if one considers also the sharp ridges on the arms and legs. That Urnanshe has female breasts therefore must be dismissed outright. To my mind, this is another example of picking and choosing elements for mimesis rather than taking into consideration the entirety of the representation. The more fragmentary statue of Urnanshe is carved in a different style that is not sharply ridged; hence, no “breasts” are represented. 23 Parrot 1967, Figures 199 [3039], 200 [10043], 213 [3028, 3029]. 24 For example, the statue of Shibum has been restored from some forty-five fragments (Parrot 1967, M 2300). Fragments were also photographed according to standard iconography; for example, individual fragments of feet were staggered so that one foot is forward in the usual fashion (Parrot 1967, Figures 212, 213). The clasped hands of another statue were restored above the stone support that would connect them to the chest (Parrot 1967, M 2319). Other statues were heavily restored according to standard iconography using plaster to complete the missing parts (for example, Parrot 1967, Plates 29, 31, 50, 51, 55). 25 Ibid., 44–45, no. 66, and Plate xx; Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 10. 26 Steible 1982, Urnanshe 20, 21, 22; Cooper 1986, La 1.2, .3, .4; Frayne 2008, E1.9.1.2, .3, .4. For the position of cup-bearer, see Glassner 1993. 27 For examples, see Woolley 1934, Plate 116; see also Boese 1971. 28 Parrot 1967, 70–71, no. 2, and Plates xxvii–xxix; Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 1. 29 Steible 1982, Urnanshe 51; Cooper 1986, La 1.6; Frayne 2008, E1.9.1.6a. 30 For example, see Hansen 1975b, no. 29 for the seated statue of a scribe (dub-sar). For the nu-banda3 from level VIIB of the Inana Temple, see Hansen 1975b, no. 21b; for the inscription, see Goetze 1970, 7 N 202. 31 For example, Woolley 1934, Plates 91, 103. 32 Ibid., Plates 107, 108, 115. 33 Moorey 1970, Plate XVII; note, however, that the object is incorrectly restored in the photograph. 34 The Kish support of human-headed bulls recalls the pair of supports from PG 1237 at Ur depicting a goat standing upright against a flowering plant; see Woolley 1934, Plates 87–89. For the transmission of Sumerian culture to the Syro-Mesopotamian world, see Gelb 1981; 1992; Biggs 1981; Moorey 1981; Michalowski 1985; Steinkeller 1993. 35 Parrot 1956, 157 and Plate 58 (M 1072). 36 Selz 2008, 18–19. 37 See also Winter 1995, 2572. 38 For banqueters at Mari, see Parrot 1956, Plate XXXVII, nos. 647–826 and Plate XLI, nos. 147, 265, 330, 341, 390, 404, 1025, 1050; Parrot 1967, Figure 143 and Plate LVI. 39 Suter 2008, 18; see also Selz 2004b. 40 Beginning in the early twentieth century, the iconography of banqueting was united under the single theme of the Sacred Marriage ritual celebrating the fecundity of the land through the marriage of a goddess, the role probably being assumed by her priestess, and the male ruler; see Cooper 1993b. Rather than interpreting

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Notes to Pages 188–96 the banquet itself, my interest here instead is in how banqueting, which unlikely signifies one single event, is utilized as a mode of gender presencing in the Early Dynastic temple. 41 Hansen 2003, 31; Collins 2006, 99–100. 42 Hansen 1963, 164 fn 98 and Plate vi. 43 Hansen 1975b, 165, no. 21c (7 N 186); see also 7 N 307. 44 Frankfort 1943, no. 270. 45 For male figures, see Frankfort 1939, no. 203; 1943, no. 270. 46 Joyce 2005. 47 Rathje 1977; Moorey 1977, 36. 48 Braun-Holzinger 1991, 96–98. 49 Ibid., 28–29; for the mace heads in the Shara Temple, see Delougaz and Lloyd 1942, 266–84. 50 Frankfort 1939, 31. See also Frankfort 1935b, 73; 1935c, 121. 51 Frankfort 1939, 31 fn 12. 52 Ibid. 53 Sculpture from Khafajah is catalogued in Frankfort (1939; 1943). 54 Gibson, Hansen, and Zettler 2001, with relevant bibliography. 55 Haines 1961, 68; Hansen and Dales 1962, 79. For the 173 installation, 7 N 123, 125, 136, 137, 138a, 138b, 139a,b, and 140; for the 179 bench; 7 N 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 200, 202, and 205.A fourth hoard of objects below the earliest level VIIB floor of room 161 included a fragmentary male head (7 N 051) and a statue base (7 N 037) among a hoard of stone vessels, beads, shells, and other items. 56 A sculpture fragment preserving the back and beginning of the skirt (7 N 080) is from room 151; a sculpture fragment preserving the feet and base (7 N 103) is from room 176; a sculpture fragment preserving a female head (7 N 113) is from room 182; and two female heads (7 N 154, 7 N 159) are from room 193. Finally, several sculpture fragments joining to other fragments from the installation in room 173 and from sanctuary 179 were retrieved from room 194 and are discussed later; sculpture fragments of a male head (7 N 302) and of a female banqueter (7 N 307) were also retrieved from room 194. 57 7 N 82, 7 N 83, 7 N 84, 7 N 85. 58 Goetze 1970, 7 N 170, 7 N 171. 59 Ibid., 7 N 137, courier (im2); Steible 1982, 240 (ugula). 60 Goetze 1970, 7 N 136. 61 Ibid., 7 N 205. 62 Beld 2002, 69. 63 Zettler 1992, 217–18. A third Early Dynastic sculpture fragment (6 N 248) naming a ~g ~a of Enlil was found in the Parthian fill below SB II of the Inana Temple. sag 64 7 N 155. 65 This statue is in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1962 (62.70.1a–b), and was examined by Jean-Francois de Lapérouse in Objects Conservation in fall 2011. 66 7 N 195. 67 6 N 423. 68 Winter 1987. 69 Ibid., 192. 70 7 N 163, 7 N 164, 7 N 167. 71 Zettler 1992, 217–18. 72 Westenholz 1977. A list of late Early Dynastic riddles excavated from an administrative building at al-Hiba (ancient Lagash) indicates that fish were closely aligned

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Notes to Pages 196–206 with the identities of cities or places. Each riddle enumerates a canal, a divine name, the name of a fish, and the name of a snake, all of which are meant as clues for the name of the city; see Biggs 1973b. 73 For the statue, see Walker and Collon 1980, 96, no. 1, Plate 25. For the inscription, see Cooper 1986, Ma 3; Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP 8; Frayne 2008, E1.10.7. In addition, a Neo-Babylonian tablet provides a copy of the inscription on another dedication to Shamash made by a merchant from Mari; see Gelb and Kienast 1990, MP C 1. 74 Hansen and Dales 1962, 80. 75 For both Lipit-Ishtar and Enanedu, see Weadock 1975, 103. 76 Postgate 1992, 130. 77 Selz 1992; Beld 2002; Cohen 2005. 78 Van de Mieroop 1989, 55. 79 Fronzaroli 1993. 80 Beld 2002, 33; Van de Mieroop 1989, 56. 81 See Bahrani 2002. 82 Woolley 1934, 73. 83 Zettler and Horne 1998, 39. 84 Steible 1982, MP 4, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 25. 85 See n 34, this chapter.

Conclusion: Materiality, Abstraction, and Early Dynastic Sculpture 1 Jacobsen 1957, 108 fn 32; 1976. 2 Turner 1988; Bowie 2006, 149. 3 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and McNamara 1985, 2. 4 These were first elaborated on by Turner in his writings on pilgrimage and processional forms of drama and were then taken up by Schechner in his delineation of performance studies; see Schechner 2002. 5 Beld 2002; see also Pongratz-Leisten 2006. 6 Frankfort 1939, no. 185; Boese 1971, CS 7 and K 7; Wilson in Aruz 2003, no. 32. 7 See also the discussion of stone door plaques in Chapter 3. 8 Goetze 1970, 7 N 122. 9 Winter 1987. 10 Woolley 1955, U.6691. 11 Hansen 2003, 24; see also Bahrani 2002. 12 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, 254–55. 13 Winter 2000a, 1789. 14 Gell 1998.

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INDEX

abstraction, see aesthetics, early twentieth century; sculpture, Early Dynastic Abu Salabikh, 41, 118, 176 Adab (modern Bismaya), 70, 117, 198 see also Meskigala aesthetics of the early twentieth-century Western art world, 10, 50, 60–61, 63–70, 76 and race, 10, 18–19, 21–23, 29–30, 44 of stone sculpture, 42, 70–71, 175 see also museum, display aesthetics of; sculpture, Early Dynastic Akkadian language, 8, 13, 16, 17, 20 Akkadian period, 8 Albinus, Bernard Sigfried, 25 allochronism, 44 Alpers, Svetlana, 80 altar, see temple, Early Dynastic, altar Andrae, Walter, 52, 81–87, 103 Apollo Belvedere, 15, 22, 24–30 archaeological reconstruction, 77, 78, 88, 151, 208 see also Ashur, Ishtar Temple G, reconstruction of sculpture in sanctuary; Khafajah, Temple Oval, reconstruction of House D; Tell Asmar, Abu Temple; Tell Asmar, Single-Shrine Temple reconstruction Archi, Alfonso, 98, 126 Art Institute of Chicago, 64, 90 Asher-Greve, Julia M., 177 Ashur, 119, 133, 137–38, 155 and craft production, 124 Ishtar Temple G, reconstruction of sculpture in sanctuary, 81–88 Ishtar Temple GF, 85, 86 sculpture, racial types identified in, 52 sculpture, use of light-colored stone, 126

“Stele Row,” 112 see also sculpture, Early Dynastic Asmar sculpture hoard, 12, 88, 107, 119, 135, 138, 146–79, 179, 189, 207, 208 dating style of, 47, 74 and modern art, 63–69 and negative aesthetic judgments, 71–72 as the oldest monumental stone sculpture, 3, 49–50 ornament and the style of, 56–61 and “primitive” art, 61–63, 69–70 shift to art history of, 52, 55–56 source of stone, 126 see also Lloyd, Seton, and the excavation of the Asmar hoard; sculpture, Early Dynastic Babylon, Ishtar Gate, 78 Bahrani, Zainab, 44, 123 Banks, Edgar James, 70 Bär, Jürgen, 45, 85, 86–87, 124, 137–38 Baranamtara, 120, 198 offerings to statues by, 131–34 Bau, goddess, 105, 120–21 and offerings during the festival of, 132–33 Baumgarten, Alexander, 21, 144 Beld, Scott Gordon, 121 Bell, Clive, 64 Bennett, Tony, 89 Bernier, Francois, 24 biblical chronology, 37–39 Bilsel, S. M. Can, 78 Blaschke, Frederick, 43 Boas, Franz, 35 Boese, Johannes, 103 Bohrer, Frederick, 42 Brancusi, Constantin, 64

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273

Index Braun-Holzinger, Eva, 116, 123 Breasted, James Henry, 39 and correspondence with Henri Frankfort, 53–56 see also Frankfort, Henri British Museum, 16, 64, 65, 126 and museum display, 84, 90 see also Elgin marbles; Gudea, sculpture of Brixham cave, 38 Buck-Morss, Susan, 80, 143–44 Buffon, Count Georges-Louis Leclerc de, 24 Burney, Sidney, 69 Buxton, L. Dudley, 36, 42, 53, 55 Calder, Alexander, 64 Camper, Petrus, 26 cephalic index, 27, 34 Cézanne, Paul, 60–61, 64 Choga Mami, 139 chronology, third millennium BC, 8–9 Chubb, Mary, 170–71 Civil, Miguel, 112 classical ideal, 10, 21–30 Cohen, Andrew, 121, 134 Collon, Dominique, 71 Connelly, Frances S., 61, 69–70 Contenau, Georges, 65 Cordier, Charles, 42 craniometry, 24–30 Crawford, Harriet, 120, 122 cubism, 50, 63–64, 71 cult statue, 88, 97–99, 125, 140, 143–45, 169–72, 208 see also divine representation cuneiform, 15–16, 20 Dales, George F., 174 darshan, 143 Darwin, Charles, 15, 28–29, 38 de Kooning, Willem, 107 dedicatory objects, 116, 190 naming of, 112, 117, 132 see also sculpture, Early Dynastic; Gudea, sculpture of Delougaz, Pinhas, 51 Dimtur, 120, 198 diorite, 42, 66, 126, 127, 182 divine representation, 84, 97–102 see also cult statue, horned headdress; Imdugud; Inana, cult statue of; Inana, symbol or emblem of Diyala region, 3, 10, 46 door plaques, 103–5, 185, 188, 203–5 see also temple, Early Dynastic Eanatum, 105, 182 Early Dynastic period, 3, 7–8, 10, 16, 41 subdivisions of, 46, 73–74, 146–47, 159 Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh), 126, 175, 187 Palace G texts, 98, 126, 133–34, 139, 142, 198

274

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Elgin marbles, 67–68 Enlil, god, 98, 100, 118, 191 see also Enmetena, statue of; Nippur, Temple of Enlil Enanatum I, 128–29 foundation figure from the Ibgal of Inana at al-Hiba, 102 see also Ningirsu, mortar dedicated to Enentarzi, 120, 193, 198 Enheduanna, 195 Enmetena, 103 statue of, 112, 117, 122–23, 126, 132, 182 see also Ningirsu, drinking vessel of Enshakushana, 135, 195 Fabian, Johannes, 44 facial angle, 26, 29, 30 Fara, 165 Fara texts, 124, 178, 191 Field Museum, 42–43 and Kish excavations, 35, 36, 37 figurines, clay, 40, 120, 130, 139–40, 170, 174–77 Foucault, Michel, 89 Frankfort, Henri, 46–66, 69–74, 77, 137, 138, 190 and the Asmar hoard, 49–50, 55–56, 126, 147, 163–64, 168–69 and the placement of sculpture, 88–89, 92, 105 and “spontaneous stylization,” 147, 174 and the subdivision of the Early Dynastic period, 46, 47–48 see also sculpture, Early Dynastic Frankl, George, 107 Freedberg, David, 144 frontality, 178, 205 Fry, Roger, 64 Gall, Franz Joseph, 27 Gelb, Ignace J., 122 Gell, Alfred, 72, 125, 144 Giacometti, Alberto, 66 Girsu (modern Tello), 8, 100, 120 Construction Inférieure, 103 early excavation of, 1, 19, 30, 39 early reception of monuments from, 41 early study of sculpture from, 30–35, 44, 61 e2-mi2 archive, 120–21, 131–37, 159, 177, 196, 197–98 Gould, Stephen Jay, 26 Groenewegen-Frankfort, H. A., 71 Gudea, ruler of Lagash, 52, 113, 126 and the 1889 Universal Exposition, 1, 4, 41–42 cylinders of, 100–2, 103 date of, 9 Louvre Museum, display of, 84 sculpture of, 88–89, 122 sculpture, early twentieth-century reception of, 66–69 sculpture, names of, 117

Index sculpture, nineteenth-century study of, 30–35 sculpture, rituals of, 111–12, 117, 131, 140 gypsum, see sculpture, Early Dynastic Haeckel, Ernst, 29 Halévy, Joseph, 20 Hamoudi, foreman of the Ur excavations, 43 Hansen, Donald P., 14, 103, 122, 196–97, 205 Hébert, Jules, 41–42 Hepworth, Barbara, 64, 65 heterotopia, 89 Heuzey, Léon Alexandre, 15, 31–32, 42, 61–62 Hoffman, Malvina, 43 Arab from Kish, 43, 68 horned headdress, 99, 104, 188, 195, 203 Imdugud, 99–100, 103, 168, 172–73 Inana, 100, 106, 122, 123, 129, 203 cult statue of, 98, 106, 125, 139 symbol or emblem of, 99, 172, 203 see also divine representation; Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba), Ibgal of Inana; Nippur, Inana Temple Indo-European languages, 19, 36 Iraq Expedition, see University of Chicago Ishqi-Mari, statue of, 133, 171, 180, 183–84 Jacobsen, Thorkild, 17, 51, 63, 100, 115, 170 Jamdat Nasr, 35, 36, 39 Jamdat Nasr period, 16, 46, 55, 159–61, 166, 174 Jaynes, Julian, 107 Keane, Webb, 115 Keith, Arthur, 15, 35–37, 42–43, 53, 55, 76 Khafajah, 14, 47, 74, 163 Nintu Temple, 105, 137, 139, 141, 190 Nintu Temple, sculpture of male figures, 190, 201 Nintu Temple, sculpture workshop, 124–25, 126, 130 sculpture, early study of, 53, 55–56 sculpture looted from, 52 Sin Temple, 105, 146, 158, 159, 184, 190–91, 193, 204 Sin Temple III, 177 Sin Temple IV, 159, 161, 176, 178 Sin Temple V, 155, 167–68, 174 Sin Temple VI, 155 Sin Temple V–VI, solid-footed goblets, 155, 164, 167–68 Sin Temple VI–VII, statue of a load-bearer, 162–63, 164, 167 Sin Temple VII, 155 Sin Temple VIII, 139, 155–57, 158, 164, 168 Sin Temple VIII, room R 42:2, 105, 156–57 Sin Temple VIII, sculpture of female figure, 190, 201 Sin Temple IX, 95, 140, 141, 156 Temple Oval, 91, 191

Temple Oval, reconstruction of House D, 91 see also Early Dynastic period, subdivisions of; sculpture, Early Dynastic King, L. W., 33 Kish (modern Tell al-Uhaimir), 40, 54–55, 135, 175 early dating of, 39 skeletal remains from, 35–37, 53, 54 study of workmen at, 37, 43 see also Hoffman, Malvina, Arab from Kish king of Kish, title, 8, 62, 122 Knox, Robert, 28 Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba), 8 Ibgal of Inana, 102 see also Enanatum I, foundation figure Lagash, city-state of, 8, 12, 46, 99, 127, 135, 196 Early Dynastic rulers of, 103, 104, 120, 123 ritual economy of, 121–22, 129–30 see also Barnamtara; Dimtur; Enanatum I; Enentarzi; Enmetena; Girsu; Girsu, e2-mi2 archive; Gudea, ruler of Lagash; Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba); Lugalanda; Nina (Surghul); Sasa; Urnanshe; Uru-inimgina Lambert, Maurice, 66 Lambert, W. G., 135 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 26 Levy, G. Rachel, 67 Linnaeus, Carolus, 24 Lloyd, Seton, 46, 51, 149 and the excavation of the Asmar hoard, 55, 170–71 and the reconstruction of Single-Shrine Temple I, 91–92 Louvre Museum, 15, 16, 65, 66, 84 Lugalanda, 120, 131–34, 198 Lugaldalu, 70 Manishtusu, 113, 119 Mari (modern Tell Hariri), 9, 104 donor, at Sippar, 196 Ishtar Temple, 180, 184, 187 sculpture from, 12, 112, 119, 133, 179–89, 199, 200–1 sculpture, style of, 181–82 sculpture, use of light-colored stone, 126 Temple of Ishtarat, 180, 184 Temple of Ninhursag, 87, 106 Temple of Ninni-zaza, 180, 184 see also Ishqi-Mari; sculpture, Early Dynastic Matisse, Pierre, 65 Mayer-Opificius, Ruth, 132–33 Meijer, Diederik J. W., 155, 176 Meskell, Lynn, 6, 116, 125, 143, 144 Meskigala, 117 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 77, 107 Meyer, Carol, 126–27 Meyer, Eduard, 33, 52 Mitchell, Timothy, 7

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Index Mitchell, W. J. T., 108, 144 Moore, Henry, 64, 66, 69, 90 Moorey, P. R. S., 124, 125, 126, 127, 130, 138 Morelli, Giovanni, 72 Morgan, David, 178 Moser, Stephanie, 78, 80 Müller, F. Max, 19, 20 museum display, 11, 76–88, 89–90, 93, 97, 102, 108–9, 116 Museum of Modern Art, New York, 78 museum studies, 80, 109 Nanshe, goddess, 103, 131–32, 134 Nina (modern Surghul), 8, 131 Nineveh, 16 Ningirsu, god, 100, 117, 120, 132, 193 drinking vessel of, 98, 112, 173 mortar dedicated to, 98–99 Ninkagina, 105, 106 Nippur, 8, 119, 126, 127, 179, 190, 194 North Temple, 72, 95, 123 Temple of Enlil, 135, 191, 193, 195 see also Nippur, Inana Temple Nippur, Inana Temple, 14, 95, 98, 122, 127, 178–80, 189, 191, 193–94 inscribed objects, 180, 184, 186, 188–89, 205 sculpture, 12, 14, 71 sculpture and gender, 188, 195–201 sculpture, banqueter, 142, 188–89, 198, 201 sculpture, composite female figure, 127, 129 sculpture, deposition of, 87, 103, 141, 158, 180, 191–95 sculpture, evidence for assembly of, 137, 138 sculpture, female figure with blue beads, 142 sculpture, nu-banda3, 184, 186, 193 ~~ sculpture, sag ga of Enlil, 184, 193–94, 195–96, 200–1 sculpture, seated male and female, 199 sculpture, stylistic variations, 196–97 Ur III period, 98, 103, 106, 124, 125, 139 see also sculpture, Early Dynastic Nissen, Hans J., 147 Oates, Joan, 40 Oppenheim, A. Leo, 115 Oppert, Jules, 16 Oriental Institute, see University of Chicago ornament, 50, 56–61, 64, 70 Pallis, Svend Aage, 76 phrenology, 26–27 physiognomy, 20, 21, 26–27 Picasso, Pablo, 50, 63, 64, 65, 72 Pinches, Theophilus G., 31, 32–33, 34 Pinney, Christopher, 143, 178 Porada, Edith, 50, 71, 163 Postgate, J. N., 176, 197 Prichard, James Cowles, 28 Price, Sally, 72

276

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“primitive” art, 10, 50, 57, 61–71, 76 primitivism, 69 Puabi, 2, 76, 198 race, 8, 17, 23–24, 41, 42, 44, 49, 52, 53, 59, 60, 70 and sculpture, 10, 18–19, 21, 24–30 see also aesthetics, and race; Gudea, sculpture, nineteenth-century study of; Sumerians, skeletal remains of; Sumerians racial formation, 23–24 racial science, 23, 26–29, 35, 44 Rawlinson, Henry, 15 Retzius, Anders Adolf, 27 Riefenstahl, Leni, 29 Riegl, Alois, 57–58 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 50, 77 Rothschild, E. H., 64, 65–66 Sallaberger, Walther, 106 Sargon of Akkad, 106, 119, 195 Sarzec, Ernest de, 15, 31 Sasa, 120, 124, 126, 196 offerings to statues by, 105, 132–35 Savage, Kirk, 30 Schäfer, Heinrich, 62–63 Schiffer, Michael B., 106 sculpture, Early Dynastic abstraction in, 10–13, 47, 50, 74, 109–10, 136– 37, 143, 145, 147–48, 167, 180, 182, 206–7 abstract or geometric style, 47–48, 56, 58, 59–60, 72–74, 77, 129, 146–47, 180, 182 alan, 112–15 assembly, disassembly, and reassembly of, 11, 74–75, 137–43 before the Asmar hoard, 159–74 in courtyards, 11, 103, 105–7, 132, 145 decline of, 119–20 at entrances, 11, 85, 102–7, 145, 151, 172, 191, 192, 197, 207–8 gypsum, 11, 126–30, 139, 141, 165, 167, 177, 207 incorrectly restored, 137–38 and issues of access in the temple, 11, 116, 136, 158, 201, 207 and modern art, 50, 60–1, 64–69 modern nomenclature of, 117 mutilation or breaking of, 170–72, 193 naming of, 117 offerings to, 131–37 and the origins of art, 50, 56–61, 63, 71, 147 precious metals and stones, 11, 124, 125–30 realistic style, 47–48, 56, 59–61, 72–74, 77, 120, 146–47, 181 reuse of, 74–75, 139–41, 147, 193, 195 in small rooms, 11, 105–7, 145, 156–57 style, spontaneous stylization of, 174, 206 using later sources for the study of, 7–8, 113–14, 119

Index see also Ashur; Asmar sculpture hoard; dedicatory objects; diorite; figurines, clay; Khafajah; Mari; Nippur; “primitive” art; sculpture, “early Sumerian;” sculpture, Sumerian; Tell Agrab; Tell Asmar; Tell Chuera; temple, Early Dynastic sculpture, “early Sumerian,” 3, 9, 31, 52 sculpture, Sumerian early reception of aesthetics of, 19, 41, 45 see also Gudea, ruler of Lagash; sculpture, Early Dynastic; sculpture, “early Sumerian” Selz, Gebhard, 107, 134, 135, 187 Semper, Gottfried, 57 Seurat, Georges, 64 Shamash, god, 100, 196 Sippar, 196 Smiles, Sam, 78 solid-footed goblets, 152–58, 164–65, 167, 174, 176–77 see also Khafajah, Sin Temple V–VI, solid-footed goblets; Tell Asmar, Archaic Shrine III Shub-ad, see Puabi Smith, George, 16 Suen, god, 98 Sumer, 8–9, 41 availability of stone in, 126, 129–30 early excavation of, 15–19, 30, 39–41, 45, 206 sculpture from, 12, 133, 179, 182, 183, 187 see also diorite; “primitive” art; sculpture, Sumerian; Sumerian language; Sumerian problem; Sumerians; Sumerians, skeletal remains of; temple-state, Sumerian Sumerian language, 2, 8, 10, 15–17, 19–21, 36 Sumerian problem, 10, 17, 19–21, 34–35, 41, 47–48, 52–55, 60 definition of, 10, 17 Sumerians, 1, 6, 17, 36–41, 45, 52–55, 71, 76 and identification of physical traits on monuments, 10, 19, 21, 33–34, 44, 52 modern definition of, 8–9, 41 early reconstructions of, 1, 3, 6, 30, 41–44 skeletal remains of, 10, 19, 34–37 see also Kish, skeletal remains from; Sumerian problem; Ur, skeletal remains from surrealism, 65 Susa, 56–57, 166 archaic deposits, 166 statue of Eshpum, 119 Susa I and II painted ceramics, 56, 58–59 Sweeney, John James, 64 Sylvester, David, 66 Tell Abu Sheeja, 112, 119 Tell Agrab, 14, 47, 146 Shara Temple, 90, 160, 165, 166, 190 Shara Temple, sanctuary, 93, 95, 139, 140–1 Shara Temple, sculpture, figure holding solid-footed goblet, 152, 153, 189

Shara Temple, sculpture, belted hero with vessel, 162, 163 Shara Temple, sculpture, copper, 167, 168, 170, 173 Shara Temple, sculpture, male banqueter, 188 Shara Temple, temple and herd cylinder seals, 159, 177 see also sculpture, Early Dynastic Tell al–‘Ubaid, 15, 35, 36, 39, 40, 103 Tell Asmar, 3, 14, 47, 55, 126, 146, 163 Abu Temple, 146–51, 152–55, 157–59, 178, 193 Archaic Shrine, 146, 148–51, 152 Archaic Shrine III, 152–55, 157, 174 Archaic Shrine IVA–B, 151 Archaic Shrine IVC, 148 Square Temple, 93, 95, 139, 140, 146, 148–52, 157, 158 Single-Shrine Temple, 146, 148 Single-Shrine Temple reconstruction, 91–93, 109 predecessor to the Square Temple, 149–52 see also Asmar sculpture hoard; Lloyd, Seton, and the reconstruction of Single-Shrine Temple I; sculpture, Early Dynastic Tell Chuera, 119, 133 Tell Sabi Abyad, 139 Temple, Early Dynastic altar of, 88–89, 95–97 bent-axis plan of, 88, 93 entrances of, 103 issues of access to, 93–95, 105, 204 sanctuary of, 93 see also Ashur; Khafajah; Nippur; sculpture, Early Dynastic; Tell Agrab; Tell Asmar; temple-state, Sumerian temple-state, Sumerian, 121 Trigger, Bruce G., 45 Turanians, 16, 19, 20, 36 Tylor, Edward B., 32 Ubaid period, 16, 40–41, 46, 52, 55 Umm el-Marra, 139 Umma, 118, 123, 164, 165, 167, 186 Underwood, Leon, 69 Universal Exposition, Paris, 1889, 1, 41, 42 University of Chicago Iraq Expedition, 14, 30, 46, 50–55, 88, 90, 170 Oriental Institute, 13, 14, 30, 46, 50–56, 64, 77 Oriental Institute Museum, 84, 89, 90 Updike, John, 78 Ur (modern Tell al-Muqayyar), 39–40, 106, 184, 195, 197, 203, 205 Royal Cemetery, 1, 121, 187, 190, 198 Seal Impression Strata, 172, 176 sculpture from a grave at, 141, 142 skeletal remains from, 35, 36 see also Hamoudi, foreman of the Ur excavations; Puabi

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Ur III period, 9 Urnanshe, 97, 132, 133, 185 Uru’inimgina, 120, 132, 133, 134 Uruk period, 16, 41, 46, 55, 99, 118, 159–61, 163, 165, 172, 174–75, 191 Ussher, James, 37

Wilenski, R. H., 66, 69 Winckelmann, Johann, 21–23, 24–26, 51, 70–71, 175 Winter, Irene J., 100–2, 103, 110, 111, 127, 131, 143, 144, 145, 195 Woolley, Katharine, 43 Woolley, Leonard, 39, 68–69, 71, 72, 176, 198

Van de Mieroop, Marc, 129 Verworn, Max, 63

Zervos, Christian, 65 Zettler, Richard L., 14, 103, 106, 125

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