Envisioning the Past Through Memories: How Memory Shaped Ancient Near Eastern Societies 9781474223966, 9781474223997, 9781474223980

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Envisioning the Past Through Memories

Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity Series Editor: Martin Bommas, University of Birmingham Advisory Board: Geoffrey Cubitt, University of York Franco D’Agostino, University of Rome La Sapienza Christopher Smith, British School at Rome Christopher Wickham, University of Oxford Other titles in this series: Cultural Memory and Identity in Ancient Societies, edited by Martin Bommas Memory and Urban Religion in the Ancient World, edited by Martin Bommas, Juliette Harrisson and Phoebe Roy

Envisioning the Past Through Memories How Memory Shaped Ancient Near Eastern Societies Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity: Volume 3 Edited by Davide Nadali

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 Paperback edition first published 2018 © Davide Nadali and Contributors, 2016 Davide Nadali and Contributors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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978-1-47422-396-6 978-1-35006-059-3 978-1-47422-398-0 978-1-47422-397-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Names: Nadali, Davide, editor. Title: Envisioning the past through memories : how memory shaped ancient Near Eastern societies / edited by Davide Nadali. Other titles: Cultural memory and history in antiquity. Description: London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. | Series: Cultural memory and history in antiquity ; volume iii | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016018028 (print) | LCCN 2016021025 (ebook) | ISBN 9781474223966 (hardback) | ISBN 9781474223980 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781474223973 (ePub) | ISBN 9781474223980 (epdf) | ISBN 9781474223973 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Collective memory--Middle East--History. | Middle East--Civilization--To 622. Classification: LCC DS57 .E58 2016 (print) | LCC DS57 (ebook) | DDC 939.4--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018028 Series: Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity, volume 3 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Contents Series Preface Acknowledgements List of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction  Davide Nadali 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

vi viii ix x 1

Preserving the Memory of the Mythical Origins: The King’s Role Between Tradition and Innovation  Paolo Matthiae

7

The Emergence of Writing and the Construction of Cultural Memory in Egypt  Federico Contardi

21

Community and Individuals: How Memory Affects Public and Private Life in the Ancient Near East  Davide Nadali

37

Embodying the Memory of the Royal Ancestors in Western Syria during the Third and Second Millennia BC: The Case of Ebla and Qatna  Nicola Laneri

53

The Historical Memory of the Late Bronze Age in the Neo-Assyrian Palace Reliefs  Mehmet-Ali Ataç

69

Prioritized Presence: Rulers’ Images in the Neo-Assyrian Palace as Devices of Elite Ideological Memory  Amy Rebecca Gansell

85

The Many Falls of Babylon and the Shape of Forgetting  Seth Richardson

101

War Remembrance Narrative: Negotiation of Memory and Oblivion in Mesopotamian Art  Silvana Di Paolo

143

From Ancient Egypt to the Mississippi Delta: A Comparative Approach to Cultural Memory and Forgetting  Martin Bommas

163

Index

183

Series Preface Culture as a set of shared attitudes, values and practices that characterizes a group or society – modern as well as ancient – is to a large extent based on the construction and transmission of memories. Differing from collective and individual approaches to the past, cultural memory describes a process that emerges from distant and collateral events and only appears in standardized forms once a group or society has agreed upon them. Memory is a phenomenon that – by definition – is directly related to the present. When dealing with ancient societies, cultural memory as a tool can be used to disclose and identify this contemporary presence of the past within ancient societies. When investigating cultural memory of past societies, key questions are how and what ancient societies remembered about events that shaped the formation of their identity, and how they built on agreed memories to create a collective present. The term ‘cultural memory’ was first introduced in 1992 by the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann in his book Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (translated in English as Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance and Political Imagination), in which he further developed the theory of collective memory, first established in 1950 by the French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in La mémoire collective (translated in English as On Collective Memory). Although Assmann’s approach was soon adopted by linguists, sociologists and anthropologists, ancient historians and classicists only slowly incorporated this term into the vocabulary of their disciplines. Today, Historical Studies and contiguous disciplines are increasingly reconsidering the question of history versus memory, rethinking history’s border zone. The use of competing terms such as ‘collective memory’, ‘social memory’ and ‘cultural memory’ – all discussing the ways in which individuals remember the past and at the same time define their social experience and involvement – has led to confusion about how social connections work and where priorities lie when human beings construct their relationship with the

Series Preface

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past. As historians, we are unable to access the mental process of culturally defined memory of the past but only how memory is embodied in texts and objects. This new series is designed to investigate the role of physical remains or rather material memories such as written and archaeological sources that were regarded to have had symbolic significance by ancient societies. By identifying the ways in which the collective past was remembered by ancient societies as cultural memory encoded in archaeological and written data, this series will address and respond to the challenges that come with this term when used uncritically. Social memory, if pushed too far, inevitably represents a theoretical and idealizing picture of the past in the past, if the influences of conflict and the use and abuse of power of groups over others are not taken into account. Diverse recollections of the past can deconstruct cultural memory and hamper its integration into a collective past. In order to allow cultural memory to construct a collective past, groups of power can encourage and promote remembering, marginalize individual memories, initiate reinterpretation or even actively instruct forgetting. The series Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity aims to reveal the mechanics of social connections in order to understand better the sources of collective pasts and to identify their continuative drifts rather than the connections established between generations. The motor of cultural memory is actively practised memory based on an agreed set of data, rather than tradition. In tracing shifts of meaning within ancient society, both cultural memory and cultural forgetting offer purposeful tools to identify the courses of history through both elite and non-­elite perspectives. Martin Bommas, Series Editor

Acknowledgements The papers collected here were presented at the international congress ‘Value and Power of Memory in Ancient Societies’, held in Rome at the Sapienza University (25th–26th November 2013). The conference was possible thanks to the financial support of the Sapienza University with the ‘Congressi e Convegni’ annual grant. I wish to thank all participants for their contributions and the stimulating debates; special thanks are for Martin Bommas (University of Birmingham) and Bloomsbury Publishing for publishing the proceedings in the series Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity.

Illustrations 2.1: Bone label from Abydos tomb U-j (Dreyer 1998: 125, Fig. 103). 2.2: Left: Year label of Den, Abydos (Petrie 1900: pl. XV.16); Right: Palermo Stone (fourth register) (Wilkinson 2000: Fig. 1). 4.1: The hypothetical journey for the coronation of the royal couple within the ancient city of Ebla (after Ristvet 2011: Fig. 5). 4.2: Reconstruction of the Royal Hypogeum of Qatna (after Pfälzner 2007: Fig. 31). 5.1: Drawing of the relief depicting the Sea Peoples Battle of Ramesses III at the so-­called Nile mouths, Medinet Habu. Epigraphic Survey, Medinet Habu 1, pl. 37. 5.2: Orthostat relief depicting an Assyrian attack against a foreign city, Panel B 3a, Room B (throne room), Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud (Kalhu). Photo: author. 6.1: Relief orthostat depicting Ashurnasirpal II holding a bow and preparing to pour a libation over a slain lion. North-West Palace, Nimrud, ca. 865–860 BC. Gypsum, h. 86.8 cm, l. 225.5 cm. © The Trustees of the British Museum (BM 124535). 6.2: Relief orthostat depicting, in bottom register, Ashurbanipal holding a bow while pouring a libation over four slain lions. North Palace, Nineveh, ca. 645–640 BC. Alabaster, interior h. of register 44.4 cm, l. 95 cm. © The Trustees of the British Museum (BM 124887).

24 25 57 60

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Contributors Mehmet-Ali Ataç studied Architecture, Art History and Archaeology, earning his PhD from Harvard University in 2003. He is the author of The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art (Cambridge, 2010), Art and Immortality in the Ancient Near East (Cambridge, forthcoming) and several essays on the art and thought of ancient Mesopotamia. He is Associate Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. Martin Bommas is Reader in Egyptology at the University of Birmingham. He studied Egyptology, Classical Archaeology and Near Eastern Archaeology at the Universities of Heidelberg (Germany) and Leiden (the Netherlands). He became field director at the excavations on Elephantine Island when he was 23, and Research Fellow in a philological research project on Mortuary Liturgies with Jan Assmann four years later. After his PhD he became Assistant Professor at the University of Basel (Switzerland) before he arrived at Birmingham in 2006. He had visiting appointments at the Universities of Heidelberg, Basel, Rome, Venice and Sheffield. Among more recent publications are Das Alte Ägypten, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Darmstadt, 2011) and Cultural Memory and Identity in Ancient Societies, CMHA 1 (London, 2011) as editor. Federico Contardi (PhD in Egyptology, Sapienza University of Rome and Free University of Berlin) participated as a research associate to international projects at the University of Heidelberg and for the Italian Research Council (CNR). He taught Egyptology in Italy (Rome, Udine) and Germany (Berlin, Tutorium). He is a team member (epigraphist) for the archaeological mission of the University of Rome at Thebes-West (TT 27) and at the temple of Hathor at Philae. Currently he is a research associate for the VÉGA (Vocabulaire de l’Égyptien Ancien) project at the University PaulValéry, Montpellier.

Contributors

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Silvana Di Paolo is a researcher at the Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico (CNR-Italy). Her research interests cover the archaeology and art history of Mesopotamia and Syria on the one hand, and of ancient Cyprus on the other hand (2nd–1st millennia BC). Her work focuses on crafts in the artisanal and visual culture shared among the Ancient Near Eastern polities. She has written extensively on the relationship between art and power, location and styles of workshops, and social meaning of works of art. She is currently finalizing the multi-­author Implementing Meanings: the Power of the Copy Between Past, Present and Future for publication in the series Altertumskunde des Vorderen Orients, and working on new projects titled Transmission of Knowledge and Culture in Antiquity: The Concept of Translation in Arts and Crafts and The ‘Art’ of Making: The Artisanal Production in the Ancient Near East and Cyprus. Amy Rebecca Gansell received her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University in 2008, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University’s Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. Gansell is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Art and Design department at St. John’s University in New York City, where she teaches courses on cultural heritage and ancient and non-Western art. She has published articles in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal and Journal of Archaeology Science, and is currently working on a book about the visual and material presence of Neo-Assyrian queens. Nicola Laneri teaches Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Catania. Since 2003, he has been the director of the Hirbemerdon Tepe Archaeological Project. In 2000, he was nominated Fulbright Research Scholar at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Columbia. Since 2001, he has been a member of the ISMEO/ IsIAO. In 2003–2004, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Middle East Technical University of Ankara (Turkey). In 2005, he acted as a Research Fellow in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. He has published more than eighty scientific articles in journals and books such as The Hirbemerdon Tepe Archaeological Project 2003–2013 Final Report: Chronology and Material Culture (Bologna, 2015), Archeologia della morte (Rome, 2011),

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Biografia di un vaso (Salerno, 2009), I costumi funerari della media vallata dell’Eufrate durante il III millennio a.C. (Naples, 2004), and the edited volumes Performing Death: The Social Analysis of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (Chicago, 2007), Looking north: The socioeconomic dynamics of northern Mesopotamian and Anatolian regions during the late third and early second millennium BC (Wiesbaden, 2012) and Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East (Oxford, 2015). Paolo Matthiae is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East in Sapienza University of Rome, and Fellow of the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris), Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna), Royal Swedish Academy (Stockholm) and Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (Berlin). He has received the Ad Honorem Doctorate from the Universities of Madrid and Copenhagen. In 1996 he was nominated Knight of the Great Cross of the Italian Republic, the highest Italian honour. Since 1964, he has been the director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Ebla (Syria). Since 1998, he has been the Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Among his many publications (eighteen books and more than 230 articles in scientific journals) are Ebla. An Empire Rediscovered (London, 1978), Il sovrano e l’opera. Arte e potere nella Mesopotamia antica (1994), L’arte degli Assiri (Rome/Bari, 1996), La storia dell’arte dell’Oriente antico, 3 vols (Milan, 1996–2000), Prima lezione di archeologia orientale (Rome/Bari, 2008), Gli Archivi Reali di Ebla (Milan, 2010), Ebla, la città del trono. Archeologia e storia (Turin, 2010) and Distruzioni, saccheggi e rinascite. Gli attacchi al patrimonio artistico dall’antichità all’Isis (Milan, 2015). Davide Nadali has been teaching Near Eastern Archaeology at the Sapienza University of Rome since 2012. He received his PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Sapienza University of Rome (2006) and was postdoctoral fellow at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Florence, from 2008 to 2010. Since 1998 he has been a member of the Italian Archaeological Expedition at Ebla (Syria), while since 2014 he has been co-­director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Tell Surghul/Nigîn (Iraq).

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xiii

He is the Principal Investigator of the research project ‘Time Through Colours: Analysis of painted artifacts in their archaeological, historical and sociological contexts’, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. He has published several articles on Mesopotamian and Syrian archaeology and art history, and one book on Assyrian reliefs (Percezione dello spazio e scansione del tempo. Studio della composizione narrativa del rilievo assiro di VII secolo a.C., CMAO 12 (Rome, 2006). He is co-­editor (together with Andrea Polcaro) of the handbook Archeologia della Mesopotamia antica (Rome, 2015) and (together with Maria Gabriella Micale) of the volume How Do We Want the Past to Be? On Methods and Instruments of Visualizing Ancient Reality (Regenerating Practices in Archaeology and Heritage 1) (Piscataway, 2015). Seth Richardson is an Assyriologist and historian who works on the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000–1600 BC), state collapse, early state sovereignty, cuneiform documents, and cultural issues of divination, divine icons and ancestor cult. He is the author of more than two dozen scholarly articles and the editor of two historical works, Rebellions and Peripheries in the Cuneiform World (Winona Lake, 2010) and Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem (Leiden/ Boston, 2014). He earned his PhD at Columbia University in 2002, was Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago from 2003 to 2012, and is currently the Managing Editor of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, also at the University of Chicago.

Introduction Davide Nadali

Memory is an essential factor in the everyday lives of social groups and individuals: indeed, as human beings, we use practical memory in all actions, from the simplest to the most complex sets of activities and combinations of behaviours. When speaking of memory in general, we think of the automatic processes of reasoning, explaining and narration: how does memory work in storytelling? And, as a necessary prerogative, how does memory work in the learning of a known story and an uninterrupted tradition? Is memory such an automatic mechanism? Indeed, memory is a constructed system of references, in equilibrium, of feeling and rationality. When looking at the English expression, to memorize is ‘to learn by heart’; we can thus perceive this special link between heart and mind; they are not to be separated and looked at independently (thus replicating what Antonio Damasio labelled ‘Descartes’ Error’), but rather as the necessary counterparts in a dialogue that discloses the process of creating and using memory to build shared memories and traditions.1 In this respect, the definition of ‘cultural memory’ points exactly to the cultural value of memory in explaining the present as a derivation from the past, and is therefore a necessary fundamental stone for the future of a society. Memory affects all cultural activities and production, and interdisciplinary analyses should endeavour to detect how memory is involved in every aspect of human culture, how it is differently employed and, finally, how different uses of memory affect the historical, religious and political meaning of a story or monument.2 Within the definition of ‘culture of memory’ we therefore encompass the culture(s) memory produces and fosters: in fact, memory is not only a passive repository of information (a place, an object or a thing that collects other places, objects and things) but it also works as an active and

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agentive element within the society, in a constant interplay between the past (what happened) and the present (what is happening). Because the multiple natures of memory involve every human activity, physical and intellectual, this volume intends to promote analyses and considerations about memory by focusing on various cultural activities and productions of Ancient Near Eastern societies, from artistic and visual documents, to epigraphic evidence and archaeological data (via excavations and surveys of the archaeological landscape). Far from being merely hypothetical and abstract, the perception, function and representation of memory have a practical and concrete resonance in the culture and actions of ancient societies. Firstly, all human actions and activities happen in time, as we live in time and are consequently affected by time. Although the nature of time is external and immaterial, memory can thus work to embody the flow of time as a peculiar human condition in all activities and thoughts. For example, particular actions, or more specifically rites, must occur in prescribed times, and their accomplishments acquire value and significance only if associated with that prescribed ‘ritual’ time, according to coded (mnemonic and automatic) activities that must be precisely repeated: this repetition is based on memory, the memory of actions and gestures, as well as the memory of the rite itself and its finalities. Memory is both the subject and object of human action: it is both the cause and the effect of human thought. At the same time, memory is at the origin of a visual and literary product (images and words work in fostering memories). Which memory comes first? How do the natures of memory interact? Did the traditional narrated memory stimulate the need to fix and materialize the past through the codification in images and words? Memory seems in some way more linked to the past, but it often becomes a condition for the future: indeed, even today, we claim the importance and necessity of preserving and telling memory for future generations. NeoBabylonian kings promoted ‘archaeological’ excavations of the ancient buildings of the city of Babylon: ancient documents show the memory of the building itself, the memory of the city and, in a wider context, the memory of the last dynasty ruling Babylon. This anchor to the past guarantees the present and is a distinctive marker for the future: memory is a both a social and cultural indicator, an inner natural peculiarity of human beings who remember what they were, reflect on what they are and plan how they will be.3

Introduction

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In particular, following the definitions of ‘linguistic turn’ and ‘pictorial turn’,4 one could in fact speak of a ‘mnemonic turn’ for what concerns both the construction and even the destruction of the memory within a society; consequently, it is important to analyse not only what memories tell, but also how ancient societies remembered and commemorated their past and how memory was thus visually and verbally represented. Memory, as a social and cultural construct and product, can be performed: indeed, it needs to be performed. How was memory performed in past societies? How was the past remembered? And how was cultural memory used as a fundamental substratum for the future of a society? Memory is a mental concept exteriorized by means of images and words that function as social and public display; at the same time, those external features recall an inner memory, or an embodied memory, helping the process of embodiment and enactment. The external representation of memory can thus remind the inner personal memory and contribute to the perception of belonging to a common (shared) cultural memory; once memory is disembodied (externally represented and performed), it refers to the common mnemonic heritage of a society (inside the body and mind of each individual). Through a comparative study that also takes into consideration modern attitudes and performances of memory, one might investigate the emotional impact of the representation and performance of memory on ancient societies and, as a consequence, the value of memory in the living present and in the construction of the future. The relationship between memory and history is a preferred topic in ancient studies: indeed, after the seminal work by Jan Assmann,5 many studies followed, applying and debating the definition of ‘cultural memory’. In fact, memory has been analysed according to several different perspectives: it sometimes seems that it has been analysed more according to our own perspectives rather than through the perspective of the ancient people, shifting from a memory marked (by the culture that produced it) to ascribed (by the analysts). For this reason, memory has been inflected in different ways – cultural, social, political, historical, mythical, collective and individual – and, probably, many other acceptations exist and will be suitably created by future researchers. However, it often follows that these definitions, each one describing and pointing to a specific value of memory according to its use and exploitation in the ancient societies by the ancient people, are sometimes used as synonyms in current

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literature; but it must be carefully pointed out that they describe specificities of the memory within the ancient societies. As a direct consequence, to whom do the evidences of memory of the past we study belong? We rely upon the memories that survived and have been handed down and which we therefore consider official and primary; at the same time, we must not forget the silent evidence of memories that have disappeared in the past (that have been purposely cancelled), or that simply have not yet been recovered. However, silent memories do not automatically imply the absence of memory: their silence might only be temporary, and new research could fill the gap. Conversely, the void of memory could be the result of systematic and voluntary choices made in the past: it is not necessarily due to the interventions of others and enemies, but the same society could have deliberately chosen to omit a memory when presenting a new course and perspective for the future. It is also evident that the majority of memories belong to the ruling class of an ancient society, the part of the society that was able to hand down (or even impose) a memory by having access to the tools to do it (writing, monumentality of works, architecture, power of intervention into the landscape). In this respect, the memory of one single person (the king) or of a restricted group of people becomes the official memory, or at least the one we consider as official; therefore definitions such as ‘collective memory’ must take into account the idea of community. Is it really a community? Does memory belong to the entire community? How was memory concretely perceived and shared in the past by the different social levels of the population? Relating to the ruling class, specifically to kings and pharaohs, memory is often confused with ideology and propaganda, as the references to memories are used as a coercive power that is imposed onto others (to the detriment of the others’ memories). As ideology (political and religious) doubtless influences the creation and handing down of a memory, this does not necessarily imply a propagandistic use or purpose: the two plans must be kept separate, as propagandistic implications are often the result of analysts’ (mis)interpretations, rather than the intentions of the past culture. Memory is a delicate matter: analyses can run the risk of oversimplifying the nature and use of memory, on the one hand, or of modifying the data to create models and labels, on the other; as historians, archaeologists and

Introduction

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philologists, we must treat memory carefully. Indeed, we operate as doctors of the memory and attention must be paid to the way in which we collect and recover mnemonic data, study and interpret mnemonic signs, and preserve memories. Conservation is a very special and fragile matter. As Liverani says: ‘Agli archivi di tavolette ancora leggibili subentrano gli “archivi” di bullae che avevano sigillato rotoli di papiro ormai disfatti. E l’attuale rivoluzione informatica va a tutto vantaggio dell’effimero, ma i dischetti di vent’anni fa già non li leggiamo più.’6 This is also valid for other types of mnemonic documents, works of art and architecture: we rely upon new systems of archiving and preserving memories, but these new systems of conservation do not always allow access to all of the available ancient documents. Replica and new forms of transmission of knowledge attempt to keep ancient memories alive, but we often face the deliberate destruction of ancient monuments (monumentum from the Latin verb monere ‘to remind’). We run the risk that these destructions affect the memories of the past, and even our replicas, though precise and accurate, cannot precisely substitute the original.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

Damasio 1994; 2010. Assmann 1992. Winter 2000. Mitchell 1994; 2005. Assmann 1992. Liverani 2010: 53. Translation: ‘The still readable archives of tablets are substituted by the “archives” of bullae that had once sealed scrolls of papyrus that were so badly decayed. The current revolution of informatics is all in favour of the ephemeral: in fact, we no longer read the floppy disk of twenty years ago.’

Bibliography Assmann, J., 1992. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in fruhen Hochkulturen, München (English transl. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination, Cambridge 2011).

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Damasio, A., 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, New York. Damasio, A., 2010. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, New York. Liverani, M., 2010. ‘Parole di bronzo, di pietra, d’argilla’ in: Scienze dell’Antichità 16, 27–62. Mitchell, W.J.T., 1994. Picture Theory, Chicago. Mitchell, W.J.T., 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago. Winter, I.J., 2000. ‘Babylonian Archaeologists of The(ir) Mesopotamian Past’, in: P. Matthiae et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Rome, 1785–1798.

1

Preserving the Memory of the Mythical Origins: The King’s Role Between Tradition and Innovation Paolo Matthiae

Over fifty years ago, André Leroi-Gourhan, when speaking about memory in the civilizations of the Ancient Near East, stated: ‘The threefold problem of time, space, and man is the matter of memorization. The king is the protagonist of a memorization programme, where he is the pivot.’1 This statement dates from 1964, yet the two concepts that the triad of time, space and man is the matter of memorization, and that a true programme of memorization pivoting on the king is present in the great civilizations of the pre-Hellenistic Mediterranean, are still fully actual. In the Sumerian world, quite likely since the mid-3rd millennium BC, kingship was the institution whose primary role was to guarantee the preservation of the order created by gods in mythical times. According to the Sumerian mind, the creation of the world order had both a time – the primordial time of creation, and a place – the temple. And the creation in time of the myth of the temple, a god’s residence on earth, and image of his residence in heaven, was, at the same time, the creation of man. So, in the Mesopotamian world, the king, in order to be the protagonist in historical time of the preservation of the world order, created in the mythical times, is the author of a complex programme of memorization, whose primary objects are precisely time, space and man.2 An important Sumerian hymn, celebrating the god Enlil, the gods’ father, was included in the canon of the ten famous literary compositions that, at least by the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, formed the base of scribal

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formation at Nippur; it commemorated the creation of his temple Ekur, and of his town Nippur with the following words: Enlil, when you marked out the holy settlement, you also built Nippur, your own city, your Kiur, the mountain, your pure place. You founded it in the Duranki, in the middle of the four quarters of the earth. Its soil is the life of the land, and the life of all the foreign countries. Its brickwork is red gold, its foundation is lapis lazuli. You made it glisten on high in Sumer as if it were the horns of a wild bull. It makes all the foreign countries tremble with fear. At its great festivals, the people pass their time in abundance.3

As stated at the beginning of the hymn: ‘Enlil is the mighty lord, the greatest in heaven and earth, the knowledgeable judge, the wise one of wide-­ranging wisdom, whose commands are by far the loftiest, the words are holy, the utterances are immutable’ (ll. 10–12 and 1–2) and, further on, ‘he is the faithful shepherd of the teeming multitude, herdsman, leader of all living creatures and has manifested his rank of great prince, adorning himself with the holy crown, and as the Wind of the Mountain occupied the dais, spanned the sky as the rainbow, like a floating cloud he moved alone’.4 Enki’s powers are the greatest among all the gods, because ‘he alone is the prince of heaven and the dragon of the earth, the lofty god of the Anunna who determines the fates, and no god can look upon him’ (ll. 100–103). Based on this idea, they composed the hymn’s final invocation, ‘You, Enlil, are lord, god, king! You are a judge who makes decisions about heaven and earth. Your lofty word is as heavy as heaven, and there is no one who can lift it.’5 Enlil not only is the creator of the temple Ekur and of the town of Nippur, and the supreme judge, who fixes the fortunes in heaven and on earth, but he is also the creator god of everything living on earth, and all humankind’s institutions depend indistinctly upon him: Without the Great Mountain Enlil no city would be built, no settlement would be founded; no cattle-­pen would be built, no sheepfold would be established; no king would be elevated, no lord would be given birth; no high priest or priestess would perform extispicy; the soldiers would have no generals; no carp-­filled waters would be the rivers at their peak . . . the sea would not produce all its heavy treasure, no freshwater fish would lay eggs in the reed-­beds, no bird of the sky would built nests in the spacious land; in

Preserving the Memory of the Mythical Origins

9

the sky the thick clouds would not fill the arable lands, vegetation would not grow lushly on the plain; in the gardens the spreading trees of the mountain would not yield fruits.6

This Sumerian vision of the contextual creation of the city, temple and man was kept in the Babylonian world, and received a final consecration in the ‘Epic of Creation’ (Enūma eliš), usually ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar I’s time, and usually considered a product of the Babylonian nationalistic revival of his time.7 In Tablet Five, after the triumph of the great god of Babylon over Tiamat, expression of chaos, these words are placed in Marduk’s mouth (V: 119–130): Above the Apsu, the emerald (?) abode. Opposite Esharra, which I built for you, Beneath the celestial parts, whose floor I made firm. I will build a house to be my luxurious abode. Within it I will establish its shrine, I will found my chamber and establish my kingship. When you come up from the Apsu to make a decision, This will be your resting place before the assembly. When you descend from heaven to make a decision, This will be your resting place before the assembly. I shall call its name ‘Babylon’, ‘The Homes of the Great Gods’, Within it we will hold a festival, that will be the evening festival.8

Further on, in Tablet Six, Marduk, after presenting to the great god Ea his project to create humankind, in fact creates humans from the divine being, Qingu, who had induced Tiamat to rebel to the gods, after the gods had delivered him to Marduk, according to a formula stating that Ea is, traditionally, the creator through Marduk’s hand (VI: 30–37): They bound him, holding him before Ea, They inflicted the penalty on him and severed his blood-­vessels, From his blood he (Ea) created mankind, On whom he imposed the service of the gods, and set the gods free. After the wise Ea had created mankind, And had imposed the service of the gods upon them – That task is beyond comprehension For Nudimmud performed the creation with the skills of Marduk.9

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After Marduk attributed all the fates to the three hundred gods in heaven, and to the three hundred gods in the netherworld, the gods built with their own hands the temple Esagila (VI: 59–68): The Anunnaki wielded the pick. For one year they made the needed bricks. When the second year arrived, They raised the peak of Esagil, a replica of the Apsu, They built the lofty temple tower of the Apsu And for Anu, Enlil, Ea and him they established it as a dwelling. He sat in splendour before them, Surveying its horns, which were level with the base of Esharra. After they had completed the work on Esagil All the Anunnaki constructed their own shrines.10

In the ideology of the Sumerian world, kingship is an institution created by the gods, like the town and temple. The very peculiar text known as the ‘Sumerian King List’, whose oldest redaction probably dates from the Ur III Dynasty, and which was updated during the following Isin Dynasty period, is usually employed in order to reconstruct some aspect, at least, of the dynastic succession in Babylonia during the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC. Yet it really is a very meaningful historiographical work.11 Here, kingship is presented as a creation, and a gift by the gods, as can clearly be seen in the famous formula used for the dynastic changes: ‘When kingship was lowered from heaven’. This conception of kingship as the main institution of the world order, and as unreplaceable support of the preservation of what the gods had established in the mythical time of creation, is confirmed in the myth called ‘Inanna and Enki’, where the list of me appears: these are the true foundations of Sumerian civilization.12 In this myth, in the list of ninety-­four me, which Enki solemnly bestows to Inanna, appealing to the sukkal Isimud as witness, immediately after the two main religious institutions (the en-ship and the lugal-ship), godship is mentioned; this has to be interpreted as divine kingship, because at the fourth and fifth places there are the ‘noble, enduring crown’ and the ‘throne of kingship’ respectively, namely two me referring to the insignia of kingship.13 In the Sumerian world, the king’s basic duties may be summarized as three tasks.14 The first one is the physical preservation of temples, made by gods in

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11

the time of creation, and the perpetuation of temple rituals, which ensured, so to say, the durable existence of the temple as living organism. In fact, the temple, as several inscriptions by Chaldaean kings in the Late Babylonian period most clearly show, had to be refurbished, or rebuilt, even in the conception of that late period, keeping their original structure;15 of course, for this reason, Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus tenaciously, and even rivalling each other, looked for the foundations of the ancient temples they refurbished in the whole of Babylonia. On the other hand, the guarantee of the rituals’ preservation, ensuring a certain and regular offerings regime, which could be effective only by means of royal measures, ensured, in the literal sense, the temples’ survival. In fact, temples – as shown clearly in several Sumerian hymns, and particularly in the collection of hymns to the temples of Sumer and Akkad, which the tradition ascribed to Enkheduanna, Sargon of Akkad’s daughter – were considered living beings, bearing the same characteristics as the gods who had built them.16 The songs of divine rituals, in the Sumerian Hymns, were literally called the temples’ voices, showing how deeply rooted was the vision of the temples as being imbued with life, and which could never be silent. The second duty was the correct administration of justice, in the practice of the formulation of judgements, as well as in the definition of rules on a juridical basis. Also, in accomplishing this second basic function, obviously in the ancient conception, the basic idea is that the king, administering justice, guarantees that the economic and social order fixed by the gods in the mythical time is preserved. In addition, in this instance, the connection with the time of origins and with the divine world is clearly maintained, in the Old Babylonian period, in the Epilogue of the Stela with Hammurabi of Babylon’s Code: the text states that Hammurabi is a great king, because he made the order established by Marduk, god of Babylon, triumph (ll. R XXIV 60–79, XXV 7–39):17 In order that the strong does not oppress the weak, that justice be made for the orphan and the widow, the law of the Land be promulgated at Babylon, the town in which Anu and Enlil raised the head in Esagila, the temple whose foundations are finally consolidated as those of heaven and earth, in order to deliver the sentences of the Land, to make justice for the persecuted, for this I wrote my precious words on my stele, and I erected it in front of my statue as ‘King of Law’ . . . Let the persecuted involved in a judicial affair

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come in front of my statue as ‘King of Law’, and let my written stele be read, so that he may listen to my precious orders. Let my stele make his affair clear, let he takes his case into account, let his heart recover! Really Hammurabi is a lord, who is like a father for the people. He has Marduk, his lord’s word at heart. He made Marduk triumph from north to south, and he made Marduk’s heart rejoice: so, he guaranteed his people’s happiness forever, and made justice reign over the Land!18

The third of the king’s main duties is the preservation of divine order, in nature and culture, namely keeping a favourable environmental situation, like that of the mythical time, and protection from the interferences and invasions of the enemies of the land of Sumer, which the gods had privileged as a blessed land since the time of origins. In the poem ‘Enki and the World Order’, Enki, the creator god of Eridu, decrees the fates of Sumer (ll. 192–209):19 Sumer, Great Mountain, land of heaven and earth, trailing glory, bestowing power on the people from sunrise to sunset: your powers are superior powers, untouchable, and your heart is complex and inscrutable. Like heaven itself, your good creative force, in which gods too can be born, is beyond reach. Giving birth to kings who put on the good diadem, giving birth to lords who wear the crown on their heads – your lord, the honoured lord, sits with An the king on An’s dais. Your king, the Great Mountain, father Enlil, the father of all the lands, has blocked you impenetrably, like a cedar tree. The Anuna, the great gods, have taken up dwellings in your midst, and consume their food in your giguna shrines with their single trees. Household Sumer, may your sheepfolds be built and your cattle multiply, may your giguna shrines touch the sky. May your good temples reach up to heaven. May the Anuna determine the destinies in your midst.20

In the following verses, the fates of the lands of Melukhkha, Dilmun and Mardu are defined, and they are complementary with those of Sumer, which thus appears as the centre of the world, in the same logic of creation. This fate of Sumer, in the oldest times, and of Babylonia and Assyria later on, had been established in the time of origin by the gods, and must be preserved by the king – regarding the environment, mainly taking care of the canal network; and concerning politics, mainly destroying its foes. In Mesopotamian ideology, along the whole course of history, the king had three main tasks, in order to keep the memory of mythical times:

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1. to refurbish temples and ensure the offerings regime 2. to administer justice, with decrees and collections of laws 3. to guarantee the fertility of the natural environment and protect against the menace of enemies, taking care of canals and killing foes. Yet, in order to accomplish these duties, the king had to plan his deeds, making himself sure that they really were desired by the gods.21 He had to ask himself in what measure the gods wished these deeds to be accomplished, and he had to evaluate their results, reporting to the gods about their real accomplishment. How did this difficult communication between the king, protagonist of the deeds, and the gods, who had commanded those deeds, really take place? This communication was entrusted by the king to the statues and votive stelae, dedicated into the temples, in order to ‘speak with the gods’, as they literally stated – because they believed that the kings’ statues and stelae could report to the gods about projects, accomplishments and the results of the king’s deeds – such as the refurbishing of temples, the issuing of decrees, the excavation of canals and the outcomes of wars.22 This was a true communication system, which, moreover, filled the sanctuaries of Mesopotamia with a large number of statues and stelae, making the temples into a kind of memory-­display. In fact, statues and stelae ‘talked’ to the gods, and the gods answered, following an easily understandable convention of expression. Gods could positively accept the kings’ communication, accepting with gratitude what the statues and stelae reported; or they could answer negatively to it, refusing what was announced to them. If the answer was positive, granting what the statues and stelae explicitly asked for, the gods granted a long life to the kings and their descendants; if the answer was negative, the gods decreed a fate of death for them.23 What is most interesting is that this communication had two active protagonists, namely the king and the god, who, in the ancient people’s interpretation, talked to each other and acted accordingly. There was also a third, passive protagonist: the subjects, who neither talked nor acted, but witnessed the dialogue of the two active protagonists, and, though not taking part in it, could understand, from the gods’ positive or negative answer, its correctness, or the mistakes made by their sovereigns.24

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In the historical development of Mesopotamian civilization, through the preservation of the memory of time (the time of origins) and space (the temple), during the whole Bronze Age, possibly until the years around 1200 BC, the institution of kingship preserved social control, presenting itself as the intermediary between the human and divine worlds, from the human side; on the other hand, the temple was the intermediary institution between the two worlds on the divine side. This happened even though kingship suffered setbacks and defeats, which were always interpreted as consequences of faults, sometimes even serious faults, in the communication with the divine world, of which the king was charged.25 This situation remained unchanged, and kingship remained the institution charged with keeping tradition alive, until the beginning of the Iron Age, albeit with some important changes, which we cannot take into account here. For example, in the Late Bronze Age (in both northern and southern Mesopotamia), a new religious awareness led to the development of what is usually called ‘personal religion’.26 These changes should be analysed in detail, and are certainly still obscure in their multifaceted aspects; the Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian kingship took a leading role in this innovation. It is likely that, by the end of the 12th century BC, the first innovator was the great Tiglath-­pileser I: in fact, one inscription of his might be read as evidence that he was the first to decorate his palace at Nineveh with the celebration of his military accomplishments,27 by means of a series of painted and glazed clay wall slabs.28 The inspiration for a continuous narrative, spreading over long walls, representing the kings’ wars, might have reached the palace workshops of Assur and Nineveh from knowledge of the impressive celebrations of Sethos I’s, Ramesses II’s and Ramesses III’s deeds on the outer walls of Theban temples;29 this hypothesis is much more probable than what is usually believed.30 Yet the Egyptian historical reliefs of the 19th and 20th dynasties were placed on the walls – usually the outer ones – of the great divine or mortuary temples, and apparently not in palaces. The idea of decorating the palaces’ rooms with reliefs depicting the king’s military deeds was an innovation of Tiglath-­pileser I, the greatest Middle Assyrian sovereign, which, as is well known, was then widely employed between the 9th and 7th centuries, at the time of the great kings of Assyria from Assurnasirpal II to Assurbanipal.31

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In previous centuries, the representation of the king’s deeds had been entrusted to stelae and statues in temples: the break with tradition is now quite patent. The representation of the king’s deeds is celebrated outside the temples, and inside the palaces. In the open spaces of citadels of Assyrian capitals, these deeds were represented in the obelisks’ registers, when it was wished to underline the results of military victories, and in the indoor spaces of royal palaces, on the walls of the throne rooms. Later on, they were placed in all the palaces’ sectors, when the kings wished to depict the progress of their military triumphs, royal hunts, and, later on, even the building of palaces.32 At the same time, with a very meaningful parallelism, temples were decorated with the gods’ mythical deeds, as happens with Ninurta in the main temple of his town, Kalkhu.33 Thus, the gods’ deeds in the mythical times were represented in temples, whereas the kings’ accomplishments in historical times were displayed in palaces. These distinctions are the mark of a very complex, deep change in perspective: the kings became protagonists of new and more effective ways to communicate – on the one hand, with the gods’ world, and on the other hand, with the subjects’ world. The king was now talking physically, and no longer metaphorically, with the gods, by means of ‘letters to the god’: these texts were read during crowded public ceremonies. At these ceremonies, Assyrian kings also organised triumphal events, with processions ending in the great sanctuaries of Assyria.34 Yet, at the same time, in a completely new circuit of direct communication in which the divine world did not take any part, the king imposed, from his own residence – and from the seat of the empire government – a completely secular communication, directed only to the human world.35 Rather than an innovation in the king’s role, this was a revolution, which certainly had its foundation in the renewed society of the Iron Age, in the ideological evolution of Mesopotamian kingship, and in the different needs of the vast empire. This, however, should be the subject of a different contribution.

Notes 1 Leroi-Gourhan 1978: 260. 2 Matthiae 1994.

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3 Black et al. 2004: 323, ll. 65–73. 4 Ibid.: 321, 323, ll. 93–99. 5 Ibid.: 323–324, ll. 139–142. 6 Ibid.: 323–324, ll. 109–123. 7 Lambert 2013: 439–465. 8 Ibid.: 104–105. 9 Ibid.: 110–114. 10 Ibid.: 112–115. 11 Jacobsen 1939; Michalowski 1983: 237–238; Marchesi 2010: 231–248. 12 Farber-Flügge 1973; Kramer and Maier 1989: 57–68. 13 Farber-Flügge 1973: 97–115; Kramer and Maier 1989: 59–60. 14 On the sacral and not divine aspects of the Mesopotamian kingship see now Winter 2008. 15 This kind of initiative is already clear in the first of Nabopolassar’s royal inscriptions (Da Riva 2013: 76–77, 88–89). 16 Sjöberg and Bergmann 1969. 17 Klengel 1993: 185–189; Charpin 2003: 109–128. 18 Finet 1983: 136–137. 19 Jacobsen 1976: 110–116. 20 Black et al. 2004: 219–220. 21 For the interpretation of the king’s role in keeping the mythical order of the origins see now Scurlock 2013: 151–182. 22 Van Dijk 1965: 1–25; Hallo 1982: 95–109. 23 Matthiae 1994: 42–66. 24 Ibid.: 63–64, 81–83. 25 Cooper 1983: 15–36. 26 Jacobsen 1976: 145–164. 27 Matthiae 2002. 28 For a different interpretation, but with similar conclusions, see Pittman 1996. 29 Heinz 2001: 36–50. 30 See Feldman 2004 and the contribution by Ataç in this volume (Chapter Five). 31 Matthiae 2009: 33–53. 32 Reade 1979a; 1979b; Matthiae 1996. 33 Moortgat-Correns 1988; Annus 2002: 39–47. 34 Pongratz-Leisten 1997; Nadali 2013. For the ‘Letters to the god’ see PongratzLeisten 1999: 210–265. See Radner 2010. 35 Winter 1981; Matthiae 1988; Lumsden 2004.

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Bibliography Annus, A., 2002. The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia, SAAS XIV, Helsinki. Black, J. et al., 2004. The Literature of Ancient Sumer, Oxford. Charpin, D., 2003. Hammu-­rabi de Babylone, Paris. Cooper, J.S., 1983. The Curse of Agade, The Johns Hopkins Near Eastern Studies 13, Baltimore and London. Da Riva, R., 2013. The Inscriptions of Nabopolassar, Amēl-Marduk and Neriglissar, Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 3, Boston and Berlin. Farber-Flügge, G., 1973. Der Mythos “Inanna and Enki” unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Liste der ME, Studia Pohl 10, Roma. Feldman, M.H., 2004. ‘Nineveh to Thebes and Back: Art and Politics between Assyria and Egypt in the Seventh Century BCE’, in: D. Collon, A. George (eds.), Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London, 7–11 July 2003, London, pp. 141–150. Finet, A., 1983. Le Code de Hammurapi, Littératures anciennes du Proche-Orient 6, Paris (2ème Éd.). Hallo, W.W., 1982. ‘The Royal Correspondence of Larsa: II. The Appeal to Utu’, in: G. van Driel et al. (eds), Zikir Šumim. Assyriological Studies Presented to F.R. Kraus, Leiden, pp. 95–109. Heinz, S., 2001. Die Feldzugsdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches. Eine Bildanalyse, Wien. Jacobsen, Th., 1939. The Sumerian King List, Assyriological Studies 11, Chicago. Jacobsen, Th., 1976. The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion, New Haven and London. Klengel, H., 1993. Il re perfetto. Hammurabi e Babilonia (Italian Transl. of König Hammurabi und der Alltag Babylons, Zürich 1991), Roma and Bari. Kramer, S.N. and Maier, J., 1989. Myths of Enki, the Crafty God, New York and Oxford. Lambert, W.G., 2013. Babylonian Creation Myths, Winona Lake. Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1978. Il gesto e la parola (Italian Transl. of Le geste et la parole, I–II, Paris 1964–1965), Torino (2nd Ed.). Lumsden, S., 2004. ‘Narrative Art and Empire: The Throneroom of Aššurnasirpal II’, in: J.G. Derksen (ed.), Assyria and Beyond. Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen, Leiden, pp. 359–385. Marchesi, G., 2010. ‘The Sumerian King List and the Early History of Mesopotamia’, in: M.G. Biga, M. Liverani (eds.), Ana turri gimilli. Studi dedicati al Padre Werner R. Meyer, S.J. da amici e allievi, Quaderni di Vicino Oriente V, Roma, pp. 231–248.

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Matthiae, P., 1988. ‘Realtà storica e livelli di lettura nei rilievi narrativi di Assurnasirpal II’ in: Scienze dell’Antichità 2, 347–376. Matthiae, P., 1994. Il sovrano e l’opera. Arte e potere nella Mesopotamia antica, Roma and Bari. Matthiae, P., 1996. L’arte degli Assiri. Cultura e forma del rilievo storico, Roma and Bari. Matthiae, P., 2002. ‘La magnificenza sconosciuta di Ninive. Note sullo sviluppo urbano prima di Sennacherib’ in: Rendiconti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Cl. Sc. Morali, Storiche e Filologiche Serie IX, 13, 543–587. Matthiae, P., 2009. ‘Le immagini del trionfo. Arte storica in Egitto e in Mesopotamia’ in: Mare Internum. Archeologia e culture del Mediterraneo 1, 33–53. Michalowski, P., 1983. ‘History as Charter: Some Observations on the Sumerian King List’ in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 103, 237–248. Moortgat-Correns, U., 1988. ‘Ein Kultbild Ninurtas aus neuassyrischer Zeit’ in: Archiv für Orientforschung 35, 117–133. Nadali, D. 2013. ‘Outcomes of Battle: Triumphal Celebrations in Assyria’, in: A. Spalinger, J. Armstrong (eds.), Rituals of Triumph in the Mediterranean World, Leiden and Boston, 75–94. Pittman, H., 1996. ‘The White Obelisk and the Problem of the Historical Narrative in the Art of Assyria’ in: Art Bulletin 78, 334–353. Pongratz-Leisten, B., 1997. ‘The Interplay of Military Strategy and Cultic Practice in Assyrian Politics’, in: S. Parpola, R.M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995. Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7–11 1995, Helsinki, pp. 245–252. Pongratz-Leisten, B., 1999. Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien. Formen der Kommunikation zwischen Gott uns König im 2. und 1. Jahrtausend v.Chr., State Archives of Assyria Studies X, Helsinki. Radner, K. (2010), ‘Assyrian and Non-Assyrian Kingship in the First Millennium’, in: G. Lanfranchi, R. Rollinger (eds.), Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity, Padova, pp. 15–24. Reade, J., 1979a. ‘Assyrian Architectural Decoration: Techniques and Subject-Matter’ in: Baghdader Mitteilungen 10, 17–50. Reade, J., 1979b. ‘Narrative Composition in Assyrian Sculpture’ in: Baghdader Mitteilungen 10, 52–110. Scurlock, J.-A., 2013. ‘Images of Tammuz: The Intersection of Death, Divinity, and Royal Authority in Ancient Mesopotamia’, J.A. Hill, Ph. Jones, A.J. Morales (eds.), Experiencing Power, Generating Authority. Cosmos, Politics, and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Philadelphia, 151–182. Sjöberg, Å.W. and Bergmann, E., 1969. The Collection of the Sumerian Temple Hymns, Texts from Cuneiform Sources III, New York.

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van Dijk, J., 1965. ‘Une insurrection générale au pays de Larsa avant l’avènement de Nuradad’ in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 19, 1–25. Winter, I.J., 1981. ‘Royal Rhetoric and the Development of the Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs’ in: Studies in Visual Communication 7, 2–38. Winter, I.J., 2008. ‘Touched by the Gods: Visual Evidence for the Divine Status of Rulers in the Ancient Near East’, in: N. Brisch (ed.), Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, Oriental Institute Seminars 4, Chicago, 76–101.

2

The Emergence of Writing and the Construction of Cultural Memory in Egypt Federico Contardi1

Introduction The written documentation of every past civilization is the bearer of memory, a body of information that constitutes for the scholar the principal source of knowledge of that particular civilization. This kind of memory is not the subject of this paper. One type of memory, which concerns us all personally, is the individual one, something that certainly did not play any role in the process of the birth of writing. The first documents to be written, in fact, did not arise from the initiative of an individual intending to preserve his own memory; rather they were produced by a society before the notion of individualism came to the fore. Studies on memory, considered from a sociological and anthropological point of view, evolved over a period that can be traced back to at least as early as the end of the 19th century – to the figure of Henri Bergson, who studied the phenomenon of individual memory.2 The transition from the individual to the social dimension was observed by Maurice Halbwachs;3 in two essays, he theorized about the existence of a collective memory – the memory of a social group, formed by the body of beliefs in which that same society recognizes itself. On the one hand, Halbwachs’ studies went beyond the concept expressed by Bergson, thanks to the integration of Émile Durkheim’s thought on the collective consciousness;4 on the other hand, however, they were partly still linked to memory as a psychological and cognitive faculty.5 In more recent years, a new field of research has opened up with the extension of studies to civilizations that

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are distant in time and space. This new sphere, inaugurated by Aleida and Jan Assmann,6 is systematized by the latter in his work Das kulturelle Gedächtnis.7 Cultural memory is the recollection of a past that a people considers the foundation for the construction of its identity, often transmitted in a communicative context characterized as official and sacral through rituals, symbols and monuments functioning as specialized bearers of tradition.8 Of course, in societies endowed with writing, cultural memory finds in this form of communication a further means of expression, in addition to those methods available to unlettered societies that express their fundamental identity in gesture, rhythm, speech and iconographic representation. If the invention of writing deeply modified the relationship between ancient civilizations and their own memory, the question arises as to whether in Egypt the invention of writing was a response to the need to preserve cultural memory. This question assumes legitimacy in connection with consideration of other reasons proposed to account for the birth of writing, associating it, for example, with the emergence of a new historical consciousness and of needs bound up with the cult and the religious sphere. The search for evidence of cultural memory in the earliest (pictorial and textual) documents of a civilization can appear in certain ways to be an unprofitable task, since, at the time of its origins – that is, at the moment of its coming into being – a civilization cannot refer to a foundational past because its consciousness of history and identity is still in the making. Nonetheless, it is still possible to recognize in that very ancient period some elements inherited from the past and held to be culturally significant. It is necessary to make clear that here we attribute a broader meaning to the term ‘memory’, including the recalling and registration of all those features of a culture that identify a civilization and differentiate it from others. This comprises not only the recollections of stories, myths and rites that refer to a distant past, but also iconography and images, such as certain symbols of royalty that refer back to a very remote past.

The birth of writing What was the relationship between the birth of writing and memory? Was the preservation and transmission of cultural memory the stimulus that led to

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the invention of writing? Or, rather, did the invention of writing lead to the establishment of a cultural memory? To attempt to answer these questions, it is necessary, first of all, to determine the necessity that led to the invention of writing. Various proposals have been formulated, and they can be summed up as follows.9 1. Writing arose under the impulse of a new historical consciousness, for the recording of events in a space-­time dimension.10 This statement is based, above all, on evidence of a celebratory type such as the Narmer Palette11 and the mace heads,12 where geographical detail and the mention of the sovereign’s name are particularly important. 2. Another interpretation ascribes the need for writing to the sphere of the cult and the sacred,13 as suggested by the particular context of the tomb (mainly royal) and the temple (particularly that of Hierakonpolis), and by the typology of the documents – votive objects and, later, lists of offerings. 3. Writing arose as a form of political communication to immortalize the actions of the sovereign and set them in a temporal dimension.14 4. Writing would serve to record information of an economic nature for the new state as it evolved. This would be deduced, for example, from the labels attached to vessels, or from inscriptions on the vessels themselves. Today this interpretation finds greater acceptance, above all after the publication, beginning in the mid-1990s, of the material excavated by Dreyer from tomb U-j.15 5. Writing arises as a means of maintaining the general order of society and of the state (here economic management comes in as well), and so the documentation would be of a juridical nature.16 This aspect, which is encountered in texts from the 4th Dynasty, both in the temple (royal decrees that seem to begin appearing towards the end of the 4th Dynasty with Shepseskaf)17 and in the funerary sphere (punishments for the violators of the tomb, attribution of an heir’s status to the person who was responsible for the burial and for maintaining the tomb thereafter, etc.), is also attributed to the first written texts. 6. Writing would have arisen with a double aim: for the management of the administration (seals and texts inscribed on vessels) and for the celebration of power (on mace heads and palettes).18

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If one of the first three proposals is correct, writing would not have been created for the practical needs of the management of the state, but rather to express those aspects that we designate as cultural, that is, those that constitute the identity of a civilization. Let us look at the various typologies of the first documents, those preceding the 3rd Dynasty, when writing achieved mature expression, allowing the formation of complex sentences.19 The first inscriptions that bear signs with a clear phonetic value, and so express a linguistic quality, go back to the Naqada IIIA1 Period and originate from tomb U-j at Abydos. They are rectangular labels of bone with topographic notations – for example, the sign of the stork bȝ joined to the sign of the throne st expresses the toponym Bast, the modern Tell-Basta/Bubastis (Fig. 2.1) – and numerical notations employing notches.20 There is a hole in the upper right-­hand corner of these labels for attaching them to some item. From the same tomb derive numerous pottery vessels bearing ink images of a scorpion, probably to express the name of the sovereign.21 From the Naqada IIIB Period (3100 BC), corresponding to the beginning of Dynasty 0, there are some pottery shards found in royal tombs at Abydos

Fig. 2.1  Bone label from Abydos tomb U-j (Dreyer 1998: 125, Fig. 103).

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bearing ink inscriptions with the name of the sovereign inside the serekh, mentioning the contents the vessel once held and displaying one of the two heraldic plants of the country to designate the provenance as Upper or Lower Egypt.22 More or less contemporary are vessels found in the Sinai region along the road that linked the Nile Delta to Palestine. These bear a Horus falcon perched atop an empty serekh.23 These are noteworthy because they derive from a primary, rather than a secondary, funerary context, having been found where they were left while ‘in transit’, at an outpost along the trade routes from the Levant. In the Naqada IIIC Period (3050 BC), the first examples of labels with dates are attested. The notations include mention of the contents (on the left), the name of the sovereign within the serekh and, to the right, the hieroglyph representing a palm frond, , with the meaning ‘year’, to specify important events of a particular regnal year by combining iconic representation with phonetic values. These labels appear beginning with Narmer and last until the end of the 1st Dynasty (year label of Narmer).24 An example is the label of King Den of the 1st Dynasty (Fig. 2.2, left). To the right are represented the important events of the regnal year in which the royal jubilee was celebrated, together with military campaigns involving the destruction of fortresses, while, at the left, in addition to the name of the king, there is mention of oil – referring to the commodity with which these labels were associated – and other information that is more difficult to interpret. As we shall see, this evidence constitutes a fundamental step that led the Egyptians to create annals and to record history.

Fig. 2.2  Left: Year label of Den, Abydos (Petrie 1900: pl. XV.16); Right: Palermo Stone (fourth register) (Wilkinson 2000: Fig. 1).

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In this same period, down to the end of Dynasty 0 (the end of the Naqada III Period, 3050 BC), we encounter the most ancient use of writing applied to a context that is clearly celebratory. These are three famous artefacts, found in a foundation deposit in the temple of Hierakonpolis: the mace heads of Kings Scorpion25 and Narmer, and the so-­called Narmer Palette.26 All three preserve the very finest relief representations, accompanied by writing specifying the king involved and his actions. The representations are always relevant to the activities of the sovereign for the maintenance of the order in the land, in warfare (on the palette), in celebration and ritual (mace head of Narmer), and in administration of the territory (mace head of King Scorpion). A document that dates to the 1st Dynasty constitutes the first example of a list with royal names in chronological sequence – a seal impression bearing the name of King Den, which served to seal the entrance to his tomb at Abydos.27 It bears the names of all the kings from Narmer to Den and includes the name of the latter’s mother, Meret-Neith, as well.28 Writing is also used to immortalize a sovereign’s name on a pair of colossal stelae set up at the tomb’s entrance (e.g. one of the pair erected by King Djet [Serpent] at Abydos).29 A similar use, though of a decidedly poorer quality, is represented by the small stelae bearing the names of high dignitaries.30 Towards the end of the 2nd Dynasty, the first sentence, complete in itself, occurs on a sealing: ‘the Ombite has given the Two Lands to his son, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Peribsen’;31 while the first, more structured, inscription is dated to the 3rd Dynasty, and it derives from the royal sphere, namely the caption with the words spoken by the gods to Djoser in the texts of his monument at Heliopolis.32 From this rapid survey, it is possible to establish some firm points: the most ancient documents – before Dynasty 0 – demonstrate a practical use of writing for administrative purposes; its employment in the funerary sphere is clearly secondary. The very numerous labels found in the tomb U-j at Abydos were originally attached to vessels to indicate the provenance of their contents, and were related to the organization of the state and, in particular, to levying taxes for the maintenance of the elite (which did not produce resources), corresponding to the the sovereign’s restricted entourage. The inscriptions on the labels of Dynasty 0 also have the same function. However, they included additional, more complex information. In fact, they also precisely define the

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temporal context, citing the name of a particular king and of a specific year of his reign, qualified by the representation of events (royal/religious ceremonies, defeat of enemies, etc.) considered significant.33 The same administrative use is also encountered in the numerous seal impressions. Remarkably, all such documentation derives from the funerary sphere, which, however, represented a secondary use, as in later periods when objects from everyday life (furniture, clothes, papyrus rolls with literary texts) were deposited in the tomb. The use of writing for the immortalization of the sovereign’s actions for display in the temple (celebratory purpose) appears towards the end of Dynasty 0 – subsequent, therefore, to the most ancient written expressions. The role of writing is not predominant, but supplements the iconic representation. In the case of the Narmer Palette, it is employed to express the name of the king (at the centre, above, between the two heads with cow horns and ears) and to qualify the two figures who precede and follow the king in the upper register.34 This state of affairs is, therefore, in contradiction to Assmann’s assertion that writing did not arise from the impulse of the economy, as in the case of Mesopotamia, but through the intention of immortalizing political communication on stone.35 Vernus – who sees writing as a means both for the management of the administration and for the immortalization of political events36 – comes close to what seems to have been the reality of the facts as we interpret them. But less convincing is the idea that the two uses, administrative and celebratory, presage the dichotomy of hieratic (for the profane and the ephemeral) and hieroglyphic (for the sacred and the eternal) scripts.37 This view arises from attributing phenomena that take form, at the latest, at the beginning of the 4th Dynasty – when the opposition between hieroglyphic writing (royal and funerary inscriptions) and hieratic writing (e.g. administrative papyri of Gebelein and Abusir) is observable – to the remote period of Narmer.38 So, then, what was the nature of the most ancient hieroglyphic writing? Did it already possess sacral connotations, which would later be expressed as mdw nt-r, ‘words of the god’? The answer to this question must take into account the type of society that produced this kind of writing – a society founded, from the moment of its formation, on the figure of the sovereign whose nature is understood in a divine sense. In this connection, what seems to me particularly relevant is the distinction made in ethnographic studies between sacred

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kingship and divine kingship. The first sees the king with prerogatives of a priestly nature, whereas in the second he himself is endowed with divine prerogatives. For some civilizations, it would seem, divine kingship was a development of kingship that was originally sacral.39 It is not to be assumed that, already before the Naqada IIIB Period, the various local chieftains would have had a divine nature. However, at the moment of the unification of the country and with the concomitant introduction of writing, the conception of kingship was already understood in a divine sense. There is much evidence in this direction, such as, for example, the inscription of the name of the sovereign within the serekh dominated by the colossal image of the falcon Horus, of whom the king is the hypostasis.40 The design of the Narmer Palette clearly identifies the sovereign with the god, as shown by the depiction of the falcon performing the same action of capturing the enemy. The king constitutes the pivot around which the organization of the state revolves, and the state in its turn is the pharaoh himself. The survival of this whole apparatus, made up of a class of officials and professionals who were not producers of the means of sustenance, was assured by a system of collecting, storing, manufacturing and redistributing raw products (e.g. grain) as well as those manufactured (oil, meat, bread, material, etc.).41 Concretely, the efficacy of this process depended on writing, which was at the same time an expression of the state and of divine kingship. The fact that writing originated with the god-­king, and that it was a tool that permitted the existence of the state, and therefore of the world, explains why, throughout Egyptian history, hieroglyphs constitute a script of ‘being’ – which was identified with what was written and rendered it eternal – rather than a script of ‘becoming’.

The birth of writing and the construction of cultural memory Every technological invention arises from the impulse to satisfy a need that had not previously existed.42 The invention of writing also conforms to this model. The growth of the state involved organizational and administrative needs, which rendered the means in use until that moment unsuitable. Orality yielded to the written record. Writing records the structure of the urbanized society, which is the economy of circulation between producers (heavenly or

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human) and rulers.43 Hence, all those aspects of collective memory directly connected with the new needs of the state found in writing the privileged means of recording (toponyms, dates, names of sovereigns, etc.), while the remaining wealth of knowledge continued to be transmitted in the ways previously in operation – pictorial representation, orality and gesture. These, in fact, were the means of expression for the cult, for myth, for narrative and for professional tasks. For a very long time, the latter continued to be confined to the sphere of orality, and access to them took place by initiation, as is inferred from numerous indirect references. On his stela, Irtysen (11th Dynasty) boasts of knowing the secrets of his art, both technical and professional, explaining that they were transmitted to him secretly and orally.44 The secret nature of the disclosure of professional skills is demonstrated by their integration into funerary ritual, which represented for the dead the means of obtaining a new state. The techniques of using a net for hunting and fishing were adopted in spells 473–480 of the Coffin Texts,45 just as the techniques of navigating and preparing a boat were inserted in spell 397.46 Thus collective memory and cultural memory did not yet find expression in writing but continued to be transmitted by means previously employed: gesture, rhythm, orality and representation. The very ancient patrimony of myths and rites would find its first written expression later, in the Pyramid Texts (end of the 5th Dynasty). An assessment of the iconographical documentation gives rise to the impression that, with Dynasty 0 and with the reign of Narmer in particular, the central power is creating its own iconography, its own modes of expression, following acquired awareness of having initiated a new political reality. In fact, this is the direction attested by the canonization of iconographies, their adoption and repetition from one reign to another, until becoming culturally significant forms of expression. The serekh, for example, from its initial appearances – without names (on the vessels of el-Beda in Sinai of the Naqada IIIB Period),47 and with the incision of the name (reign of Ka, one of the predecessors of Narmer)48 – becomes an integral part of citing the name of the sovereign. Similarly, some of the more important symbols of kingship, such as the White Crown, the Red Crown and the wȝs-sceptre, trace their origins back into a past more distant than the beginning of the 1st Dynasty. The Red Crown and the wȝs-sceptre were already symbols of power well before the pre- and

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proto-­dynastic ages. A petroglyph in the Wadi Qash of the Naqada I Period reproduces the image of a chieftain bearing a prototypical Red Crown and a short kilt, and holding the pastoral wȝs.49 Another representation of the Red Crown going back to the same period is found on a vessel from the site of Naqada.50 By contrast, other iconographies would not have continued after the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, probably because they represented ancient ritual activities that had swiftly fallen into disuse such as, for example, human sacrifice in a ritual context recorded on labels placed on containers in the name of Aha and of Djer (beginning of the 1st Dynasty).51 If representation is the bearer of cultural memory, writing also has had the same function, from the moment when it became an integral part of iconography. The labels that appear from the Naqada IIIC Period to express the concept of time (regnal year) through the depiction of significant events linked with the sovereign (royal ceremonies, warlike acts, etc.) are messages in figurative form accompanied by brief annotations in writing with an explanatory purpose (description of the action, name of the king, information about the contents). One may ask whether the written part constitutes an appendix to the figurative part, and is therefore a separate reality, or if the representation and writing form a unity. My view is that the latter is the case and that writing serves to transform the representation into a discourse, expressing what would otherwise be inexpressible in simple representation, analogous to what is found, for example, in the captions added to the scenes in Old Kingdom mastaba tombs, transforming them into discourse. While the individual iconographic components of these representations are (sometimes) bearers of an earlier memory, narrative as a whole, constituted by the union of the figurative part with writing, is a means of expression that is completely new and that transmits what had been impossible to transmit before. All this constitutes the first written evidence for the acquisition of a historical awareness that situates events within a temporal framework. For example, the label in Fig. 2.2 contextualizes a supply of better-­quality oil from Libya, h. ȝtt -th. nw (with the indication of the quantity), in a precise historical dimension, viz. the year of the reign of Den (name inscribed within the serekh) when the sovereign celebrated his jubilee (first register on the right) and the destruction of a city, probably in southern Palestine (second register on the

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right), whose name is indicated (the events in the third register are fragmentary). Further information relating to the management of this supply is also specified, such as the name of the high official in charge, the chancellor of Lower Egypt (htmw-­bjtj) Hemaka (left side, upper part).52 ˘ These types of documents are foundations on which the Egyptians constructed their chronology, their history, allowing the structuring of time in a succession of reigns, each one made up of individual years. A first step towards a diachronic structure of time is observed in some royal cylinders of the 1st Dynasty.53 Of these, the clay impressions that sealed the entrance to the tomb of King Den have been preserved at Abydos (similar seal impressions exist also for King Qaa).54 On the seal, Den’s name is inserted in a sequence of ancestors’ names going back to King Narmer, to the beginning of the 1st Dynasty.55 The most elaborate form of this chronological information is represented by the annals. The oldest preserved example is the Palermo Stone, which probably goes back to the 5th Dynasty.56 It records the names of all the sovereigns and specifies significant events, year by year. This structure is applied to all the sovereigns of the 1st to the 5th dynasties, while, for the sovereigns prior to the 1st Dynasty (those who lived in the period of the formation of the pharaonic state, corresponding roughly to Dynasty 0), only the names are provided (with which, however, until now, no correspondence has been found in the contemporaneous documentation) along with an indication of their authority over Upper or Lower Egypt by the representation of the relevant crown. This reveals a prudent work of construction of a foundational memory already taking place at the beginning of the creation of the unitary pharaonic state. After all, the awareness of a new era was already alive during the unfolding of these events, as is demonstrated, for example, by the creation of new forms of iconography for the expression of royal power (royal symbols and insignia, name of the sovereign inserted in the serekh, etc.) and the need to differentiate regnal years by citing significant events. The instrument for the creation and the fixing of this memory is the recording of time in the manner adopted on the year labels (Fig. 2.2, left). Later, an identical model was employed for the annalistic information on the Palermo Stone, where the individual regnal years are organized within a rectangular field containing the principal events, marked out on its right side by the vertical sign (palm frond) indicating the word ‘year’ (Fig. 2.2, right).

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It seems to me, therefore, that writing did not arise under the stimulus for the preservation and transmission of the collective memory and identity. This need had long been met by iconic representation, to which writing was subsequently added as a complement (already at the end of Dynasty 0, particularly with Narmer). On the contrary, writing was the stimulus for the construction of a cultural memory, which originated with the possibility of expressing time, as with the labels citing a particular regnal year. Ideology needs a past on which to construct its present,57 and this material is its cornerstone.

Notes 1 This work has been supported by Labex ARCHIMEDE, ‘Investissement d’Avenir’ programme ANR-11-LABX-0032-01. 2 Bergson 1896. 3 Halbwachs 1925; 1950. 4 Durkheim 1893. 5 Proietti 2012: 18. 6 Assmann, A. and Assmann, J. 1988: 25–50; Assmann 1988: 9–19. 7 Assmann 1992. See also Bommas in this volume (Chapter 9). 8 Proietti 2012: 17. 9 For a general presentation of the various interpretations proposed up to the beginning of the 1980s (cf. points 1 and 2 in the list in the text), see Schenkel 1983: 50–59. 10 Brunner 1965: 756–769. 11 Quibell 1898; Kemp 2006: 84. 12 Millet 1990: 54; Spencer 1993: 56. 13 Westendorf 1969: 56–87. 14 Assmann 1992: 169–170; 1995: 80. 15 Kahl 1994: 158; Dreyer 1998; 2007a: 217. The economical-­organizational interpretation is maintained also by Regulski 2008: 999, 1002. 16 Schenkel 1983: 45–63. 17 For a collection of royal decrees of the Old Kingdom, see Strudwick 2005: 97–127. 18 Vernus 1993: 89–90; Morenz 2004: 244; Baines 2007: 122. 19 For a study of the functioning of the earliest system of hieroglyphic writing to the end of the 3rd Dynasty, see Kahl 1994.

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20 For an interpretation of the signs, see Dreyer 1998: 125, Fig. 103; 2007a: 212. For an analysis of this material and new interpretations, see Regulski 2008: 985–1009. 21 Dreyer 1992: pl. 4. 22 Petrie 1902: pl. I.2, III.30. 23 Hartung 2001: 346–347. 24 Dreyer 2007a: 215. 25 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford AN1896-1908.E3632. 26 Cairo Museum, CG 14716 (Quibell 1898: 81–84, pl. XII–XIII). Millet 1990: 53–68. 27 Dreyer 2007b: 208, Fig. 292b. 28 There exists another seal of this same kind in the name of Qaa, containing the complete list of all the sovereigns of the 1st Dynasty, starting with Narmer. Dreyer 2007b: 208. 29 Louvre E 11007. 30 Dreyer 2007b: 200. 31 Dreyer 2007a: 217. 32 Urk. I, 154. 33 Helck 1987: 168–175. 34 Cairo Museum, CG 14716 (Quibell 1898: 81–84, pl. XII–XIII). 35 Assmann 1992: 169–170; 1995: 80. 36 Vernus 1993: 92. 37 Ibid. 38 Posener-Kriéger and de Cenival 1968; Posener-Kriéger 2004. 39 De Heusch 2009: 128. 40 For the origin of Egyptian kingship and the state of the question, see Baines 1995: 95–156. 41 Wilkinson 1999: 116–133. 42 Leroi-Gourhan 1965: 67. 43 Ibid.: 67–68. 44 Barta 1970. 45 Bidoli 1976: 42–44. 46 Bickel 2004: 113–115. 47 Hartung 2001: 346. 48 The attestation of the serekh to the reign of King Scorpion is uncertain (Wilkinson 1999: 57). 49 Winkler 1938: pl. XIII.2; Wilkinson 2003: 80. 50 Wainwright 1923: 26–33, pl. XX; Wilkinson 2003: 81. 51 Crubézy 2005: 65–81; Menu 2005: 122–135.

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52 For the reading of this plaque and the various related problems, see Godron 1990: 32–76. 53 The sequence in chronological order of the names of the sovereigns recorded on the seals is interpreted by Cervelló-Autuori (2008: 895) as an expression of the cult of the royal ancestors, and not as a list with a historiographical objective. 54 Dreyer 2007b: 208, Fig. 292b–c. 55 Ibid. 56 Wilkinson 2000. 57 Assmann 1992.

Bibliography Assmann, A. and Assmann, J., 1988. ‘Schrift, Tradition und Kultur’, in: W. Raible (ed.), Zwischen Festtag und Alltag, ScriptOralia 6, Tübingen, 25–50. Assmann, J., 1988. ‘Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität’, in: J. Assmann, T. Hölscher (eds.), Kultur und Gedächtnis, Frankfurt, 9–19. Assmann, J., 1992. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, München. Assmann, J., 1995. Stein und Zeit. Mensch und Gesellschaft im alten Ägypten, München. Baines, J., 1995. ‘Origins of Egyptian Kingship’, in: D. O’Connor, D.P. Silverman (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Kingship, Probleme der Ägyptologie 9, Leiden, 95–156, 300–329. Baines, J., 2007. Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt, Oxford. Barta, W., 1970. Das Selbstzeugnis eines altägyptischen Künstlers (Stele Louvre C14), MÄS 22, Berlin. Bergson, H., 1896. Matière et mémoire, Paris. Bickel, S., 2004. ‘D’un monde à l’autre: le thème du passeur et de sa barque dans la pensée funéraire’, in: S. Bickel, B. Mathieu (eds.), D’un monde à l’autre. Textes des Pyramides et Textes des Sarcophages, BdE 139, Cairo, 91–117. Bidoli, D., 1976. Die Sprüche der Fangnetze in den altägyptischen Sargtexten, ADAIK 9, Glückstadt. Brunner, H., 1965. ‘Die altägyptische Schrift’ in: Studium generale 18, 756–769. Cervelló-Autuori, J., 2008. ‘The Thinite “Royal Lists”: Typology and Meaning’, in: B. Midant-Reynes, Y. Tristant (eds.), Egypt at its Origins 2, OLA 172, Leuven, 887–899. Crubézy, É., 2005. ‘Les sacrifices humains à l’époque prédynastique: l’apport de la nécropole d’Adaïma’, in: J.P. Albert, B. Midant-Reynes (eds.), Le sacrifice humain en Égypte ancienne et ailleurs, Études d’égyptologie 6, Paris, 65–81.

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De Heusch, L., 2009. Pouvoir et religion, Paris. Dreyer, G., 1992. ‘Recent discoveries at Abydos Cemetery U’, in: E.C.M. van den Brink (ed.), The Nile Delta in Transition: 4th–3rd Millennium BC, Tel Aviv, 293–299. Dreyer, G., 1998. Umm el-Qaab I. Das prädynastische Königsgrab U-j und seine frühen Schriftzeugnisse, AV 86, Mainz. Dreyer, G., 2007a. ‘Frühe Schriftzeugnisse’, in: G. Dreyer, D. Polz (eds.), Begegnung mit der Vergangenheit – 100 Jahre in Ägypten, Mainz, 211–217. Dreyer, G., 2007b. ‘Königsgräber ab Djer: Wege zur Auferstehung’, in: G. Dreyer, D. Polz (eds.), Begegnung mit der Vergangenheit – 100 Jahre in Ägypten, Mainz, 197–210. Durkheim, É., 1893. De la division du travail social, Paris. Godron, G., 1990. Études sur l’Horus Den et quelques problèmes de l’Égypte archaïque, Cahiers d’Orientalisme 19, Genève. Halbwachs, M., 1925. Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Paris. Halbwachs, M., 1950. La mémoire collective, Paris. Hartung, U., 2001. Umm El-Qaab II: Importkeramik aus dem Friedhof U in Abydos (Umm el-Qaab) und die Beziehungen Agyptens zu Vorderasien im 4. Jahrtausend v. Chr., AV 92, Mainz. Helck, W., 1987. Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit, ÄAbh 45, Wiesbaden. Kahl, J., 1994. Das System der ägyptischen Hieroglyphenschrift in der 0.–3. Dynastie, GoF 4/29, Wiesbaden. Kemp, B.J., 2006. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, London and New York (2nd ed.). Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1965. Le geste et la parole II, Paris. Menu, B., 2005. ‘Mise à mort cérémonielle et prélèvements royaux sous la Ire dynastie’, in: J.P. Albert, B. Midant-Reynes (eds.), Le sacrifice humain en Égypte ancienne et ailleurs, Études d’égyptologie 6, Paris, 122–135. Millet, N.B., 1990. ‘The Narmer Macehead and Related Objects’ in: JARCE 27, 53–68. Morenz, L.D., 2004. Bild-Buchstaben und symbolische Zeichen. Die Herausbildung der Schrift in der hoehen Kultur Altägyptens, OBO 205, Fribourg and Göttingen. Petrie, W.M.F., 1900. The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty. Part I, EEF Memoir 18, London. Petrie, W.M.F., 1902. Abydos I, EEF Memoir 22, London. Posener-Kriéger, P., 2004. I Papiri di Gebelein – Scavi G. Farina 1935, Torino. Posener-Kriéger P. and de Cenival, J.L., 1968. Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum. Fifth Series. The Abu Sir Papyri, EEF Memoir 22, London. Proietti, G., 2012. ‘Memoria collettiva e identità etnica. Nuovi paradigmi teorico-­ metodologici nella ricerca storica’, in: E. Franchi, G. Proietti (eds.), Forme della memoria e dinamiche identitarie nell’antichità greco-­romana, Quaderni del

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Dipartimento di Filosofia, Storia e Beni Culturali dell’Università di Trento 2, Trento, 13–41. Quibell, J.E., 1898. ‘Slate Palette from Hieraconpolis’ in: ZÄS 36, 81–84. Regulski, I., 2008. ‘The Origin of Writing in Relation to the Emergence of the Egyptian State’, in: B. Midant-Reynes, Y. Tristant (eds.), Egypt at its Origins 2, OLA 172, Leuven, 985–1009. Schenkel, W., 1983. ‘Wozu die Ägypter eine Schrift brauchten’, in: A. Assmann, J. Assmann, Chr. Hardmeier (eds.), Schrift und Gedächtnis. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation I, München, 45–63. Spencer, A.J., 1993. Early Egypt: The Rise of Civilisation in the Nile Valley, London. Strudwick, N.C., 2005. Texts from the Pyramid Age, WAW 16, Leiden and Boston. Urk. I = Sethe, K., 1933. Urkunden des Alten Reiches, Leipzig. Vernus, P., 1993. ‘La naisssance de l’écriture dans l’Égypte Ancienne’ in: Archéo-Nil 3, 75–108. Wainwright, G.A., 1923. ‘The Red Crown in Early Prehistoric Times’ in: JEA 9, 26–33. Westendorf, W., 1969. ‘Die Anfänge der altägyptischen Hieroglyphen’, in: D. Gerhardt (ed.), Frühe Schriftzeugnisse der Menschheit, Göttingen, 56–87. Wilkinson, T.A.H., 1999. Early Dynastic Egypt, London. Wilkinson, T.A.H., 2000. Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: The Palermo Stone and its Associated Fragments, London and New York. Wilkinson, T.A.H., 2003. Genesis of the Pharaohs: Dramatic New Discoveries that Rewrite the Origins of Ancient Egypt, London. Winkler, H.A., 1938. Rock-Drawings of Southern Upper Egypt I, Archaeological Survey of Egypt, Memoir 26, Oxford.

3

Community and Individuals: How Memory Affects Public and Private Life in the Ancient Near East Davide Nadali

Introduction When dealing with the social, political, cultural and religious aspects of ancient civilizations, memory can so far be considered a kind of recurrent topos of research and, indeed, a common feature that can suitably link and explain the aims and nature of actions and thoughts in ancient societies. However, while memory can be recognized and analysed through the study of the physical products of material culture, it is important to bear in mind that memory also encompasses immaterial aspects that cannot be concretely handled, touched and seen; consequently, the study of the memories of ancient civilizations requires a very careful consideration of even the smallest details to reconstruct the context where and when a memory has been purposely created and used. At the same time, analysts must reconstruct the behaviours and feelings around the created memory; in this respect, the differences in strata of ancient societies must be taken into consideration. Analysis is not a simple process, as the sources and documents at our disposal are not fully understandable and may in fact be incomplete: actually, the incompleteness of sources and documents is the most disappointing and frustrating factor limiting our ability to fully grasp the complexity of how memory has been shaped, preserved across time or, conversely, purposely destroyed as part of a programmatic annihilation of past traces. The destiny of memory is strongly based on, and depends on, the dual – either balanced or unbalanced1 – possibility of construction/preservation and

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destruction/cancellation. Once a memory has been shaped, it requires delicate and constant attention so that it can be preserved and handed down; on the other hand, the cancellation of a past memory can imply a total destruction or, sometimes, a re-­foundation, with the addition and transformation of meanings and concepts. Memory is the result of the frequent and long stratification of actions and thoughts; moreover, it is the result of constructions and destructions as two complementary and necessarily bound actions. In the end, memory is characterized as a large, extremely fragile container of facts: all monuments, inscriptions and small objects keep the memory of the one who commissioned and created the work, and hand down the content of stories in words and images, creating a common discourse on the old origins and solid foundations of the future of ancient societies. However, monuments, inscriptions and objects keeping the record of ancient facts that acquired the value of historical memory can easily be destroyed, often becoming the target of war actions, or decaying over time, or being affected by the inattention of subsequent generations. This fragility is, in fact, intrinsic: all physical supports run the risk of becoming void containers, unable to correctly preserve memories. Even the most modern informatics systems cannot absolutely assure the exactness and incorruptibility of registering and storing data for ever;2 the human brain can be affected by illnesses and diseases that particularly affect the capability of generating memory (storing things) and remembering past events, even affecting the simplest of daily actions. Human beings are therefore somewhat anxious to preserve memories, both personal (belonging to a single individual) and common (belonging to a large society, or groups of individuals). The role of memory in past societies and, consequently, what archaeological records can reveal and explain, is the difference between the memory of a (large) community and the memory of a single individual. How can scholars face these two realities ? Are they totally independent matters or, rather, do they affect each other? On the one hand, it seems quite easy to reconstruct, or at least to follow, the process of memory-­ making once large corpora of archaeological documents and written sources are available; on the other, the scarcity of information, or even the total absence of direct sources, actually prevents any possibility of analysis or consideration. Usually, the first situation is generally described and considered as the perfect occasion to study how memory is conceived, elaborated and fostered by a

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community of individuals that shares the same language and the same cultural and religious background; on the contrary, it is always implied that traces of single individuals (thus referring to strictly personal and private memories) are either scanty or even impossible to retrace in archaeology (the only example might be the careful excavation of private houses).3 This dichotomy, however, is incorrect and cannot be indiscriminately applied to all cases: even in the presence of visual and written documents, analysts can simply and immediately infer that the evidence at their disposal perfectly describes and records a memory that can be generally labelled as belonging to an entire society (collective memory),4 and is therefore the expression of a culturally intended way of registering and handing down names, places and events (cultural memory).5 In fact, the reality of data can be differently interpreted. Does the automatic definition of memory as collective and as the expression of an entire culture imply that it refers to large numbers of people that not only shared the content and the way of visualizing and perpetuating the memory, but also were aware of this mechanism ? The answer is clearly no: the definition and categorization of memory does not in fact belong to the ancient societies, but rather to the analysts who study and interpret the past. As a consequence, we are left dealing with two categories of memory: a memory marked – that is the memory as it was conceived and thought by its own culture in the past, with its own prerogatives and functions; and a memory ascribed – that is the memory resulting from the secondary analyses made by modern analysts. It might seem mere speculation, but memory is so delicate and fragile an entity, which runs the risk of misinterpretation and manipulation: this risk does not only belong to modern and contemporary evaluations, but also can be recognized in the past when a memory has been purposely reinvented and reshaped, changed and manipulated, usually for political and cultural aims. In this respect, the way of dealing with memory, in both the past and present, defines a very special attitude human beings have towards memory, particularly when they face the others’ memory: the tendency to change and reschedule events can be retraced throughout history, which might also explain how personal memories (specifically belonging to a single individual) have changed and adapted to become a universal (collective) memory, representing wider culture and society. Making the distinction between a private (individual) memory and a public (collective) memory is an impossible task: the reality probably lies somewhere

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in the middle, in an (un)balanced situation where specific political and cultural choices might change the nature of memory, even completely transforming it from the original shape and content in which it had been conceived. The real task consists in recognizing the limit of the task itself: firstly, it is important to reconsider the term ‘collective’ since it is misleading, it generalizes and it flattens differences; secondly, memory must in fact be inflected according to the grammar of the originating culture, indicating whether a collective memory has really been created, or whether it has just been claimed that one has been invented, or we now assign a collective (universal) value to that memory, according to the evaluation of the data at our disposal. Where does individuals’ memory lie? Someone might state that archaeology is unable to show evidence of common individuals’ memory; however, specific archaeological contexts can reveal the nature of mnemonic practices of people with shared actions and purposes.6 The main problem in analysing memory in past societies lies in the number and nature of archaeological documents: visual materials and texts are primary sources, but analysts often tend to universalize the content and meaning of images and inscriptions, as they perfectly mirror whole aspects and levels of the ancient society. In fact, images and inscriptions (royal, as well as texts of the city-­state offices and administration) describe and refer to a part of the society, specifically the part that rules and thus has the power and means to create and foster a memory. Is this memory necessarily universal, and representative of the whole ancient society ruled by that elite? It may or may not be: at different levels of the society, parallel personal memories could exist and might even share the same content and function of the presumed collective, although on a non-­monumental and official level. In the end, one might even argue that what is labelled as ‘collective memory’, expressing the main cultural traits of the society, is the result of the selection or imposition of a personal memory that had the political and economic means to become the representative memory handed down through images and words.

How many memories? Remembering is a mental and cultural activity that distinguishes human beings: in particular, memory is a fundamental component of the human

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system of learning and transmission of knowledge.7 It not only forms the database of all information (a mere systematic and passive archive of data), but also is the active necessary element for the elaborations and connections of information. As concerns the study of the ancient civilizations, archaeology can shed light on the uses of the past in the past, and illuminate how people conceived of their past, perceived their present and projected their future.8 The past was in fact the necessary and unavoidable starting point and foundation for living the present and planning for the future; taking into consideration the conception of time in Ancient Mesopotamia, Mesopotamian people, differently from what we usually say and think, had their past in front of them, while the future was behind them.9 According to the Mesopotamian conception, the past is an imminent reality that permeates each phenomenon of life, while the future is an unreal and immaterial realm that needs the contribution of the past to be reliable and sustainable. Memory is not a passive storage of the mind, but remembering is a deliberately programmatic, active and creative process of constructing the world. The performance of memory is strictly physical and it thus needs a place where it can be performed, communicated and shared, a lieu de mémoire, according to the definition by Pierre Nora, where archives must be deliberately created, anniversaries maintained, celebrations organized, eulogies pronounced and bills notarized, since such activities no longer occur naturally.10 The idea and representation of memory is often associated with places that are motionless and store all souvenirs and evidences of the past: if space is the ground of remembering against time, the true value of memories consists in their motionless and timeless dimension. Monuments are built to remember an event and register the names of places and people that should never die:11 for that reason, their form should be timeless, in a safe place that needs to be preserved as part of a circuit of operations and activities to keep the memory alive. Human history does not only proceed through the building of monuments and memorials, but also operates through destruction and cancellation, causing a dramatic change of the lieu de mémoire that might lose its mnemonic function or take on a new mnemonic meaning, from a positive to a negative aspect: no longer a lieu de mémoire but a lieu de damnatio memoriae.12 The destruction and cancellation of monuments and memorials acquire a deep meaning, though on a negative level: even now, monuments and

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memorials of the past suffer deliberate actions of cancellation due to political, religious and cultural reasons or fanatic irrationality. The void where once a mnemonic sign of a past society stood actually becomes a new mnemonic marker: the absence recalls what was there and it stresses the violent change of the lieu de mémoire. Iconoclasm and the destruction of memorials have always affected the history of humankind;13 dealing with such attitudes in the past, scholars tend to find explanations and reasons historicizing events, while ongoing similar events are deeply denounced as different causes are involved. We, as Western scholars, do not share the pretexts of the destroyers (although European history shows that the same justifications based on either political or religious explanations have been exactly replicated, adopted and shared).14 If memory is founded on the concept of place that guarantees its physicality and materiality (although this does not automatically imply that objects, inscriptions and other souvenirs are always visible – as with the foundation deposits of palaces and temples in Ancient Mesopotamia), changes and interventions along human history might cause a transformation of the place of memory: monuments and evidences of the past might in fact be either relocated (put back in place with an operation of restoration and rehabilitation – as with the archaeological activities of the Babylonian kings in the 1st millennium)15 or replaced (substituted by new memorials or even destroyed; in this extreme case they are replaced by the void – this practice was probably not uncommon, as the inscriptions of Mesopotamian kings usually warned their successors against the cancellation or manipulation of their names and souvenirs). Referring specifically to the Mesopotamian tradition of the ritual foundation deposits when a temple, palace or house was projected and built, it is interesting to note that figurines and bricks lying in the deposits of the foundation of the building are invisible signs of the ritual operation that occurred at the time of the edification: modern and contemporary archaeological discoveries and the archaeological works on Babylonian temples by the Neo-Babylonian kings reveal the existence of these signs; Neo-Babylonian kings aimed specifically at recovering this evidence of the past to restore and re-­found the name of the builder, on one hand, and the building itself, on the other, by adding their own name as the last intervention in the life and history of the temple.16 When the foundation deposit was placed in the building with a ritual ceremony, it

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acquired the value and function of historical document and mnemonic sign, bearing the name of the builder, the name of the god to whom the temple was dedicated, and the date. It was not important that these signs were visible: it was much more important and useful to know that they were there, acting on their own for the protection of the building and guaranteeing the transmission of memory to the future. The invisibility of the foundation deposits that are buried within the building does not condemn them to oblivion: rather it is this aspect of invisibility that strengthens the awareness of their existence and performative nature in their depth. Going further, it could be argued that foundation deposits become mnemonic traces when they are physically excavated and discovered: as fragments of the past, foundation deposits and, as a consequence, the oldest parts of the buildings are reworked, reused and reincorporated in the present, resulting in the temporal co-­existence of past and present in a new spatial dimension.17 Instead of basing the analysis exclusively on the distinction between literate and illiterate societies and cultures,18 it is essential to focus on the existence and preservation of the lieux de mémoire. Of course, the preservation of places of memory depends on several factors: 1. Not all places are archaeologically known and, as a consequence, future archaeological discoveries might provide new data to complete the memory gap. 2. Places of memory have not been found since they simply do not exist, and so we can speak of an absence of memory that was too fallible or perishable to be kept in a fixed place for a long time. 3. Places of memory have disappeared since they have been purposely the target of a systematic destruction; the memory has been transformed and condemned to amnesia. As stated in the introduction of the volume Archaeologies of Memory, ‘place’ as a broad category ‘encompasses monuments, landscapes, natural features, buildings, tombs, trees, obelisks, shrines, mountain peaks, and caves’:19 moreover, unlike the distinction based on writing, analysis can thus be sharper and go beyond the too simplistic contrast between elites and common people that implies additional considerations on terminology, like the organization of the ancient societies and nature of the evidence at the analysts’ disposal. In fact,

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the construction of a lieu de mémoire is a cross activity that can be fostered by both elites and common people; of course, the intensity, monumentality and materiality of each lieu de mémoire influence its durability and effects on the whole society, and on history. The attention paid to the maintenance of the lieu de mémoire by ancient people determines its success and preservation for future generations and increases the possibility that archaeologists will find it, and might explain how people conceived, valued and promoted their past:20 archaeological research of the mnemonic traces can in fact detect the voluntary practices of remembering and forgetting, with the possibility of identifying artificial memories suitably built and conceived through a process of selection or destruction of specific pieces of evidence.21 The search for all kinds of places of memory that can be ascribed to the voluntary memory of elites and mnemonic practices of common people constitutes the difficulty and, at the same time, the challenge of archaeology: it is obviously much easier to concentrate on the former due to the better state of preservation of the archaeological remains and to the tendency of interpretation and topics of archaeological and historical studies in the past (as an example, I refer to the study of imperial powers and so the identification and formulation of the concept of empires in the Ancient Near East;22 or, strictly linked to this, the trend of propaganda studies for the analysis and interpretation of official inscriptions and art, started in the 1970s).23 The nature of the archaeological data at the archaeologists’ disposal led to the classification and categorization of the now widespread concept of collective memory, after the contribution of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs with his works Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925) and La mémoire collective (1950). It is, however, true that the clearest and most incisive evidence about memory practices belongs to the elites of ancient societies: notwithstanding this, can we simply ignore the possibility of analysing the memory of common people with their own products and mechanisms? Study into this neglected or little-­known aspect would reinforce the investigations on memory, as it allows researchers to explore the workings of memory in different strata of the society, showing how the performance of memory in the lieux de mémoire describes and defines the social relationships and inter-­subjectivity within the community – taking into consideration the sensual and sensory effects of actions and objects as mnemonic products in what we could label as an

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aesthetic of memory (aesthetic in its proper meaning as the study of sensory values). In fact, speaking of collective memory, it should first be clarified what is meant by the words ‘collective’ and ‘collectivity’: how many memories and collectivities are we dealing with? Memory and mnemonic practices of large numbers of individuals, forming a group, are often described as social memory: in the words of Van Dyke and Alcock, social memory is ‘the construction of a collective notion (not an individual belief) about the way things were in the past’.24 This definition removes the role of individuals in building a shared memory; however, if it is true that social memory encompasses the past that people share with one another – regardless of whether they personally experienced the events or not25 – it is important to stress that the social and cultural frameworks, within which souvenirs are registered and performed, define inter­subjective relationships among individuals. Given the same cultural and social environment, individuals can share the past that they did not personally live or experience, thanks to the common cognitive and neurological human substratum. In this respect, the construction of a shared memory not only involves the (re)presentation of facts, but it also implies the remembering of emotions, either positive or negative. As a consequence, memory becomes a strict bond among the members of the society, either on a large scale (properly collective memory) or on a reduced relationship (paradoxically, even at the personal level and identity of the individual). In particular, narratives, both verbally and visually, are the most efficient instrument for registering facts and events that are chosen to establish a memory and to make emotions continuously alive: narratives guarantee the continuity of action and, therefore, of the emotions involved. As concerns memory, narratives form the common background of a group, and their value is not only in the past (remembering ancient times), but is truly actual (in the present).

(Non-)official memory? Social memory is framed by groups of individuals who share common social and cultural practices that determine how memory is socially experienced, lived and fostered, arriving at the postulation of the cultural memory by Jan

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Assmann.26 It seems that we can recognize a proper social and cultural (collective) memory in the most ancient societies, before the formation of a distinguished elite group that, we can say, acts as an individual who experiences, shapes and fosters his own memory expanded and enlarged to a social and collective level. In fact, starting from the formation of the royal power in Ancient Mesopotamia, official documents (inscriptions, stelae, statues, appropriation and use – or abuse – of the landscape) become the objectification of the past, transforming a personal memory (what Halbwachs calls mémoire autobiographique)27 into history; in other words, the social memory objectified,28 which is also shared by a restricted collectivity strictly tied to the chief or the king because of firm belief or self-­interests. This collectively institutional (imposed?) memory corresponds to what we could label a political memory.29 Which data do we have to encode mnemonic practices of non-­elite levels of Ancient Mesopotamian societies? Needless to say, archaeological information is scanty, since they leave but little trace: we are not dealing here with monumentality, but with small signs, even immaterial traces that have not been recorded and did not survive. If a top-­down process and machination by the elites can be systematically researched and followed, a bottom-­up approach is still a desideratum, but in the end it might occur that this reverse process is principally based on argumenta e silentio. However, it is still possible to investigate a bottom-­up process of mnemonic practices. Early Dynastic funerary practices in Mesopotamia, in a historical moment that precedes the formation of the royal power, can be used to explain such a possibility: the absence of a precise figure that can be recognized as the king allows us to analyse the matter of memory in the 3rd millennium BC without the risk of running into questions of propaganda. In a funerary context, we can speak of the memory of the body, or somato-­memory, where the body is the object of memory and memory is enacted through the body.30 Concerning images, Andrew Jones points out that ‘rather than treating image production as a process enabled by memory, it may be more appropriate to think of it as a process that enables mnemonic transmission’:31 likewise, the body of the dead defines a process that enables mnemonic transmission; it is not the final product of a mnemonic cultural process, but it embodies memory and fosters the remembering of the dead. Indeed, this emphasis on the importance of the dead body seems to be strengthened by the fact that burials in the Early Dynastic

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Period mostly occurred in domestic structures;32 it might happen that, as at Kish, burials were directly sunk from below the floors of occupied houses, indicating a perfect contemporaneity.33 At Ur, houses with related burials in the area of the Royal Cemetery have been recognized by Leonard Woolley upon the Seal Impression Stratum 4, before the discovery of the cemetery with the so-­called royal tombs, dated to the late Early Dynastic IIIB.34 The burials underneath the floors of domestic units define the lieu de mémoire at a private level: it is not a monumental place, and is confined to the domestic milieu with an attempt by the people living in those domestic spaces to establish a direct and constant link between the netherworld and the domain of the living.35 It is probably inappropriate to speak of a cult of the ancestors, but this depends on the value we ascribe to the meaning of the word ‘ancestor’:36 the intention to build a lieu de mémoire that is not a monument, isolated and emphasized by its independence, is evident; rather it is a lived place characterized by daily activities: a special co-­existence is created between the two realms within each house, in a symbiotic and complementary reciprocity. In this initial phase of the Early Dynastic Period, burials are characterized by similar features and, in particular, by indistinct funerary goods: the same elements can be recognized in intramural burials across several cities of central and southern Mesopotamia.37 A kind of koiné can be singled out: borrowing the method of the period eye used by art historians, as developed by Michael Baxandall,38 we can speak of a memory eye, that is, memory in this period is conceived and transmitted through a combination of products and material things that are the result of innate skills and skills based on experience, often culturally determined. Conversely, in the late Early Dynastic III, differentiation within the society starts with the achievement of a leading group whose burials are distinguished by their shape, place and wealthy grave goods, as it might be seen at Khafajah, Abu Salabikh and Ur.39 Burials and tombs co-­exist inside the city: next to necropolises, burials are still placed within domestic units, with a progressive social differentiation in the ‘monumentality’ of the built funerary space and the dimension of the house. In a period where the temple is still the economic and social agent of the city, Mesopotamian societies start to reorganize, and this can be traced in funerary customs through the choice of the dimension of shapes and places and the intentional diversity of material qualities of grave goods.

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Taking into consideration the funerary traditions of the Early Dynastic Period, the situation can be used as an exemplification of a bottom-­up process of analysis: commemoration in the wealthy tombs of the Royal Cemetery of Ur results from the oldest Early Dynastic I–II and contemporary private burials, and the differences are due to the political and cultural changes occurring in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC that determine the shift of the cultural parameters of memory. When dealing with memory, analysts must take many aspects into account: in particular, memory apparently seems to be a monolithic set of information and mechanism of representation, divulgation and communication, while it reveals a complex stratigraphy depending on the type and amount of information, the context of use, and the continuity and practicability of the place of memory across time. Even the absence of memory can become a new form of memory: based on the information archaeologists can collect from the field, memory should be inflected accordingly without resorting to generalization and necessarily to definitions that, most of the time, reflect more what we think and presume rather than what ancient societies thought and wanted to express. Archaeology is doubtless the primary historical discipline to physically face the question of memory, from the work on the field to the interpretation of data: the deconstructionism of recent archaeological research is the only way to operate a U-turn in the memory studies with the identification of memories rather than one (shared, collective, cultural, social) memory. In fact, thinking of the archaeologists of the future, could they describe and identify a common, shared, collective memory of our time? It would be possible, but only if peculiar cultural elements (language, religion and politics) are taken into account – elements that differ from place to place (the environment is also a culturally crucial component). In this respect, not only time but also geography/ environment (place) influence the created memory – conversely, memory affects the awareness of both time and place – and, therefore, its correct interpretation.

Notes 1 As history clearly shows, memories have a different fate depending on the political and religious situations and attitudes of ruling classes; sources reveal the existence

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of a number of memories that co-­exist, although contrasting (being the result, for example, of two different and opposing political systems). Conversely, sources can show the unilateral success of one memory over the other(s), and thus the unbalanced situation is forcedly created by the mass of visual and written documents preserved, on the one hand, and the absence of those that have disappeared, have been destroyed or simply have not yet been recovered, on the other. 2 Liverani 2010: 51–53. 3 Otto 2015. 4 Halbwachs 1968. 5 Assmann 2011. See also the contributions in this volume by Contardi (Chapter Two) and Bommas (Chapter Nine) for a detailed discussion of this aspect. 6 Laneri 2015. 7 Animals, such as elephants and dolphins, are also said to have a memory – a social memory that works as an element of cohesion and identification of the group; within the human domain, memory does not only describe a system of identification of people and places, but it also precisely affects the creation, even the manipulation, and the transmission of knowledge. 8 See the contribution of Bommas in this volume (Chapter Nine) on the importance of archaeology as a means to assess memory. 9 Liverani 2010: 52–53. 10 Nora 1989: 12. 11 Rowlands 1993: 145. 12 Lyon Crawford 2007: 27. 13 A conference held at the Oriental Institute in Chicago in 2011 was devoted to the theme of iconoclasm in the ancient world (May ed. 2012). 14 Of course, a simple comparison between destructions in the past and the ongoing attacks on the cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq is inappropriate: future research and studies will deal with and try to historicize these events. However, current events show how the cancellation of the memory is still a threat and the preservation is not only fundamental, but also requires strong efforts. 15 Winter 2000. 16 The kings of Babylon actually operated the first archaeological excavations, giving a chrono-­history and chrono-­stratigraphy of the city. 17 Hamilakis 2010: 193. 18 Does writing really have a hegemonic role in the memory question? Surely, writing changed the system of registering facts and events and thus it had repercussions on the concept of memory, and on the possibility of transmitting and communicating facts, feelings and thoughts. However, we must take into

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consideration the fact that the mnemonic system of registration existed well before the invention of writing and then co-­existed with writing, such as oral traditions and the use of images. As a consequence, it seems that we elected writing as the most authoritative system and therefore mostly rely upon it. 19 Van Dyke and Alcock 2003: 5. 20 Ibid.: 2. 21 Hamilakis 2010: 190. 22 Liverani 2005. 23 Propaganda has been generally used to describe the cultural products of imperial and dictatorial powers: in the Ancient Near East, the Assyrian empire has been the preferred research topic to show how the imperial organization of the Assyrians was deeply imbued with and based on propaganda (Liverani 1979; Reade 1979). In this respect, how can memory be interpreted? What meanings do Assyrian royal inscriptions and visual art acquire and foster? If all is propaganda, so even is memory a fictitious construction showing a vision of the world that has been altered by the Assyrian ruling class. Recently, however, the propagandistic interpretation of Assyrian inscriptions and images has been called into question (Gillmann 2011–12): the evaluation of the type of audience for Assyrian inscriptions and bas-­reliefs shows how propaganda does not completely and correctly explain the mechanism of communication in the Assyrian culture. Assyrian gods, the kings and the court magnates are the first direct receivers of the contents of words and images: as a consequence, the narrated events that principally refer to the role of the Assyrian deities and the position of the Assyrian king are in fact expression of a collective memory, a collectivity that does not encompass the entire Assyrian society at all levels, but exactly points at a restricted ‘collectivity’ that precisely knows and shares the code of communication and the cultural traits. In this respect, memory works as a system of self-­reference of the Assyrian identity as conceived and understood at a personal (king) level. 24 Van Dyke and Alcock 2003: 2. 25 Schwartz 2013: 495. 26 Assmann 2011. 27 Halbwachs 1968: 35–41. 28 Jones 2007: 53. 29 Assmann, A. 2006: 215–220. 30 Connerton 1989: 72–104 and Laneri’s contribution in this volume (Chapter Four). This mechanism of the memory enacted through the body can be clearly observed in the practices of the Neolithic period (which precedes the use of writing), when skulls were modelled with clay so that the lineaments of the faces of the dead survived in the present (Belting 2001: 146, 150–154; 2014).

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31 Jones 2007: 196. 32 Laneri 2013. 33 Algaze 1983–84: 140. 34 Woolley 1934: 15. 35 Collins 2013. 36 Laneri 2015: 4–7. 37 Collins 2013; Vogel 2013. 38 Baxandall 1988. 39 Laneri 2013: 386–392.

Bibliography Algaze, G., 1983–84. ‘Private Houses and Graves at Ingharra, A Reconsideration’ in: Mesopotamia XVIII–XIX, 135–193. Assmann, A., 2006. ‘Memory, Individual and Collective’, in: R.E. Goodin, C. Tilly (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford, 210–224. Assmann, J., 2011. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization. Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination, Cambridge. Baxandall, M., 1988. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, Oxford. Belting, H., 2001. Bild-Anthropologie, Munich. Belting, H., 2014. Faces. Eine Geschichte des Gesichts, Munich. Collins, P., 2013. ‘Everyday Life in Sumer’, in: H. Crawford (ed.), The Sumerian World, London, 344–357. Connerton, P., 1989. How Societies Remember, Cambridge. Gillmann, N., 2011–12. ‘Les bas-­reliefs néo-­assyriens: une nouvelle tentative d’interpretation’ in: State Archives of Assyria Bulletin XIX, 203–237. Halbwachs, M., 1968. La mémoire collective, Paris. Hamilakis, Y., 2010. ‘Re-­collecting the fragments: archaeology as mnemonic practice’, in: K. Lillios, V. Tsamis (eds.), Material Mnemonics: Everyday Memory in Prehistoric Europe, Oxford, 188–199. Jones, A., 2007. Memory and Material Culture, Cambridge. Laneri, N., 2013. ‘Understanding the Living. Socio-Economic Dynamics of Funerary Practices in Southern Mesopotamia During the Early Dynastic Period’, in: B. Christiansen, U. Thaler (eds.), Ansehenssache. Formen von Prestige in Kulturen des Altertums, Munich, 385–399. Laneri, N., 2015. ‘Locating the Social Memory of the Ancestors. Residential Funerary Chambers in Mesopotamia during the Late Third and Early Second Millennium

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BC’, in: P. Pfälzner et al. (eds.), Contextualizing Grave Inventories in the Ancient Near East, Wiesbaden, 3–11. Liverani, M., 1979. ‘The Ideology of the Assyrian Empire’, in: M.T. Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires, Copenhagen, 297–318. Liverani, M., 2005. ‘Imperialism’, in: S. Pollock, R. Bernbeck (eds.), Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives, Malden/Oxford, 223–243. Liverani, M., 2010. ‘Parole di bronzo, di pietra, d’argilla’ in: Scienze dell’Antichità 16, 27–62. Lyon Crawford, C., 2007. ‘Collecting, Defacing, Reinscribing (and Otherwise Performing) Memory in the Ancient World’, in: N. Yoffee (ed.), Negotiating the Past in the Past. Identity, Memory, and Landscape in Archaeological Research, Tucson, 10–42. May, N.N. (ed.), 2012. Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond, OIS 8, Chicago. Nora, P., 1989. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’ in: Representations 26, 7–24. Otto, A., 2015. ‘How to Reconstruct Daily Life in a Near Eastern Settlement: Possibilities and Constraints of a Combined Archaeological, Historical, and Scientific Approach’, in: M. Müller (ed.), Household Studies in Complex Societies. (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches, OIS 10, Chicago, 61–82. Reade, J.E., 1979. ‘Ideology and Propaganda in Assyrian Art’, in: M.T. Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires, Copenhagen, 329–344. Rowlands, M., 1993. ‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’ in: World Archaeology 25/2, 141–151. Schwartz, G.M., 2013. ‘Memory and Its Demolition: Ancestors, Animals and Sacrifice at Umm el-Marra, Syria’ in: Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 23/3, 495–522. Van Dyke, R.M. and Alcock, S.E., 2003. ‘Archaeologies of Memory: An Introduction’, in: R.M. Van Dyke and S.E. Alcock (eds.), Archaeologies of Memory, Malden, 1–13. Vogel, H., 2013. ‘Death and Burial’, in: H. Crawford (ed.), The Sumerian World, London, 419–434. Winter, I.J., 2000. ‘Babylonian Archaeologists of the(ir) Mesopotamian Past’, in: P. Matthiae et al. (eds), Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Rome, May 18th–23rd 1998, Rome, 1785–1798. Woolley, C.L., 1934. Ur Excavations 2. The Royal Cemetery. A Report on the Predynastic and Sargonid Graves Excavated Between 1926 and 1934, London and Philadelphia.

4

Embodying the Memory of the Royal Ancestors in Western Syria during the Third and Second Millennia BC: The Case of Ebla and Qatna Nicola Laneri

Introduction The relationship between objects, people and places can be fundamental when the aim is to create forms of memorialization for the dead among the living. This is especially the case with ancient societies who left behind numerous traces that can be useful for scholars in reconstructing ancient religious beliefs and practices. In particular, archaeologists have used a social memory theoretical framework to enlarge the field of research to a broader agenda that, as emphasized by Andrew Jones, can help researchers in defining ‘how things and places helped societies remember’.1 Regarding funerary contexts, researchers have primarily directed their interest towards the definition of archaeological correlates that can help identify tangible elements to be associated with ancient cults of the ancestors. Even though the search for the cult of the ancestors can be both risky and tricky,2 this exercise can be particularly fruitful if the archaeological data are supported by written sources that better explain the role of the ancestors and how they were venerated and memorialized by a given society. For example, in the case of the Ancient Near East the proliferation of texts dedicated to this topic can be found starting from the 3rd millennium BC. These texts are mostly concerned with the subject of royal or elite ancestor worship, and it therefore appears of great importance to confront the textual evidence with

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archaeological data in order to interpret the ritual practices involved in the memorialization of royal ancestors. Of particular relevance for the topic investigated in this paper is the appearance of royal hypogea built underneath palaces, as well as mausolea that have marked the urban fabric of numerous Ancient Near Eastern cities from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BC. Thus, in this contribution the social memory theoretical framework will be a tenet to be used in analysing two specific case studies from western Syria: the 3rd ­millennium example available from Ebla, and the 2nd millennium Royal Hypogeum discovered at Qatna. In this epistemological process I will use the written data to support my theoretical proposition that is based on the assumption that the memory of royal ancestors is pivotal for constructing the ‘charismatic authority’ of royal families and linking them to a cosmic dimension. Because, as mentioned in a previous publication, ‘in order to establish this authority, the leader’s charisma has to be communicated through a language based on the performance of rituals that assist the observer in connecting the royal domain with the divine one’.3 In particular, the focus of this brief article will be on the investigation of the role of body memories in constructing forms of memorialization, with an emphasis on how memories were incorporated by the social body through the practice of ritual journeys and convivial eating.

Embodied memories Through the application of the work on social memory by Maurice Halbwachs (1992) and Paul Connerton (1989), archaeologists have been able to enhance a research framework dedicated to identifying the relationship between places, objects and people in the process of remembrance among ancient societies. This can be seen in some interesting recent contributions to the archaeological research on the social memory theoretical framework that has been used to access the material remains of collective memory in different archaeological contexts, such as the volumes edited by Van Dyke and Alcock (2003), Mills and Walker (2008), and the monograph written by Jones (2007).

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However, for a coherent research on memory, it is pivotal to establish how all the elements involved in the act of memorialization come together. In the third and final chapter of his book, How Societies Remember, Connerton focuses on the concept of ‘bodily practices’ that serve the purpose of embodying memories through habitual acts.4 Thus, it is the individual who reinforces the relationship between places, objects and memories, through bodily and active participation in forms of remembrance enacted as part of the social group, such as during ritual and ceremonial practices. According to this cognitive process, the role played by the body in incorporating memories becomes pivotal. In fact, the body represents the central subject in the relationship with the material world, because, as pointed out by Julian Thomas, ‘the body is not a container we live in, it is an aspect of the self we live through’.5 Within this perspective, I find the concept of body memory an inspiring tool for defining how remembrance is constructed among ancient societies, because it opens up a different way of looking at memory that is no longer an internal act of mental memorization, but instead an active form of storing information in the human cognitive system based on habitual and repetitive bodily actions that are sedimented through the use of the senses. Thus, as emphasized by Jones, ‘remembrance is not a process internal to the human mind; rather, it is a process that occurs in the bodily encounter between people and things’.6

Palaces and royal hypogea in Western Syria during the third and second Millennia BC In Mesopotamia, the 3rd millennium BC is characterized by a social transformation that, in terms of funerary customs, is marked by an inclusion of graves within the urban fabric through the construction of residential graves, royal hypogea and mausolea.7 This is even more evident when facing the funerary customs of elite groups in north-­western Syria and south-­eastern Anatolia, where selected deceased were buried either in large underground hypogea, as in the case of the tombs discovered at Tell Kazane, Tilbeshar or Ebla; or in above-­ground funerary monuments, as seen at Umm el-Marra, Mari, Tell B’ia, Tell Banat, Tell Ahmar, Jerablus Tahtani and Gre Virike.8

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The Hypogeum G4 at Ebla and the mausoleum for the royal ancestors From among these 3rd ­millennium royal funerary internments, the case of Ebla represents a very interesting and intriguing example. Here we encounter the presence of a large underground hypogeum located underneath the Royal Palace G (i.e. the Hypogeum G4), as well as texts documenting the ritual of the royal coronation, in which the new royal couple travel within temples and the ancestral mausoleum located in the vicinity of the city-­state. The grave Hypogeum G4 was excavated by the Italian team of archaeologists directed by Paolo Matthiae between 1992 and 1995.9 It was topographically located underneath the western sector of Palace G and at a depth of almost 6 metres below the floor of the royal building. The hypogeum was composed of two large communicating rooms, both roughly 5 by 4 metres in size and with floors made of fine lime plaster. Their structural construction comprised blocks of well-­cut limestone that most probably formed a corbelled vault as the roofing system. However, the stones have been sacked and there are no remains of the roofing system except for a few blocks protruding from the sides of the rooms, suggesting such a structural composition. The discovery of such an extraordinary funerary architecture lacks any evidence of skeletons or any signs of funerary goods, suggesting that it was either completely sacked in antiquity, used as a sort of cenotaph or, simply, never utilized as a proper mortuary locale. Given the poor preservation of the remains, it is particularly important to notice the physical proximity of this large, two-­chamber hypogeum with the royal palace and the unquestionable connection of these two architectural structures in grounding the Eblaite kingship to royal ancestral figures. Furthermore, Archi suggests the possible textual evidence of a royal grave (i.e. ÉxPAP) embedded in Ebla’s urban fabric.10 The cult of the royal ancestors at Ebla is even more evident in a series of texts dedicated to the coronation of the royal couple.11 These texts are very useful because they indicate the existence of a locale outside of the Ebla city walls dedicated to the cult of the royal ancestors, i.e. the mausoleum in Nenash, as well as the entanglement between the new royal couple, the memory of the royal ancestors and the cosmic presence of the gods of Ebla.12 These texts also

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narrate a long pilgrimage that, as pointed out by Archi, represented the celebration of the union between male and female principles, which was renewed in heaven as on earth.13 The ritual initiates with the future queen waiting in a state of liminality outside the city wall after leaving her father’s house (Fig. 4.1).14 The next day, dressed in her wedding garments, she passes the Gate of the Kura and enters an open space, the ma-­ra-sum, and finally enters the temple of Kura, either the one in the SA.ZA, within the vicinity of the palace, or the one located near the Gate of Kura. Here offerings are made to the god of the city, Kura; to his divine partner, Barama; to Ishhara; to the tutelary god of kingship; and to two minor gods. On the third day the queen enters the temple of Kura. On the fourth day,

Fig. 4.1  The hypothetical journey for the coronation of the royal couple within the ancient city of Ebla (after Ristvet 2011: Fig. 5).

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a group of elite members that includes the royal couple, priests, scribes and other officials, begins the journey into the countryside, visiting numerous settlements in order to make offerings to other divinized kings until, on the seventh day, they reach the é ma-­tim, the mausoleum of the dead ancestors, in Nenash. The royal couple then visit the mausoleum, and the statues of Kura and Barama are transported there from the city on a cart. It is here that the new royal couple receive the blessing of the royal ancestors for their new sovereignty, and of the mother-­goddess Nintu, who announces that there ‘is a new god Kura, a new goddess Barama, a new king, a new queen’.15 After this, three cycles of seven-­day rituals are performed in Nenash and, when the caravan again enters the city of Ebla, another set of ritual performances is enacted in the local temple dedicated to Kura. The end of this long journey coincides with an offering in the temples to the divinized Sagishu, and the ritual deposition of a statue of the king and one of the queens who ‘lies in the temple of the gods of the king’.16 Even though no reconnaissance survey of the area surrounding Ebla has been able to link Nenash with a modern site, some aspects of the text related to the rituals enacted within the city are confirmed by the archaeological data, such as the discovery of the two temples dedicated to Kura: the Red Temple underneath the Middle Bronze Age temple of Ishtar, which is most probably the temple in SA.ZA; and the Temple of the Rock, which has been interpreted as the temple of Kura near the gate.17 In addition, in the northern sector of the Royal Palace G the discovery of a standard representing two facing women, one seated and one standing, interpreted by Matthiae as the living queen standing in sign of devotion in front of an ancestral seated queen, confirms the inseparable relationship between ‘living royals’, ‘royal ancestors’ and the divine world.18 All these elements are of extraordinary importance because they give us a clear picture of the importance of the royal ancestors in continuing the royal genealogy as well as the role of the ritual journey to their mausoleum in Nenash in embedding the royal genealogy within the cosmic world.19 The journey embeds the primary locale of the kingship (i.e. the palace) with the divine world (i.e. the temples) and the royal ancestors (i.e. the mausoleum); and it sacralizes this relationship into the landscape of the Eblaite region. In other words, it represented a way of connecting the royal genealogy, which was

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embodied in the memory connecting the underground hypogeum with the palace, to the cosmological world, which connects the gods venerated in the temples with the royal ancestors venerated in the mausoleum.20 The importance of the memory of the royal ancestors at Ebla also continued during the following 2nd millennium BC, when a series of underground chambers were carved into the natural bedrock in order to host the remains of the royal ancestors and the related funerary goods; these were directly connected to the royal palaces by means of shafts and steep staircases. During this archaeological phase, a sanctuary dedicated to the cult of the ancestors was also located above ground.21

The Royal Hypogeum of Qatna In addition to those unearthed at the Middle Bronze Age city of Ebla, other underground hypogea carved in the natural bedrock appear as a marking feature of the funerary customs of western Syria and the Levant during the 2nd millennium BC. From among these examples, the Royal Hypogeum located underneath the Royal Palace of Qatna (both were discovered by a Syro-Italian-German project) is obviously the most astonishing.22 The palace and the related hypogeum date to a long chronology that goes from the 18th to the 14th century BC, when it was then destroyed either by the Hittites or by their enemies during the kingdom of Shuppililiuma I. However, most of the materials found in the palace’s floor, as well as the graves, are dated to the G 7b phase, that is between 1400 and 1340 BC.23 The funerary chambers of the hypogeum (Fig.  4.2) were located about 12 metres below the foundations of the palace and were connected to the palace through the long stepped corridor AQ. This corridor contained four wooden doors that led to the shaft/antechamber VK, a 5 by 4 metre room located about 5 metres below the corridor’s floor. The bottom of the antechamber was reachable by disposable wooden ladders, and this room acted as the entrance to the hypogeum.24 Such a complex entrance system allowed a connection between the underground rooms and Hall A of the Palace, which has been considered as a sort of ‘ancestral ceremonial hall’ probably used as a room dedicated to rituals and ceremonies associated with the cult of the ancestors; whereas room CP, built directly on top of the main,

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Fig. 4.2  Reconstruction of the Royal Hypogeum of Qatna (after Pfälzner 2007: Fig. 31).

southern funerary chambers of the Royal Hypogeum, has been interpreted by the excavators as ‘the main living room of the king’.25 The entrance to the rock-­cut hypogeum consisted of a large gate flanked by the presence of two basalt statues of seated royal male figures with offering bowls in front of them. From here, a passage led into the main large funerary chamber, which was columned and gave access to three smaller rooms located on each side. The grave had multiple depositions representing at least the last fifty years of use of the palace. In fact, together with more than 2,000 objects and funerary goods, the remains of a total of about twenty to twenty-­four individuals were found. Out of all the unearthed skeletal remains, only one skeleton (i.e. an individual lying on a stone table in chamber 4) was discovered in a fully articulated position.26 In the central chamber, a basalt sarcophagus and four wooden biers were used to contain the bodies of the deceased. Other finds include a wide and rich variety of funerary goods including gold or semiprecious stone beads, decorative plaques, miniature vessels, a modelled hand made of gold, an extraordinary example of an amber lion, and numerous

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ceramic vessels, most of which were placed along the north-­western corner and, according to the excavators, were used to contain food, probably in association with the performance of rituals for remembering the memory of the ancestor enacted in the southern chamber, where no traces of human skeletons were found.27 Together with the important social role played by banqueting with the royal ancestors and the adornment of the human bodies with rich funerary goods and textiles,28 another key element for creating and reinforcing the memory of the royal ancestors at Qatna is represented by the journey from the royal palace above to the royal tomb below, a journey that was framed by the presence of doors, corridors and gates.29 Due to its excellent state of conservation, the Royal Hypogeum of Qatna is an extraordinary discovery that allows us to reconstruct the entire process of funerary deposition and gives us the unique opportunity to archaeologically trace how the memory of the royal ancestors was materially constructed and revised through the sharing of common meals and the travelling from the world of the living (situated above in the palace) to the that of the dead (located in the underground multi-­chambered hypogeum).

Ceremonies of the body for the memorialization of ancestors As mentioned at the beginning of this contribution, one fundamental point of Connerton’s study of social memory is dedicated to bodily practices as forms of memorization of the past, because, as he correctly pointed out, ‘in habitual memory the past is sedimented in the body’.30 In particular, I find the concepts of ‘incorporating practices’ and especially of the ‘ceremonies of the body’ as pivotal tools for interpreting how the memory of ancestors can be cemented in the cognitive domain of individuals in a specific group. In fact, it is through the repetitive enactment of ceremonies dedicated to the memory of ancestors that the ‘noble privileges’ of the living can be affirmed. But it is through active bodily actions performed by the participants in the event that the memory of the past can be embodied. Jones’s idea of commemorative performance leads to a similar conclusion.31 It involves bodily participation through an engagement with places and objects, which suddenly

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becomes a connective practice that ties together people and things into acts of memorialization. To me, these aspects of body memories in the process of memorialization of dead ancestors can be clearly found in two aspects emerging from the case studies presented here: first, the ritual journey, and second, convivial eating.

The ritual journey: Travelling to the world of the ancestors Ritual and ideal journeys from the great above to the great below characterize numerous religions. In the Ancient Near East this is quite evident when confronting several texts dedicated to the journey to the netherworld by heroes or deities, such as in the famous example of ‘The descent of Inana/Ishtar to the Netherworld’. Throughout the journey, the body is challenged by a series of events that transform the cosmic perspective of the relationship between the great above and the netherworld. I believe the construction of underground royal hypogea is strongly linked to such a cosmological perspective; consequentially, the relationship between the palace and the grave can be envisioned as a physical representation of a sort of axis mundi that connects the living kings with the royal ancestors at a cosmic level. In order to incorporate such a cosmological concept into the collective memories, it was necessary to enact bodily ritual practices of descent and ascent to and from the locale of the ancestors – that is the underground hypogeum – through a complex path composed of corridors, steps and doors, such as with the path recognizable in the relationship between the palace and the royal tomb at Qatna. However, to make the commemorative performance even stronger and link it to a broader divine dimension, the journey could have also been thought of as a pilgrimage into the territory to determine the sacrality of the royal ancestors in their path to a cosmic dimension, as in the case of Ebla during the 3rd millennium BC. Thus, the journey for the memorialization and sacralization of the royal ancestors started from the axis mundi incorporated in the palace, and was then directed towards temples and mausolea that dotted the outer landscape in order to entangle genealogy and cosmology into the landscape of the living. This aspect has been correctly used by Ristvet in her analysis of the royal pilgrimage in Syria during the 3rd millennium,32 and, in a recent article, Archi has further emphasized the ritualistic aspect of the journey in his analysis of

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the archaeological and written data emerging from Ebla during the mid-3rd millennium BC.33

Food and memory: Convivial eating to commemorate the ancestors An aspect of fundamental importance in constructing forms of remembrance in funerary practices is the presence of food and communal feasting, which is further reinforced by cross-­cultural examples that help reconstruct possible ancient environments. In fact, food and the way of consuming it in convivial forms represent a powerful vehicle for constructing social memories, and can be considered ‘an important engine for the construction of intense bodily memories’ through its sensual aspects.34 Written cuneiform texts can help in understanding the importance of public banquets or offerings of foodstuff for honouring and remembering royal and wealthy ancestors in Ancient Near Eastern societies. In fact, starting from the 3rd millennium BC they inform us of a custom dedicated to the commemoration and remembrance of dead royal ancestors as demonstrated by the Sumerian ki-­a-nag (i.e. a sort of chapel) dedicated to the memory of royal individuals in southern Mesopotamia during the late 3rd millennium BC; and the famous kispu ritual dedicated to the remembrance of the dead, mentioned in later Akkadian texts.35 According to the written sources associated with the latter ritual, the ceremony consisted of libations in which ‘water was poured over the [ancestor’s] grave and food offered there, while prayers were spoken naming the dead’.36 The importance of communal feasts in memory of the ancestors as a form of respect towards the gods of the underworld is further emphasized when the royal deceased has to enter the netherworld, as is confirmed by the mythological text of Urnamma’s death and his descent to the netherworld.37 This element is further confirmed by the 3rd millennium BC texts from Ebla dedicated to the rituals enacted at Nenash, in which foodstuff and textiles were listed as offerings.38 In terms of archaeological evidence, the presence of the remains of foodstuff and vessels for the consumption of food and liquids inside the graves can help archaeologists understand the role of food both as a companion for the deceased into the netherworld and as part of acts of communal feasting performed directly inside the grave, as seen in the case highlighted at Qatna.

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These elements reinforce the existence of rituals dedicated to the memory of the ancestors in which food acted as a sensorial element to strengthen forms of bodily memories among the involved participants, and mortuary feasting, as emphasized by Holtzman, served the purpose of ‘creating a remembrance of the feast that is transformed into fame for the feast giver’.39

Conclusions The important role played by the ancestors and their cult in framing Ancient Syrian societies’ religiosity is widely substantiated by written sources.40 More recently, archaeological data have supported these sources and have proven that the creation of places for the cult of the ancestors was part of a framework necessary to strengthen the collective memory of a community and, in the case of elite groups, to reinforce the cosmological link between the royal families and the divine world. The cases of Ebla during the 3rd millennium BC and of Qatna during the 2nd millennium BC have confirmed this epistemological trajectory, and especially that the memorialization of ancestors needs to be constructed through a tight connection between places, material culture and bodily experiences. In the case of the royal ancestors, such processes of memorialization become even stronger when embedded in a broader cosmological discourse that implies cosmic values to royal genealogies.

Notes 1 Jones 2007: 5. 2 See Whitley (2002) for a discussion on the complexity of defining indicators for the cult of the ancestors in archaeological contexts. 3 Laneri 2008: 207. 4 Connerton 1989: 72. See also Nadali’s contribution in this volume (Chapter Three). 5 Thomas 1996: 19. 6 Jones 2007: 26. 7 Laneri 2007; 2014.

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8 Peltenburg 2013; Porter 2002; Ristvet 2011; Schwartz 2012; 2013. 9 Matthiae 1997. 10 Archi 2012: 11–12. 11 Fronzaroli 1993. 12 Archi 2013. 13 Archi 2012: 8. 14 A detailed and philological analysis of the texts dedicated to the journey to Nenash by the royal couple is available in Archi 2012 and Fronzaroli 1993. 15 Archi 2013: 230. 16 The pivotal role of the mausoleum in Nenash is also confirmed by other texts that mention the assignment of foodstuff and clothing as ritual offerings during the frequent visits to the locale by the king and his retinue, Archi 2012: 10–11. 17 Matthiae 2010: 107–117. 18 Matthiae 2010: 180, Fig. 93. 19 Ristvet 2015: 87–89. 20 Archi 2013. 21 Matthiae 2010: 435–438, 452–457. 22 Pfälzner 2007; 2012. 23 Pfälzner 2007: 36–43. 24 Ibid.: Fig. 31. 25 Ibid.: 51. 26 Ibid.: 55–59. 27 Ibid.: 58. The presence of benches, vessels and animal bones in this room supports the hypothesis that it was used as a sort of ‘banqueting room’ for performing the kispu ritual in remembrance of the royal ancestors. 28 Rosberger 2014. 29 Pfälzner 2012: 210. 30 Connerton 1989: 72. 31 Jones 2007: 44–46. 32 Ristvet 2011. 33 Archi 2013. 34 Holtzman 2006: 365. 35 Jacquet 2012; Jagersma 2007; Jonker 1995; Tsukimoto 1985; 2010. 36 Postgate 1992: 99. 37 Kramer 1967. 38 Archi 2012; Fronzaroli 1993. 39 Holtzman 2006: 371. 40 Toorn 1994; 1996.

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Bibliography Archi, A., 2012. ‘Cult of the Ancestors and Funerary Practices at Ebla’, in: P. Pfälzner et al. (eds.), (Re-)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East, Wiesbaden, 5–33. Archi, A., 2013. ‘Ritualization at Ebla’ in: Journal of Near Eastern Religion 13, 212–237. Connerton, P., 1989. How Societies Remember, Cambridge. Fronzaroli, P., 1993. Archivi reali di Ebla, Testi 11. Testi rituali della regalità (Archivio L.2769), Roma. Halbwachs, M., 1992. On Collective Memory, Chicago. Holtzman, J.D., 2006. ‘Food and Memory’ in: Annual Review of Anthropology 35, 361–378. Jacquet, A., 2012. ‘Funerary Rites and Cult of the Ancestors during the Amorite Period’, in P. Pfälzner et al. (eds.), (Re-)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East, Wiesbaden, 123–136. Jagersma, B., 2007. ‘The Calendar of the Funerary Cult in Ancient Lagash’ in: Bibliotheca Orientalis 64/3, 289–308. Jones, A., 2007. Memory and Material Culture, Cambridge. Jonker, J., 1995. The Topography of Remembrance. The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia, Studies in the History of Religion 68, Leiden. Kramer, S.N., 1967. ‘The Death of Ur-Nammu and His Descent to the Netherworld’ in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 21, 104–122. Laneri, N., 2007. ‘Burial Practices at Titriş Höyük, Turkey: An Interpretation’ in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 66/4, 241–266. Laneri, N., 2008. ‘Texts in Context: Defining Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East During the Third and the Early Second Millennium BC’, in: L. Fogelin (ed.), Religion in the Material World: A Conference on the Archaeology of Religion, Carbondale, 196–215. Laneri, N., 2014. ‘Locating the social memory of the ancestors. Residential funerary chambers as locales of social remembrance in Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennia BC’, in P. Pfälzner et al. (eds.), Contextualizing grave inventories in the ancient Near East. Proceedings of the workshop at the London 7th ICAANE in April 2010 and an International Symposium in Tübingen in November 2010, both organized by the Tübingen Post-­graduate school, ‘Symbols of the Dead’, Qatna Studien Supplementa 3, Wiesbaden, 3–11. Matthiae, P., 1997. ‘Where were the early Syrian kings of Ebla buried?’ in: Archiv für Orientforschung 24/2, 268–276. Matthiae, P., 2010. Ebla: la città del trono: archeologia e storia, Torino.

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Mills, B.J. and Walker, W.H., 2008. Memory work: archaeologies of material practices, Santa Fe. Peltenburg, E.J., 2013. ‘Conflict and exclusivity in Early Bronze Age societies of the Middle Euphrates Valley’ in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 72/2, 233–252. Pfälzner, P., 2007. ‘Archaeological Investigations in the Royal Palace of Qatna’, in: D. Morandi Bonacossi (ed.), Urban and natural landscape of an ancient Syrian capital. Settlement and environment at Tell Mishrife/Qatna and in Central-Western Syria, Udine, 29–64. Pfälzner, P., 2012. ‘How did they bury the kings of Qatna?’, in P. Pfälzner et al. (eds.), (Re-)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East, Wiesbaden, 205–221. Porter, A., 2002. ‘The Dynamics of Death: Ancestors, Pastoralism, and the Origins of a Third-Millennium City in Syria’ in: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 325, 1–36. Postgate, J.N., 1992. Early Mesopotamia: Society and economy at the dawn of history, London. Ristvet, L., 2011. ‘Travel and the making of north Mesopotamian polities’ in: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 361, 1–31. Ristvet, L., 2015. Ritual, performance, and politics in the ancient Near East, Cambridge. Rosberger, E., 2014. ‘Things to Remember. Jewellery, Collective Identity and Memory at the Royal Tomb of Qatna’, in: P. Pfälzner et al. (eds.), Contextualizing grave inventories in the ancient Near East. Proceedings of the workshop at the London 7th ICAANE in April 2010 and an International Symposium in Tübingen in November 2010, both organized by the Tübingen Post-­graduate school, ‘Symbols of the Dead’, Qatna Studien Supplementa 3, Wiesbaden, 201–215. Schwartz, G.M., 2012. ‘Era of the Living Dead: Funerary Praxis and Symbol in Third Millennium BC Syria’, in: P. Pfälzner et al. (eds.), (Re-)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East, Wiesbaden, 59–78. Schwartz, G.M., 2013. ‘Memory and its demolition ancestors, animals and sacrifice at Umm el-Marra, Syria’ in: Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23/3, 495–522. Thomas, J., 1996. Time, Culture, and Identity: an interpretative archaeology, London. Toorn, K.V.D., 1994. ‘Gods and Ancestors in Emar and Nuzi’ in: ZA 84/1, 38–59. Toorn, K.V.D., 1996. Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria, and Israel: Continuity and Changes in the Forms of Religious Life, Leiden. Tsukimoto, A., 1985. Untersuchungen zur Totenpflege (kispum) im alten Mesopotamien, AOAT 216, Kevelaer. Tsukimoto, A., 2010. ‘Peace for the Dead. On kispu(m) Again’ in: Orient 45, 101–110. Van Dyke, R.M. and Alcock, S.E. (eds.), 2003. Archaeologies of Memory, Malden. Whitley, J., 2002. ‘Too Many Ancestors’ in: Antiquity 76: 119–126.

5

The Historical Memory of the Late Bronze Age in the Neo-Assyrian Palace Reliefs Mehmet-Ali Ataç

The visual imagery of the Neo-Assyrian (883–612 BC) palace reliefs includes both an emblematic or formulaic dimension and what we tend to refer to as historical narrative. The formulaic often manifests itself in the form of representations of the king in cultic roles, supernatural figures and sacred trees.1 As for historical narrative, which is the focus of the present essay,2 it primarily revolves around scenes of battle, victory and deportation. Both modes have their roots in the Middle Assyrian period (ca. 1350–1000 BC), with historical narrative attested in the commemorative monuments of this era, such as the White Obelisk,3 while the formulaic appears in the glyptic and wall painting of this same earlier imperial phase of Assyria.4 In the formation of the Neo-Assyrian historical narrative, there is additional impetus from Ramesside (ca. 1295–1070 BC) relief sculpture. Such inspiration is already present in the art of Ashurnasirpal II (883–854 BC). A comparison of one of this king’s images on a relief panel from his throne room, showing him charging at battle in a chariot, with one of Seti I’s (1294–1279 BC), would suffice to demonstrate this affinity, even though the two artistic traditions are distinct enough from one another morphologically and stylistically.5 Furthermore, on account of the Assyrian military expeditions to Egypt in the 7th century BC, the Battle of Kadesh reliefs of Ramesses II (19th Dynasty, 1279–1213 BC) and the Sea Peoples reliefs of Ramesses III (20th Dynasty, 1184–1153 BC) (Fig. 5.1) are plausibly thought to have exerted an enhanced degree of influence especially on Ashurbanipal’s (668–627 BC) panoramic depictions of his Elamite battles.6

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Fig. 5.1  Drawing of the relief depicting the Sea Peoples Battle of Ramesses III at the so-­called Nile mouths, Medinet Habu. Epigraphic Survey, Medinet Habu 1, pl. 37.

Both the formulaic and historical narrative modes in Neo-Assyrian relief sculpture have close relations with memory. While the formulaic evokes the remote and primordial phases of the cosmos through the sacred arboreal, antediluvian and cosmogonic imagery, and hence a sense of mythical memory, the historical evokes the much more immediate memory of the key military incidents of the Assyrian imperial machine. In this essay I explore the additional implications of historical memory possibly referenced by the military narrative reliefs of the Neo-Assyrian palace decoration. It is my argument that even though the reliefs depict or record contemporary events, they indeed reference a bygone era as well, namely the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550–1200 BC); the key incidents that marked its end centuries; and its role and place in the historical consciousness of a new era, the Iron Age, in which the Neo-Assyrian Empire is embedded. As such, I posit that for the Neo-Assyrian iconographer, the Late Bronze Age had the status almost of myth as well, albeit a much more recent one in comparison with the primeval history referenced by the supernatural subject matter of the reliefs. It is furthermore my argument that such mythical allusion in historical narrative also rendered the military events shown in the palace decoration worthier of representation than they would be were they merely understood as the contemporary events or achievements of the royal patron in his lifetime, the way in which the relief scenes have mostly been

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treated so far.7 Thus, for the Assyrians themselves, the historicity of the narrative reliefs may have lain more in the quality of this kind of myth than in their putative capacity to record contemporary events.8 Many of the tropes and visual modes characterizing historical narrative in the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs are those of the Late Bronze Age, found both in their Middle Assyrian forebears, as seen on the White Obelisk – which, however, is Middle Assyrian but not, strictly speaking, from the Late Bronze Age – and in Egyptian Ramesside prototypes.9 These tropes are primarily the city and the siege; the royal or military chariot ride or fight; and the panoramic river battle. It is my contention that these formulaic tropes in Neo-Assyrian relief sculpture evoked their own heroic past. Their persistent occurrence in the scenes renders the events already historical in their own time. This historical dimension, however, is one that we may think of as sacral history, especially by virtue of a possible learnt perception of the end incidents of the Late Bronze Age as cataclysms of cosmic dimensions marking the closing or dissolution of a great and special era. I propose that such a learnt perception would have characterized as much the scholarly or elite milieus of the very international Late Bronze Age itself as those of its successor, the Iron Age, when the notion of the end of the Bronze Age would already have had the status almost of sacred lore or myth. To take a rather drastic shortcut, we might think of the Neo-Assyrian artist as somewhat like the Homeric poet(s), composing and rehearsing during the Iron Age epic accounts of incidents of grandeur belonging to the end of the Bronze Age, with elements and practices of both ages, their own and the previous, side by side or blended with one another.10 I propose that the many scenes of battle, siege and destruction, always directed against an apparent enemy, carved on the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs, endlessly rehearse or re-­enact events and acts of mythical or epic status belonging to a Late Bronze Age mindset under the rubric and guise of representations of contemporary incidents. These events in and of themselves were certainly real and important, but not the art’s ultimate objective. From this standpoint, the gap we might conceive between the formulaic as mythical or primeval, and narrative as historical, narrows. Both end up belonging to a larger realm of sacral history, in which the distinction between myth and history becomes immaterial. In what follows, I discuss why and

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how the Late Bronze Age and its end incidents were perceived and treated as special in their own time, and the ways in which the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs allude to this historical consciousness in the Iron Age. Key in considering these Late Bronze Age dynamics and their representation are New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1550–1070 BC) and the wider internationalism of the era. This internationalism is not simply a matter of diplomacy, circulation of objects, trade and economy, but equally intellectual thought and a shared awareness of historical change encompassing Egypt itself, the Aegean, Anatolia and further western Asia. Epic or epic-­like texts are the hallmarks of this era and its impact on the period that follows. The Ramesside royal inscriptions, the Assyrian royal inscriptions, the so-­called Tukulti-Ninurta Epic and the Homeric poems, especially the Iliad, all revolve around warfare as theme or narrative.11 They were all written in synthetic literary languages that belonged to learnt or bardic milieus.12 The Late Bronze Age internationalism we are so fond of talking about in terms of economy and circulation of materials and objects also extended to the realm of ideas,13 including philosophies of historical representation. Perhaps the quintessentially legendary war of the Eastern Mediterranean world, the Trojan War is increasingly being seen, especially by archaeologists and historians of the Aegean and Anatolia, as a highly conceptual and literary representation and conflation of possibly more than one incident of conflict among polities of the Aegean and Anatolia towards the end of the Late Bronze Age.14 The chronological window proposed for this putative war by such experts is between the time of the Battle of Kadesh during the reign of Ramesses II, around 1275 BC, and the second wave of Sea Peoples against Egypt, countered by Ramesses III, around 1180 BC, about a hundred years later.15 The Ancient Greek historical tradition, too, places the Trojan War in this window.16 Both Ramesside battles, Kadesh and the Sea Peoples, were depicted as the heroic accomplishments of the two Ramesseses in both text and image in sacral contexts, i.e. temples. Scholars have also long pondered the connection between the Sea Peoples, associated geographically with the Aegean and western Anatolia, and their role in the incidents telescoped in the formulation of one grand literary Trojan War.17 All these wars are examples of what Eric Cline has referred to as ‘literary warfare’. To quote Cline directly:

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[w]hat these battles have in common is that although there is literary evidence that they took place, and no reason to doubt that they did, there is yet absolutely no archaeological evidence for any of them. It can be argued that the same holds true for the Trojan War, for which we have literary evidence but no definitive archaeological evidence . . . Thus, the Trojan War is not necessarily unique in the Late Bronze Age . . .18

Here, I do not intend to probe the many controversial and unresolved dimensions of these battles and their notorious problems, such as the identity of the Sea Peoples. But I would like to draw attention to their common position as battles within the greater Eastern Mediterranean towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, symptomatic of the closing of a great era in the minds of the artists and scribes who recorded them, a systemic collapse of ‘global’ proportions,19 which becomes worthy of commemoration for posterity in what we may call an epic or heroic rhetoric in text and image. In approaching the Indo-European epic of heroic warfare, especially the Iliad, a 1953 book, hardly read and cited in our time, G.R. Levy’s The Sword from the Rock: An Investigation into the Origins of Epic Literature and the Development of the Hero (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1976 [1953]), drew attention to the hallmark of this kind of epic as representing decline, the end of a civilization or an era, the shift from an older tradition to a new order, often in the form of battles generated by warlike newcomers, who, once victorious, incorporate into their songs the memory of the change and destruction that yielded their new presence.20 The book draws its thematic inspiration from the well-­known but enigmatic ‘Sword God’ of the Hittite imperial sanctuary Yazılıkaya. It sees the sword as both death and the hero’s potential of extracting himself from death.21 Despite its datedness, the book is impressive in placing the forging especially of the Homeric epic within the larger historical change that swept the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East at the end of the Late Bronze Age. For Levy, the Hittite Sword God is not an isolated metaphor. She sees the Hittite Empire as the juncture between the East and the West in the crystallization of an epic tradition in Greek and Indic that features the chariot as the hallmark of warfare. The chariot is certainly one of the hallmarks of both Ramesside and Assyrian historical narrative in the visual arts as well.22 Indeed, with its equal emphasis on the individual hero and his hostile relation to mortality, and on the wider historical memory of an age of heroes, Levy’s

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perspective offers the promise to extend the parameters of epic in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East beyond Indo-European poetics.23 Whether or not it was Troy VI, destroyed around 1280 BC, that was the setting of the war and destruction that inspired the Trojan War, it is this archaeological stratum of Troy that embodies the paradigmatic walled city of the Late Bronze Age, potentially the kingdom of Wilusa, a vassal state of the Hittite Empire, and the inspiration for Homer’s Troy.24 The siege and eventual fall of a well-­rounded, well-­fortified and sophisticated city embodies Levy’s paradigm for epic as revolving around the demise of an older system, culture or civilization that now imparts its privileges onto its conqueror. The paradigmatic nature of the walled city in the forging of a heroic, epic-­like idiom can also be seen clearly both in Ramesside and Assyrian historical narrative in the visual arts (Fig. 5.2).25 The trope goes back to the art of Seti I, father of Ramesses II, whose revolutionary Karnak reliefs showing his SyroPalestinian campaigns feature the walled city located on a hilltop as the quintessential leitmotif in depicting the target of imperial conquest.26 Even though the Battle of Kadesh is not about the siege of the city of Kadesh per se, the city as the setting of the battle, along with pharaoh in his chariot and the River Orontes, constitute the main focus of the representations.27

Fig. 5.2  Orthostat relief depicting an Assyrian attack against a foreign city, Panel B 3a, Room B (throne room), Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud (Kalhu). Photo: author.

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The indebtedness of the panoramic mode of representation found in the Sea Peoples reliefs of Ramesses III to that of the Kadesh reliefs of Ramesses II is obvious, even though the tendency among scholars is rather to point to the shifts in the art of the former pharaoh to a more conservative style.28 Beyond an admiration on the part of the younger Ramesses for the older and his achievements, or a matter of emulation and propaganda,29 this visual affinity must reflect a deeper-­seated perception of these two battles as cognate in terms of what they stood for in the Ancient Egyptian historical consciousness, which, I argue, is the impending closure to an era.30 One may wonder why the Battle of Kadesh should have had such implications of dissolution for the Egyptians when it was fought at the height of the Egyptian imperial power, the reign of Ramesses II. But often in empire, plenitude, climax or apex already bear within them the harbingers of decline and collapse.31 References to some of the groups among the Sea Peoples, Lukka, Sherden and Peleset, indeed go back to the Kadesh records of Ramesses II;32 and the inevitable clash between the Egyptian and Hittite armies, the two superpowers of the era, at Kadesh, perhaps resulted more in favour of the Hittites than the Egyptians.33 It is one of the conundrums of Ancient Egyptian art history that the Battle of Kadesh was obsessively depicted as a victory in Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum, Abydos and Abu Simbel, while it was apparently a near-­defeat for the Egyptians, resulting in a stalemate. We usually try to explain this matter away by taking comfort in notions of propaganda and Ramesside megalomania. Erik Hornung’s very elegant solution of ‘history as celebration’, the Egyptian perception of history as a ritualistic and cyclical phenomenon, and hence the ‘ceremonial character of history’,34 too, falls short in providing a fully satisfactory explanation for this crux. Perhaps Marc Van De Mieroop asks the critical question: ‘The unique richness of the sources presents a challenge to the historian, however: was the battle unique or its representation?’35 Such a question should not imply that the battle per se was not important, but rather that the representation had an intellectual agenda beyond the depiction of an alleged victory or royal glorification to justify its repeated occurrence in sacral contexts.36 Likewise, the battles against the Sea Peoples may in fact have entailed several clashes in the Egyptian Delta taking place over a number of years, which the artists and historiographers of Ramesses III may have telescoped into one

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grand affair, producing the image of the heroic pharaoh dispelling the formidable enemy both on land and sea.37 We tend to think of all these battles as overly important by virtue of their representations, which may have had supra-­regional and supra-­political connotations that meant more for notions of sacral history, almost in an academic sense, than for any putative interest in recording military achievements and royal glorification. Again, the battles themselves were certainly not insignificant, but the iconographers behind the production of the relevant images clearly had motives of greater priority than leaving for posterity a permanent account of the key military successes of the Egyptian imperial machine. In the Ancient Greek world, Homer is not the only Iron Age poet who looks back to the Late Bronze Age. Hesiod, too, does the same thing to a certain extent, and in his ‘myth of the ages’, he places a race of heroes, those who fought at Thebes and Troy, between his races of bronze and iron (Works and Days, 155–169). The battles that I have been talking about and their representations lie across the threshold that marks our archaeological ages of bronze and iron. In fact, Hesiod’s race of heroes is sometimes thought of as an anomalous insertion of a fifth age to a scheme originally characterized by four ages, such as found in Indic lore.38 One can venture to interpret this intermediate ‘fifth’ age as one introduced, or grafted on, to an existing quadripartite system in order to corroborate a traditional scheme of sacral history with a historical consciousness focused, in the philosophical and almost academic sense argued for above, on a much more recent or immediate past of mythical proportions, the end of the Late Bronze Age, and hence an instance of historical memory. As such, Hesiod’s additional age, the Age of Heroes, at the end of which many heroes perish but some are immortalized, may not have been his alone, but may rather have belonged to a wider Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern milieu. The perception of such an era-­ending dissolution may have been consciously experienced, pondered and represented, again almost academically, by the masterminds behind the art and texts of our Late Bronze Age polities and empires. In turn, the sacral and historical memory of this dissolution would have been the critical defining factor for their successor traditions in the Iron Age. In the Iron Age, the Neo-Assyrian Empire revives Late Bronze Age modes of historical representation. In his art, the Neo-Assyrian artist explored the

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age-­old tropes of the siege and fall of a well-­fortified city, such as Sargon II’s (721–705 BC) siege scenes and Sennacherib’s (704–681 BC) Lachish cycle. In the well-­known Ulai River battle scenes of Ashurbanipal, the echo of the Battle of Kadesh and the Sea Peoples battles of Ramesses III at the so-­called Nile mouths could not simply be just compositional or emulative.39 By showing many instances of destruction, the Neo-Assyrian artist concentrates on notions of dissolution and catastrophe. In doing so, he defines a place in the cosmos for his empire in reference to historical memory, the most recent global dissolution, pointing to cataclysm both past and possibly future, within a traditional mindset that favoured a cyclical and ritualistic sense of time, as has been argued by Assmann and Hornung for Ancient Egyptian historical narrative in the visual arts. The fact that the catastrophe in the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs envelops a historically identified enemy has for many decades led to interpretations of these images as document, propaganda, glorification and celebration, preventing us from doing more thinking about what they also may be.40 We are now in a position to ponder these images in a new light, which activity should result in alternative conceptions of history and memory embedded in images.

Notes 1 For studies of this formulaic dimension of the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs, see Ataç 2006: 69–101; 2010. 2 A previous attempt on my part to approach the complexity of the narrative mode in the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs is Ataç 2013a. 3 Pittman 1996. 4 On Middle Assyrian glyptic, see Moortgat 1969: 120; Porada 1979: 2–15; Matthews 1992: 191–210. For a brief overview of Middle Assyrian painting as attested in the remains of the palace of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC) at Kar TukultiNinurta, see Moortgat 1969: 118. 5 See Budge 1914: pl. 14; Epigraphic Survey, Battle Reliefs 1986: pl. 3. Indeed, the elusive but integral conceptual bond between the art of Ashurnasirpal II and that of Ramesside relief sculpture deserves to be investigated in greater detail. A preliminary attempt focusing on the conceptual and semantic parallels, rather than a scenario of historical transmission, may be found in Ataç 2006.

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6 Breasted 1932; Feldman 2005. 7 A compelling alternative reading may be found in Bachelot (1991: 116–117), on how the narrative reliefs would have functioned in cementing a fraternal bond among the military elite, the proper audience of the reliefs, who would have reminisced, by viewing the images, on their shared experience of the dangers of war, on the verge of death, in battle, with the king as the ‘Father’ figure over them. 8 See the contribution of Gansell in this volume (Chapter Six). 9 In this regard, see Van De Mieroop 2007: 229, commenting on shared practices among the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the Hittites in recording military events. 10 See Finkelberg 2005: 12, 167, on the Ancient Greek Pan-Hellenic epic traditions of the Iron Age as a narrative about the Heroic Age associated with the Late Bronze Age and revolving around the Trojan War. On the Homeric epic’s encompassing elements of the Bronze Age in addition to those of the Iron Age, see ibid., 3; Cline 2013: 49. 11 On the affinity of the Homeric poems, especially the Iliad, to the Ramesside and Assyrian royal inscriptions, see Burkert 1992: 118–120. See also West 1997: 380. More recently, see Patzek 2003: 63–74. 12 On the unique literary qualities of the Kadesh inscriptions of Ramesses II, see Gardiner 1960: 53–54. On the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, its encompassing SumeroBabylonian elements, and its relation to and impact on the historical genres such as the Assyrian royal inscriptions, see Machinist 1976: 455–482. On this text’s literary characteristics, see also Foster 2005: 211. On the use of archaisms and neologisms in the Sea Peoples inscriptions of Ramesses III (20th Dynasty, 1187–1156 BC) and the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions of the 9th century BC, and the dialectical complexity of the Homeric poems, see Albright 1950: 162–163. On Late Bronze Age archaisms, including a pre-Mycenaean example, in the Iliad, see Vermeule 1986: 85–86. 13 Van de Mieroop 2007: 232, 251–252. 14 See, for instance, Bryce 2005: 367–368; 2006: 189; 2010: 480; Finkelberg 2005: 3; Cline 2013: 53, 104–108, indicating that it would be anachronistic to approach the epic tradition from the modern criterion of historicity just as it would to deny it all historical basis whatsoever. See, furthermore, Albright 1950: 166–169, pointing to the potential of the political configuration of the region during the Late Bronze Age as a source in the development of the Trojan War literary tradition. Much more sceptical, however, is Raaflaub 2005: 59. 15 See Albright 1950: 173; Bryce 2006: 70–72; Cline 2013: 27, placing the relevant incidents toward the end of the 2nd millennium BC, before the demise of the Hittite and Mycenaean states. On the same chronological window defined by a potential Achaean attack against Troy VI, ‘shortly after the battle of Qadesh’ and

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culminating in the destruction of Troy VIIa in the Sea Peoples era, see Mellink 1986: 100. 16 For discussions of the Greek historical tradition in relation to the Trojan War, see Bryce 2005: 368; 2006: 64 (citing Herodotus 2.145, ‘proposing a date about 800 years before my time [mid-13th century]’), 70, 72; 2010: 476; Cline 2013: 1, giving the date range according to the Ancient Greek tradition as 1334–1135 BC. 17 See Albright 1950: 173, considering the date of the Trojan War in relation to the chronology of Egypt’s Sea Peoples invasions, ranging from the reign of Merneptah (19th Dynasty, 1213–1203 BC) to that of Ramesses III; Griffiths 1956: 110–111; Cline 2013: 27, 35, 94. 18 Cline 2013: 36. 19 Van de Mieroop 2007: 40. 20 Levy 1976: 67–72. 21 Ibid.: 16. 22 For studies of the Bronze Age chariots in the archaeological and visual record, see Moorey 1986: 196–215; Feldman and Sauvage 2010: 67–181. 23 A plea to that end is also Burkert 1992: 120. 24 See Bryce 2006: 64–67; 2010: 478–479; Cline 2013: 91–94. For an earlier assessment of the evidence in this regard, see Güterbock 1986: 33–44. On Troy VI as the possible paradigm for the walled city in the literary consciousness of the Greek Bronze Age, see Vermeule 1986: 91. 25 Ataç 2013b. 26 For illustrations of examples, see Epigraphic Survey, Battle Reliefs 1986: pls. 2, 9, 23. 27 Gaballa 1976: 119; Groenewegen-Frankfort 1987: 136. See also Tefnin 1981: 73, which goes so far as suggesting that the typical Syrian city, round and turreted, is so ideal that it could be the prototype of the image of the celestial Jerusalem in Christian iconography. 28 Kantor 1957: 51; Gaballa 1976: 128–129; Groenewegen-Frankfort 1987: 139. See, however, Hornung 1992: 154–155, on Ramesses III’s decorating the Medinet Habu temple with scenes of the Battle of Kadesh as well, which testifies further to this pharaoh’s seeing an affinity between that battle and its representations with his own. 29 Van Dijk 2000: 305. 30 Schaden 1979: 143. 31 A well-­rounded discussion of this phenomenon in relation to the Assyrian Empire may be found in Liverani 2001: 386–389. 32 Shaw 2000: 328, pointing out that some of the same groups, such as the Denen, Lukka and Sherden, were already active by the reign of Akhenaten (18th Dynasty, 1352–1336 BC). See also Van De Mieroop 2007: 243.

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33 Assmann 2002: 267, referring to the battle as a setback for the Egyptians; Van De Mieroop 2007: 39–40. 34 Hornung 1992: 154, 157, 164. Along these lines, see also Assmann 2002: 247, which also underscores the cyclical aspects of war in Ancient Egyptian historical and intellectual perspective. 35 Van De Mieroop 2007: 38. 36 Indeed, Van De Mieroop (2007: 36) himself glosses that significance as Kadesh’s constituting a direct clash between the two major superpowers of the era, and not a war fought against proxies. 37 O’Connor 2000: 94–100, citing Cifola (1988: 275–306), as the representative of this view, but disagreeing and arguing rather for the necessity to take the representations at face value in their capacity to show an organized military power genuinely threatening Egypt’s stability. O’Connor nevertheless privileges the conceptual or cosmological level of meaning over the literal, without, however, going beyond matters of the king’s overthrowing chaotic forces. In the same vein is Cline and O’Connor 2003: 128–134. 38 The topic is much too complex and arcane to be handled here. See, especially, Griffiths (1956) discussing the possible Babylonian and Iranian roots of the four world ages and their association with metals. Indeed, the gist of Griffiths’ argument is that Hesiod’s scheme represents an amalgamation of myth and history, with the myth having the upper hand. See, as well, Nagy 1999: 151–173. 39 Feldman 2005. 40 Critical views on the study of images along these lines have been lucidly expressed in Bahrani 2008.

Bibliography Albright, W.F., 1950. ‘Some Oriental Glosses on the Homeric Problem’ in: American Journal of Archaeology 54, 162–176. Assmann, J., 2002. The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, New York. Ataç, M.-A., 2006. ‘Visual Formula and Meaning in Neo-Assyrian Relief Sculpture’ in: The Art Bulletin 88, 69–101. Ataç, M-A., 2010. The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art, Cambridge/ New York. Ataç, M-A., 2013a. ‘The Changing Approaches to History in the Neo-Assyrian Palace Reliefs’, in: L. Feliu et al. (eds.), Time and History in the Ancient Near East:

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Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Barcelona, 26–30 July 2010, Winona Lake, 583–598. Ataç, M-A., 2013b. ‘The Neo-Assyrian Citadel-City and the Walled City as Theme in the Visual Representation of Imperialism’, in: N. Ergin, S. Redford (eds.), Cities and Citadels in Turkey: From the Iron Age to the Seljuks, Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement 40, Leuven/Paris/Walpole, 39–66. Bachelot, L., 1991. ‘La fonction politique des reliefs néo-­assyriens’, in: D. Charpin, F. Joannès (eds.), Marchands, diplomates et empereurs: Études sur la civilisation mésopotamienne offertes à Paul Garelli, Paris, 109–128. Bahrani, Z., 2008. Rituals of War: The Body and Violence in Mesopotamia, New York. Breasted, J.H., 1932. ‘Assyrian Relief Sculpture and the Influence of Egyptian Art’, in: Egypt Exploration Society, Studies Presented to F. Ll. Griffith, London, 267–271. Bryce, T., 2005. The Kingdom of the Hittites, Oxford. Bryce, T., 2006. The Trojans and Their Neighbours, London/New York. Bryce, T., 2010. ‘The Trojan War’, in: E.H. Cline (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (ca. 3000–1000 BC), Oxford, 475–482. Budge, E.A.W., 1914. Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum: Reign of Ashur-­nasirpal, 885–860 B.C., London. Burkert, W., 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Cambridge/London. Cifola, B., 1988. ‘Ramesses III and the Sea Peoples: A Structural Analysis of the Medinet Habu Inscriptions’ in: Orientalia 57, 275–306. Cline, E.H., 2013. The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford. Cline, E.H. and O’Connor, D., 2003. ‘The Mystery of the “Sea Peoples” ’, in: D. O’Connor, S. Quirke (eds.), Mysterious Lands, London, 107–138. Epigraphic Survey. Earlier Historical Records of Ramses III: Medinet Habu 1, OIP 8, Chicago (1930). Epigraphic Survey. The Battle Reliefs of King Sety I, Chicago (1986). Feldman, M.H., 2005. ‘Nineveh to Thebes and Back: Art and Politics between Assyria and Egypt in the Seventh Century BCE’, in: D. Collon, A. George (eds.), Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London, 7–11 July 2003, London, 141–150. Feldman, M.H. and Sauvage, C., 2010. ‘Objects of Prestige? Chariots in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean and Near East’ in: Ägypten und Levante 20, 67–181. Finkelberg, M., 2005. Greeks and Pre-Greeks: Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition, Cambridge/New York. Foster, B.R., 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, Bethesda. Gaballa, G.A., 1976. Narrative in Egyptian Art, Mainz am Rhein.

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Gardiner, Sir A., 1960. The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II, Oxford. Griffiths, J.G., 1956. ‘Archaeology and Hesiod’s Five Ages’ in: Journal of the History of Ideas 17, 109–119. Groenewegen-Frankfort, H.A., 1987. Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East, Cambridge/London. Güterbock, H.G., 1986. ‘Troy in Hittite Texts? Wilusa, Ahhiyawa, and Hittite History’, in: M.J. Mellink (ed.), Troy and the Trojan War: A Symposium Held at Bryn Mawr College, October 1984, Bryn Mawr, 33–44. Hornung, E., 1992. Idea into Image: Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought, New York. Kantor, H.J., 1957. ‘Narration in Egyptian Art’ in: American Journal of Archaeology 61, 44–54. Levy, G.R., 1976. The Sword from the Rock: An Investigation into the Origins of Epic Literature and the Development of the Hero, Westport. Liverani, M., 2001. ‘The Fall of the Assyrian Empire: Ancient and Modern Interpretations’, in: S. Alcock et al. (eds.), Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, Cambridge/New York, 374–391. Machinist, P., 1976. ‘Literature as Politics: The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic and the Bible’ in: Catholic Biblical Quarterly 38, 455–482. Matthews, D., 1992. ‘The Random Pegasus: Loss of Meaning in Middle Assyrian Seals’ in: Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2, 191–210. Mellink, M.J., 1986. ‘Postscript’, in: M.J. Mellink (ed.), Troy and the Trojan War: A Symposium Held at Bryn Mawr College, October 1984, Bryn Mawr, 93–101. Moorey, P.R.S., 1986. ‘The Emergence of the Light, Horse-Drawn Chariot in the Near-East c. 2000–1500 B.C.’ in: World Archaeology 18, 196–215. Moortgat, A., 1969. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Classical Art of the Near East, London/New York. Nagy, G., 1999. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, Baltimore/London. O’Connor, D., 2000. ‘The Sea Peoples and the Egyptian Sources’, in: E.D. Oren (ed.), The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment, University Museum Monograph 108, University Museum Symposium Series 11, Philadelphia, 85–101. Patzek, B., 2003. ‘Homer and the Near East: The Case of Assyrian Historical Epic and Prose Narrative’ in: Gaia: Revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grèce archaïque 7, 63–74. Pittman, H., 1996. ‘The White Obelisk and the Problem of Historical Narrative in the Art of Assyria’ in: The Art Bulletin 78, 334–355. Porada, E., 1979. ‘Remarks on Mitannian (Hurrian) and Middle Assyrian Glyptic Art’ in: Akkadica 13, 2–15. Raaflaub, K.A., 2005. ‘Epic and History’, in: J. Miles Foley (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Epic, Malden, 55–70.

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Schaden, O.J., 1979. ‘Some Observations on the Sea Peoples’, in: M.A. Powell Jr., R.H. Sack (eds.), Studies in Honor of Tom B. Jones, AOAT 203, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 143–155. Shaw, I. (ed.), 2000. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford. Shaw, I., 2000. ‘Egypt and the Outside World’, in: I. Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford, 314–329. Tefnin, R., 1981. ‘Image, écriture, récit: À propos des representations de la Bataille de Qadesh’ in: Göttinger Miszellen 21, 55–76. Van De Mieroop, M., 2007. The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Ramesses II, Malden. van Dijk, J., 2000. ‘The Amarna Period and the Later New Kingdom’, in: I. Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford, 272–313. Vermeule, E.D.T., 1986. ‘ “Priam’s Castle Blazing”: A Thousand Years of Trojan Memories’, in: M.J. Mellink (ed.), Troy and the Trojan War: A Symposium Held at Bryn Mawr College, October 1984, Bryn Mawr, 77–92. West, M.L., 1997. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, Oxford.

6

Prioritized Presence: Rulers’ Images in the Neo-Assyrian Palace as Devices of Elite Ideological Memory Amy Rebecca Gansell

Introduction The king raises a dish in his right hand, while his left hand plants a bow on the ground. At his feet, a dying lion grimaces. Clad in nearly identical regalia, his later dynastic successor pours a similar vessel of wine over four slain lions. These scenes, carved on palace orthostat reliefs, depict the Neo-Assyrian rulers Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–859 BC) and Ashurbanipal (r. 668–627 BC) enacting libation rituals following royal hunts (Figs.  6.1, 6.2). Despite their ancient

Fig. 6.1  Relief orthostat depicting Ashurnasirpal II holding a bow and preparing to pour a libation over a slain lion. North-West Palace, Nimrud, ca. 865–860 BC. Gypsum, h. 86.8 cm, l. 225.5 cm. © The Trustees of the British Museum (BM 124535).

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Fig. 6.2  Relief orthostat depicting, in bottom register, Ashurbanipal holding a bow while pouring a libation over four slain lions. North Palace, Nineveh, ca. 645–640 BC. Alabaster, interior h. of register 44.4 cm. © The Trustees of the British Museum (BM 124887).

display in different cities and the roughly two-­century gap between them, the vignettes are very much alike. In Neo-Assyrian art, a consistent syntax and iconography recorded a repertoire of royal deeds that had been embedded in Mesopotamian visual traditions for at least two millennia. In this paper, I propose that the phenomenon of ‘elite ideological memory’, enacted through rulers’ images, sustained this convention. Neo-Assyrian royal images conveyed memories of particular historical events and individuals. Furthermore, in concurrence with recent scholarship, I consider that on a sacred, ideological level, royal images also communicated infinite realities of the past and future to their elite palace audiences.1 In addition, parallel to Ernst Kantorowicz’s theory of a ruler having a mystical, eternal body and an inferior, mortal body, I contend that Neo-Assyrian elites would have prioritized rulers’ permanent, artistically conceived images over rulers’ biological bodies as vehicles of memory and kingship.2 Ultimately, I confront the self-­reflexive relationship between rulers’ bodies and images, and I investigate the duality of kings’ images: as memories of individual men and of the concept of kingship.3 Central to this study referencing sculpted palace orthostats from the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II through Ashurbanipal are NeoAssyrian conceptions of time, body and image. Palace audiences and aesthetics are also taken into account.

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Elite ideological memory Fundamentally, ‘memory’ is the subjective construction of a past.4 Memory takes multiple forms, but, in the analysis of Neo-Assyrian rulers’ images, the concept of ‘cultural memory’ is most germane. According to Jan Assmann, cultural memory constitutes a group’s identity and normative self-­image based on a shared past that can be cultivated through words, images and actions.5 Here I focus on a subcategory of Assmann’s concept of cultural memory that I delineate as ‘elite ideological memory’.6 My focus is on the relationship between elite ideological memory and the elites themselves. ‘Elite’ refers to the privileged community who fostered this memory and whose identity it informed and supported. The Neo-Assyrian elites encompassed the sovereign, the royal family and the upper echelons of the royal court, including priests and scholars. ‘Ideological’ describes the role of memory, propagated across generations, in maintaining elite authority.7 Within the spatial and material framework of the Neo-Assyrian palace, I suggest that monumental inscribed relief images communicated and reinforced elite ideological memory as they imbued the elites’ existence with significance beyond mortal routines and accomplishments.8 For example, as elites passed by large-­scale narratives on the palace walls, the images could have conjured recollections, expectations and knowledge of participating in the political and sacral events portrayed. Repetitive imagery carved on durable, immobile orthostats also could have affirmed group membership by reinforcing answers to the questions ‘Who are we?’ and ‘What shall we do?’9 Thus, through elite ideological memory’s self-­reflexive quality, palace reliefs would have reminded the ruler and those around him that they were the legitimate authorities to reign in an everlasting empire.10

Time Cultural memory not only evokes the past, but, according to Assmann, ‘it also organizes the experience of the present and future’.11 In this manner, as elite ideological memory coalesced and was monumentalized, Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs would have recast the past as an everlasting reality.12 The visual narratives

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would have transformed completed events into a timeless model conveying that what always was, is, and what is, always will be. That is, while the images of Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal pouring libations over lions may have referenced each ruler’s success in a particular hunt, they would also have evoked the success of all legitimate kings (past, present and future) in all hunts (Figs. 6.1, 6.2). With a perfect past, which was inseparable from a perfect future, a given ruler and his audience could view his reign as a durative perfection.13 Visual and textual analyses suggest that the Assyrians recognized a narrative plane that was not bound to mortal timelines.14 Ernesto de Martino’s theory of ‘metahistory’ resonates with the Assyrian concept of elite ideological memory as a dimension ‘in which history as a human product is suspended’.15 For example, the scenes of Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal libating over lions demonstrate the bounty and power of the king’s bow as well as a ritual transaction between ruler and divine (Figs.  6.1, 6.2).16 Through this sacred relationship, kingly deeds and identity could have transcended mortal time to be forever preserved in the divinely sanctioned domain of elite ideological memory.17

Rulers’ bodies A critical factor in the relationship of elite ideological memory to art is the vulnerability of the king’s body. The human body strains, sickens, deteriorates and eventually becomes elderly and dies. These biological weaknesses were not positive characteristics of Neo-Assyrian kingship, and they were never depicted in art.18 However, implying the body’s innate fragility, in hunt and combat scenes, rulers were equipped both to take action and to defend themselves (for example, BM 124579 and BM 124552). Furthermore, Assyrian texts indicate that, due to concerns for their safety in the palace, kings lived behind a defence of locks, guards and supernatural surveillance.19 In death, tomb-­robbing threatened royal bodies.20 Risks might also have been posed through uncovered skin, an Ancient Near Eastern taboo against which is demonstrated in the biblical narrative of Noah’s accidental exposure (Genesis 9:21–27). In the 1st-­millennium BC Šumma alu series, an omen, which is missing its apodosis and therefore does not preserve

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the consequence, refers to a presumed contravention of decorum in which a man sees the king’s body (Akkadian: zumru).21 Concerns surrounding the exposure of rulers’ bodies might be confirmed through their consistent depiction in long robes.22 Mortal rulers were vulnerable to physical violence too: Sargon II (r. 722– 705 BC) was killed on the battlefield, and Sennacherib (r. 704–681 BC) was murdered in a palace conspiracy. Kings could also be endangered by damage to or the displacement of their images.23 Curses reveal anxiety about the security of rulers’ images, some of which were ultimately defaced by enemy hands (for example, BM 124912).24 However, attesting that the kingly image was less vulnerable than the mortal body, there is no evidence that violence to the king would harm his images. The biological body, then, never a site of safety or stability, seems to have been only a temporary actor in the eternal drama of elite ideological memory.25

Rulers’ images Over the course of centuries, images of Neo-Assyrian monarchs were relatively analogous to one another (Figs. 6.1, 6.2).26 Although, throughout their reigns, all kings could have worn the same type of regalia in which they were depicted in art, their mortal bodies would not all have ever possessed or maintained the ideal physical characteristics comprising their images. Rather than a personal likeness in the Western sense of a portrait, according to Irene Winter, the image of the king may be best explained as a formulated picture of the tropes of kingship.27 In addition to establishing ideals of male attractiveness that encoded kingly characteristics, the visual consistency of Neo-Assyrian rulers’ images could also have fused individual and dynastic identity. Thereby, as Michelle Marcus has proposed, the kingly image could have ‘eternalize[d] and naturalize[d] the legitimacy of the ruler and the state, by way of suggesting unity with the past’.28 Much scholarship has been dedicated to defining the Neo-Assyrian concept of image (Akkadian: s.almu) and clarifying, in particular, the nature of the image of the king (s.alam-šarri) and the image of kingship (s.alam-šarrūtiya).29 Analysis of Assyrian texts reveals that Neo-Assyrian rulers’ images were

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recognized as original realities constituting an essential component of kingly existence.30 In this sense, because artistically rendered figures were not construed as copies of the biological body, an image might appropriately be classified, along with the body, as what Zainab Bahrani describes as a ‘multiplication’ of personhood, or simply ‘another way that the person [in this case, the king] . . . could be encountered’.31 Rulers’ images not only multiplied the kingly presence, but also embodied divinity.32 Assyrian texts describe both the ruler’s body and his image as being cast of ‘the flesh of the gods’ (Akkadian: šēr ilāne).33 Some inscriptions even mark the term s.almu with the divine determinative (the Sumerian dingir sign) suggesting that an image itself could be deified.34 Consequently, as vehicles of memory materializing both mortal and divine essence, rulers’ images could have tethered kingly actions and identity to the historical timeline and translated them into the eternal sphere of elite ideological memory.35

Audience and aesthetics The audience for Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs and their manifestations of elite ideological memory would probably have included the ruler, members of his family, courtiers and diplomatic visitors.36 Even if the sculptures documented events and power in a straightforward way, an initiated cadre probably would have read them from the metaphysical perspective explored here.37 While this informed group, including the monarch, would have accepted the divinity and personhood of rulers’ images, the works’ perfection and aesthetic appeal would nonetheless have been vital to their elite effectiveness as well as to their capacity to influence broader audiences.38 A perfect image shows an idealized figure properly participating in a flawless event. The iconography is accurate (the appropriate regalia, for example, is portrayed), and the narratives culminate in success. Furthermore, a perfect image fulfils the highest standards of figural appearance. In the case of kings’ images, characteristics such as a full beard and powerful musculature demonstrated masculine ideals (Figs.  6.1, 6.2).39 In fact, Neo-Assyrian texts refer to gods perfecting (Akkadian: šuklulu) the king’s image and bodily form

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in their own likenesses.40 Thus, valid rulers’ images would have materialized not only human ideals but also divine perfection. Only the highest-­quality artworks would have been suitable media for the perfect kingly image.41 Provoking delight or awe, aestheticized imagery gains impact and persuasion. In fact, an analysis of image quality on Ashurbanipal’s lion hunt reliefs (for example, BM 124850–58) suggests that Neo-Assyrian artists deployed master craftsmanship as an ideological device to highlight and empower royal figures through consummate carving.42 Therefore, as perfect pictures and aesthetically appealing works offered to palace audiences, NeoAssyrian rulers’ images could most effectively have communicated the king’s mortal and eternal authority in elite ideological memory.

Self-­reflexive rulers’ images and the memory of king and kingship With regard to artworks, ‘self-­reflexive’ typically refers to an entity bearing its own image. More broadly, building upon Assmann’s criterion that cultural memory is ‘self-­reflexive’, the term could be applied to the relationship between the Neo-Assyrian ruler and his image.43 This would not be a simple circumstance of the king and his picture, however, but a dynamic juxtaposition of the ruler’s biological form with a divinely perfected artistic manifestation of his personhood and the office of kingship.44 Visually resembling the king at least in action, hairstyle and regalia, a ruler’s image could have prompted what Hans Belting describes as ‘self-­perception’ and/or ‘self-­oblivion’.45 That is, when an ageing king (perhaps with an aching back and sagging skin) gazed upon the virtual mirror of the palace wall and saw a perfect figure, perhaps he would have identified with the flawless form before him and forgotten about his own mortal body. Likewise, when others viewed a potentially aged ruler in conjunction with a royal sculpture, they too might have perceived the divinely perfected image as a true presence of the ruler, not as an idealized picture of his earlier years. Although the sovereign’s biological body changed with time and circumstances, the king’s image, in the manner of a god’s, would have remained forever flawless, as it thrived in the eternal realm of elite ideological memory.

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When a sovereign created a memory of his personal achievement, such as the South-West Palace relief series portraying Sennacherib’s victory at Lachish (for example, BM 124911–12), he demonstrated commitment to the tradition of kingship by employing an established rhetoric of text and image.46 Subsuming a ruler’s story into an everlasting narrative played out on palace walls, self-­reflexive images and inscriptions also would have reminded the king and other viewers of what he did, what his ancestors did, what is always done and therefore what he and his successors will do. The king’s image thereby both preserved the biographical memory of an individual and secured his role in the elite ideological memory of kingship. Furthermore, by portraying the heir apparent in his narrative (for example, BM 124549), a ruler would be ever more fixed as a genealogical link in history, time and eternal memory.47 Because royal regalia and ruler portraits remained generally consistent throughout the Neo-Assyrian period, a living monarch could have recognized himself and been recognized by others in his own portraits as well as in those of his predecessors. For example, Ashurnasirpal II’s North-West Palace was still intact during the reign of Ashurbanipal, whose own actions, personal appearance and images could have emulated and been (positively) assessed against his forefather’s record (compare Figs. 6.1, 6.2). Approximately half a century earlier, Ashurbanipal’s great-­grandfather, Sargon II, had lived in the North-West Palace, where he would have held court in Ashurnasirpal II’s then antique throne room.48 Here, against the legitimizing backdrop of his dynastic ancestor’s image, Sargon II would have marked his place on the historical timeline while activating and enacting his role in elite ideological memory. Further strengthening his eternal authority, when Sargon II, who deposed Shalmaneser V (r. 726–722 BC), put on the robes of kingship, he demonstrated links not only to Neo-Assyrian history but also to the mythological past. The name ‘Sargon’ could have cast the usurping ruler in a positive light by associating him with the highly esteemed 3rd-­millennium BC Akkadian-­ period king Sargon of Agade.49 Visually, Sargon II evoked his legitimacy by incorporating monumental sculptures of an archaic hero-­type into façades a and n of the new palace that he built at Khorsabad (AO 19861–62).50 Depicted holding miniature lions, the hero figures are recognizable as lahmu, mythical ˘ beings portrayed on Akkadian-­period seals.51 The surviving sculpture from

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façade a depicts a hero with archaic-­style curls, while a Neo-Assyrian-­style head differentiates the intact figure from façade n and may provide a ligature between Sargon II, the era of Sargon of Agade and, perhaps, the primordial universe described in mythology. Although Sargon II’s lahmu imagery vividly ˘ references legendary history and metaphysical eternity, more standard NeoAssyrian palace narratives could also have empowered mortal rulers with ‘mythological’ characteristics of kingship, thereby elevating their reigns into the immortal realm of elite ideological memory.52

Conclusion Jennifer Ross theorizes that, presenting reality through the filter of ideology, royal Neo-Assyrian art removed the ‘lived experience’ from its original time and place.53 According to this scheme, royal imagery would have manifested and sustained the sacred phenomenon of elite ideological memory on an eternal plane, where rulers’ images were prioritized over the mortal body as the everlasting presence of the Neo-Assyrian ‘king’ and ‘kingship’. Images could therefore have stabilized the king’s presence in space as well as in historical and metaphysical time. For instance, once a king departed – whether he left the palace, left the capital or died – the essence, presence and memory of king and kingship would linger in his carved images at the heart of the empire.54 As demonstrated by Ashurnasirpal II’s depiction behind his own throne (BM 124531), the ‘seat’ of the empire would never be empty.55 Reflecting the essential and unending role of royal images, Neo-Assyrian texts document that rulers vigorously restored and preserved royal sculptures.56 Maintained by mortal hands as devices of elite ideological memory, images of kings and kingship would thus have been empowered to sustain the empire for eternity.

Acknowledgements I thank Mehmet-Ali Ataç and Irene Winter for their feedback on various drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Ann Guinan, who assisted me with researching and interpreting the Šumma alu omen discussed here. Last, but

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not least, I thank Nigel Tallis of the British Museum for his generous assistance in measuring the relief for me that is illustrated in Fig. 6.2.

Notes 1 Ataç 2010b: 177–188; Bahrani 2008: 125; 2014: 7–10, 98–99, 114, 141, 235, 238; Maul 2008: 20–24; 2015. 2 Kantorowicz 1998. For a recent consideration of Kantorowicz’s theory in relation to ancient kingship, see Bommas (2013: 198–205); also see Machinist (2006: 186, n. 118). 3 Bahrani 2003: 127–133; 2014: 141; Belting 1994: 23. 4 Erll 2011: 1–5, 38–94. 5 Assmann 1995: 131–32; 2006: 24–30, 169; 2011: 6, 9, 31; Bommas in this volume (Chapter Nine); Luiselli 2011. 6 My analytical category of ‘elite ideological memory’ is further supported by foundational studies by Aby Warburg (1999), who recognized objects and symbols as repositories of cultural memory, and by Maurice Halbwachs (1980; 1992), whose theory on ‘collective memory’ linked memory to social frameworks. For discussions of Warburg and Halbwachs, see Assmann (1995: 125–127; 2006: 93–95, 170; 2011: 21–33); Bahrani (2014: 87–89) and Erll (2011: 14–22). 7 Bahrani 2008: 65–74; 2014: 34, 94–96; Marcus 1995. 8 Assmann 2011: 38; Halbwachs 1980: 156. On the role of inscriptions in transmitting eternal memory, see Liverani (2010). 9 Assmann 2006: 38–39, 104; 2011: 6, 24–25, 37; Erll 2001: 34; Halbwachs 1980: 128–134. 10 Assmann 1995: 132–133. See also the contribution of Ataç in this volume (Chapter Five). 11 Assmann 2011: 28, 149–150. 12 Ibid.: 37–38. 13 Maul 2008: 20; 2015; Middleton and Brown 2008. 14 Ataç 2010a; 2010b; Bahrani 2014: 98–99, 114; Katz 2013. 15 de Martino 1995; Di Ludovico 2013: 184–185. 16 Belting 1994: 17; Halbwachs 1992: 88, 119; Katz 2013: 118; Maul 2008: 21–22; Ross 2005: 333. 17 Bahrani 2003: 182; 2014: 76, 238. 18 Winter 1995: 2578; 1996; 1997: 370–373. 19 Radner 2010.

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20 Although all kingly remains were robbed from their graves at Assur, inscriptions warn against the disruption of their tombs (Grayson and Novotny 2014: 23–24, 283, 285, Text 203, line 1; Text 204, line 1; Haller 1954: 170–181; Postgate 2008: 177–178). 21 Freedman 1998: 187. Semantically zumru seems to indicate the skin-­covered, as opposed to garment-­covered, physique (CAD 21/Z: 158). 22 Ataç 2010a: 35–36. 23 Bahrani 2003: 182; 2008: 98; 2014: 76, 104–105. 24 Bahrani 2008: 149–184; 2014: 77; Grayson 1991: 253–254, Text A.O.101.17, lines v 54–95; Nylander 1999. 25 Acknowledging human mortality, royal texts include pleas for the king’s health and longevity (Grayson 1996: 61, Text A.O.102.12, lines 36b–40; Grayson and Novotny 2012: 226, Text 34, lines 91–94). 26 Bahrani 2014: 75; Winter 1997: 372. Regarding the king’s agency in the creation of his images, see Ataç (2010a: 4–5, 157–158), Cole and Machinist (1999: 36–37, 147–148, Letter 34, lines 11–23, r.2 lines 1–17 and Letter 178, lines 10–258) and Winter (1997: 367–368, 375–377). 27 Bahrani 2003: 138–145; 2014: 69; Machinist 2006: 187–188; Winter 1997: 368–369, 373–374, 377; 2009. 28 Marcus 1995: 2488. 29 Bahrani 2003: 121–148; 2014: 33, 68–74; CAD 16/S. : 78–85; Frahm 2013: 102–103; Machinist 2006: 162, 171–172, 175–179, 187–188; Winter 1995: 2572–2573; 1997: 364–366, 374; 2008b: 83–86; 2009: 262, 266, 269. Consider that Winter (1997: 374; 2008b: 81; 2009: 266) and, following her, Bahrani (2003: 138–145; 2008: 98; 2014: 81, 84) find models for interpreting Neo-Assyrian royal images in Marin’s (1988) study of Louis XIV. 30 Bahrani 2003: 127, 134–135, 201; 2014: 84; Frahm 2013: 102; Machinist 2006: 176; Winter 1997: 365–366; 2008b: 86. 31 Bahrani 2003: 134, 138. For a comparative, cross-­cultural conception of the extension of identity and personhood into extrasomatic, immortal spheres, see Wilkinson (2013). 32 Bahrani 2003: 127; Machinist 2006: 187–188; Winter 1997: 377; 2009: 269. 33 Frahm 2013: 98; Machinist 2006: 162–163, 166–167, 170–172, 175, 177–179; Ornan 2007: 162, 170; 2009: 145–147; 2013: 585–589; Winter 1997: 373–376; 2008b: 84–86; 2009: 269. 34 Cole and Machinist 1999: xiv–xv; Frahm 2013: 105; Machinist 2006: 178, 185; Winter 1996: 91–92; 2008b: 86. 35 Ataç 2010a; Bahrani 2014: 7, 76, 141, 235, 238; Katz 2013: 119; Machinist 2006: 178–179, 186; Winter 2008b: 75, 84–86.

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36 Ataç 2010a: 89; Marcus 1995: 2492; Russell 1991: 223–240. 37 Ataç 2010a. 38 Ibid.: 201; Winter 1996: 19–23. 39 Winter 1995: 2578; 1996: 11–15; 1997: 370–371. 40 Machinist 2006: 177; Winter 1997: 372; 2008a: 337; 2008b: 85; 2009: 269. 41 Bahrani 2008: 54; 2014: 43–48; Winter 1995; 1996: 19–21; 2003; 2008a. 42 Aker 2007; Bahrani 2003: 138; Winter 1995; 2008a. 43 Assmann 1995: 132–133. 44 Winter 1997: 376. 45 Belting 1994: 11. 46 Maul 2008: 21. 47 Ibid.: 20; Parker 2011: 366–367; Tadmor 1981: 13, 25. 48 Kertai 2013: 11, 18, 21. 49 Assmann 2006: 28; Feldman 2007: 278–279; Frahm 2005: 48; Garrison 2012: 33; Van De Mieroop 1999: 329–330, 333–334. 50 Albenda 1986: 52–53, 101–102, Pls 15–17, Figs 7–8; Garrison 2010: 154–155; 2012: 33. 51 Albenda 1986: 102, n. 1; Ataç 2010a: 174. Note that Eppihimer (2015) questions the degree to which audiences, especially those beyond the king’s inner circle, might have drawn a link between the sculptures and Akkadian or archaic imagery. 52 Ataç 2010a; Bahrani 2014: 45–47, 98–99, 114. 53 Ross 2005: 333. 54 Machinist 2006: 176. 55 Winter 1993. 56 Grayson 1991: 282, Text A.O.101.26, lines 67b–69a; 1996: 62, 101, Text A.O.102.13, lines 1’–10’, Text A.O.102.27, lines 13b–15; Grayson and Novotny 2012: 40, 78, Text 1, lines 93–94, Text 8, lines 17’–18’; Tadmor and Yamada 2011: 87, Text 35, line iii 6’.

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Maul, S.M., 2008. ‘Walking Backwards into the Future: The Conception of Time in the Ancient Near East’, in: T. Miller (ed.), Given World and Time. Temporalities in Context, Budapest, 15–24. Maul, S.M., 2015. ‘Rückwärts schauend in die Zukunft: Utopien des Alten Orients’, in: A. Archi (ed.), Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 57th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Rome, 4–8 July 2011, Winona Lake, 3–12. Middleton, D. and Brown, S.D., 2008. ‘Experience and Memory: Imaginary Futures in the Past’, in: A. Erll, A. Nünn (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, New York, 241–252. Nylander, C., 1999. ‘Breaking the Cup of Kingship: An Elamite Coup in Nineveh’ in: Iranica Antiqua 34, 71–83. Ornan, T., 2007. ‘The Godlike Semblance of a King: The Case of Sennacherib’s Rock Reliefs’, in: J. Cheng, M.H. Feldman (eds.), Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by Her Students, Boston, 161–178. Ornan, T., 2009. ‘In the Likeness of Man, Reflections on the Anthropocentric Perception of the Divine in Mesopotamian Art’, in: B.N. Porter (ed.), What is a God? Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia, The Casco Bay Assyriological Institute Transactions 2, Winona Lake, 93–151. Ornan, T., 2013. ‘A Silent Message: Godlike Kings in Mesopotamian Art’, in: B.A. Brown, M.H. Feldman (eds.), Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, Boston, 569–595. Parker, B.J., 2011. ‘The Construction and Performance of Kingship in the NeoAssyrian Empire’ in: Journal of Anthropological Research 67, 357–386. Postgate, J.N., 2008. ‘The Tombs in the Light of Mesopotamian Funerary Traditions’, in: J.E. Curtis et al. (eds.), New Light on Nimrud: Proceedings of the Nimrud Conference 11th–13th March 2002, London, 177–180. Radner, K., 2010. ‘Gatekeepers and Lock Masters: The Control of Access in Assyrian Palaces’, in: H.D. Baker, E. Robson, G. Zólyomi (eds.), Your Praise is Sweet: A Memorial Volume for Jeremy Black from Students, Colleagues, and Friends, London, 269–280. Ross, J.C., 2005. ‘Representations, Reality, and Ideology’, in: S. Pollock, R. Bernbeck (eds.), Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives, Malden, 327–350. Russell, J.M., 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh, Chicago. Tadmor, H., 1981. ‘History and Ideology in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions’, in: F.M. Fales (ed.), Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis: Papers of a Symposium Held in Cetona (Siena), June 26–28, 1980, Orientis antiqui collection 17, Rome, 13–33.

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Tadmor, H. and Yamada, S., 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-­pileser III (744–727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726–722 BC), Kings of Assyria, RINAP 1, Winona Lake. Van De Mieroop, M., 1999. ‘Literary and Political Discourse in Ancient Mesopotamia: Sargon II of Assyria and Sargon of Agade’, in: B. Böck, E. Cancik-Kirschbaum, T. Richter (eds.), Munuscula Mesopotamica, Festschrift für Johannes Renger, AOAT 267, Münster, 327–339. Warburg, A., 1999. The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, introduction by K.W. Foster, translation by D. Britt, Los Angeles. Wilkinson, D., 2013. ‘The Emperor’s New Body: Personhood, Ontology and the Inka Sovereign’ in: Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23, 417–432. Winter, I.J., 1993. ‘ “Seat of Kingship” / “A Wonder to Behold”: The Palace as Construct in the Ancient Near East’ in: Ars Orientalis 23, 27–55. Winter, I.J., 1995. ‘Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art’, in: J.M. Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, New York, 2569–2580. Winter, I.J., 1996. ‘Sex, Rhetoric, and the Public Monument: The Alluring Body of Naram-Sîn of Agade’, in: N.B. Kampen (ed.), Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, New York, 11–26. Winter, I.J., 1997. ‘Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology’, in: S. Parpola, R.M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, 7–11 September 1995, Helsinki, 359–381. Winter, I.J., 2003. ‘ “Surpassing Work”: Mastery of Materials and the Value of Skilled Production in Ancient Sumer’, in: D.T. Potts, M. Roaf, D. Stein (eds.), Culture through Objects: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of P. R. S. Moorey, Oxford, 403–421. Winter, I.J., 2008a. ‘Sennacherib’s Expert Knowledge: Skill and Mastery as Components of Royal Display’, in: R.D. Biggs, J. Myers, M.T. Roth (eds.), Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago July 18–22, 2005, SAOC 62, Chicago, 333–338. Winter, I.J., 2008b. ‘Touched by the Gods: Visual Evidence for the Divine Status of Rulers in the Ancient Near East’, in: N. Brisch (ed.), Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, Oriental Institute Seminars 4, Chicago, 75–101. Winter, I.J., 2009. ‘What/When Is a Portrait? Royal Images of the Ancient Near East’ in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 153, 254–270.

7

The Many Falls of Babylon and the Shape of Forgetting Seth Richardson°

Introduction Put in your head a picture of Babylon in the centuries after its first age of prominence – from the time after its first, spectacular demise in 1595 BC, down to its gradual dilapidation in the last centuries before Christ. For sixteen centuries – most of its history – Babylon, like post-­imperial Rome, lived as both an ‘eternal’1 city and an artefact of state collapse: simultaneously the symbol of a durable forever and a monument of utter failure. Babylon, resettled and rebuilt, came to take on not only political but cosmological significance as the centre of earthly power, especially between 750 and 300 BC. But the memory of its long-­ago destruction continued to trouble that triumph, even through years when other captive peoples, settled in its shadow, wrote their own tales about the fragility and resilience of homelands. How to deal with the memories of an inconvenient and problematic past? Latter-­day Babylon wielded the ‘invented tradition’ of its ancient right of dominance, but the very cityscape through which its processions marched was a setting that also suggested the city’s historical mortality. The heroic present literally inhabited and figuratively gestured to its own past, lauding its ancient kings, temples and gods. But this opened a two-­way street of allusions, because it was not possible to import only the ‘good’ past without the ‘bad’. This duality created a historical echo chamber through which Babylon symbolized Mesopotamian notions of civic resilience and fragility for more than a millennium. Like many cultural paradoxes, this was a functional irony,

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channelling the good into the framework of Babylonian political ideology, and transforming the bad into harmless fairy tales, or refocusing them on other subjects. This essay tracks the historical reception of Babylon’s 1595 collapse in later times; and along the way attends to some points of interest suitable for historical reconstruction.2 Many of these texts have been discussed before, and in various combinations, but often to support specific historical arguments, and never all at once.

Remembering and forgetting Babylon Babylon’s Fall was a more severe rupture of political and social orders than the collapse of Akkad or Ur. This is indicated not only by the length and severity of political confusion and low textual production that followed,3 but also by the fact that the event was never memorialized where we would expect to find it, in the genre of laments. One exception to this might be the lengthy mourning for Babylon embedded in the Erra and Išum composition, though it is hardly clear what historical event (if any) might be its referent.4 A second possible exception might be found in the laments for dead kings oddly embedded in the Late Sumerian composition In the Desert By the Early Grass, wherein appears the name ‘Sumaditan’, apparently for Samsuditana. The text perhaps casts Samsuditana in an unfavourable light, along with Ibbi-Sin of Ur, as part of an Unheilsherren tradition; but the text is broken and its translators disagree as to the line’s reading.5 Aside from these mildly astonishing exceptions, the lamentation genre ignored the Fall of Babylon despite its otherwise robust production. In their early form (i.e. those composed prior to 1595), Sumerian city-­laments memorialized the historical destructions of Akkad,6 Ur, Uruk, Nippur, Lagaš7 and Eridu.8 This historiographic form was probably already becoming moribund by 1595.9 But in their later post-1595 ‘canonical’ form, produced, copied and used down to very late times, laments abandoned their historical voice for a cosmological one, and Babylon was rarely mentioned except among generic and collective lists of all cities, not as a subject.10 The foretexts, parallels and means to treat the Fall of Babylon in laments were all available, but the topic went virtually unused; nor did it ever become

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the subject of any other kind of composition. This omission from major tradition tells us something about the severity of the event, the degree of the historiographic problem, or both. One might begin to think that the Fall of Babylon had simply been forgotten. We know so little about the event ourselves that we might imagine the ancients had no sources for or traditions about the event. But there were at least thirteen cuneiform compositions mentioning or alluding to the event, and therefore ongoing knowledge and concern about it. These sources do not form any single coherent historical tradition, i.e. the intention to tell a similar story in a similar order with a similar point via narratives sharing consecution, consequence and significance. Indeed, the sources listed below are mostly just historiola, ‘little stories’, coming in a mix of genres, and my discussion of them is necessarily of varying length. The absence of a clear centre to the stories has not prevented some historians from clinging to the bits of textual wreckage in hopes of reconstructing a sequence of events. Such reconstructions argue by aggregation, accepting the partial reliability of some sources and narrativizing them; or by reduction, judging one source or topos credible against the falsity of others. I will be no different in analysing the historical value of these sources, but will also consider their reception contexts. The task of reception history is different from historical reconstruction: to determine the relationship between retrospective accounts and the concerns of the times in which they were written. In examining sources that were not or could not be historically comprehensive, we identify the justifying claims on which they grounded themselves and sometimes other documents, and compare the prominence of particular themes instead of distinguishing fact from fiction. In this, our purpose is to discern: what did later Mesopotamians think of the Fall of Babylon, when they thought of it at all? And what are the implications of the shape that the particular remembering and forgetting took?11 Table 7.1 lists these thirteen sources, in rough order of the probable date of the witnesses. Even a perfectly reliable chronological reconstruction would not account for their tropes as merely products of their times. But if we entirely fail to take stock of the changing contexts in which stories are composed, we risk creating composite and anachronistic explanations from such fragments – golems of historical reconstruction – and miss opportunities to see how

Table 7.1  List of the thirteen sources analysed Date of text

ca. 1550 1. Tell Muhammad year-­names

Reference Narrative Antagonists/ to Fall of belligerents Babylon

Temporal framework

indirect

no

unnamed multiple (Kassite) antagonists; civil strife?

contemporary, unidentified none approx. 25 Kassite years Dynasty

n/a

no

Successor state

Explanation Earlier Departing for Fall of sources/ god Babylon recensions motif?

2. Telipinu Edict

ca. 1500

direct

yes

Hittites; ‘Hurrian troops’

retrospective by two generations

none named

Hittite conquest

royal annals?

only if aššuššet implies it

3. Kadašmanharbe I ˘ kudurru (YBC 2242)

ca. 1400

indirect

no

Hanaeans, Amorites, Kassites(?), Suteans

recent past

Kassite Dynasty

dissolution of borders

n/a

no

4. Muršiliš II prayer

ca. 1300

direct

no

Hittites

generational past

none named

none

royal annals?

yes

5. Babylonian King List B

Late Bronze indirect originals with Late Babylonian precipitates

no

none

retrospective, 19th–15th c.

Sealand Dynasty implied

none

no original king list/ individual year-­names?

6. Babylonian King List A

Late Bronze indirect original sources with late (e.g. 7th c.) precipitates

no

none

retrospective and cumulative, [19th]–7th c.

Sealand Dynasty

none

no original king list / year-­names?

7. The Marduk 12th c.? Prophecy

indirect

yes

Hittites implied

16th–12th c.

not specified

Marduk diasporic departs to tales? ‘put Hatti to the test’ and enables commerce

8. The Agum-­ 7th c. kakrime text

indirect

yes

Hanaeans implied

15th c.?

Kassite Dynasty

none

9. The Šulgi Prophecy

12th c.?

indirect

yes

Hittites

16th–12th c.

n/a

king neglects antiyes citizens of Babylonian Nippur and account? Babylon

10. tamītuoracles

Neo-Assyrian, direct from Kalhu ˘

yes

Elamites, 17th c. [  ]-­ratû, Kassites, Idamaras., Hanigalbat, ˘ Samh arû and ˘ ‘Edašuštu’; as ‘foreign’ and ‘enemy troops’

none named

ominous and copied historical from material Middle Assyrian original?

yes

14th / 13th yes c. original(s)?

no

(Continued)

Table 7.1  (Continued) Date of text

Reference Narrative Antagonists/ to Fall of belligerents Babylon

Temporal framework

Successor state

Explanation Earlier Departing for Fall of sources/ god Babylon recensions motif?

11. Ammis.aduqa Neo-Assyrian, unknown yes fragment late 8th Khorsabad

Kassites 17th c. implied? (mentions ‘Burnaburiaš’); rebellion?

Kassite Dynasty?

civil conflict? unknown

probably not

12. Samsuditana Middle ‘Epic’ Babylonian Nippur

direct

yes

Sealand Dynasty?

17th c.

Sealand Dynasty

implied Sealand conquest

unknown

unknown

13. Chronicle of Late Early Kings Babylonian

direct

no

Hittites

Sargon of Sealand Akkad to Dynasty Agum III (ca. 1450); passage specifies ‘time of Samsuditana’

Hittite invasion

omens, Weidner Chronicle

no

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different times privileged different genres and themes. And, in fact, a progression of themes does emerge here: five early texts acknowledging 1595 rather matter-­of-factly, if indirectly; three Late Bronze literary works, which process it through triumphal restoration theologies (both for and against Babylon and Marduk);12 and four Iron Age compositions, which take up an argument about ill-­fated kings and discontented kingdoms.13

Source 1: The Tell Muhammad year-­names The earliest sources we have, from around 1595, come from about thirty tablets excavated from a site not far from Babylon called Tell Muhammad. Eleven of these tablets bear dates based on the number of years elapsed from the resettlement of Babylon – not from its Fall, but its restoration,14 though perhaps fairly soon after the event15 – with the formula: Year [36–41] that Babylon was resettled.16

The dates make no account of the collapse event, nor should they: the violent nature by which most of lower Mesopotamia both came into and went out from under Babylon’s control probably left them little disposed to mourn its passing in the short term. But the dates and the texts on which they appear reveal several contexts of reception. Within a generation of the collapse, an institutionally authorized commemorative framework about Babylon was in place, despite a radically changed political and social order that recognized both an urban Babylonian state sector and a rural Kassite one. A territorial state existed of at least 5,000 km2 (a little smaller than the Netherlands), to judge by the minimum lands encompassing both Tell Muhammad and Babylon.17 The year-­names indicate that this little kingdom had control over religious, political, economic and agricultural institutions, made regular astronomical observations, had contact with Aššur and Ešnunna, and maintained markets for grain, silver and real estate. The year-­names also acknowledged political rulers unrelated to the First Dynasty (and not always clearly ‘kings’). These rulers bore clearly Kassite names,18 though none matches that of any known Kassite dynast,19 and intra-Kassite conflict is indicated between multiple groups and leaders.20

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This historical data is slight; the concerns of the dating system were to marry the (expiring) practice of year-­name formulae to the refounding of Babylon as a ‘Year 1’ event of bedrock importance; and to emphasize the city’s rebuilding rather than its destruction. These first glimpses of post-­ collapse Babylon indicate that political and civil life had preserved some old symbols while innovating new ones, but we see no mention at all of the collapse itself.

Source 2: The Telipinu Edict The Telipinu Edict relates the heroic exploits of the Hittite king Muršili I as prolegomena to describing administrative reforms enacted by Muršili’s grandson Telipinu. The text first credits Muršili I with accomplishing the deathbed wish of his father, Hattušili I, in conquering Aleppo; then, with equal ˘ brevity, it goes on to say: ‘Now later he went to Babylon. He destroyed Babylon and fought the Hurrian [troops]. Babylon’s deportees [and] its goods he kept in Hat[tuša].’21 ˘ Although the double conquest of Aleppo and Babylon became part of a Hittite ‘military tradition’ in later times,22 it is hardly clear why Muršili I bothered to undertake the raid. Aleppo was Hatti’s bête noire in Syria, and ˘ worth neutralizing; but Babylon lay almost 900 km further downriver,23 and (to our present knowledge) there was no particular problem between the states nor even direct contact.24 Were Muršili merely eager to embellish the account of the Aleppo conquest, he might more simply have moved against Qatna or Ugarit, cities within easier reach (ca. 100–200 km).25 Babylon had either become or threatened to become a competitor to Hittite commercial or geopolitical interests in Syria. Contrary to many discussions, the Edict does not actually contain a synchronism for the Fall of Babylon, since it mentions no Babylonian king by name. Thus the most important thing the text supposedly gives us – that the Hittite attack ended the reign of Samsuditana – it does not actually say. That connection requires associating the Edict, composed ca. 1500 BC, with our very last text, the ‘Chronicle of Early Kings’ (Source 13), composed more than a millennium later in Late Babylonian times. The text’s reliability as a chronographic tool must also be in question, since Hittite chronology depends

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partly on the date of the Fall of Babylon – and thus the ‘synchronism’ is quite possibly arrived at by circular logic. The problem goes deeper. Muršili I and Samsuditana each reigned for thirty-­one years.26 Except by assuming that the raid ended the reign of Samsuditana (as no source reports), we have no way of fixing the date of the raid into those two regnal lengths, which might overlap by as little as one or as much as sixty years (a similar problem exists for the Gulkišar-Samsuditana synchronism in Source 12, below). There is no necessary chronological identity between the end of Samsuditana’s reign, the Fall of Babylon and Muršili’s raid. The Hittite razzia may have occurred as early as Samsuditana’s accession, as far as we currently know. Meanwhile, the more neglected points of the Edict concern the topics of booty and Hurrian troops. On the first, the Edict tells us that the Hittite capital of Hattuša – more than 1,000 km away – received the seized people ˘ (nam.ra.meš) of Babylon and ‘their goods’ (Hitt. aššuššet). Who and what were these people and things seized by Muršili? There are indications that they might have included cultic personnel, literary and ritual texts, and even the divine image of Marduk (perhaps corroborated by Sources 4, 7 and 8). Some evidence points to Old Babylonian (hereafter, OB) literature or the city of Babylon as sources or stimuli for Middle Hittite literature. We know of Hittite colophons indicating Babylon as the source of specific compositions or Babylonians as scribes,27 texts that presuppose familiarity with Babylonian people and products,28 and the use of OB sources for Hittite terrestrial omens seem likely.29 There is also the Hittite babilili-ritual, which invokes Mesopotamian deities with incantations in Akkadian. Though there is ‘no reason to posit composition before the fourteenth century’, the text may yet be known in fragments of Middle Hittite date,30 and some of its topical and grammatical features hint at an OB Akkadian background.31 Meanwhile, there is a very low profile of evidence for Syrian intermediaries for Middle Hittite texts such as hemerologies, physiognomic omens, tirānu-oracles, potency incantations and bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian incantations.32 As these Hittite manuscripts include some of the ‘earliest-­attested exemplars of several “canonical” Mesopotamian texts’,33 the direct transmission of these genres from Babylonian tablets or scholars may be no less plausible than a Syrian route.

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It must be acknowledged that if there were Late OB persons and literatures circulating in the 16th- or 15th-­century Hittite world, direct evidence for them is not there, and that current scholarship supports a predominantly Syro-Levantine influence for early Hittite literature and palaeography rather than a Mesopotamian one.34 Nor am I aware that aššu, ‘goods’, was otherwise used to indicate ‘tablets’ in Hittite.35 Yet it would be difficult to exclude the possibility that Muršili I returned to Hattuša in 1595 BC with a trophy library and captured scholars, adding another stimulus to an emerging Hittite writing tradition between its Old Assyrian and Late Bronze Syrian influences. If we posit some Babylonian cultural or literary influence at the Hittite capital at the end of the Old Kingdom, we might think in terms of Mesopotamians living in Anatolia,36 alongside captives from Aleppo and elsewhere, as semi-­free people,37 adding another adstrate population alongside the descendants of Assyrian colonists, still conversant with writing technologies and textual traditions.38 A later repatriation of Marduk’s statue to Babylon might also have returned descendants of these nam.ra people, with a diasporic account that would shape the later prophetic stories (Sources 7 and 8). The second neglected issue of this passage in the Edict is its description of battle against ‘Hurrian troops’. It is unclear if or how these Hurrians were allied with Babylon, which may or may not complicate the claim of the later Agum-­ kakrime text (Source 8), which sets the exile of Marduk in Hana. All we can say is that the text moves two non-­aligned and possibly hostile ethno-­political identities (Babylonians and Hurrians) to the fore in the same landscape; focuses the action in the Euphrates corridor and attention on the booty and deportees rather than on Babylon and the dynasty (about which it says nothing); and sets the stage for a historiographic theme of later Mesopotamian texts: restoration and return.

Source 3: The Kadašman-harbe I kudurru (=YBC 2242) ˘ This kudurru from the reign of Kadašman-harbe I (ca. 1400 BC) has ˘ recently been translated by Susanne Paulus.39 It dates to around 150 years after the Tell Muhammad texts, and takes as its narrative occasion the vanquishment of Sutean forces40 and consolidation of Kassite power. Its

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opening, however, describes the time of Samsuditana41 as a time of struggle between the ‘belligerence’ (qitbulu) of the Amorites, the ‘uprising’ (tibût) of the Hanaeans, and the Kassite army. This free-­for-all is said to have changed the original divine plan of the land of Sumer and Akkad and ‘unmade’ (lā buššumu) its borders: When at the time of Samsuditana the borders of Sumer and Akkad were altered by the belligerence of the Amorites, the uprising of the Hanaeans, and the army of the Kassites, the design [of the land] had been obliterated, and [its] borders had been unmade: Kadašman-Harbe, King of ˘ Babylon . . .

The Kassite king’s military victory permitted him to re-­draw boundaries around arable lands, such as was accomplished by this particular stela, which documents approximately 13 km2 of fields belonging to four households near Hamru on the Tigris.42 Again we find a source placing thematic importance on ˘ restoration, multiple belligerents, and their deleterious effect on the state’s territorial integrity. The latter element harmonizes well with the situation presented by the tamītu-oracles (Source 10), and my 2005 argument that state territorialism had been degraded and that ‘a competitive warlord society had rooted itself in the countryside’.43

Source 4: The Sun-­goddess prayer of Muršili II Returning briefly to the Hittite tradition, the description of Muršili I’s conquest of Babylon is apparently supported by the later claim of Muršili II (ca. 1300 BC; in copies of the late 13th century) in a prayer that: In the past, Hatti, with the help of the Sun-­goddess of Arinna, used to maul the surrounding lands like a lion. Moreover, Aleppo and Babylon which they destroyed, they took their goods – silver, gold, and gods – of all the lands, and they deposited it before the Sun-­goddess of Arinna.44

Not only does this corroborate Source 2, but apparently the premises of Sources 7 and 8 as well.45 Muršili II’s reference to Babylon may seem more pointed in light of the accusations of murder and sedition he levelled against his Babylonian stepmother in a separate prayer. Given that one of the pieces of evidence against her was her apparent prediction of Muršili’s death from an

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eclipse omen ‘in real Babylonian fashion’,46 the passage may have partly been intended to underscore Hittite cultic authority through Hattuša’s possession of ˘ Babylonian gods.

Sources 5 and 6: Babylonian King Lists A and B Babylonian King Lists A and B have been known for well over a century, and there is not much new to add here beyond underscoring that, despite their brevity, their formats clearly mark the ends of the dynasties they document.47 Though both BKLA 48 and B are known only from much later copies, the manuscripts from which they descend probably had Bronze Age roots.49 Both lists imply the succession of Babylon by a Sealand rather than a Kassite kingdom,50 thus bringing a seventh group into the historical picture. The relationship and relative chronological position of the following Kassite dynasts in BKLA is ambiguous,51 but given the enormous length of the claimed Kassite reign (576 years or more, against 368 for the Sealand), it is probable that the compositors assumed some overlap, contemporaneity and competition between Babylon and its successors. The texts display a confidence that historical accuracy was possible; BKLA’s correct sequence of Babylonian kings, for example, is already no small achievement. The later corrections by scribes to regnal lengths in BKLB also indicates that some First-Dynasty sources, such as lists of kings and year-­names, were still in circulation.52 It is possible, for instance, that the most complete date-­ list of Samsuditana post-­dates the First Dynasty,53 while other date-­lists only collected ‘highlights’ from the year-­names of Hammurabi and Samsuiluna, perhaps the source material for later chronicles.54 Other texts may have preserved date formulae as a secondary consequence of their composition, the best example being the Venus Tablet of Ammis. aduqa, a Seleucid-­era recension.55 BKLA and BKLB make absolutely no significance of the Fall of Babylon. But the lists are products of historical research and awareness. From a historiographic point of view, they situate the First Dynasty as the earliest historically recoverable age of Babylon, and cite the end of Samsuditana’s reign as the first major rupture in the life of a city that (by the time of its known copies, at least) felt itself to be not only the political but the cosmological centre of the world.

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Source 7: The ‘Marduk Prophecy’ Our three Late Bronze Age texts are very different sorts of compositions: two prophecies – one in the voice of Šulgi, one in the voice of Marduk – and a third text in the possibly fictional voice of a king named Agum-­kakrime. The first two compositions belong to a class of Akkadian pseudepigraphic and ex eventu prophecies that affected a historical voice, using calculated doses of historical detail to amplify the profundity of the events they ‘predicted’. A large number of such literary texts could theoretically be marshalled into service here, since the themes of Marduk’s peregrinations and the oppression of the city pervade these genres; but I will restrict my comments to the texts that most specifically imply the 1595 event.56 The Marduk Prophecy describes the god’s journeys to Hatti, Aššur and ˘ Elam, in an order correctly corresponding to the order of the raids of Muršili I, Tukulti-Ninurta I and Kutir-Nahhunte, and correctly recalls Middle Bronze ˘˘ trade with Anatolia.57 The account also overlays (accurately or fancifully?) a specific time period for the residence of Marduk in Hatti (but not for Aššur or ˘ Elam) as a historicizing element: I gave the command that I go to Hatti, I put Hatti to the test, there I set up ˘ ˘ the throne of my supreme godhead. For twenty-­four years I dwelt there. I made it possible for Babylonians58 to send (commercial) expeditions there, and they marketed(?) its [ ] goods and property59 [in] Sippar, Nippur, [and Babylo]n. A king of Babylon arose [and] led [me in procession to] . . . Babylon . . .60

While this composition, like others, makes no explanation for the Fall of Babylon, it does account for the immediate post-­conquest landscape. Far from a devastated Babylon, we hear of one rejuvenated through Marduk’s solicitude of long-­distance trade. This is a substantially different picture from the image of a landscape riven by warring tribes, all the more arresting in contrast to Marduk’s (equally voluntary) Elamite sojourn in the same text, during which Babylonia suffers from famine, plague, civil war, rebellion, cannibalism and madness. Yet the climactic refrain of each section of the Marduk Prophecy is not a lament for the disorder caused by the departure of the god, but rather a command for all lands to render tribute to Babylon. The use by both this

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composition and Agum-­kakrime (Source 8) of the ‘departing god’ motif to laud Babylon’s victorious dominance over other lands thus departs radically from the older lamentation tradition. In earlier Sumerian laments, there was little emphasis on what specific enemy lands the god went to;61 the god’s ‘abandoning’, ‘standing aside/outside’ or ‘taking of an unfamiliar path’ was metaphorical, not historical.62 And, although hopeful prayers for the restoration of devastated cities concluded most of the old city-­laments, these were precative, prophylactic and prospective63 – not the kinds of triumphal accounts of return and rebuilding found in Sources 7 and 8. Any likening of these celebratory compositions to the Sumerian laments, with their agonistic spirit and themes of punishment and mercy, on the basis of the shared ‘departing god’ motif is superficial, misperceiving how different the new tradition really was: the Fall of Babylon was now the event that allowed a peripatetic Marduk (or Enlil) to reorder the world towards Babylon’s (or the Sealand’s) future glory.

Source 8: The Agum-­kakrime text Agum-­kakrime’s treatment of Marduk’s absence from Babylon is also consistent with the theme of the city’s renaissance: ‘When Marduk, lord of Esagila and Babylon, (and) the great gods ordered with their holy command his return to Babylon . . .’ .64 The text introduces a new wrinkle, however, in its specification that the god went to ‘the land of the Haneans’ rather than to Hatti. This feature (among ˘ others) has invited some negative comment as to the text’s dependability, though one might recall the ambiguous role of the ‘Hurrian troops’ in the Telipinu text.65 The Agum text tells us that the king ‘set [Marduk’s] face towards Babylon’, negotiated his return, confirmed it by divination, arranged it by his messengers and brought it by royal escort66 to ‘the building which Šamaš confirmed during the examination of the facts’.67 Similar to the Marduk Prophecy, the historiographic premise of Agum-­kakrime was that the god returned of his own will, on his own good time, and with no hint that his absence had either caused or been caused by any chaos or disorder. Though Agum-­kakrime may be regarded as a genuine 2nd-millennium composition based on internal evidence (toponyms,68 cultic names69 and the absence of clearly anachronistic elements70), some are inclined on other

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grounds to see the text as a later ‘pious fraud’. Yet the text is remarkably long and involved for any ‘fraud’ it might perpetuate,71 and even a fraud would have had to draw from some genuine (and obscure) 14th- or 13th-­century details72 copied and preserved down to the 7th century. This indicates, at the very least, a residual interest in the idea of Marduk’s return and of post-­collapse Babylon as a recoverable past – i.e. in historicity as an epistemic mode.

Source 9: The Šulgi Prophecy The Šulgi Prophecy is considerably different from the previous two ‘proBabylonian’ sources, and less concerned with evoking a specific historical past. But it should be considered in tandem with the Marduk Prophecy, because the two were copied together: scribes saw them as related texts.73 Here, it is Šulgi’s voice, evoking foresight in the past, that establishes the memory of Babylon’s trials: The lands are given as one to the king of Babylon and Nippur. Whichever king shall arise after me, on account of(?) Balda[ha] (and) the land of Elam to the east, he will be [thrown into] complete [disorder]. The Hittites will [conquer] Babylon [ ]. (large gap).74

The text gives a different and incorrect order of events: ‘disorder’ caused by Elam, a conquest of Babylon by the Hittites75 and finally the alienation of Babylon’s treasures to Assyria (cf. Source 7, above). The Šulgi text has the Hittite and Assyrian episodes precipitating social disorder (whereas the Marduk text correlates it to the Elamite sojourn), and otherwise muddles the sense of consecution sufficiently to make us doubt that a historical voice was really its primary strategy. Whereas in the Marduk text the (implied) Fall of Babylon is situated in a historical prologue to the major prophetic section of the text, here the event is squarely within the prophetic passage: ‘The Hittites will conquer Babylon’, Šulgi intones. The Šulgi text does not mention Marduk or a restoration of Babylon;76 on the contrary, it predicts an end of ‘the reign of the king of Babylon’77 and the restoration of a Sumerian kingship centred on Girsu/Lagaš by the command of Enlil – in effect a counter-­claim to the Marduk text. Šulgi acknowledges the pervasive warfare and disorder described in other texts only generally (‘fighting

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and warfare shall not cease . . . brother will devour his brother . . .’) rather than specifying any warring parties. In attributing the Fall of Babylon to the Hittites as a consequence of the Babylonian king’s rapacity, it anticipates the ‘ill-­ omened king’ theme expounded in the 1st-­millennium texts discussed below (Sources 10–13). The more straightforwardly historical documents of earlier times were now being overlaid with pseudepigraphic voices, references within and between texts; Marduk, Agum-­kakrime and Šulgi, all copied into the 1st millennium, thus created some generic layering. These accumulated references buttressed the authority of one another, going beyond mere factual accuracy to provide an atmosphere of historical significance. A scribe could copy the Šulgi prophecy and consider its truth-­claim to be guaranteed by the ‘genuine’ royal inscription of Agum-­kakrime; and then savour the profundity of Agum’s historicity in light of the Šulgi text’s cosmological voice – all grounded by the facts of the king lists – and so forth. An account directly focusing on the Fall of Babylon had failed to develop, but stories began to circulate in orbits around the event as a point of departure. It is with this in mind that we turn to Sources 10–13 and their themes of Unheilsherrschaft and rebellion.

Source 10: Four Neo-Assyrian tamītu-oracles (ND 5492, ll. 26–231) Turning to the 1st millennium, we come to four compositions that more directly countenance the 1595 Fall of Babylon as a topic, but that change the focus from Babylonian restoration to the fate of specific kings, with the underlying thema of the Late OB monarchs as ill-­omened. There is a NeoAssyrian oracle, two historical tales and the snippet from the Chronicle of Early Kings, each with revealing details. That two of the texts stem from Assyrian sources may lie in the background of their negative view of Babylon; three see the Babylonian collapse as ominous for the fragility of king, kingdom and kingship. Such themes were widely elaborated in ominous writings of the period, but the First Dynasty received only modest attention in comparison with other epochs. At most, we can point to Hammurabi78 and his heir Samsuiluna79 as figures of minor interest in later ages. The Neo-Assyrian tamītu-oracles, principally from Nimrud,80 feature the first appearance among all our texts of a Babylonian king by name: Samsuditana,

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the last of the dynasty. The middle four of six oracles in Lambert’s Text No. 1 are set in the time of Samsuditana, and occupy almost two-­thirds of the whole text.81 The first of these concerns securing the safety of ‘the city’ (certainly Babylon82) against an enemy with whom Samsuditana must contend; the next three attend to the safety of those who must go outside the city, those on guard duty and ‘the fort’. The text is cast in terms and tone appropriate to its divinatory genre, but these four environments are already specifically linked in OB texts of the period (as I have previously stressed) and probably reflect a single historical situation.83 Three features deserve further comment. The first is the enumeration of the ‘foreign’ troops with whom Samsuditana fights. These are indicated through three strategies: seven specific ethnonyms (i.e. the armies of Elamites, [ ]-­ratû,84 Kassites, Idamaras. ,85 Hanigalbat,86 Samharû87 and ‘Edašuštu’, ll. 31–40);88 the ˘ ˘ ‘foreign troops that are with them’ (ummāni ahi ša libbīšunu), indicated for the ˘ last four of these; and, more generally, ‘the enemy (army)’,89 ‘foreign soldiers’ or ‘foreign speakers’. With the exception of the Kassites, none of the identifiable ethnonyms are otherwise associated in traditions about the Fall of Babylon, even though most are identifiable in the OB record. One might choose to argue that one, some, none or all of the aforementioned groups were responsible for the Fall of Babylon. But such an approach may miss the larger point: the event as it was historically imagined involved multiple actors. (Indeed, the identity of the ‘Edašuštu’ army is best explained not as an ethnonym, but as derived from the quasi-­mythological term idašuš, meaning something like ‘the army of the multitude’, i.e. an unidentifiable mob or militia.90) The text presents a situation of chaos; it does not assign blame to a particular actor; the question to be answered is not which specific group conquered Babylon, but how the state became so weak in its own landscape as to permit so many warlord groups to take root. The second point is the sharp distinction the four oracles make between a countryside teeming with danger, and the cities and forts under siege. Movement outside of the cities was restricted; animals and property were at risk; enemies carried out banditry, raiding and hostage-­taking; the gates and bridges of the city had to be carefully defended; and watches by day and night were crucial.91 The cities and forts of the Babylonian state appear as small islands of safety perched precariously in an ocean of enemies. The terrain of

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conflict is precisely the one described by the letters of ‘trouble in the countryside’ from the end of the dynasty.92 The third crucial theme has to with rebellion as the specific occasion for the crises described in the oracles. The enemies are not foreign invaders (though there were foreign troops ‘with them’), but troops ‘who have rebelled against Marduk and Samsu-­ditana’ (l. 42, nakru; also ‘revolt’, l. 49, barti; ‘rebel’, l. 87, nabalkutu). They are ‘foreign soldiers [and] foreign speakers’, but they ‘are in the land’ (ll. 121–122), ‘human with eyes, nose and brow’, not attacking as organized military forces, but ‘by smooth talk’, ‘constantly seeking out strategems’, ‘by as many tricks as there are’, by day and night, stealing animals, lying in ambush ‘in a litter’, beguiling officials and subverting the loyalty of the populace. Simply put, as I concluded a decade ago: ‘Kassites were not “the enemy”: rebel soldiers were.’ 93 As the Fall of the city is imagined here, we find the surprising feature that the city of Babylon has to be encouraged not to expel the king himself, warning officials: . . . not to speak with the enemy, nor open the barricade94 of the Great Gate, nor expel the garrison of Marduk95 and Samsuditana, the son of Ammis.aduqa, King of Babylon, nor allow the enemy to enter the city.96

Important citizens are accused of communication and cooperation with the unnamed enemy against the king. Such a triangle of interests does not harmonize with the stress on binaries in ominous literature, and further suggests the episode’s historical authenticity. A conflict involving a conglomeration of rebellious foreign mercenaries, the potential for civil revolt, and Samsuditana as the hapless victim are all topoi preserving an unsavoury memory.

Source 11: A fragment mentioning Ammis.aduqa Another Neo-Assyrian witness has been judged by its editor, J.A. Brinkman, to be too fragmentary to be worth publishing. DŠ 1005 is a late 8th-­century97 text of a ‘historico-­literary character’ mentioning an ‘Ammes. aduqa’,98 a Burnaburiaš and the governor (šākin t.ēmi) of Babylon. The anachronism of the governor’s title and the apparent erroneous synchronism of Ammis. aduqa with (a king?)

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Burnaburiaš disinclines one to trust the composition’s historical accuracy. The action of the story is lost, but these figures were probably cast together in one historical tableau to the purpose of putting them in conflict with one another, and brings to mind the triad of the first tamītu-oracle discussed and its conflict between king, city and ‘enemy’.

Source 12: A ‘Samsuditana Epic’ A twelfth text is an as-­yet unpublished Nippur text, a ‘Samsuditana Epic’, rediscovered by Elyze Zomer from joining tablet halves in Jena and Philadelphia. Since her edition will appear in the forthcoming proceedings of the 2013 Ghent Rencontre, I can and will say little here, except to put what is already known in the context of the present discussion. The text is Middle Babylonian, and describes a humiliating defeat of Samsuditana by King Gulkišar of the Sealand Dynasty, establishing an apparent synchronism in good keeping with others.99 Though control of Babylon (i.e. its Fall) seems not to be explicitly at risk in the account, Zomer thinks it likely to point towards a ‘temporary [Sealand] control’ over Babylon, given the intersection of Gulkišar’s name on BKLA/B: that is, some Sealand king must have been king of Babylon at some point to merit including that dynasty on the list, and only Gulkišar’s victory seems to satisfy that condition so far.100 The range of overlapping dates afforded by the regnal lengths of these two kings, however, is as much as eighty-­ two years, so the synchronism remains rough. As with the ‘synchronism’ of Samsuditana and Muršili I (see discussions under Sources 2 and 13), the order of historical events remains uncertain. As a historiographic matter, however, we note a new generic approach to the Fall of Babylon through a fully narrative account, the text’s styling of Samsuditana as an unlucky king, and the existence of a tradition alternate to a Kassite succession, yet consistent with BKLA and BKLB (compare to the ‘Lagašite’ disposition of Source 9).

Source 13: The Chronicle of Early Kings This last text is the best known: the famous passage in the Chronicle of Early Kings (ABC 20 B rev. 11’).101 A Late Babylonian scribe – abstracting and excerpting data from omens, year-­names and perhaps other chronicles –

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returned after finishing his draft, as an afterthought, to a small interlinear space about halfway down the tablet’s reverse. Finding the proper chronological place between entries about Abi-­ešuh and Ea-­gamil of the Sealand, he inserted ˘ in a squeezed hand: ‘At the time of Samsuditana, the Hittites marched against Akkad.’102 Thus the latest text is the only one that proposes a full synchronism between event and king. It is remarkable, given that the relevant entry is only seven words long – although the text has been known for a century – and despite the importance that has been laid on it – that there is still anything new to be said about it. We may note that the Chronicle mentions the first and last kings of each dynasty, thus bracketing their rise and fall, and the passage of eras; at least to this degree, it implies, as the king lists do, a notion of succession.103 Further, internal parallels confirm that ‘marched’ in this text definitely means ‘defeated’.104 Thus the text says exactly and unambiguously what we think it says about the Hittites conquering Babylon. But the Chronicle also tells us more that we do not look for. To begin with, both the form and ductus of the line are unique within the text, a tiny interlinear insertion made after it was completed – acknowledged as an afterthought, or reluctantly. The entry is also unusually non-­narrative within this text, a bare event without a story,105 marking it as different from the manuscript tradition from which the Chronicle descended. It is (again together with the Ilu-šumma entry; see note 105) the only overt synchronism in the text, using the phrase ana tars.i; but this terminus technicus gives us only a proximate synchronism. Known from both omen literature and synchronistic passages in other chronicles (ABC 21–24 inter alia), the phrase probably indicates the passage’s derivation from ominous106 or other chronicle-­like texts.107 (The text’s anachronistic spellings already point to the composition of the text centuries after the event it describes.108) For a chronicle that makes use of the inexact temporal device ana tars.i next to other more particular ones,109 the phrase must indicate, in Grayson’s words, that the redactor ‘had no precise dates [for a particular event] and was compelled, therefore, to employ the vague phrase “at the time of . . .” rather than the precise formula of [year X narratives]’.110 We are thus put in the strange position of having the redactor’s lack of specific knowledge be the only thing we can prove about its chronographic claim; the scribe had

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only a rough knowledge of the timing of the event compared with others he mentions. As I have argued above, the text may thus hand down the story of a Hittite raid that came during Samsuditana’s reign – or even preceded and precipitated it – rather than ended it. Several lines of evidence in the Chronicle passage are consistent with this. First, ana/ina tars.i, indistinct as it is, indicates a simultaneity rather than a sequence of events. However, insofar as some other temporal construction such as arki (‘after’) would be unlikely here (e.g. ‘After Samsuditana, the Hittites . . .’?), what seems relevant is that previous entries in the Chronicle were specific in noting the downfall of kings when they knew of it: the text acknowledges the death or demise of Naram-Sin, Šulgi, Erra-­imitti, Rim-Sin I and Rim-Sin II, and specifies that Iluma-­ilu was not captured. Why, then, does the text shy away from mentioning the death or capture of Samsuditana? If we consider that the Chronicle in its own words does not require the demise of Samsuditana as a consequence of the Hittite raid, what alternatives are there? A comparison against the primary record shows that there are equally possible dates for the Hittite invasion in Samsuditana’s eighth or twenty-­sixth rather than his thirty-­first year – or even at (and as) the conclusion of Ammis. aduqa’s reign. Taking these in chronological order, I will abbreviate what I have written elsewhere.111 The only known destruction layers in the region both date to As. 18/19 (at Harādum and Sippar-Amnānum), and ˘ Ammisaduqa’s supposed years 20 and 21 are either so chaotic that they . permitted neither text production nor political order, or they are entirely chimerical (See TLOB 1 65–66112). Samsuditana then came to the throne (immediately? or after a short gap of time?) with a first year-­name that (uniquely among Babylonian year-­names) stressed his stabilization of the royal succession (rather than the promulgation of a mīšarum).113 Texts bearing his year-­names are not found at Babylon until his eighth year – unusually named for Samsuditana’s celebration of his ‘lordship’ (nam-­e n-na-­n i) in that city.114 Together with other evidence of the disruption of archives and economic and institutional practices at the Ammis. aduqa-Samsuditana divide, the period As. 18/19 through Sd 8 is not a less likely scenario for the Hittite raid (and/or a war with the Sealand) than Sd 31. A less likely but still possible alternative is that the exhaustion of Samsuditana’s year-­names in his 26th or 27th year,115

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four or five years short of the 31-year reign assigned to him in BKLN, indicates these same disruptions, or even the end of his reign.116 These scenarios may all prove counterfactual, but they do illustrate that what we think we know about the major historical implication of the Chronicle – that the Hittite invasion marked the end of Samsuditana’s reign – is not quite so clear. The historiographic reading of the text, meanwhile, shows that the event was isolated from the larger tradition, and explained by blaming an inept king. Topically, this subject had enormous importance; but it was also troubling, embarrassing, humiliating – a reception eloquently reflected in the almost-­forgotten, tiny, cramped little script: the whisper of a bad memory that hides as much as it tells.

The shape of forgetting The Old Babylonian period was not very well-­known or interesting to later Mesopotamians, though it was available as a subject. We know that there was a good deal of incidental 1st-­millennium knowledge about the First Dynasty of Babylon, including copies of original royal inscriptions,117 portions of Codex Hammurabi,118 astronomical observations,119 toponyms,120 colophons,121 Distanzangaben ,122 year-­names,123 and archaic royal titles.124 Set in the context of scribal material carried forward from the OB (including the Late OB specifically), including literary and scientific texts125 as well as formal conventions,126 the failure to develop any coherent historical tradition about the downfall of Babylon and its king seems a glaring omission. This silence cannot have been from a lack of information: the very sources the scribes were using confronted them with the historical problem fairly regularly. The shape of this imperfect remembering is not accidental, since the stories show some repeated historiographic themes: multiple combatants, Babylonian restoration, unlucky kings, internal rebellion. But most unifying is what the texts do not say, in their pervasive topical avoidance of the event itself. In this, we are faced with neither a remembering (e.g. a celebratory ‘invented past’), nor a forgetting (a programmatic elision, cultural amnesia or absolute taboo). An examination of the crafting of the past in the past requires more fine-­ grained analysis than the words ‘remembering’ and ‘forgetting’ permit; it wants

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an appreciation of the shapes and patterns of memory. ‘Forgetting’ is already a part of the memorial process. If we posit the existence of such a thing as ‘social memory’ (already problematic in metaphorically rendering a cultural process as a natural one), we must also acknowledge the capacity for group forgetting. All historical narratives require selection and (crucially) sublimation; and ‘forgetting’ can only be operationalized through the same texts as ‘remembering’, through omission, rescripting and repositioning.127 Historical ‘forgetting’ is thus not a defect in the recall or cognition of an individual, but something effected through exactly the same editorial processes and texts that encode ‘memories’. ‘Historical forgetting’ is the repression, sublimation or omission of historical knowledge despite demonstrable access to it. It is in the context of otherwise informed retellings that the consistent avoidance of Babylon’s collapse becomes significant. Such a process goes well beyond the mere suppression of embarrassing or inconvenient facts for political expedience, or through bad scholarship. It is rather an explaining-­away of problems through historical reprocessing in order to assuage cultural anxieties and traumas. This reprocessing is a priori activated or triggered by the sources’ generic claims to accuracy, significance and grounding in original and authoritative texts. This kind of mental repackaging can be a perfectly normal thing to do from a psychodynamic viewpoint (again, if one grants the premise that cultures have a psyche). But as every therapist knows, there is both healthy or successful forgetting, and unhealthy or unsuccessful forgetting. We can think of ‘healthy and successful forgetting’ as a coherent (if inaccurate) historical tradition renarrativized to effect the therapeutic recovery of group identity from collective trauma by changing the focus and significance of the traumatic event from negative to positive. But an ‘unhealthy forgetting’ would be either a studied disinterest in attending to a painful and obvious past, or even a ‘failed’ forgetting – an inability to avoid the triggers or narcissistic injuries generative of ongoing trauma. An unhealthy and failed forgetting, such as the one I examine here, is then quite a different thing from either a ‘successful’ remembering or forgetting. Babylonian historical semantics did not embrace a cognitive (let alone a collective cognitive) model of history: the past was held to have been embodied in texts, not animated by minds. Intriguingly, ‘forgetting’ (mašû) was part of

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the everyday vernacular (at least in the OB), while one can mostly find ‘remembering’ (hasāsu) only in monumental and canonical works. In the ˘ parlance of OB letters, for instance, people only ever ‘remember’ by saying that they do ‘not forget’ (lā mašû). Such an asymmetry only prompts me to caution that we are dealing with a culture for which ‘remembering’ is not so straightforwardly the conceptual opposite of ‘forgetting’, nor appropriate to the recollection of the past, and that our analyses must take cognizance of that discrepancy. The shape of the failure to account for the Fall of Babylon – perhaps the supremely cataclysmic historical event for the culture post-1595 BC – points away from the idea that it had simply been forgotten in popular memory and scribal transmission, and towards the idea that there was a profound awareness and anxiety about it. We have an utterly disorganized narrative tradition about a commonly known but uncomfortable subject, which kept leaking out into historical conversations. Every nation has one of these semi-­unmentionable subjects. The event was more than an embarrassing hiccup: since Babylon had become the enduring and uncontested political capital of the entire region in as little as a century after the Fall – and for the next thousand-­plus years – the fate of the city became synecdochic for the entire culture. Babylon was not just one city any more, but the city of mankind, the embodiment of community, polity and cosmos – playing something like the symbolic role played by Rome in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Discussions of Babylon’s fate therefore fell within cuneiform historical literature’s particular allusive discursivity, in which all accounts of past events had ominous implications for the present. To put it bluntly, Babylon’s collapse was much more important after the fact than it was when it happened. There was a shift in signification between the event and its reception; what had once been a mere local and temporary adversity (as the Tell Muhammad year-­names had it) became, by the time of the historical epics and the chronicles, a topic significant of the entire culture’s fragility. The failure to produce a coherent tradition about the 1595 event was, in this sense, due to the anxieties of later times.128 There are four final points worth making about the thematic shape of this anxiety. First is a clearer view that later epochs had little clarity on the cause of collapse. Five of the sources describe multiple and changeable antagonists;

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fifteen different groups are named in all. Five sources do not name the attackers; only four sources do so unambiguously (2, 4, 9 and 13, all naming the Hittites – but two of those sources are Hittite); none directly names the Kassites. By an account of all thirteen sources, no preponderance of blame accrues to any group – an overall view different from the common ascription to a single-­ stroke raid of the Hittites, and one closer to the situation described by Source 10. The spectacle of manifold belligerents links back to OB-period references to generic ‘enemies’, leading to contemporary and later editors sometimes being unable to name the belligerent parties. The strongest theme is thus one of chaos and danger throughout the state, the sense of a society beset by danger on many sides. Second, we see the thematic predominance of rebuilding a triumphant Babylon rather than memorializing its downfall (Sources 1, 5–8). Even Source 9, in working so directly against this theme, highlights its importance. The focus on restoration, of course, studiously avoids mentioning the cataclysm at all. Third, we see that the stories about Marduk and the Late OB kings never coincide. These themes had two distinct literary genealogies, tied to particular periods of production. The Marduk stories were Late Bronze Age apologies used to reposition (or, in the case of the Šulgi Prophecy, critique) Kassite Babylon as a world power. The later stories about Samsuditana (and probably Ammis. aduqa), by contrast, were dubious if not critical of royal capability. The former underwrote Babylon’s emergence as a national state in the Late Bronze Age; the latter was a theme typical of the ensuing imperial millennium, when the status of kings as heroic agents had begun to slip in Akkadian literature.129 The fourth point has to do with the fact that the struggle of the Fall of Babylon to emerge through so many different types of texts shows how widely it pervaded cultural consciousness. This generic diversity reflects its production from historical memory, which requires the mutually buttressing truths of historical accuracy, cosmic significance and moral intention. The drama of the royal stories shored up the deep truth of the prophecies, which were in turn supported by the dry facts of king lists. The mistakes we find in these sources were not merely a ‘getting things wrong’; nor yet were they ideological tricks to simply convert bad pasts into glorious ones. The multiple narrative strategies

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tried to perform a therapeutic rapprochement with a difficult past by bypassing an authoritative account. But avoidance is not a successful tool for repairing trauma. The topic of Babylon’s Fall continually triggered anxieties about the stability of the state, the civilization and the cosmos. Trauma recovery requires renarrativization – not just the rearranging of important events, but a story line that invites embellishments and retellings, to re-inscribe healing memories over painful ones, such as was done with, for instance, Naram-Sin of Akkad.130 But the Fall of Babylon as a topic scores very low in terms of narrativity: few of these are stories one would tell and retell. What I see here, despite thematic unities, is a failed forgetting, with little of the direct topicality which renarrativization requires. Despite clear access to historical information and the evident importance of the event, no coherent or direct narrative ever emerged about the Fall of Babylon – only these scraps. This lack of historical processing, this avoidance, paradoxically indicates both the unparalleled severity of the original event and its aftermath, as well as the durability of its traumatic effects. Unlike Akkad or Ur, this was a true calamity, something unresolved and ominous, one of the anxieties around which cultural problematics are formed.

Notes ° All abbreviations follow the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) except ABC (= Grayson 1975) and TLOB (= Richardson 2010). 1 On ‘eternal Babylon’, see Van De Mieroop (2003: 273–274), and CAD D s.v. dārâtu s. b), Hammurabi’s statement that Sippar u Bābilim šubat nēhtim ana dārâtim lu ˘ ušēšib, ‘I made Sippar and Babylon everlasting, peaceful settlements.’ 2 This essay will appear as part of my book, ‘For the Safety of the City’: On Babylon and Collapse, in preparation. 3 Gasche et al. 1998; Hunger and Pruzsinszky (eds.) 2004. 4 Foster (1996: 779–781) noting the phrasings from laments. George (2013a) sees the 9th-­c. poem as ‘of extreme antiquity’, about ‘a real war in the familiar, historical world’, if ‘inspired by recent history’. 5 Jacobsen 1976: 77–78; Cohen 1988: 670, 676, 682. 6 Cooper 1983.

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7 The so-­called ‘Urukagina Lament’. 8 A sixth lament, for Sumer, mourned the putative losses of ten cities other than Ur (the principal subject of that text): Kiš, Kazallu, Marad, Keš, Adab, Umma, Girsu, Lagaš, Gaeš and Kuara. 9 Notwithstanding, the genre was alive enough that its late form entailed a choice to change rather than revive or emulate. The latest known copy of a Sumerian city-­lament (LUr) dates to the reign of Ammis.aduqa, ca. 1630 BC: Samet and Adali 2012: 31 n. 1, with literature. The genre was thus still in the toolkit of scribes of the following generation – alive to witness the 1595 event – but they did not use it to produce any composition in emulation of it. 10 Laments which were topically (if not historically) about destroyed cities were produced at least into the Middle Assyrian period, copied as late as the Seleucid period, and used in liturgical contexts as ‘specific [and] irreplaceable composition[s]’ (Cohen [1988]: 13–14). These compositions mention the collapse or rebuilding of all the major OB cities (ibid.: passim), but Babylon appears only in long lists of other cities (e.g. ibid.: 58, 66, 72, 84, 109, 138, 140, 142, 149, 167, 168, 181, 245). In many of these instances, Babylon is not being paired with its temple (Esagila), as most other cities are. 11 See the contribution of Di Paolo in this volume (Chapter Eight). 12 See n. 56, below. 13 A variety of other sources reflect a working knowledge of the Late OB times in which the Fall took place, and a probable awareness of that historical environment: see nn. 117–126, below. 14 Cf. van Koppen (2010), who proposes that āšib GN might mean the year when ‘Babylon sat down’, though this usage of (w)ašābu is not attested for cities. More plausible is his assertion that some of the kings might have been contemporaries of Samsuditana; cf. the two earlier Kassite ‘kings’, Tiggil and Išikni-ID, lugal erén kaššî, who appear in Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (OLA) 21 20 (Si 30), ll. 6 and 8 (and see ll. 30–31: 30 erén kaššî / ša ana kar-dutu ki illakunim). 15 The authors of a proposal for a modified low chronology (Gasche et al. 1998: 78–79), pinpointing the Fall of Babylon in 1499 BC, proposed that the ‘Year 1’ of resettlement might have been only three years after the collapse. Van Koppen (2010: 457–458) has suggested that the material and textual assemblages from the site are contemporaneous with the Late OB, rather than succeeding it. Either scenario would suggest a less drastic collapse event than normally presumed. 16 Gasche et al. 1998: 83–88, after the unpublished dissertation of I.J. al-Ubaid; of the eleven formulae, eight are of the double year-­name type, celebrating also an event unrelated to the resettlement, e.g., IM 92139: ‘Year 38 that Babylon was resettled / Year in which the moon was eclipsed’. The authors presume the year-­names

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indicate allegiance to a Kassite king in Babylon, but do not rule out a Sealand king (cf. Dalley 2009 and Source 12), despite the heavily Kassite onomastics. 17 The distance from Tell Muhammad to Babylon is about 80 km; if one assumes this to form the minimum diameter of the state, one comes to an area slightly above 5000 km2. 18 Gasche et al. 1998: 86, including Burna-Sah (son of X); King Šipta’ulzi; one or two ˘ sons of Hurbah; and, in seeming chronological order: a son of Udaša-­x; ˘ ˘ Ninnahneru, son of Burna-Sah; and King Hurduzum. ˘ ˘ ˘ 19 Boese 2008: 201–210 proposed the reconstruction of some of these names in the Synchronistic King List after the collation of Weidner’s original readings of ll. 16ʹ–18ʹ by J.A. Brinkman, which would have permitted the Tell Muhammad kings to have ruled only a few generations before Burnaburiaš I, and a Fall of Babylon at 1540 BC ±10 years. But see Brinkman (2014), who disbelieves the reconstruction. 20 Gasche et al. 1998: 86: The ‘son(s) of Hurbah’ seem to have been in revolt against ˘ ˘ royal authority, or even foreign enemies, and so were not rulers of Babylon: IM 92721, dated ‘Year 36 that Babylon was resettled’, indicates that a ‘son of Hurbah ˘ ˘ was killed in Tupliaš’; IM 92725, without a double year-­formula, indicates that a ‘son of Hurbah initiated hostilities with the king’. ˘ ˘ 21 Landsberger 1954: 64–65; Hoffmann 1984: 18–19; Bryce 1998: 102–105; Gasche et al. 1998: 6–7; van den Hout 2003a: 195. 22 E.g. in the chronicle of Hantili (Keilschriften aus Boğazkőy (Kbo) III 57 [Catalogue des Textes Hittites (CTH) 11A]) and ‘other fragments’ (CTH 12–14), Bryce 1998: 103 n. 7; the later pairing of Aleppo and Babylon was a merism or metaphor for conquest. Muršili himself may have been emulating Hattušili I’s double conquest of Hassuwa and Hahha in his second Syrian campaign (Bryce ˘ ˘˘ 1998: 83–84). 23 Schwartz and Akkermans (2003: 326) speculate that the campaign may also have included ‘the burning of Ebla, never to regain its status as a major urban center’. 24 The name of Hattuša is found in 18th-­c. Mari texts (Répertoire Géographique de ˘ Textes Cunéiformes (RGTC) 3 95), but few if any identifiable Hittite toponyms or ethnonyms are known from Babylonian documents. However, Hattušili’s explicit comparison of himself to Sargon of Akkad, with respect to his Euphrates crossing and conquest of Hahha (Güterbock 1964; Hahha itself is known from Sargonic ˘ ˘˘ ˘ ˘˘ period texts, e.g. RGTC 1 68), shows some Old Kingdom familiarity with Babylonia, and this falls in line with other Hittite references to Mesopotamian historical traditions. 25 On the obviousness of such choices, see e.g. Klengel (1987), citing Archives Royales de Mari (ARM) I 66; these cities were probably only four days’ march each from Aleppo.

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26 Conventional regnal dates for Muršili I are 1620–1590 (Bryce 1998: xiii), and for Samsuditana, by the Middle Chronology, 1626–1595. Neither set of date ranges is, of course, beyond doubt. 27 Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi (KUB) 4 67 ii 9–10, a colophon from Boğazköy, is read by Leichty (1970: 20–21) as iz-­bu an-­nu-tam la-­a dam-­qu-[tum ša ká.dingir].ra.ki; cf. Riemschneider (1970: 70 n. 25). Leichty dates these texts to around 1350 BC, but implies the possibility of their removal from Babylon in 1595. See also Miller (2004: 273, 365–369) on CTH 481.B, one manuscript of which credits the ritual ‘When a Man Sets Up the Deity Separately’ to two scribes, one of whom is named [mníg.ba-d10 x] x uruká.dingir.ra (see also Karasu 2001). Miller (2004: 368): ‘[The texts] must reflect written material in Kizzuwatna in which Mesopotamian scholarly literature significantly older than the [Middle Hittite] archive itself was preserved . . .’ . See also van den Hout 2003b: 89, §3), considering an argument in favour of a pre-Kassite source for some Hittite celestial omens; my thanks to the author for bringing this to my attention. 28 E.g. the Hittite literary text ‘about merchants’ (Hoffner 1968) probably refers to (Sargonic, Assyrian or Babylonian) Mesopotamians, through the otherwise oblique reference to ‘nam.ra people’ (l. 6); note also the ‘Babylonian stone’ there (na4ká.dingir.ra ki, l. 11). 29 Freedman (1998: 13 and n. 63): ‘[S]pecific parallels between an Akkadian OB text of Šumma Alu type and a Hittite text’ are already known, among other Middle Hittite omens ‘known to have come from OB prototypes’. 30 Beckman (2014: 3). Note F17 §4ʹ 1ʹ, in which the incantations are spoken in Akkadian by ‘the foreigners’ (LÚ.MEŠú-­b a-rù-­t im) for Ilabrat, the Lady of Babylon, the Queen of Nineveh and others. 31 Beckman (2002: 40–41 and n. 42; 2014: 5–6, 68–69, 74) on the possible OB pedigree of CTH 718’s bird and fish incantation, including its use of the feminine plural pronoun šâtu. 32 Fincke 2012: 95, 97. 33 Beckman (1983: 98–99). A few tablets supposedly exhibiting a ‘Middle Babylonian script’ (e.g. KUB 37, 55, 69) may in fact be Late OB products, the palaeographic difference being difficult to discern (see, e.g., Zadok 2014: 229 n. 18 and Kutscher 1989: 104, on Nippur copies which ‘are not late copies, but genuine late Old Babylonian documents which display the earliest syllabic and paleographic features known from the Middle Babylonian period’; for the late OB Nippur context, see van Lerberghe and Voet 2010). On Sumerian curricular materials in Hatti, see Fincke 2012. 34 See, for instance, Klengel (2002: 104), who, although he specifically enumerates the acquisition of ‘Babylonian cuneiform writing’ as one of the goals of the

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campaigns of Muršili I, maintains that Hittite writing was (purely) ‘from Syria’. See also Beckman (2002: 36; 2014: 6 n. 36) and Haas (2008) cited there. 35 Watkins (1979: 281), with aššu- as moveable and inorganic forms of wealth (mostly metals and stone); Puhwel (1984: 199–202). Note, however, the parallel use of níg.ga (būšu) in MA royal inscriptions, stylistically influenced by Hittite ones, coinciding with the same kings who took tablets from Babylon to Aššur: Tukulti-Ninurta I (Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods (RIMA) 78.1 29, ‘their property’, níg.ga-šunu; also 78.28 8, a seal which was ‘property’ of a Babylonian king) and Tiglath-­pileser I (CAD B s.v. būšu b-2ʹ, three examples). 36 The ‘Marduk Prophecy’ (Source 7), in claiming a 24-year sojourn in Hattuša for ˘ Marduk, specifies that the god’s residence made it possible for Babylonians to reach Hatti, and for Hittite goods to reach ‘Sippar, Nippur and Babylon’. ˘ 37 Hoffner (2002): Hittite nam.ra (arnuwala-) captives were typically assigned fields for cultivation and held certain limited rights and obligations. 38 Bryce (1998: 15 n. 27), citing Güterbock, ‘suggests that Babylonian- or Assyrian-­ trained scribes may have been employed for writing documents in Nesite [in the 18th c. BC]’. 39 Paulus 2014: 296–304 (KH I 1); see also Zomer forthcoming. ˘ 40 Apparently corroborating Chronicle P (ABC 22 i. 5–7). 41 As sa-­am-su17-di-­ta-na. 42 This concern for borders (bulug/mis.ru) is also reflected in a kudurru text of the next attested Kassite king, Kurigalzu I (Paulus 2014: Ku I 2 II1). On Hamru, see RGTC 5 116. 43 Richardson 2005: 279, 282–286. 44 Singer 2002: 53 No. 8 §8, cf. the early prayer, ibid. p. 26 §6ʹ. 45 The later prophetic story that Marduk was recovered from Hana rather than Hatti becomes more credible if one credits Arnaud’s (1987) contention that the Hittites exercised a custodianship of the cultural traditions of conquered cities in intermediate places such as Emar (and perhaps, here, Hana). 46 Singer 2002: 75 no. 17. 47 Although BLKA does not preserve the list of Babylonian kings (only the subscripted total years and number of kings), the fact that both the sequence and number of Sealand Dynasty kings in the section following match BKLB suggests that its Babylonian account would have been parallel. 48 Cf. van Koppen (2010: 454), who dates at least BKLA by the existing witness as ‘first millennium’. 49 Grayson 1969: 105–106.

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50 The later reception of the list’s sequence as indicative of political succession is supported by a fragment of BKLA from the Aššurbanipal Library, narrativizing as follows: ‘the dynasty of Babylon [changed; its kingship passed to E’urukuga]’, as restored by Lambert (1974), proposing Lagaš as the identity of E’urukuga (cf. Source 9); see also Grayson 1969: 106–107. 51 The text claims an unbroken knowledge of the past more than an unbroken line of Babylonian political power, hence the general absence of explanations. 52 Although the scribal emendations to BKLB would seem to exclude the redactor’s full reliance on individual year-­names or date lists – rather, a wholesale ‘rounding’ of the numbers (Poebel 1947; Richardson 2002) – other evidence suggests that some such materials indeed existed. 53 Horsnell’s date-­list ‘N’, from Ešnunna, at least on the grounds that Babylon no longer controlled Ešnunna during Samsuditana’s reign: Horsnell 1999: 197; on the control of Ešnunna, cf. van Koppen 2010: 457, 460–461. 54 Horsnell’s lists ‘O’ and ‘Q’ (1999: 201–204). 55 Though the Venus Tablet possibly reproduces an abbreviated formula of Ammis.aduqa’s eighth year (Reiner and Pingree 1975: 33, l. 10: ina iti.še ud.25.kam . . . mu giš.dúr.gar kù.gi.ga.kam), it lacks the royal name, though this may be explained by the scribe’s having copied it from a year-­name list. It is thus not clear that the scribe knew the year-­name belonged to Ammis.aduqa. Notwithstanding, Reiner and Pingree believed the tablet’s omens 1–13 to all date to Ammis.aduqa, and perhaps omens 14–17 and 22–23 as well; less certainly, omen 21. Cf. Sassmannshausen (2004: 65), suggesting that the year-­name could also be Sd 21, though this seems less likely, as no giš sign is present, and only two exemplars of the date are known (against dozens for As. 08). 56 Compare with the historically non-­specific language of, e.g., Grayson and Lambert (1964) 9, Text C, which ‘could refer to any king of the First Dynasty of Babylon’; or the abandonment of Babylon by Marduk in ‘Advice to a Prince’ (ll. 25–30) and ‘Erra and Išum’, (ll. 123–140): Foster 1996: 746, 763; see also 285, 300. 57 The text is an interesting bridge in the sense that its account of the Elamite excursion takes up the Sumerian motifs of social disorder, while the first two accounts (Hatti and Assyria) display the new sensibility of the god’s expeditions as salubrious events. Presumably this is because the Elamite campaign was the uniquely disordered situation which Nebuchadnezzar I (the ‘king of Babylon’ most probably referred to here) heroically put right. 58 Borger (1971: 5, l. 18): dumu.meš ká.dingir.ra ki; cf. other references to the city of Babylon in this text, which use the determinative uru. 59 Cf. the role of Babylonian ‘goods’ discussed under Source 2. 60 Translation by Foster (1996).

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61 Lament over Sumer (LSUr) ll. 150, 265 (cf. ll. 27–37), 375–376; cf. Eridu Lament (LEridu) A 11–12, B 6, C 40–41, when the king and gods ‘stayed outside the city as if it were an alien city’. 62 Lament over Ur (LUr), ll. 1–18, 230–240, 254. Cf. LEridu C, in which the gods are said to ‘destroy’ but not ‘abandon’ the other cities. 63 E.g., LUr ll. 378–386; LSUr ll. 350f., 505f.; LEridu C ll. 37–44; indeed, the emphasis was that a return to the city might never be possible: E.g. LSUr ll. 69–78, 251–259. Lament for Nibru (LNibru) is an exception, with more than half of the text (following the fourth kirugu) devoted to a restoration narrative. 64 Foster 1996: 275–278. 65 Neither the Edict, Šulgi Prophecy nor Babylonian Chronicle says that the Hittites took the Marduk statue – only that they attacked Babylon. See above n. 45 regarding Arnaud’s theory. 66 The description is similar to passages in the Marduk Prophecy: ‘A king of Babylon arose and led me in procession to . . . Babylon . . . fair was the processional way!’; and: ‘He will lead me in procession to my city Babylon and bring me into eternal Ekursagila’ (Foster 1996: 303). 67 Oshima 2012: 242. 68 See Oshima 2012: 246, with literature. Ešnunna (kur áš-­nun-na-­ak) is little represented in Neo-Assyrian, Middle Babylonian and Nuzi texts (RGTC 5; RGTC 8; Parpola and Porter 2001). Padan and Alman (a merism?) are also poorly known (see Padāni, attested once, with ‘Kapru’, RGTC 8 245). 69 The ‘Gate of Radiance’ (ká.su.lim.ma) mentioned here is only otherwise attested from the time of Nebuchadnezzar I (George 1993: 107, no. 558); cf. the mention of the é.da.di. h é.gál (ibid.: 73, no. 135), patronized by Esarhaddon and ˘ Nabonidus. The text also invokes Šuqamuna, the patron god of the Kassite Dynasty, who was poorly remembered in succeeding centuries except in one 10th-­c. royal name (Širikti-Šuqamuna) found in the Chronicles (Grayson 1975: 245–246); Sassmannshausen (1999: 418–419) is in general agreement about the memory of Kassite culture: ‘From the middle of the 10th century, the sources yield almost no information about Kassites in Babylonia’. 70 The dynastic descent specified is not openly at odds with other sources. Indeed, one might incline towards the genuineness of the material based on its attribution to such an obscure king; one might expect a purely fraudulent text to have been attributed to a famous rather than an unknown king. 71 Oshima (2012) speculates that the text was a pious fraud created by the priests of Esagila. Yet even this explanation supposes that the details and fragments from which the story was composed came from ‘the records of the deeds of the Ancient Babylonian kings . . . by combining different pieces of information which

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were at their disposal, probably found in the archive of Esagila’ (p. 233). The ‘fraud’ also seems overly elaborate if merely in service of exemptions for three individuals rather than, say, an entire institution (as Oshima suggests) or city; the exemptions occupy about nine (vi 31–39) out of 384 lines of text, and are not clearly connected to the Esagila (compare Foster 1996: vi 42f – vii 10 [‘exempted those craftsmen . . . in honor of Marduk and Sarpanitum’] to Oshima 2012: vi 40 – vii 10 [‘exempted them . . . as well as the house, field and orchard for Marduk and Sarpanitum]’, italics mine). 72 Some elements, however, remain obscure, e.g. the nearly-unique title ‘King of the Kassites’ (Bartlemus 2010: 153 and n. 48; my thanks to Susanne Paulus for this reference) and the unique ‘King of the land of the Gutians’. The latter title is an odd claim for a Mesopotamian king, though (enemy) kings of Gutium are attested from OB material (see Westenholz 1997: 246 and n. 19, and George 2013b: 235). The Geheimwissen coda might argue for a later date of composition, but the earliest of these is known ‘from the late second millennium’ (Lenzi 2008: 175). 73 As Foster (1996: 270) has pointed out. 74 Foster 1996: 271–273. 75 Of the three, only the Hittites are said to have ‘conquered’ Babylon (though indeed the verb is restored). The mention of the ‘Hittites’ here is brief and broken (Borger 1971: 14 III 24ʹ: Ha-­at-tu-ú x), and the anachronistic reference to them from the ˘ mouth of ‘Šulgi’ is of course one of the many dead giveaways that the text is of post-Ur III origin. 76 Unless this is implied by ‘the possessions of Babylon will go to Subartu [Assyria]’ (Foster 1996: 271). 77 And Babylon’s implied partner in the south, Nippur; compare with the record for Late OB control of Nippur in van Lerberghe and Voet (2010) and n. 33 above; and George 2013b: 235, 246. 78 Interest in Hammurabi was manifested in generally positive historical vignettes. For a brief survey, see Van De Mieroop (2005: 130–131); to this one might add a number of late copies of his royal inscriptions from Sippar, Kiš, Nippur, Khafaje and Borsippa, including RIME 4 3.6.3 and 3.6.19 (both NB). Note also the Distanzangaben statement of Nabonidus setting Hammurabi 700 years before Burnaburiaš (Pruzsinszky 2009: 147–148); see also nn. 122 and 124, below. 79 Samsuiluna enjoyed lesser fame as a king of the Unheilsherrschaft-model; e.g. Grayson (1975: 190–192); Jeyes (1989: 47–50); Lambert (1990). Cf. Brinkman (1976: 98–99), who has observed that the ‘Chronicle of Early Kings’ calls Hammurabi and Samsuiluna ‘kings’, but not Abiešuh and Samsuditana. ˘ ˘ 80 Lambert 2007: No. 1 21–41 and 141–149; pp. 10–12 discuss evidence for some tamītu material coming from Nineveh or even Babylonia.

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81 Only the first of these four (ll. 26–95) explicitly sets its action in the time of Samsuditana, but the following three (ll. 96–231) most likely describe sequential and concatenated historical topics. Cf. Lambert (2007: 143), who felt the three belonged to Ammis.aduqa’s reign. The very first omen in the collection is clearly set in Hammurabi’s time; and Lambert felt the sixth was a later composition of Middle or Neo-Babylonian date (ibid.: 148). 82 The phrase ana šulum GN has OB analogues, most of which are Mariote: see Jeyes (1989: 38–39). In this historically allusive context, the omen surely refers to Babylon, especially with the ‘garrison of Marduk’ mentioned in l. 82. 83 See Richardson (2005). Lambert (2007: 143) felt ll. 96–231 to refer to Ammis.aduqa’s reign, but on grounds that are equally applicable to Samsuditana. Both Charpin et al. (2004) and Lambert (2007: 20) inclined towards the basic fidelity of the oracles to the OB historical situations they describe, and commented on their relation to specific ethnonyms and Akkadian terms. Notwithstanding, Lambert had a reluctance to extrapolate from that dependability, e.g. p. 141, on the obvious identity of the historically-attested OB šāpir aga.uš with the ‘supervisor of the infantry’ who appears in ll. 9 of No. 1. On the omen’s bearing on Samsuditana’s descent, see Charpin (2005) and Richardson (2006). 84 The broken word might be restored as ˹hu˺-ra-­ti-i, consistent with the traces on ˘ the copy: i.e. hurādu-troops: CADH 244–245, MB/MA, with hurāti as a spelling ˘ ˘ ˘ known from Boghazköy texts in reference to soldiers of Mitanni. This restoration does not, however, explain the gentilic form. 85 Uniquely in this list, the troops of Idamaras. are specified as ‘stationed’ in their home territory. 86 Richardson 2002. 87 The Samharû are also mentioned in several OB letters; see Richardson (2005: ˘ 275–276) and Table 1. Cf. the Hittite term for Babylon, Šanhara; see now Zadok ˘ 2014: 226–227. 88 As Lambert (2007: 144) observed, the absence of the Sealand Dynasty from the list is noteworthy. 89 The oracle’s use of the generic term ‘enemy’ (erén.kúr) has a double purpose, both to identify a group to which it cannot give a name, and to reflect the common trope of opposites and others in ominous literature. Compare, e.g., Jeyes (1989: 44 sub. 5) and Richardson 2005. 90 See Richardson 2015. CAD I/J s.v. idašuš s. and B s.v. būl dašuš, lex. (= a.za. lu.lu, ‘multitude’); the -tu ending may be explained either as the ‘feminine collective’ hypothesized by Lambert, or as a plural form extended from the ‘folk etymology’ of idu + šūši, lit. ‘sixty-­armed’. Cf. the Erra and Išum text (Foster 1996: 779): ‘The citizenry of Babylon . . . had no one in charge. . .’

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91 Compare the roles of the mas.s.artu/dagiltu in the oracles with those of the āmiru and diviners of VS 22 77, the second-­to-last known dated text of the First Dynasty. 92 Richardson 2005. 93 Richardson 2005. As my argument accurately anticipated the content of the oracles in this regard, Lambert’s (2007) characterization of it as ‘more sociological’ than ‘historical’ is amiss. 94 The ‘barricade’ (gišru) figures as an ominous topic in OB extispicy (CAD s.v. gišru A 3). 95 Against the odd translation of s.āb pīhati as ‘the sphere’ of Marduk by Lambert ˘ (2007: 29). 96 Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud (CTN) IV 63 ii 26 and 11–15; see also Charpin (1997: 190); Charpin et al. (2004: 382), and compare to similar passages in Erra and Išum. 97 J.A. Brinkman, pers. comm.; the excavation of the text at Dur-Šarrukin establishes its date fairly closely to the last two decades of the 8th century; whether it had antecedents is unknown. 98 Cf. am-­me-dé-­ta-na, TLOB 34; the spelling is not necessarily anachronistic. 99 I.e. Iluma-­ilu with Samsuiluna and Abi-­ešuh (Chronicle of Early Kings), and ˘ Damqi-­ilišu with Ammiditana (via the latter’s 37th year-­name); others will be discussed by Zomer, forthcoming. 100 Zomer forthcoming. 101 Grayson 1975. 102 Grayson (1975: 45–49 and 152–156); the information cannot have derived from a Samsuditana year-­name, which obviously would neither have a) been inclined nor b) survived to inform us of an enemy victory. 103 The Chronicle makes sure to bracket the two dynasties covered by BKLB by including Sumu-­abum/Samsuditana and Ilima-­ilum/Ea-­gamil as bookends; the Samsuditana story was thus meant to explain the end of the dynasty. Also like BKLB, the Chronicle sees the advent of the Kassite Dynasty as the implied narrative outcome, after a Sealand ‘interlude’. 104 We can be sure that ‘marched’ meant a conquest even without a report of a specific outcome (as in ABC 20 A 9–10, 12–13, 15–16, 26, B obv. 10–11, 16, rev. 7, 14, 17; and especially cf. B rev. 10, the exception that proves the rule by specifying that there was not a victory), because the other five instances of illikma in this text (A 9, 24, 27, B obv. 9, 15) all resulted in conquests. Admittedly, however, the verb must be partially restored (cf. A 24, fully restored). 105 The Ilu-šumma entry of A 37 is similarly non-­narrative; cf. B, which omits that entry.

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106 The inclusion of the Apišal and Erra-­imitti stories may point to an ominous source. 107 Given the apparent caesura of royal inscriptions in the century or more following the attack, such lost ‘historical’ material as we might imagine must be restricted to another later chronicle-­like source. 108 E.g. the orthography of Samsuditana’s name using dŠàmaš- (= MAN ), which is both post-OB and generically linked to ominous texts. There is also the equally anachronistic māt hattû, unknown in OB times. Both features argue for a date of ˘ composition significantly later than the event in question. The text also uses the regional name of ‘Akkad’ in this passage alone, avoiding the name ‘Babylon’ (Babìliki), even though it uses that writing to mean Babylon in all preceding lines (e.g. A 20 and 29, crimes against Babylon), and is specific in using the names of other cities in the contexts of defeat. This may, however, be more closely related to the text’s pro-Babylonian Tendenz than an anachronism, per se. 109 Compare ABC 20’s use of more specific chronographic markers: Sargon of Akkad’s eleventh year (A 4), his ‘old age’ (A 11) and distinctions of sequential action with arkišu, ‘after’ (e.g. A 14 and B rev. 13). 110 Grayson 1975: 5–7, 200. 111 See esp. Richardson 2005 and 2006 on evidence for these proposals. 112 Richardson 2010. 113 The existence of an agnatic branch of the royal family is implied in Ammis.aduqa’s claim that he was the dumu ašarēdu ša Ammiditana, the eldest son of his father (RIME 4 3.10.1); the branches of the royal family, however, probably go back much further than this. 114 According to Pientka (1998: 134), only five texts (exclusive of Samsuditana’s year-­name list) bear this formula, only one of which (Yale Oriental Series (YOS) 13 143) she judges to actually come from Babylon. Compare with Zomer’s proposal for the brief control of Babylon by Gulkišar: perhaps in this seven-­year period? 115 Landsberger and Feigin (1955): since the date-­list includes empty space on the back, it would have included further dates if they had been known. The text’s provenance from Ešnunna, moreover, which was not under Babylonian control, raises the possibility that it was compiled after Samsuditana’s reign, as a historical artefact, rather than during it. 116 This discrepancy to be explained by Poebel’s (1947) identification of scribal emendations to the original (broken) text; see above, n. 52. 117 Royal inscriptions from the late First Dynasty were recopied at Nippur; see Kutscher (1989). 118 Parts or all of the text were copied as early as the Late OB period itself (Finkelstein 1967) and into the Neo-Assyrian period by scribes who were interested in its literary, legal and historical value (Radner 2003: 883 and n. 2).

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119 See above, n. 56; and Horsnell 1999: 222. 120 At least one of the eponymous fortresses of a First-Dynasty king (Kār-Dūr-ApilSîn) was still in use in the time of Nebuchadnezzar I, while fortresses named for Sîn-­muballit. and Sumu-­la-El retained their names at least into the Middle Babylonian period. Frame (1994), B.2.4.6, rev. l. 15 (p. 20); for Dūr-Sîn-­muballit. (near Nippur) and Dūr-Sumu-­la-El, see RGTC 5 98. It is curious that only fortresses named for early OB kings survived into succeeding periods. 121 E.g. among the colophons of library tablets from Koyunjik, note Frayne RIME 4 3.6.3 and .19; 3.9.1; and (perhaps) 3.10.1. 122 E.g. the Nabonidus Distanzangaben for Hammurabi claims that Burnaburiaš was his ‘successor’ (Brinkman 1976: 8 n. 5 and 117 sub. E.3.12.1 and E.3.12.2); cf. Source 11, which has them as contemporaries. 123 E.g. the likely sources for ABC 20 rev. 8ʹ-9ʹ were the original year-­names Ae ‘o’ and ‘o+1’. 124 In the 7th century BC, Šamaš-šuma-­ukīn resurrected the archaic title ‘King of the Amnānu’ to legitimize his authority in Babylonia (see RGTC 9 23). In the prior century, the Sūhu governors Šamaš-­rēša-­us.ur and Ninurta-­kudurrī-­us.ur ˘ also displayed some (local?) knowledge of OB times by cobbling together the improbable claim that they were both ‘of an enduring lineage, distant descendant[s] of Tunamissah, son of Hammu-­rāpi, king of Babylon’, with the ˘ unconvincing coda that: ‘My ancestors are numerous; . . . I have not written down their names . . .’. See Frame 1995: 275 and S.0.1001 and S.0.1002 (esp. ll. 3–4), who sees Tunamissah as a ‘Kassite’ name. ˘ 125 Notably the compendious liver-­omen literature from Sippar, which survived into later ages largely intact, the originals often dated with OB year-­names (Jeyes 1989: 46). OB literary sources carried over into Kassite and later times included Atra-­hasis (see George [1996: 148–149] on an NB copy) and MB ‘Sargon and Purušhanda’ and ‘Naram-Sin and the Enemy Hordes’ (Westenholz 1997). ˘ Original OB material may also have found its way into 7th-­century Enūma Anu Enlil (Reiner and Pingree 1981: 71). 126 E.g. in the survival of Late OB sign-, word-, and grammatical lists (Vanstiphout 2003: 17) generally; in the continued Kassite use of Late OB tabular accounting (Robson 2004), standard oracular query formulae (Starr 1983: 108), Silbenalphabet A (Tanret 2002), bird-­lists (Veldhuis 2000: 76) and mathematical texts (Robson 1997). Some continuity in Late OB titles, terms and extispical practices is also evident in Sealand texts (Dalley 2009). Cf. Veldhuis (2000: 70–71), on the general absence of Late OB material at Nippur, the most important centre of learning in the next age.

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127 This apparent paradox is produced by the conditions of narration, in that punctative events can only attain significance in narrative, which is consecutive, consequential and necessarily selective. 128 Indeed, this Late Babylonian historical voice may have formed the background for the biblical tale of the Fall of Babylon in New Testament literature, which stands in quite a similar position, a city eternally collapsing in the future – the end of eschatological time, not just a discrete past event. 129 Richardson 2014: 487–490. 130 As I argued in ibid., the stories of Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem present a successful renarrativization of a painful past in exactly this way, through scripture, jokes, folktales and histories.

Bibliography Arnaud, D., 1987. ‘Les hittites sur le moyen-Euphrate: protecteurs et indigènes’ in: Hethitica 8, 9–27. Bartelmus, A., 2010. ‘Restoring the Past. A Historical Analysis of the Royal Temple Building Inscriptions from the Kassite Period’ in: KASKAL 7, 143–171. Beckman, G., 1983. ‘Mesopotamians and Mesopotamian Learning at Hattuša’ in: JCS ˘ 35/1–2, 97–114. Beckman, G., 2002. ‘Babyloniaca Hethitica’, in: K.A. Yener, H. Hoffner (eds.), Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History: Papers in Memory of Hans G. Güterbock, Winona Lake, 35–42. Beckman, G., 2014. The babilili-Ritual from Hattuša, CTH 718, MC 19, Winona Lake. ˘ Boese, J., 2008. ‘ “Harbašipak”, “Tiptakzi”, und die Chronologie der älteren Kassitenzeit’ ˘ in: ZA 98/2, 201–210. Borger, R., 1971. ‘Gott Marduk und Gott-König Sulgi als Propheten. Zwei prophetische Texte’ in: BiOr 28, 3–24. Brinkman, J.A., 1976. Materials and Studies for Kassite History, Chicago. Brinkman, J.A., 2014. ‘Tiptakzi’ in: RlA XIV/1–2, 58. Bryce, T., 1998. The Kingdom of the Hittites, Oxford. Charpin, D., 1997. ‘Review of CTN IV’ in: RA 91, 188–190. Charpin, D., 2005. ‘Samsu-­ditana était bien le fils d’Ammi-­saduqa’ in: N.A.B.U. 2005/2, 36. Charpin, D. et al., 2004. Mesopotamien: Die altbabylonische Zeit, OBO 160/4, Fribourg. Cohen, M., 1988. The Canonical Lamentations of Mesopotamia, Potomac. Cooper, J.S., 1983. The Curse of Agade, Baltimore.

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Dalley, S., 2009. Babylonian Tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty in the Schoyen Collection (CUSAS 9), Bethesda. Fincke, J., 2012. ‘The School Curricula from Hattuša, Emar and Ugarit: A Comparison’, ˘ in: W.S. van Egmond, W.H. van Soldt (eds.), Theory and Practice of Knowledge Transfer, Leiden, 85–102. Finkelstein, J.J., 1967. ‘A Late Old Babylonian Copy of the Laws of Hammurapi’ in: JCS 21, 39–48. Foster, B.R., 1996. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, Bethesda. Frame, G., 1994. ‘A Bilingual Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar I’, in: E. Robbins, S. Sandawhl (eds.), Corolla Torontoniensis: Studies in Honour of Ronald Morton Smith, Toronto, 59–72. Frame, G., 1995. Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157–612 BC) (RIMB 2), Toronto. Freedman, S., 1998. If A City is Set on a Height: The Akkadian Omen Series Šumma Ālu, vol. 1: Tablets 1–21, Philadelphia. Gasche, H. et al., 1998. Dating the Fall of Babylon, MHE II Memoirs 4, Chicago. George, A., 1993. House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia, MC 5, Winona Lake. George, A., 1996. ‘Tablets from the Sippar Library VI: Atra-Hasis’ in: Iraq 58, 147–190. ˘ George, A., 2013a. ‘The Poem of Erra and Ishum: A Babylonian poet’s view of war’, in: H. Kennedy (ed.), Warfare and Poetry in the Middle East, London, 39–71. George, A., 2013b. Babylonian Divinatory Texts Chiefly in the SchØyen Collection, CUSAS 18, Bethesda, MD. Grayson, A.K., 1969. ‘Assyrian and Babylonian King Lists: Collations and Comments’, in: M. Dietrich, W. Röllig (eds.), lišan mithurti (Fs von Soden), AOAT 1, Kevelaer, ˘ 105–118. Grayson, A.K., 1975. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, TCS 5, Locust Valley. Grayson, A.K. and Lambert, W.G., 1964. ‘Akkadian Prophecies’ in: JCS 18/1, 7–30. Güterbock, H., 1964. ‘Sargon of Akkad Mentioned by Hattušili I of Hatti’ in: JCS 18, 1–6. Haas, V., 2008. Hethitische Orakel Vorzeichen und Abwehrstrategien, Berlin. Hoffmann, I., 1984. Der Erlass Telipinus, Heidelberg. Hoffner, H., 1968. ‘A Hittite Text in Epic Style about Merchants’ in: JCS 22, 34–45. Hoffner, H., 2002. ‘The Treatment and Long-Term Use of Persons Captured in Battle according to the Maşat Texts’, in: K.A. Yener, H. Hoffner (eds.), Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History: Papers in Memory of Hans G. Güterbock, Winona Lake, 61–72. Horsnell, M., 1999. The Year-Names of the First Dynasty of Babylon, Hamilton. Hunger, H. and Pruzsinszky, R. (eds.), 2004. Mesopotamian Dark Age Revisited, Vienna.

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Jacobsen, Th., 1976. The Harps that Once . . .: Sumerian Poetry in Translation, New Haven. Jeyes, U., 1989. Old Babylonian Extispicy: Omen Texts in the British Museum, Leiden. Karasu, Ç., 2001. ‘Observations on the Similarities and Differences between the Hittite Colophons and the Babylonian-Assyrian Colophons’, in: G. Wilhelm (ed.), Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongresses für Hethitologie: Würzburg, 4.–8. Oktober 1999, Wiesbaden, 248–254. Klengel, H., 1987. ‘Orientalisches Tadmur und antikes Palmyra. Zu einer neuen Publikation von J. Teixidor’ in: Klio 69, 288–292. Klengel, H., 2002. ‘Problems in Hittite History, Solved and Unsolved’, in: K.A. Yener, H. Hoffner (eds.), Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History: Papers in Memory of Hans G. Güterbock, Winona Lake, 101–110. Kutscher, R., 1989. The Brockmon Tablets at the University of Haifa: Royal Inscriptions, Haifa. Lambert, W.G., 1974. ‘The Home of the First Sealand Dynasty’ in: JCS 26/4, 208–210. Lambert, W.G., 1990. ‘Samsu-­iluna in Later Tradition’, in: Ö. Tunca (ed.), De la Babylonie à la Syrie, en passant par Mari, Liege, 27–34. Lambert, W.G., 2007. Babylonian Oracle Questions, MC 13, Winona Lake. Landsberger, B., 1954. ‘Assyrische Königsliste und “Dunkles Zeitalter” (Continued)’ in: JCS 8/2, 47–73. Landsberger, B. and Feigin, S., 1955. ‘The Date List of the Babylonian King SamsuDitana’ in: JNES 14/3, 137–160. Leichty, E., 1970. The Omen Series Šumma Izbu, TCS 4, Locust Valley. Lenzi, A., 2008. Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel, SAAS 19, Helsinki. Miller, J., 2004. Studies in the Origins, Development and Interpretation of the Kizzuwatna Rituals, StBoT 46, Wiesbaden. Oshima, T., 2012. ‘Another Attempt at Two Kassite Royal Inscriptions: The AgumKakrime Inscription and the Inscription of Kurigalzu the Son of Kadashmanharbe’ in: Babel und Bibel 6, 225–268. Parpola, S. and Porter, M., 2001. The Helsinki Atlas of the Near East in the NeoAssyrian Period, Helsinki. Paulus, S., 2014. Die babylonischen Kudurru-Inschriften von der kassitischen bis zur frühneubabylonischen Zeit, AOAT 51, Münster. Pientka, R., 1998. Die Spätaltbabylonische Zeit: Abieshuh bis Samsudituna: Quellen, Jahresdaten, Geschichte, Münster. Poebel, A., 1947. ‘Study V. The Use of Mathematical Mean Values in Babylonian King List B’ in: AS 14, 110–121.

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Pruzsinszky, R., 2009. Mesopotamian Chronology of the 2nd Millennium B.C.: An Introduction to the Textual Evidence and Related Chronological Issues, Vienna. Puhwel, J., 1984. Hittite Etymological Dictionary, Vol. 1: Words beginning with A, Berlin. Radner, K., 2003. ‘Neo-Assyrian Period’, in: R. Westbrook (ed.), A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, HdO 1:72/2, Leiden, 883–910. Reiner, E. and Pingree, D., 1975. Babylonian Planetary Omens, Part One: The Venus Tablets of Ammis.aduqa, BiMes 2/1, Malibu. Reiner, E. and Pingree, D., 1981. Babylonian Planetary Omens, Part Two: Enuma Anu Enlil, Tablet 50–51, BiMes 2/2 71, Malibu. Richardson, S., 2002. The Collapse of a Complex State: A Reappraisal of the End of the First Dynasty of Babylon, 1683–1597 B.C., Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York. Richardson, S., 2005. ‘Trouble in the Countryside, ana tars.i Samsuditana’, in: W.H. van Soldt (ed.), Ethnicity in Ancient Mesopotamia, Leiden, 273–289. Richardson, S., 2006. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ in: N.A.B.U. 2006/3–4, 3. Richardson, S., 2010. Texts from the Late Old Babylonian Period (JCS Suppl. Series 2), Boston. Richardson, S., 2014. ‘The First “World Event”: Sennacherib at Jerusalem’, in: I. Kalimi, S. Richardson (eds.), Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem: Story, History, and Historiography, Leiden, 433–505. Richardson, S., 2015. ‘Samsuditana and the sixty-armed horde’ in: N.A.B.U. 2015/2, 37. Riemschneider, K., 1970. Babylonische Geburtsomina in hethitischer Übersetzung, StBoT 9, Wiesbaden. Robson, E., 1997. ‘Three Old Babylonian Methods for Dealing with “Pythagorean” Triangles’ in: JCS 49, 51–72. Robson, E., 2004. ‘Accounting for Change: The Development of Tabular Book-­keeping in Early Mesopotamia’, in: M. Hudson, C. Wunsch (eds.), Creating Economic Order: Record-Keeping, Standardization, and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, Bethesda, 107–144. Samet, N. and Adali, S.F., 2012. ‘Three New Nippur Manuscripts of the Ur Lament, I’ in: JCS 64, 31–37. Sassmannshausen, L., 1999. ‘The Adaptation of the Kassites to the Babylonian Civilization’, in: K. van Lerberghe, G. Voet (eds.), Languages and Cultures in Contact, Leuven, 409–424. Sassmannshausen, L., 2004. ‘Babylonian Chronology of the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BC’, in: H. Hunger, R. Pruzsinszky (eds.), Mesopotamian Dark Age Revisited, Vienna, 61–70.

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Schwartz, G. and Akkermans, P., 2003. The Archaeology of Syria, Cambridge. Singer, I., 2002. Hittite Prayers, WAW 11, Atlanta. Starr, I., 1983. The Rituals of the Diviner, BiMes 12, Malibu. Tanret, M., 2002. Per Aspera ad Astra. L’Apprentissage du cunéiforme à SipparAmnānum pendant la Période Paléobabylonienne Tardive, MHE III/1, Ghent. Van De Mieroop, M., 2003. ‘Reading Babylon’ in: AJA 107/2, 257–275. Van De Mieroop, M., 2005. King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography, Oxford. van den Hout, T., 2003a. ‘The Proclamation of Telipinu’, in: W.W. Hallo (ed.), The Context of Scripture I, Leiden, 195. van den Hout, T., 2003b. ‘Omina (Omens) B. Bei den Hethitern’ in: RlA X/1–2, 89. van Koppen, F., 2010. ‘The Old to Middle Babylonian Transition: History and Chronology of the Mesopotamian Dark Age’ in: ÄuL 20, 453–463. van Lerberghe, K. and Voet, G., 2010. A Late Old Babylonian Temple Archive from Dūr-Abiešuh, CUSAS 8, Bethesda. ˘ Vanstiphout, H., 2003. ‘The Old Babylonian Literary Canon’, in: G.J. Dorleijn, H. Vanstiphout (eds.), Cultural Repertoires, Leuven, 1–28. Veldhuis, N., 2000. ‘Kassite Exercises: Literary and Lexical Extracts’ in: JCS 52, 67–94. Watkins, C., 1979. ‘nam.ra gud udu in Hittite: Indo-European Poetic Language and the Folk Taxonomy of Wealth’, in: E. Neu, W. Meid (eds.), Hethitisch und Indogermanisch, Innsbruck, 269–287. Westenholz, J., 1997. Legends of the Kings of Akkade, MC 7, Winona Lake. Zadok, R., 2014. ‘On Population Groups in the Documents from the Time of the First Sealand Dynasty’ in: Tel Aviv 41/2, 222–237. Zomer, E., forthcoming. ‘Enmity Against Samsuditana’, in: Proceedings of the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Ghent.

8

War Remembrance Narrative: Negotiation of Memory and Oblivion in Mesopotamian Art Silvana Di Paolo

Remembrance of war is a theme that has received growing attention from the Second World War onwards. The literature in this regard has focused interest on the concept of ‘memory’.1 Various cultural reasons explain why this theme has determined a change of perspective in the field of the social sciences, and of history in particular. Reflections on the concept of remembrance of war, extremely relevant today, are also closely linked to the communicative characteristics of our society: the perception we have of conflict is constantly filtered, and even ‘manipulated’ by the media.2 Without wishing to take some trenchant positions – such as that of the historian Pierre Nora, who modelled a modern culture of memory by superimposing it on that of the Shoah because, according to him, representations became substitutes for authentic and specific experiences3 – it is evident that Shoah marked a turning point: the interpretation of war and its stories from the perspective of the victors led to a reshaping of the concept of collective memory.4 This debate on the concept of memory embodied in a globalized culture is constantly focused on the relationship between ‘remembrance’ of and ‘obliviousness’ to the tragic events, favouring a gradual opening up to new scenarios in which some questions have become relevant: When and how is memory created? Is it after war, as justification for the victor; or during the conflict, in order to favour its resolution?5 How and why does forgetting operate? Remembrance and oblivion are two terms that, in the contemporary world, often arise in connection with war events, authoritarianisms and politics of

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reconciliation, above all in societies undergoing violent conflicts and dealing with heavy moral-­political inheritances. All of them deal with the constant tension between competing and opposite narratives, as well as the ambiguous nature of elements shaping the post-­conflict scenarios. Memory and oblivion of war, and the way in which they are visually represented or omitted, when placed in the context of historical study, especially that of the Ancient Near East, demonstrate unexpected potential, but also offer up an important series of limitations.

Retrieval of the past between sources and propaganda In the Ancient Near East, with particular reference to Mesopotamia, a ‘historical consciousness’ has been elaborated in a particular way and, obviously, by power elites alone through their literate courts (officials, scribes, etc.).6 The ancient written sources at our disposal, in fact, emphasize how the concern of Mesopotamian culture with the recent and distant past, as well as its people’s interest in the memory of it, was ubiquitous. It is, however, difficult to determine whether collective events were also transmitted and recorded through oral traditions and not just through scribal contacts.7 In particular, in the ritual practices that have often also played an important role in political propaganda, as well as in military successes, oral memories were registered and codified – but also corrected – through writing.8 In Ancient Mesopotamia, the normative power of tradition involved every aspect of life. This interest is evident in the language and writing: in Sumerian and Akkadian, the terms indicating ‘past’ mean ‘face’ and ‘front’ because, for Mesopotamians, the past stood before them, being something they ‘face’.9 In architecture, the focus on the past was also obsessive: from the repeated restoration of walls and buildings to the episodes concerning the uncovering of ancient buildings, such as the remnants of the Eulmash built by Sargon of Akkad in the 3rd millennium BC, searched for during the reign of Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus (556–539 BC). In all these cases, new building projects were sought to keep pre-­existing structures intact or, conversely, ‘delete’ all changes over time, as at Sargon’s temple, and to return the constructions to their original shape or re-­establish their primitive design.10

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The successful outcome of these works was a favourable sign and a good ‘omen’ for the stability of present and future kingdoms. This particular conception of the time is the way in which hegemonic power elites in the Ancient Near East created their own sensitivity towards their history: the remembrance of the past and its heroes (among whom was Sargon of Akkad), through thought and actions, served to reaffirm the primeval world order established by gods and recreate the conditions of the mythical and perfect times, continually subverted by human intervention. As in many other fields of antiquity, the interpenetration between historiography and other forms of representation of the past (above all, mythology) is also a constant element in the Ancient Near East. On the one hand, legendary accounts are present in the evenemential history (as for the ‘archetypal’ Legend of Sargon, probably built in the Neo-Assyrian period);11 on the other hand, historical events become literary and almost legendary tradition (in the case of the Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur, belonging to the well-­known genre of city-­laments).12 The interpretation of war – its genesis as well as its outcome – does not deviate from this framework. For Mesopotamians, war was a form of ethical behaviour. The reason for this way of thinking was that conflicts were aimed at defeating chaos, the disorder created by human attempts to subvert the primordial order: it was achieved, for instance, through the emulation of the exploits of ancient rulers, personifying a kingly ideal. Taking into account these premises, what, exactly, constitutes ‘right war’ according to the Mesopotamian system of thought? How is ‘right war’ recorded in visual media? What qualifies as a visual representation of it? What is removed from these representations? Given the interconnectedness with politics and propaganda, the content of war imagery projects certain facets of conflict while concealing others, because the event must appear as a veritable act of ‘creation’ restoring the order of the world, wrongly subverted by causes that led to the war. Studies concerning war and its representation in the Ancient Near East have been strongly influenced by the contemporary debate over memory as a selective process enhanced by propaganda designed to persuade the audience: the manner in which conflict is represented in ancient art has been interpreted in the light of the evolution of phenomena such as the ideological transformation of war into spectacle, or its manipulation for propagandistic aims that the mass media have

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implemented in the contemporary world. Interest in these topics, with particular reference to the ancient societies, is strictly linked to the development of theories of communication and mass media in present societies: in this sense, modern history, and, in part, ancient history, has been revised, paying particular attention to the phenomenon of ‘orientation’ of the audience (from persuasion to its manipulation).13 Thus, the remembrance of Assyrian wars represented on the bas-­reliefs inside palaces has been interpreted as a strategy to promote the political agenda of sovereigns and arouse strong conflicting emotions in the audience (seduction and repulsion at the same time). At the centre of this process, which constantly re-­evokes the experiences of war, there is the identification of specific features that recur in the majority of stone reliefs: the consistency in the portrayal of stereotyped enemies; the ways in which the experience of war and related events was represented; the visual and conceptual relationship between the defeat of the enemy and the return to the preceding ‘idyllic’ status quo. The use of traumatic visual messages is involved in an overall form of communication reflecting the conception of the world, the political agenda of Assyrian kings and plans for expansion.14 Only in more recent years, and specifically in relation to the memory of war events, have post-­colonial and gender studies focused on the analysis of the representation of the body, a repository of suffering and trauma. The study of the narratives that represent traumatic events served to rework critical thinking on the past, to reiterate the ethical responsibility of narration and thus representation: a past that is marked not only by official memory (established and guaranteed by power elites) but also by that of the individuals as belonging to the community dramatically engaged in shocking events. In this different perspective, memory is a dynamic concept, because the practices of memory and oblivion are inevitably the fruit of an ‘interaction’ between values, identities and histories of victors and defeated, between communities and individuals. This unstable relationship between remembering and forgetting, displaying and suppression, is also visible on media: what is shown on war monuments can be removed by historical sources. Corporal traumas are ‘inscribed’ on the bodies, and memory of events is stored in them. Instead, their transposition in ‘written words’, for instance, is subject to a kind of ethical resistance.15

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‘Active’ remembering and forgetting of war events The relationship between representation of war and memory of it presents troubled aspects. The celebrating, triumphant and ‘sacred’ memory, which renders all immovable and without imperfections, also includes all suppressed or somehow censored memories. Victories are celebrated on impressive artworks, giving a powerful vision of triumphant civilizations that crystallize their cultural identity and values thus. This theme is strictly linked to the phenomenon of the damnatio memoriae, well documented in the Ancient Near East. In literate societies, the destruction of commemorative and victory symbols is a premise to the ‘rewriting of history’ and events. It is a kind of ‘cultural repression’, serving for the various forms of annihilating the cultural memory of the enemy through its external symbols. To prevent this, wars were prepared as a complex of actions, rites and strategies that took place before, during and after the conflict. In particular, rituals reinforced the re-­establishment of the world order after a war, through specific acts aimed at confirming the inviolability of the maintenance rites for the future, also sanctioned by war monuments intended as anthropomorphized agents.16 On the level of cultural memory, this kind of ‘active’ forgetting is a continuous process, which is determined by a social need and becomes destructive when directed at an alien culture.17 Acts of forgetting are, paradoxically, also a constructive part of internal social transformations.18 When referring to the military competition for supremacy, they serve to censor or negate some aspects deemed dangerous for the stability of present and future kingdoms. The abundant visual evidence concerning the representation of the ‘Other’ after a military victory contrasts with a parallel phenomenon: the lack of monuments commemorating the society’s fallen against outer enemies, or the remembrance of those who had fallen for the community (a different attitude is documented in Ancient Greece).19 Even if future archaeological discoveries may modify the picture emerging from the available written and visual sources, it can be said that defeats in the Ancient Near East resulted in a total absence of monuments. On the one hand, defeats do not produce memorials. This phenomenon is similar to that of Ancient Rome,20 while it is in contrast to the modern Western world’s commemoration of significant losses from the First World War onwards

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(the Vietnam War is probably the most striking case). Within a cultural framework dominated by a single point of view, that of power elites, military defeats in the Ancient Near East are archaeologically and visually undetectable. This assumption raises some questions. How did Ancient Near Eastern civilizations react when defeated? What role did defeats play in the shaping of a cultural memory? Are defeats completely forgotten, or are some of them remembered on special occasions and for specific purposes? Probably, these questions can never be answered. On the other hand, any recording or recalling of past events, such as wars, involves a genuine selection, both deliberate and unintentional, of what to remember, and of what to pass over in silence and to keep hidden.21 Accounts of the past are, in many cases, incomplete and partial; the past is, therefore, an unsolved puzzle – it is the summary of fragmented pieces of evidence. If defeats are deliberately omitted for obvious reasons, victories over the enemy are also treated as events to be ‘managed’ in the historical sources. It remains doubtful whether these situations are to be considered examples of ‘active’ forgetting, or rather cases of simply falling out of the ‘frames of attention’. As is well known, military successes are celebrated in a variety of texts. In particular, in the Ancient Near East, from the Akkadian age onwards, the lists of year-­names (designating each year of a king’s reign by a sentence describing an event) provide some important information about recent past events (recent when compared with the composition of these texts). The year-­formulae refer to different aspects of royal action (building activities, the dedication of divine statues and sacred furnishings in temples, the digging of canals, the inauguration of a new king, etc.), including the genesis and outcome of specific war episodes, unknown from other evidence (victory monuments, for instance). The 32nd year of the reign of Hammurabi of Babylon, for instance, describes his conquests in a large area north-­north-east of Babylon and is entitled as follows: Year Hammurabi, the king, the hero who gains victory for Marduk, defeated with his mighty weapons the entire army and soldiers of Ešnunna, Subartu and Gutium and conquered the land of Mankisum and the land on the banks of the Tigris up to the border of the Subartu mountains.22

About a century before, the 5th and last year of the reign of Sin-­iqisham, King of Larsa (ca. 1840–1836 BC) had been recorded with the following

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formula: ‘Year Kazallu, the army of the land of Elam, Zambiya the King of Isin, and Babylon were smitten by the weapons’23, which refers to an event that had occurred the year before. Here, Sin-­iqisham celebrates the military defeat of a coalition including the city-­state of Isin and his king, Zambiya. The struggles between Isin and Larsa, defined by the alternating possessions of some prestigious and strategic Babylonian city-­states (Nippur, for instance), are well known. Only forty years later, during the 29th year of his reign (ca. 1794 BC), Rim-Sin definitively conquered Isin, eliminating Larsa’s only real competition in central Babylonia; this victory marked the end of Isin as an independent state.24 The year-­formula of Sin-­iqisham, naming the main enemy of the city of Larsa, the ruler Zambiya of Isin, and those of Rim-Sin, again referring to the victory over Isin (from the 29th year of his reign to the 60th and last, when Larsa was incorporated into the kingdom of Babylon by Hammurabi), are thought of as explicit memories of recent past events: wars become constitutive elements of a ‘state’ identity, reproduced in collective memory through narratives of the recent past, even if in a concise and simplified way. These year-­names, usually referring to the most important event of the previous year, although opinions differ on this point,25 explicitly recall the enemy’s name, often removed from other kinds of texts, such as letters, mentioning the same war episodes. Various reasons can explain this practice: from a sort of damnatio memoriae, requiring a defacing of the name of the individual whose memory was being magically annihilated,26 to a political strategy intended to prevent letters being intercepted and read, which could cause the failure of the military plans. Anyway, examining elite memory as it is constructed or reconstructed under a variety of circumstances, it seems evident that it often involves a process of both inclusion and exclusion, relying on a duality of remembering and forgetting. The episode of the conquest of Ur at the city of Isin by Gungunum, king of Larsa, is known only from indirect sources: Gungunum acquires the title of king of Ur in this circumstance, according to the inscriptions of the priestess of the god Nanna. No year-­name is dedicated to this episode by Gungunum, nor is this defeat obviously mentioned by the king of Isin.27 A few decades later, the roles are reversed. For five years, Sumu-El of Larsa lost the city of Ur to the advantage of Isin; the recapture of Ur during the 21st

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year of his reign is demonstrated by his daughter’s consecration as priestess of Nanna (this episode became the year-­name of the 22nd year of Sumu-El’s reign). There is an unstable balance between the almost obsessive recalling of military victories, such as the defeat of Kish by Sumu-El of Larsa during the 10th year of his reign, which is used in four successive year-­formulae (from the 11th to the 14th), and a complete disappearing of war episodes in these sources.28 It is highly probable that the military successes were commemorated through war monuments such as stelae, although they were neglected by the royal chancellery. Cultural memory is built upon the balance between remembering and suppression: this means that the past must be articulated to become memory, and also that forgetting is important for the formation of identity.

Condensed war events for a ‘canonized’ memory Conflict between groups of people is reconstructed upon the ideas the ancients had of war and those documented in literary sources. Through organized and justified violence, cosmic order was to be restored – an idea that had existed since the dawn of time. This central idea, which elucidates war in its preparatory phase and justifies its outcomes, is to be calculated within the concept of memory: this works on various levels, and necessitates an interaction between spatial and temporal conditions to settle and become part of a common heritage. To this we can add that the transformation and sedimentation of cultural experiences over time derive from a constant dialectic between various memories, from the individual (short, and long lost) to the collective (also often difficult to piece back together), by way of a cultural memory imposed by a few (in our case). This memory, constructed and ‘cultivated’ by an elite, allows us to hold on to those events that would otherwise have been destined to disappear in the absence, or rather the impossibility, of the fixing of memories either of individuals or of a whole group. This type of cultural memory supports a collective identity, and is built on a relatively small number of places, persons, texts, artefacts and myths circulating in the collectivity and, in some ways, communicated to the collectivity. It is a

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particular working memory that stores and reaffirms the cultural basics of a society continuously recycling and reproducing it. It is also characterized by rigorous processes of selection; its result is a cultural memory promoting an orthodox reading of events and the building of a rigid image, almost paranoiac, of the world through the omission and the obscuring of some facts. What is stored for self-­preservation and posterity must survive the generations and be kept intact. Within this process, artefacts and monuments have a special place: as objects placed at the intersection between art, history and religion, they are destined to an eternal presence in the society, becoming special ‘memorial spaces’: cultural memory is kept continuously and periodically alive through the actions and rites performed before them and for their preservation in the future. The conclusion of the peace between the king Shamshi-Adad of Assyria and the king Dadusha of Ešnunna (at the beginning of the 18th century BC) does not only represent the end of a period of struggles. It, in fact, inaugurates a phase characterized by military cooperation that would be fruitful in the regions east of the river Tigris, from the valley of the Adhaim to the area north of Nineveh. The conquest of Qabra, known from different sources (the tablets from Mari and Tell Shemshara, as well as two inscribed stone stelae),29 occurs when this military collaboration becomes effective. Texts reveal that troops led by Ishme-Dagan, together with those coming from Ešnunna, were divided in order to execute surprise attacks against enemies and prevent their escape, thus gaining territory as quickly as possible. Shamshi-Adad started by attacking the countryside around Arrapha. The crossing of the Lower Zab took him to Qabra, where, with Ishme-Dagan, he was victorious and conquered a series of fortified cities. In twenty days, they were able to bring the siege to Qabra, aided by the king of Mari, Yasmah-Addu, and by Dadusha. This event is commemorated on a stone stela, accidentally discovered in 1983 at Tell Asmar, the modern name of Ešnunna, the capital of the powerful territorial state in the Diyala basin east of Baghdad, ruled by Dadusha. This monument, found out of context, is 1.80 m high and is characterized by a long cuneiform inscription, partnered by war scenes sculptured in low relief.30 It represents the Ešnunna ‘version’ of the military events also known by other written sources, and the expression of an objectified and institutionalized memory. Originally erected in the temple of the Storm

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God (as said in the cuneiform inscription), the stela constitutes a ‘memorial space’, formed by a symbolic heritage embodied in text and images that serve as mnemonic triggers to initiate meanings associated with a specific war event. At the same time, it brings back the time of the mythical origins, because both action and its representation reinforce the indissoluble bond between the gods and the community through its ruler; and it crystallizes a collective experience of the recent past. The conquest of Qabra is mentioned in the last year-­formula of the king Dadusha,31 representing the year when the monument was probably erected and dedicated in the sanctuary of Ešnunna. However, it refers to the military successes of the previous year. The memory of the war is still alive. The sequence of events seems to reproduce the steps of the military actions carried out by Ishme-Dagan. But in the project of this victory stela, through the narrative of the recent past, single facts and war episodes must be ‘transformed’ and ‘adapted’ to become collective memory and a shared heritage, as well as developing an image and an identity for the community. Dadusha himself did not directly take part in the war,32 although he sent his troops to support his allies’ strategy. Nevertheless, the ‘image of heroism’ (as described in the text) of the king of Ešnunna as an emblem of the victory over the enemy is necessary: only in this way can a community’s cultural memory preserve the symbolic institutionalized heritage to which individuals resort to build their own identities and to affirm themselves as part of a group. This is possible because the act of remembering involves normative aspects and includes the rules regarding how and what to remember. To do this, the relationship between war, violence and economic prosperity (three different aspects of a winning leadership) is clearly shown through the representation of the triumph, the exhibition of war trophies (the enemies’ heads, including that of the defeated king, Bunu-Eshtar) and the sieges (including looting) of the cities indicated by massive turreted walls. From an authentic and specific war experience was built a ‘canon of the memory’,33 an artefact requiring, in a certain sense, meaning and order, and overcoming the limited experience of the human life. A shared cultural memory makes use of repeated concepts that may be relevant from a social, political or ethical point of view. It is the specific experience of a community that seeks to perpetuate itself over time, trying to overcome its ‘temporality’.

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Memory, oblivion and their impact on corporeity The human body catalyses various reflections in the debate on war and its memory.34 The tormented or lifeless body is among the primary objects of this reflection: this image has the ambivalent power of horror, contemporaneously repulsive and seductive. This point underlines the issue of the ‘representability’ of the violence that originates in war, questions that return to the problem of the infraction of conventions, to the ostentation of the horror that thus removes any empathetic aura from death. The memory of war revolves around death, and serves to focus attention on the impact of war and of violence on individuals: in particular, the violence meted out on the enemy’s body. This is the lens through which it is possible to examine another dimension of war: its representation and remembrance.35 Violence is a concept that has a very strong emotional connotation. It is a manifest violation of the enemy’s physical integrity. It is a direct attack, which has a devastating impact on corporeity. In any case, the damage provoked is immediate, visible and often permanent. The practice of taking enemies’ body parts (especially heads) within a war dynamic is well known: they, removed as trophies, are disseminated in Ancient Near Eastern art from the beginning of civilization to the Neo-Assyrian period.36 Within the Assyrian imperial ideology, for instance, representations of the detached heads of the enemy progressively increase in late reliefs (7th century BC), when the purpose of this practice becomes clearer: to register their number and display them. The circumstances and evolution of this macabre practice, as well as its display, gave rise to a number of different interpretations. But, in the war domain, also relevant is the symbolic component of the physical aggression. As a matter of fact, the symbolic sphere can be used to legitimize physical violence: the intervention of a more or less complex symbology leads to the creation of a prejudice, and to the negative perception of the enemy.37 It is an extremely dynamic process, which goes beyond the dichotomy between Us and Them, also leading to the dehumanization of the adversary. Pierre Bourdieu described the symbolic power in this way: ‘le pouvoir de faire voir et de faire croire, de confirmer ou de transformer la vision du monde et, par là, l’action sur le monde, un pouvoir quasi-­magique qui permet d’obtenir l’équivalent de ce qui est obtenu par la force physique’.38

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On another occasion, I have emphasized the relationship between bodily violence, its representation, and behaviours of the audience towards the acts of punishing enemies through the study of a group of early Old Babylonian seals dating from between the 19th and 17th centuries BC.39 They are characterized by a particular visual narrative supporting the legitimacy of the bodily violence and the violation of physical integrity. It is a two-­figure group formed by a ruling figure, identifiable by tiara and dress, and a victim, generally a seated, kneeling or lying-­down figure who is threatened or about to be killed. According to the visual conventions adopted, this iconic message could refer to some founding heroic event, reproduced on cylinder seals through the exhibition of the ‘moral’ distinction between performer and victim, the direction of the violent action, the involvement of corporeal aspects, and the use of expressive and symbolic codes. The action is represented as a direct and corporal assault. It channels the violent potential of an institutional figure who re-­establishes the world’s order against another figure, probably personifying a group who had subverted that order (‘outsiders’). The violence scene always involves only two figures, except in some cases in which a third personage (an armed figure) is acting in order to block the enemy’s head and allow his beheading. On the left side there, is always a ranked figure: he is often a king or ruler according to his dress and headgear. On the right, a powerless man is being threatened and about to be wounded or, more often, killed. They form a ‘visual unity’ characterized by well-­defined positions, gestures and acts. Here, assault and killing are well studied: they focus on some specific body parts (eyes, hands, knees, calves, etc.). The eye contact between performer and victim belongs to a dimension that is both physical and symbolic: the victim is supplicating, but the performer, technically favoured, is also exalted by the other’s humiliation. The physical contrast is exerted in order to knock the victim down, also from a psychological point of view. To reach this objective, the assailant is preventing his adversary’s movement by using his left foot and exercising an obstacle action on vital points of the body; he holds the victim down on his chest (where his heart is), but also on his legs (often on one of his calves), to prevent his escape. The action is almost exclusively carried out by the figure on the left side. His main weapon, a harpé held in the right hand, minimizes the stress condition typical in hand-­to-hand

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fighting, because the action immediately and quickly ends with the killing of the adversary. The body is also used to step up his technical supremacy and slow down the victim’s movements, immobilizing him with his left arm and right leg. This scene is reproduced with minimal or no variations at least for two centuries. In all cases, the conflict between performer and victim is remembered in a special way: it is a minimized, essential act, with no particular connotation, within an ‘ahistorical space’. The reasons for the dispute are contained and presented in an ordered fashion. The visual language is characterized by a restricted code, by a ‘liturgical presentation’ of the event. On the other hand, the involvement of corporeal aspects, through the representation of the triumph of a vigorous body on a passive corporeity exhausted by a body-­to-body interaction, also introduces the lived dimension of this event. Thus, this act is not just the fixed, rhetorical image of the authority dominating, or of a submission to a predetermined order. It is a combination of a tradition-­based, action-­based and ritual-­based symbolism enhanced by the performing of religious acts: the victor, like other divine figures, is the recipient of an animal offering by a ruler, of a libation carried out by a priest, of other acts of worship again performed by a ranked figure. The royal aspect of the performer is, probably, linked to the original context in which the violent act was produced: originally a heroic event, an extraordinary military victory, a ‘liminal’ fact, maybe an unexpected event. Through the depiction of religious acts performed in honour of a heroic, divinized personage, the cylinder seals are intended, probably, to promote the construction of mental images and to give permanence to the event. Therefore, past or mythical war events are used as metaphors and ‘lessons’. On the one hand, a ‘power ritual’ or ‘war ritual’ is destined to engender the violence and potentiate its effects, with the aim of killing and symbolically destroying the enemy; on the other hand, an emotionally meaningful narrative is embedded in a shared culture, invoking the past in response to new needs.40 War narrative becomes a normative account, with heroes and adversaries invoking past threats and conflicts. It falls under the process of building a cultural memory, and takes place through symbolization, dramatization and canonization. It is a ‘much more explicit, homogeneous, and institutionalized top-­down memory’.41

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The violence is regulated and legitimized by the actions of the king-­like figure: through them, the ‘violator’ is excluded and the pre-­existing world order is reaffirmed, using bodily violence and corporeal submission. His image and his action aim to unify, create connections and stabilize a point of view that spans many generations. The political power, in this way, builds a memory with the aid of memorial signs, such as symbols, images, ceremonies, places and monuments, and constructs an identity. Such a memory is mediated, because it is based on selection and exclusion (through a reasoned synthesis of events). The capacity to erect a boundary line between remembering and oblivion, between useful and not useful, is fundamental; the lack of this line of demarcation prevents the community from having its own identity and a future.

Notes 1 On the ‘boom’ of this interest in the contemporary society, see Winter 2006: especially 1–13 and 275–289. 2 See the contribution by Bommas in this volume (Chapter Nine). 3 Nora 1989: 7–25. 4 On the globalisation of memory, see Levy and Sznaider 2002: 87–106, especially 89–92. In particular, media, creating cosmopolitan memories, favoured new moral-­ political interdependencies and obligations. On this subject, see Tester 1999: 469–483. 5 Important contributions in this domain are Halbwachs 1980; Schwartz 1982: 374–402 and Nora 1989: 7–25. The study of social memory unavoidably involves the problem of collective identities: see, in this regard, Eisenstadt and Giesen 1995: 72–102. 6 On how the historical significance of the past developed in the Ancient Near Eastern civilizations, see Liverani 2010: 27–62. 7 The constant interaction between oral traditions and writing has been emphasized in recent studies. In particular, David Carr outlined that in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures, texts served to reinforce oral modes of education rather than replace them (Carr 2005). 8 Watts 2009: 29–66, in particular p. 59. 9 On this specific conception of time, see Cassin 1969; Glassner 2004: 7; Maul 2008. 10 On the ‘antiquarianism’ in the Mesopotamian culture see Beaulieu 1994; Winter 2000; Maul 2008 from different perspectives.

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11 For a detailed description of this text, including sources and development, see Lewis 1980, who considers evidence for composition during the time of Sargon II to exploit Sargon’s deeds as a paradigm of his own; Westenholz 1997: 36–49. 12 On this composition, see now Samet 2014 with preceding bibliography. 13 Some important remarks concerning the genesis of the studies on propaganda in the Ancient Near East are in Liverani 1996: 283–290. On the application of modern concepts, such as audience, to the societies of the Ancient Near East, see Di Paolo (in pr. a) with preceding bibliography. 14 On the visual dimension of the memory of war events in the Neo-Assyrian period strictly linked to the identity of the audience and its specific ‘demands’, see Reade 1979: 338–339; 1980: 81; 1994: 274; Winter 1981; 1983; Matthiae 1988; Russell 1991; Tadmor 1997: 330–335; Holloway 2002: 72–76; Lumsden 2004: 376. 15 See, in this regard, the influential work of Bahrani 2008, in particular pp. 9–21. 16 On the exercised agency of material objects involved in the war domain, see, in particular, Winter 2007: 42–69; Westenholz 2012: 89–122. 17 On ‘active’ and ‘passive’ forgetting, see Assmann 2008a, in particular pp. 97–99. 18 On forgetting processes, see the comments of Ricoeur (2000) and Augé (2004). On social forgetting also as a factor of progress, see Connerton 2009. See also the contribution of Richardson in this volume (Chapter Seven). 19 Edwards 2007: 19–24. 20 On the textual commemoration of war reserving a place for defeat in Ancient Rome, see now Clark 2014 (with preceding bibliography), who takes account of only the republican phase. On the relationship between memory and military defeat, see Östenberg 2014: 255–265. 21 For the Roman period, see Flower 2006: 1–13. 22 Horsnell 1999 (vol. II): 143–144. 23 Sigrist 1990: 29; Charpin 2004: 107, 386. 24 Sigrist 1990: 52–53. 25 On this aspect see the comments made by Horsnell 1999 (vol. I): 130 with preceding bibliography. The question of the choice of the event to be remembered in the year’s name remains unsolved. A case (Archives Royales de Mari (ARM) XIII 27, 47) is documented in the royal archives of Mari (Durand 1997: 90, 157). 26 Charpin 2004: 48 and n. 92. 27 Ibid.: n. 93. 28 Sigrist 1990: 18–20. 29 On the conquest of Qabra see MacGinnis (2013: 3–10), who assembled all textual data concerning this war. 30 On this stela, see Frayne 1990: 562; Ismail and Cavigneaux 2003; Miglus 2003; Uehlinger 2008; Nadali 2008.

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31 Baqir 1949: 78, n. 13. 32 According to a suggestion by Charpin (2004: 169). 33 On the concepts of ‘canon’ and ‘archive’ in the formation of a cultural memory, see Assmann 2008a. 34 See the contribution by Laneri in this volume (Chapter Four). 35 Bahrani 2008 stimulated the first relevant discussion on this theme. 36 This topic has been studied with different approaches. The human trophy-­taking, with particular reference to the head removal in Mesopotamian milieu, has been interpreted as one of the tactics of warfare (De Backer 2009: 13–50) or as a symbolic or performative action (Bonatz 2004: 93–101; Dolce 2014 with preceding bibliography) or both of these (De Backer 2008: 93–412). On a presumed ‘censorship’ of this practice by Mesopotamian legal codes, see Glassner (2006: 47–55). 37 Di Paolo 2008: 343–359. 38 Bourdieu 1977: 410. 39 Di Paolo in pr. b. 40 Smith 1999: 62. 41 Assmann 2008b: 214.

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Reade, J.E., 1979. ‘Ideology and Propaganda in Assyrian Art’, in: M.T. Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda. A Symposium on Ancient Empires, Mesopotamia 7, Copenhagen, 329–343. Reade, J.E., 1980. ‘The Architectural Context of Assyrian Sculpture’ in: BaM 11, 75–87. Reade, J.E., 1994. ‘Revisiting the North-West Palace, Nimrud’ in: Orientalia 63, 273–278. Ricoeur, P., 2000. La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris. Russell, J.M., 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh, Chicago/London. Samet, N., 2014. The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur, Mesopotamian Civilizations 18, Winona Lake. Schwartz, B., 1982. ‘The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory’ in: Social Forces 61, 374–402. Sigrist, M., 1990. Larsa Year Names, Berrien Springs. Smith, A.D., 1999. Myths and Memories of the Nation, Oxford. Tadmor, H., 1997. ‘Propaganda, Literature, Historiography: Cracking the Code of the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions’, in: S. Parpola, R.M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7–11 1995, Helsinki, 325–338. Tester, K., 1999. ‘The Moral Consequentiality of Television’ in: European Journal of Social Theory 2/4, 469–483. Uehlinger, Ch., 2008. ‘Gott oder König? Bild and Text auf der altbabylonischen Siegesstele des Königs Dāduša von Ešnunna’, in: M. Bauks, K. Liess, P. Riede (eds.), Was ist der Mensch, dass du seiner gedenkst? (Psalm 8,6). Aspekte einer theologischen Anthropologie, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 515–536. Watts, J.W., 2009. ‘Ritual Rhetoric in Ancient Near Eastern Texts’, in: C. Lipson, R. Binckley (eds.), Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics, Anderson, 39–66. Westenholz, J.G., 1997. Legends of the Kings of Akkade, Winona Lake. Westenholz, J.G., 2012. ‘Damnatio Memoriae: Destruction of Name and Destruction of Person in Third-Millennium Mesopotamia’, in: N.N. May (ed.), Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond, Oriental Institute Seminars 8, Chicago, 89–122. Winter, I.J., 1981. ‘Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs’ in: Studies of Visual Communication 7/2, 2–38. Winter, I.J., 1983. ‘The Program of the Throne room of Assurnasirpal II’, in: P.O. Harper, H. Pittman (eds.), Essays on Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in Honor of Ch. K. Wilkinson, New York, 15–31. Winter, I.J., 2000. ‘Babylonian Archaeologists of The(ir) Mesopotamian Past’, in: P. Matthiae et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Rome, 1785–1798.

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Winter, I.J., 2007. ‘Agency Marked, Agency Ascribed: The Affective Object in Ancient Mesopotamia’, in: R. Osborne, J. Tanner (eds.), Art’s Agency and Art History, Malden, 42–69. Winter, J., 2006. Remembering War. The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century, New Haven/London.

9

From Ancient Egypt to the Mississippi Delta: A Comparative Approach to Cultural Memory and Forgetting Martin Bommas

When addressing memory and forgetting in the ancient world, by far the biggest enemy that researchers face is the lack of outspoken sources. This does not mean that there is a lack of evidence. Quite the opposite is the case. However, unless historians ask meaningful questions, the primary sources of the ancient world will fail to speak to them. One way out of this dilemma is by consulting contemporary cultures or cultures of the recent past, provided these offer scholars evidence for both tangible and intangible heritage, distinct histories and complex hierarchic social structures.

The invention of the term ‘cultural memory’ Hardly any other term used in cultural-­theoretical thinking has witnessed a similar impact when it first entered into the world of interdisciplinary thinking processes as did ‘cultural memory’. Said to have been born at the University of Heidelberg in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this term attracted a group of openly associated scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds who congregated for workshops, lectures and conferences at the Egyptological Institute, then headed by Jan Assmann.1 Using Maurice Halbwachs’ seminal study La mémoire collective as their basis, Aleida and Jan Assmann had already briefly touched upon the term Gedächtniskultur by using the term Kulturelles Gedächtnis in 1988.2 A year after their groundbreaking work, highlighted by

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Jan Assmann’s seminal study Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, triggered a fresh dispute in Memory Studies in 1994, a boom was already being predicted.3 Ten years later, the topic of ‘memory culture’, perhaps due to the many branches of disciplinary research cultures, was diluted to such an extent that it proved to be almost impossible to provide a quick summary of the new field of research.4 The term ‘cultural memory’ was, however, afloat earlier, and before Assmann used it in 1988. In his 1988 article ‘African Cultural Memory in New Orleans Music’, Jason Berry discusses the rich African tradition that made its mark on New Orleans’s early development as a centre of culture,5 and suggested that the African past was remembered with the help of ‘rituals of living history, when poetic movements of the street revolve around a vernacular of jazz’.6 Today, twenty-­seven years after the term was introduced into disciplinary research, it is perhaps appropriate to raise the question of how two disciplines such as music studies and Egyptology managed to incorporate the term within their respective research. What use can be made of a concept that is at home both in the ancient world and in the modern world surrounding us? Does the orchestration of social memory differ between highly hierarchical societies, and where and how can similarities be made out? What can African-American folklore teach us about Ancient Egypt, and is it viable to compare two cultures, clearly very distant from each other in both space and time? It is hoped that by addressing the mechanics of remembering and forgetting in the history of black American folklore (whose protagonists and culture bearers can still be interviewed), scholars will be able to raise research questions that are otherwise hidden in the material data of the ancient world. These questions will certainly, but not exclusively, deal with memory and meaning in the ancient world, and will encourage the identification of patterns of organized memory among social groups in the ancient societies of Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Rome. In a further step, this article will address the variations and difficulties regarding the documentation of social memories as part of tangible and intangible heritage. The main difference between the concepts of ‘collective memory’ (Halbwachs) and ‘cultural memory’ (Assmann) is not so much how the past is perceived, but agency and mnemonic techniques. While Halbwachs aimed at working out the discrepancy between history as seen by scholars and history as seen by those

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who actually experienced the past, Assmann attempts to identify social structures. According to Assmann, these institutions enable the connectivity between cultural representations and their availability via their medial conditions, such as writing, images, etc., thus helping to construct a self-­ interpretation based on a group’s own past.

Individual forgetting Jan and Aleida Assmann are well aware of the fact that the term ‘memory’ includes cognitive intellectual operations: the success or failure of remembering results in an outcome that is neither ‘true nor false’.7 As such, the failure to remember is not the dark side of memory or even the opposite, it is part of the process. What seems like a logical and even natural process, is, however, reliant on the quality of the information about the event being processed. While information that is not interrogated on a regular basis can be forgotten inasmuch as its relevance becomes decreasingly important, traumatic experiences remain a constant companion, almost impossible for an individual to forget. The term ‘post-­traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD) or ‘post-­traumatic stress syndrome’ (PTSS) is used to name a range of symptoms an individual may develop in response to experiencing a traumatic event that is outside of the normal human experience. Post-­traumatic stress disorders are reoccurring delayed responses,8 the understanding of which is well advanced. Individuals dealing with PTSD without medical consultation in most cases aim to avoid memories in order to eliminate unwanted processes of reliving aspects of the trauma.9 However, if treated, PTSD can be kept under control and even toned down. Propranolol, a beta-­adrenoceptor blocking drug (beta-­blocker) that was developed for high-­blood-pressure patients, has also proven to be successful with regard to symptoms related to anxiety, such as a fast heartbeat and trembling. Propranolol does not relieve the emotional symptoms associated with anxiety, such as stress or fear,10 but has been proven to help to soften patients’ post-­traumatic memories. Recent research has shown that by using this drug, existing memories can be reshaped and saved accordingly.11 Described as a ‘memory dampener’ or even ‘a pill to forget’,12 propranolol is the

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first drug that can condition the human memory to a certain extent. While, based on this research, an individual’s wish to forget can be met through individual treatment, the memories of social groups unbiased by individual experiences are easier to shake off; and, indeed, often the opposite is the case when memories are actively promoted to prevent them being forgotten.13 As a consequence, it is fair to say that individuals’ memories and social groups’ memories are different inasmuch as individuals cannot actively forget while social groups indeed can, involving processes of both active and passive forgetting, or in other words: both for an individual as well as for a social group, it is much easier to remember than to forget.   memory

active forgetting

individual

social group

individual

social group

↓

↓

↓

↓

possible

possible

impossible

possible

Cultural forgetting When addressing memory, canonization and the mechanics of remembering through cultural messages, whether intended or unconsciously produced to inform posterity, past scholars have been successful in looking into written evidence and artefacts independently. The cultural historian Jakob Burckhardt (1818–1897) distinguished between ‘messages’ encoded in texts and ‘traces’ that provide indirect information and preserve involuntary memories.14 This approach, although tempting at first glance, has been proven to be dangerous, as written and archaeological sources together can provide a much richer and more elaborate picture, which is only blurred if the preference for one methodological approach prevails over another.15 Instead of discarding Burckhardt’s dated approach altogether, Aleida Assmann has taken the trouble to show that only a small percentage of memory-­related artefacts acquire the status of being repeatedly remembered through a rigid process of canonization.16 This process, however, can only be successful where the dividing line between active and passive forgetting has been established. While active forgetting is

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mainly achieved by means of destruction, negation and censorship, passive forgetting takes place when memory is neglected or scattered in locations inaccessible to social groups, or is likely to be destroyed. This leads to the conclusion that active forgetting needs intermediaries in order to operate successfully: both memory and forgetting can be orchestrated by authorities that are largely accepted by social groups either through general or silent agreement, or through election processes. Orchestrated memory and forgetting are both defined by the existence of institutions of preservation and re-­ embodiment as a result of canonization (or the lack thereof), in which case we can speak of ‘cultural memory’17 and ‘cultural forgetting’. This conclusion has important consequences: if memory and forgetting are orchestrated, what then constitutes history? Is history reduced to ‘handling authorised, imposed, celebrated and commemorated’ events as Paul Ricoeur suggests in his work Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oublie?18 Without a doubt, as history is written by authorities who are interested in modelling identity, ideology can indeed stand in the way of narratives that become canonical through intimidation, the need for legitimization, or ingratiation. There can be no denial that processes of orchestrated forgetting are acts of manipulation, based on the promotion of false or biased documents. And it is also true that the exposure of these documents is one of the foremost tasks of historians who assess and reassess the authenticity of documents in order to establish their appropriateness for researching historical events.19

Cultural memory in Egypt: a brief survey The fact that cultural memory as a field of academic interest was developed by an Egyptologist has not exactly helped to further identify aspects of Ancient Egyptian history that were triggered by processes related to memory, let alone forgetting. Although memory played an important role in shaping Ancient Egypt, research into memory and forgetting in Ancient Egypt is a complex field and still stands at its beginning, despite Jan Assmann’s groundbreaking research. A systematic approach to this topic lies beyond the scope of this contribution, too. Instead, four examples from various periods across the history of Ancient Egypt shall be presented, to demonstrate how

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memory and forgetting were orchestrated there, and ultimately shaped Egypt’s history: 1. 2. 3. 4.

rewriting history as an act of legitimization; eliminating uncomfortable events in the past; orchestrating forgetting to secure the cultural unity of the country; inventing history.

The first aspect – rewriting history as an act of legitimization – can be demonstrated by early Middle Kingdom pharaohs such as Senwosret II, who employed scribes to rewrite history through literary works in ca. 1870 BC.20 By addressing the First Intermediate Period, a period of economical wealth and cultural diversity, and also of anarchy and turmoil, the new rulers, derived from a dynasty of local potentates from Thebes, ostentatiously tweaked the evidence and existing memory in order to legitimize themselves as lawful and much-­needed kings of the entire country. They were so successful in doing so that until very recently even Egyptologists fell for their line.21 A similar scenario emerged towards the end of pharaonic rule in Egypt. At the beginning of the Ptolemaic rule over Egypt in ca. 311 BC, a decree, called the Satrap Stela (stela Cairo 22182), was commissioned in order to label the time of Persian occupation of Egypt as a period of instability.22 The new king Ptolemy I, former satrap of Egypt, made sure he would be celebrated as the messiah who re-­established law and order in Egypt.23 In both cases – although around 1,700 years distant from each other – social groups’ memory was actively manipulated by authorities who were interested in cementing their legitimacy. At the same time, but less obviously, to judge by the lack of evidence, active forgetting took place at a much lower level within Egyptian society as well. During the first part of the 18th Dynasty, two examples of the second category, the annihilation of uncomfortable events in the past, took place. When, shortly before or after her death in ca. 1458 BC, Queen Hatshepsut fell into disgrace and her name was erased from official documents by her successor Thutmosis III, even private monuments such as tombs were not spared. Just as had happened in the temple of Khnum at Elephantine, where a gang of workmen deleted her names,24 several of her name cartouches in the private Theban Tomb TT345 were altered as well. Replaced by the name of her

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father, Thutmosis I,25 whose cultic worship lasted until the Ramesside Period, her name would not have been visible to the untrained eye. Thirdly, orchestrating forgetting to secure the country’s cultural unity can sometimes be identified as acts of memory. The god Amun, prominently persecuted by Akhenaten and his followers during the Amarna Period, saw his name occasionally26 being removed from monuments, before being restored during the Ramesside Period, around 40 years later.27 However, this process was hardly a smooth operation: the violent act of persecuting Amun during the Amarna Period was turned into an equally violent restoration of Egypt’s former glory by radically extinguishing the Amarna Period, a process that started during the rule of Tutankhamun in ca. 1334 BC.28 Remarkably, not only royal monuments but also tombs of non-­royal individuals, who had supported the king during his reign, were combed through: the erasure of the memory of Akhenaten can also be observed in the tomb of Parennefer (TT188), who was a high official during Akhenaten’s reign but became a royal butler after the king’s death, thus showing that processes of active forgetting included non-­royal monuments of those who were known to have had links with the ostracized king. The extent of this act of systematic forgetting can be seen in the fact that Seti I’s king list from Abydos willingly omitted the name of Akhenaten and other Amarna-­rulers, including Tutankhamun,29 thus omitting him from reference sources and removing him from cultural memory. The fourth category is perhaps the most remarkable: the invention of history.30 Perhaps during the reign of King Mentuhotep II (ca. 2055–2004 BC), who reunited Egypt after the political separation of Upper and Lower Egypt during the First Intermediate Period, the need to legitimize the new ruling class was felt for the first time. Different from later Middle Kingdom kings, who rewrote history through a literary approach as seen above, a king was invented who, as an actual and historical figure, never existed.31 At this point, Mentuhotep II, who later periods decided to inflate as the hero of a new age, might have felt too stark a contrast between his own meteoric rise to absolute power and his comparatively modest parentage: in the so-­called Karnak king list, dating to the time of Thutmosis III (ca. 1450 BC), the invented king is referred to as simply ‘the ancestor’.32 Obviously, with Ancient Egyptian history spanning a period of more than 3,600 years, an abundance of examples show how history was renegotiated by

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posterity. Based on the four categories outlined above and the examples given, it is fair to say that the process of rewriting history was triggered by authorities who had an interest in either promoting forgetting for the sake of their own interests, or rewriting history by tweaking or even inventing ‘historical’ facts. In any case, processes of self-­assertion trigger both the creation of memory and the orchestration of forgetting. Moreover, all those attempts are commissioned by authorities who have the power to influence media and political stakeholders. As shown above, in Ancient Egypt such power was exercised exclusively by a new pharaoh: Mentuhotep II, Senwosret II, Thutmosis III, Akhenaten, Seti I and Ptolemy I, mentioned above, are only a few names of kings who actively rewrote history. Their rule marked the end of previous political change and crisis. This does not come as a surprise: history in Ancient Egypt – just as anywhere else – was written by the victor. In his study Geschichte als soziales Gedächtnis, Peter Burke wrote: ‘It has been said many times that victors wrote history. But one could also say: the victors did forget history. They can indeed afford to do so, whereas the losers can never accept what happened.’33 As a matter of fact, things are far from being that simple. Even in Ancient Egypt, the use and abuse of political power34 is not restricted to pharaohs, but also filters through to lower levels of society, which ultimately translate an idea into public policy. Who are the authorities that stand behind the processes of actively destroying evidence that could aid memory? What are the strategies of cultural forgetting, and who orchestrates these, out of which particular interest? Obviously, when entering the non-­royal strata of society, the image of those who set into practice at a local level what has been issued at court becomes increasingly opaque the more the king’s direct influence decreases. The aim of this article, as has been stated above, is to facilitate research in this area by outlining the benefits of studying similar procedures among modern social groups. Apart from the fact that more contemporary sources are usually available to modern historians than to scholars of the ancient world, another obvious advantage is the possibility of complementing research with interviews with those involved, whether as individuals or as members of social groups. Therefore, for the remaining part of this contribution, I shall discuss a rather obvious but nevertheless under-­investigated aspect of AfricanAmerican history that is intrinsically tied to my topic, namely cultural

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forgetting in African-American culture in the United States of America35 that is accessible via folklore, especially blues music.

A short history of the blues Blues music, which has its origins in Africa, has become the fundament upon which almost all modern music genres are built, be it jazz, rock, hip-­hop or even aspects of pop music. Emerging from the former slave states at the end of the 19th century, the blues had their heyday from the 1920s to the 1960s. Thanks to their rather basic form, which leaves ample room for improvizations,36 the blues have changed profoundly and still do until today. However, the music industry was never keen to promote blues music, leaving even outstanding artists such as B.B. King (1925–2015) and Eric Clapton (born 1945) disappointed.37 One of the major torchbearers of the genre today, the guitarist Joe Bonamassa (born 1977), has defied the music business by taking the blues to a stadium level; but the industry shows little interest in what it regards as a niche. The music industry’s restrained interest in the blues is only paralleled by the indifference of the American public. During the international conference ‘The United States in the World’, which took place in 1976 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the United States in Washington DC, an international committee of scholars, artists and authors agreed that the US’s single most outstanding contribution to culture in the world was jazz and blues music. Astonishingly, the US delegates flat-­out denied these findings. Blues artists, on the other hand, were always well aware of the genealogical tree – the eminent blues artist and co-­founder of the Chicago blues genre Muddy Waters (1913– 1983) put it in a nutshell when in 1977 he famously called rock ’n’ roll ‘the baby of the blues’.38 Today, the blues are gradually finding their true place in music history, often due to initiatives from outsiders. In a song from 2015, the British-­ born Jon Cleary, who had adopted New Orleans as his home town, sang about ‘Bringing back home the greatest gift America gave to the world: jazz, funk, rhythm & blues and soul’.39 With the music industry largely objecting to seeing anything more in the blues than a viable niche market, and even scholars denying the blues their

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true place within the cultural history of the USA, and in fact the world, it seems hard to find any advocate for the blues among the predominantly white elite in the US, past and present. Even among African-Americans, the reception of the blues, although they stem from African-American folk poetry40 and are largely the result of a gradual transformation of African traditions in the American South, does not seem undivided. Although the blues fathered rhythm & blues in the 1940s, rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, soul in the 1960s and hip-­hop in the 1970s, the blues are seen as a source of embarrassment. The overwhelmingly rich cultural achievement of blues music, perhaps the biggest success African-American culture ever achieved outside its own backyard, does not take away from the fact that blues lyrics tell the story of poverty, segregation and exploitation by the white man. The eminent blues singer and guitarist B.B. King was one of the first to openly observe this dichotomy: Seems like the English or French or even the Australians and Japanese were loving the blues more than my own people. I understood how some black people have a bad association with the blues. The blues represent a painful past; for some, the blues stand for a time when we didn’t have pride and hadn’t made progress.41

Around the mid-1960s, when their traditionally black audience had turned predominantly white, especially on the east and west coasts of the United States, blues musicians initially saw themselves conflicted. Two factors can be singled out as main reasons for this change. First, the African-American Civil Rights Movement and non-­violent protest against racism led up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination based on ‘race, color, religion, or national origin’.42 Secondly, as a result of the so-­called British Invasion, spearheaded by bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, American folklore was reintroduced to the United States. Young, white British musicians, who had learnt their trade by listening to records from US labels and were unbiased by the social impact the blues had had in the US, were to change popular culture forever. When The Beatles made their US television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9th February 1964, the ‘American record industry ground to a halt’,43 and the new excitement they brought to popular music resulted in skyrocketing sales of instruments.44 In particular, The Rolling Stones, who derived their name from a Muddy Waters song, labelled themselves

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as a blues band, and in 1965 they appeared with the blues great Howlin’ Wolf on Shindig!, a national musical variety series based in Los Angeles, staged by a British producer.45 Although the rock revolution of 1964 introduced blues music to a white audience that had previously had little or no contact with black music, but whose enthusiasm allowed black musicians to benefit from record sales in a way not known before, white musicians playing the blues were often looked down on as imitators rather than innovators. Although the golden era of American songwriting that had started around 1925 had come to a halt by 1960,46 and it was only due to the British Invasion that the music industry could survive, resentments were flying high. Albert King, one of the most influential blues guitarists of all time, summed up his feelings as follows: There’s no problem for me to play the blues, because I lived it, man. You’re looking at a guy that’s been so low that gettin’ up didn’t even cross my mind. I sing the blues to tell a story. There’s just one way to play the blues, and that’s to play the blues. You can’t mix Lionel Hampton [jazz vibes player] in with the blues; you can’t mix the Cream in with the blues; you can’t mix Country Joe and the Fish [US hippy folk band] in with the blues and you can’t mix The Rolling Stones in with the blues. . . . Now, if you want to play somethin’ by The Rolling Stones, then you go and rehearse their stuff and you play it – but you won’t be playing no blues.47

From Albert King’s statement, which stands pars pro toto for the feelings of many blues musicians, it becomes evident that blues music is strictly regarded as an African-American matter that should not be in the hands of white people who never faced the poverty in America’s Southern states, where racial segregation still exists and where the blues – unwantedly – is still a way of life. Living in poverty in country shacks that often have no electricity or running water, and the fact that children suffer from unstable home lives, including high mobility rates, are only a couple of the issues that result in poor performance. According to a report published in March 2013, 78% of the state of Mississippi’s 4th graders are below proficient in reading.48 For the large majority of the black population of Mississippi (37% of the overall population), the much-­trumpeted ‘American way of life’ never happened, and, where life in poverty is still the norm, traditions of the past are equally unappealing, especially as the cultural achievements of African-Americans in the Mississippi

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Delta are intertwined with slavery and segregation. Two questions arise from this assessment. First, who is in charge of taking care of the past cultural achievements in the Mississippi Delta? Second, who remembers the past, and for which reasons?

Who owns the past? Based on what has been outlined before, it seems fair to say that AfricanAmericans in Mississippi sometimes find it hard to subscribe to their history, even though the music born out of the Delta had an unparalleled impact on today’s popular music. The lack of engagement with the past and the memory thereof can, however, only be partially explained by referring to precarious modes of life in America’s South. Another aspect that has to be addressed is the fact that, by and large, African-American history is oral history. Returning to the point made about forgetting, it is evident that African-American culture does not favour a passive storing memory, but limits itself to active cultural memory. Here, cultural memory is conveyed via performance and use, rather than objects and artefacts or the documentation of performance for future generations. Practice rather than writing, and indigenous embodied repertoires instead of archival systems, characterize what the UNESCO convention of 2003 described as ‘intangible cultural heritage’.49 Although it is debatable whether or not the application of the convention aims to support the AfricanAmerican cultural community,50 some outputs are undeniably tangible, such as music records, poetry or ‘Blaxploitation’ films to name but a few. Diana Taylor is perhaps the best-­known advocate of stressing the power of the Western archive over indigenous performance,51 a view long held when addressing the production, transmission and storage of knowledge. In fact, the aim to protect intangible living black cultural heritage even predates the 1950s. Alan Lomax (1915–2002), the pioneering oral historian and field collector of Folk music (among many other trades), was among the first to favour this view. He started off recording songs of sharecroppers and prisoners in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi at the age of seventeen, when he accompanied his father, John A. Lomax, on his Folk-­song collecting trips for the Library of Congress in 1932. Today, his field records are among the few authentic

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documents of the musical world in the Mississippi Delta, which were quickly vanishing by the 1940s. Preserved in the Library of Congress, and as media documents openly accessible to anyone who wishes to sign up as reader,52 Lomax’s unrivalled archive consists of 6,400 sound recordings, a large number of which were collected in the Deep South. However, what we witness here are two different methods of dealing with cultural memory: a Western, white approach that prefers the passive storage of memory, and a black approach that favours active cultural memory by stressing the importance of performance and practice. More often than not, the latter approach has proven to be difficult. Although it may be true that the Intangible Cultural Heritage Conference in 2003 helped to clarify legal aspects of ownership, African-Americans in the Deep South are not in the driver’s seat when it comes to harvesting the fruit of their blues tradition – in fact, they never were. Companies cutting blues records were always owned by white entrepreneurs, and so were the publishers who disseminated sheet music: a well-­known example is the publication of ‘Saint Louis Blues’, composed by the ‘Father of the Blues’, W.C. Handy (1873–1958), who was bilked of his royalties for decades. Those who flock to the Mississippi Delta to witness real Delta blues performed by real blues shouters often find themselves directed to blues festivals. Organized by self-­declared authorities that claim to construct authenticity by promoting blues musicians dead or alive, tourism is in the lead where cultural space is created in order to encourage racial harmony. According to Stephen A. King, Professor of Communication Studies at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, festival organizers look at blues musicians as ‘cultural resources’ and use ‘rhetorical strategies to invert the social hierarchy and promote a sense of social justice’.53 This approach to blues festivals, however, seems to have a long tradition. The first of these festivals, the Memphis Country Blues Festival, held in 1966, was followed up by four more, but also created ‘a struggle for ownership of the event between the hippies and the city government’,54 obviously not involving the black cultural community whose traditions these early festivals were believed to celebrate.55 What appears at first sight to be ‘cultural forgetting’ seems to find an explanation in what has been described as the lack of passive storing memory, at least in the eyes of those who promote the white approach. According to the African-American mind, however, the blues are not dead, nor forgotten: they live on in the minds of those who perform the music, people who do not share

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the white interest in creating archives. This oral approach to history, which is not based on the use of writing, favours processes of actively remembering through practice, dance, ritual and other ways of performance. Just because history is not written down does not mean it is forgotten. But it is also true that social groups who remember with the help of archives and museums often use their assumed advantage to remember the history of groups who lack these institutions. Ultimately, this act of piracy triggers the question of who owns history: those who have the means to document history or those who live it, or both? Societies with oral traditions find it hard to make a stand against the strategies of societies who equip themselves with tools in order to remember what has been agreed on and to forget what is painful. Authorities who institutionalize memory also orchestrate forgetting. I wish to think that similar strategies were in place in Ancient Egypt. With the help of identifying similar strategies in modern societies that equally have a strong focus on oral history like black folk culture in the Deep South, Egyptology will be better prepared to lay focus on identifying patterns of active cultural memory based on the use of passive storing memory on one side, and the orchestration of cultural forgetting on the other.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Harth 2010: 88. Assmann and Assmann 1988: 27. See the study by Huyssen 1995. Schraten 2011: 151. Berry 1988: 3–12. Ibid.: 3. Assmann, A. 2001: 103–122. See http://www.mind.org.uk/information-­support/types-­of-mental-­healthproblems/post-­traumatic-stress-­disorder-(ptsd)/?gclid=CPu_5SwuboCFfSWtAodCRkAvw (last accessed 28th October 2013). 9 See Gorman and Darton 2011. 10 See http://www.patient.co.uk/medicine/propranolol (last accessed 28th October 2013).

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11 Brunet et al. 2008: 503–506. 12 See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/22/60minutes/main2205629 .shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody (last accessed 28th October 2013). 13 War memorials and museums often serve the purpose of supporting the maintenance of active processes of remembering. 14 Assmann, A. 1996: 40. 15 Bommas 2011: 79–108. 16 Assmann, A. 2010: 99. 17 Assmann has already pointed out that collective memory (in Assmann’s terminology, ‘communicative memory’) is non-­institutional, see Assmann, J. 2010: 111. 18 Ricoeur 2004: 448. 19 See Contardi’s article in this volume (Chapter Two). 20 Blumenthal 1996: 131. 21 Bommas 2012: 37–38. 22 For a photograph of this stela, which shows an unnamed pharaoh making offerings to the gods of Buto, see Pfeiffer 2005: 20. For the negative image of Persians as laid out on this stela, see Klinkott 2007: 34–53. 23 ‘He (i.e. Ptolemy) had restored the sculptures17 of the gods which were found in Asia, and all the furniture and books of the temples18 of northern and southern Egypt. He had restored them to their place’, own translation based on the original text in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. 24 Bommas 2000: 105–108. 25 Whale 1989: 87. 26 The evidence from the temple of Khnum at Elephantine suggests that the persecution of Amun outside Thebes was carried out half-­heartedly, perhaps as an act of opposition, and therefore never comprehensive, see Bommas 2000: 304. 27 Among many other temple sites, the New Kingdom temple of Khnum presents clear evidence, see Bommas 2000: 303–304. 28 For the so-­called Restoration Stela, see Assmann, J. 1997: 253–254. 29 For a photograph of the inscription, see Reeves 2001: 190–191. 30 Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) use the term ‘invented traditions’, which received criticism for its ambiguity, see Masuzawa 2005: 14. 31 Bommas 2012: 47; Morenz 2015: 33. Among those scholars who support the view of Mentuhotep I as a real pharaoh are (among others) Grimal (1992: 143) and Seidlmayer (2002: 135), while Schneider (1994: 155) cautiously points out that Mentuhotep I’s appearance is the result of a ‘later tradition’. 32 See Lepsius 1853: plate second register from top, fourth name from left. 33 Burke 1991: 297.

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34 For the desire of individuals and their dependence on others to satisfy these desires, see Knipnis 2001: 3. 35 Fabre and O’Meally 1994. 36 Giddins and DeVeaux 2009: 31. 37 King, B.B. 1996: 295; Clapton 2007: 364 points out that ‘the systems of marketing and distribution are in the middle of a huge shift, and by the end of this decade, I think it’s unlikely that any of the existing record companies will still be in business’. 38 ‘The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll, Pt. 2’ is the title of a song written by Muddy Waters and Brownie McGhee, published on the LP Hard Again (1977). 39 ‘Bringing Back the Home’, Album: GoGo Juice. 40 Giddins and DeVeaux 2009: 26. 41 King, B.B. 1996: 279. 42 For a transcript of the Act see http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true &doc=97&page=transcript (last accessed 7th November 2013). 43 Gordon 1995: 87. 44 As The Beatles at this time played US-made Gretsch and Rickenbacker guitars, US guitar manufacturers were able to benefit instantly from The Beatles’ appearance on television. The Beatles themselves were well aware of the impact they had on instrument sales. George Harrison said he ‘read somewhere that after The Beatles appeared on [the Sullivan shows] Gretsch sold 20,000 guitars a week, or something like that’, see Bacon 2005: 68. Including the impact of rock ’n’ roll, which fully emerged in 1955, the number of guitar players in the US increased from 2.6 million to 10 million between 1955 and 1965 (Gordon 1995: 89) although it remains unclear to what extent these aficionados indeed mastered their instruments. 45 Norman 2012: 174. 46 Giddins and DeVeaux 1995: 31. 47 Marten 2013: 5. 48 Mader 2013. 49 Assmann, A. 2010: 105. 50 A few nations abstained from voting, among them the USA. Kurin 2004: 66–77. 51 Taylor 2005. 52 The Lomax Family Collection forms part of the American Folklife Center, based at the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/, last accessed 7th November 2013). 53 King, S.A. 2011: 181. 54 Gordon 1995: 137. 55 The Ku Klux Klan had held a rally at the same site only a week earlier, Gordon 1995: 134.

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Bibliography Assmann, A., 1996. ‘Text, Traces, Trash: the changing media of Cultural Memory’, in: J. Schlaeger (ed.), The Anthropological Turn in Literary Studies, Tübingen, 31–44. Assmann, A., 2001. ‘Wie wahr sind Erinnerungen?’, in: H. Welzer (ed.), Das soziale Gedächtnis: Geschichte, Erinnerung, Tradition, Hamburg, 103–122. Assmann, A., 2010. ‘Canon and Archive’, in: A. Erll, A. Nünning (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, Berlin/New York, 97–107. Assmann, A. and Assmann, J., 1988. ‘Schrift, Tradition und Kultur’, in: W. Raible (ed.), Zwischen Festtag und Alltag: Zehn Beiträge zum Thema “Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit”, Tübingen, 25–49. Assmann, J., 1997. Ägypten. Eine Sinngeschichte, Frankfurt am Main. Assmann, J., 2010. ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, in: A. Erll, A. Nünning (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, Berlin/New York, 109–118. Bacon, T., 2005. 50 years of Gretsch Electrics. Half a Century of White Falcon, Gents, Hest & Other Great Guitars, Hong Kong. Berry, J., 1988. ‘African Culture and Memory in New Orleans Music’, in: Black Music Research Journal Vol. 8, No. 1, 3–12. Blumenthal, E., 1996. ‘Die literarische Verarbeitung der Übergangszeit zwischen Altem und Mittlerem Reich’, in: A. Loprieno (ed.), Ancient Egyptian Literature. History and Forms, Leiden/New York/Cologne, 105–135. Bommas, M., 2000. Der Tempel des Chnum auf Elephantine, PhD diss., Heidelberg. Bommas, M., 2011. ‘Pausanias’ Egypt’, in: M. Bommas (ed.), Cultural Memory and Identity in Ancient Societies, CMHA 1, London, 79–108. Bommas, M., 2012. Das Alte Ägypten, Darmstadt. Brunet, A. et al., 2008. ‘Effect of post-­retrieval propranolol on psychophysiologic responding during subsequent script-­driven traumatic imagery in post-­traumatic stress disorder’, in: Journal of Psychiatric Research 42 (6), 503–506. Burke, P. 1991. ‘Geschichte als soziales Gedächtnis’, in: A. Assmann, D. Harth (eds.) Mnemosyne, Formen und Funktionen der Kulturellen Erinnerung, Frankfurt am Main, 289–304. Clapton, E. (with C.S. Sykes), 2007. Eric Clapton. The Autobiography, London. Fabre, G. and O’Meally, R. (eds.), 1994. History & Memory in African-American Culture, New York/Oxford. Giddins G. and DeVeaux, S., 2009. Jazz, New York. Gordon, R., 1995. It Came From Memphis, New York/London/Toronto/Sydney. Gorman, J. and Darton, K., 2011. Understanding post-­traumatic stress disorder, London. (http://www.mind.org.uk/media/46891/understanding_ptsd_2011.pdf, last accessed 28th October 2013).

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Grimal, N., 1992. A History of Ancient Egypt, Bodmin. Harth, S.D., 2010. ‘The Invention of Cultural Memory’, in: A. Erll, A. Nünning (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, Berlin/New York, 85–96. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (ed.), 1983. The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge. Huyssen, A., 1995. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, New York. King, B.B. (with D. Ritz), 1996. Blues All Around Me, New York. King, S.A., 2011. I’m Feeling the Blues Right Now. Blues Tourism and the Mississippi, Jackson. Klinkott, H., 2007. ‘Xerxes in Ägypten. Gedanken zum negativen Perserbild in der Satrapenstele’, in: S. Pfeiffer (ed.), Ägypten unter fremden Herrschern zwischen Satrapie und römischer Provinz, Frankfurt am Main, 34–53. Knipnis, D., 2001. ‘Using Power. Newton’s second law’, in: A.Y. Lee-Chai, J.A. Bargh (eds.), The Use and Abuse of Power. Multiple Perspectives on the Causes of Corruption, Ann Arbor, 3–17. Kurin, R., 2004. ‘Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in The 2003 UNESCO Convention: a critical appraisal’, in: Museum International 56.1–2, 66–77. Lepsius, R., 1853. ‘Über die zwölfte Aegyptische Königsdynastie’, Berlin. Mader, J., 2013. ‘The Literacy Crisis: Searching for Solutions in Mississippi’, in: Hechinger Report, 11th March 2013 (http://hechingerreport.org/content/the-­ literacy-crisis-­searching-for-­solutions-in-­mississippi_11482/, last accessed 7th November 2013), first published in Biloxi Sun Herald, 9th March 2013. Marten, N., 2013. ‘Welcome’, in: Guitar Techniques 222, 5. Masuzawa, T., 2005. The Invention of World Religions, Chicago. Morenz, L.D., 2015. Der Erinnerer: ein bedrohlicher altägyptischer Dämon und die existentielle Furcht vor dem Totengericht, Berlin. Norman, P., 2012. Mick Jagger, St Ives. Pfeiffer, S., 2005. ‘Entstehung und Entwicklung einer multikulturellen Gesellschaft im griechisch-­römischen Ägypten’, in: Jahrbuch der historischen Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2004, 15–24. Reeves, N., 2001. Akhenaten. Egypt’s False Prophet, London. Ricoeur, P. (transl. K. Blamey/D. Pellauer), 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting, Chicago. Schneider, Th., 1994. Lexikon der Pharaonen, Zurich. Schraten, J., 2011. Zur Aktualität von Jan Assmann. Einleitung in sein Werk, Wiesbaden. Seidlmayer, S.J., 2002. ‘The First Intermediate Period’, in: I. Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, New York, 118–147.

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Index aesthetics 86, 90, America folklore 164, 171–172 ancestors 31, 34, 47, 53–54, 56, 58–59, 61–65, 92, 137 Ancient Egypt 164, 167, 170, 176 Assyria 12, 14–15, 69, 115, 131, 133, 151 blues 171–173, 175 body 3, 46, 50, 54–55, 61–62, 86, 88–91, 93, 146, 153–155 collectivity 45–46, 50, 150 communication 13–15, 22–23, 27, 48, 50, 118, 146 community 4, 38–39, 44, 64, 87, 124, 146–147, 152, 156, 174–175 conflict vii, 72, 106–107, 118–119, 143–145, 147, 150, 155 cult 22–23, 29, 34, 47, 53, 56, 59, 64 destruction 3, 5, 25, 30, 38, 41–44, 49, 71, 73–74, 77, 79, 101–102, 108, 121, 145, 147, 167 Egypt 22, 25–26, 31, 69, 72, 79–80, 164, 167–170, 176–177 epic 9, 71–74, 78, 106, 119, 124 exclusion 149, 156 Fall of Babylon 102–104, 106, 108–109, 112–117, 119, 124–128, 138 forgetting 44, 102–103, 122–124, 126, 143, 146–150, 157, 163–171, 174, 176 cultural vii, 166–167, 170, 175–176 historical 123 heritage 3, 49, 150, 152, 174 intangible 163–164, 174–175 tangible 163–164

history vii, 3, 22, 25, 28, 31, 39, 41–42, 44, 46, 48–49, 70, 71, 75, 77, 80, 88, 92–93, 101, 123, 126, 143, 145–146, 151, 164, 167–168, 170–171, 174, 176 cultural 172 reception 103 rewriting 147, 168, 170 sacral 71, 76 hypogea 54–55, 59, 62 identity vi, 22, 24, 32, 45, 50, 73, 87–90, 95, 109, 117, 123, 131, 134, 147, 149–150, 152, 156–157, 167 ideology 4, 10, 12, 32, 93, 102, 153, 167 individuals vi, 1, 38–40, 45, 60–61, 63, 86, 133, 146, 150, 152–153, 165–166, 169–170, 178 Kadesh 74–75, 78, 80 battle 69, 72, 74–75, 77, 79 kingship 7, 9–10, 14, 15–16, 28–29, 33, 56–58, 86, 88–89, 91–94, 115–116, 131 knowledge 21, 29, 87, 120–123, 127, 131, 137 transmission 5, 41, 49, 174 memorial(s) 41–42, 147, 156, 177 space 151–152 war 177 memory aesthetic 45 ascribed 3, 39 collective vi, 4, 21, 29, 32, 39–40, 44–46, 48, 50, 54, 62, 64, 143, 149, 152, 164, 177 cultural vi–vii, 1, 3, 22–23, 28–30, 32, 39, 45, 87, 91, 94, 147–148, 150–152, 155, 158, 163–164, 167, 169, 174–176

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Index

historical 38, 70, 73, 76–77, 125 individual vii, 21, 39 marked 3, 39 non-­official 45 official 4, 146 performance 3, 41, 44, personal 3, 39–40, 46 place 42, 48 political 46 preservation 14, 22, 32, 37, 43 shared 1, 45 social vi–vii, 45–46, 48–49, 53–54, 61, 63, 123, 156, 164 studies 48, 164 transmission vi, 22, 32, 43, 46, Mesopotamia 7, 12–16, 27, 41–42, 46–47, 55, 63, 86, 101, 103, 107, 130, 144 metahistory 88, metaphor 73, 128, 155 monumentality 4, 44, 46–47 monument(s) 1, 5, 22, 26, 38, 41–43, 47, 55, 69, 101, 147–148, 151–152, 156, 168–169 war 146–147, 150 myth 7, 10, 22, 29, 70–71, 76, 80, 150 mythical origin 152 narrative 14, 29, 30, 45, 71–72, 77–78, 87–88, 90, 92–93, 103–104, 110, 119, 124–126, 132, 135, 137, 144, 146, 149, 152, 154–155, 167 historical 69–71, 73–74, 77, 123 military 70 visual 87, 154 war 155

Neo-Assyrian art 86, 93 artist 71, 76–77, 91 Empire 70, 76 historical narrative 69, 93 palace reliefs 69, 71–72, 77, 87, 90 period 92, 136, 145, 153, 157 reliefs 70–71 royal inscriptions 78 Old Babylonian Period 11, 122 Old Kingdom 30, 32, 110, 128 performance 61–62, 173–176 ritual 61, 64 propaganda 4, 44, 46, 50, 75, 77, 144–145, 157 remembrance 54–55, 63–65, 143, 145–147, 153 ritual practice 54, 62, 144 royal genealogies 64 Sea Peoples 69–70, 72–73, 75, 77–79 selection 40, 44, 123, 148, 151, 156 self-­preservation 151 state collapse 101 Syria 49, 54–55, 59, 62, 108, 130 trauma 123, 126, 146, 165 war 13–14, 38, 72, 74, 78, 80, 113, 121, 126, 143–157, warfare 26, 72–73, 115–116, 158 year-­names 104–105, 107–108, 112, 119, 121–122, 124, 127, 131, 135–137, 148–150