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Envisioning the Past Through Memories. How Memory Shaped Ancient Near
Eastern Societies
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Davide Nadali
Sapienza University of Rome
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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
Bloomsbury Academic
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Series Preface vi
Acknowledgements viii
List of Illustrations ix
List of Contributors x
Introduction Davide Nadali 1
Index 183
relationship with the 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. 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
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.
2.1: Bone label from Abydos tomb U-j (Dreyer 1998: 125, Fig. 103). 24
2.2: Left: Year label of Den, Abydos (Petrie 1900: pl. XV.16); Right:
Palermo Stone (fourth register) (Wilkinson 2000: Fig. 1). 25
4.1: The hypothetical journey for the coronation of the royal couple
within the ancient city of Ebla (after Ristvet 2011: Fig. 5). 57
4.2: Reconstruction of the Royal Hypogeum of Qatna (after Pfälzner
2007: Fig. 31). 60
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. 70
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. 74
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). 85
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). 86
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),
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).
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. Neo-
Babylonian 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
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
Notes
Bibliography
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in fruhen Hochkulturen, München (English transl. Cultural Memory and Early
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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.
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