Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

The late second millennium composition Enuma elish, known for decades as the Babylonian Creation Epic, is now read primarily as a political myth intended to support Babylon’s claim to be foremost among cities and to justify the elevation of its patron god, Marduk, to the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. While this revised interpretation of the epic allows us to consider Enuma elish in its proper context, among other myths of hero gods such as Anzu, Labbu, and Girra and Elamatum, it has not encouraged the analysis of other aspects of the composition. The role of Tiamat in particular, and the relevance of her femininity to the outcome of the epic, requires further exploration. This essay examines the ways in which gender roles--and their transgression--shape the narrative of Enuma elish.

The figure of Apsu, father of the great gods, makes but a fleeting appearance in the late second millennium BCE Babylonian epic Enuma elish. Tidily disposed of within the first seventy lines of Tablet I, he has at best a peripheral and passive presence in the remainder of the text, his corpse serving as the foundation for Ea’s dwelling and his death providing a plausible, if insufficient, justification for Tiamat’s subsequent transformation from protective mother to raging destroyer. Under these circumstances, the Apsu episode might reasonably be read as a mere preface to the main action, technically useful to, but nonetheless distinct from, the central conflict between Tiamat (Apsu’s female mate and mother of all the gods) and the young hero god Marduk. Such a reading, however, would miss out both on those features of the incident that are interesting in their own right and on the importance of the Apsu episode to the broader arc of the narrative. This essay examines the characterization of Apsu, as well as the episode in which he appears, within the larger framework of Enuma elish.

The Tablet of Destinies, a well known if somewhat enigmatic motif, features prominently in Mesopotamian mythology as both an emblem and a receptacle of divine power and kingship. In the Babylonian narrative Enūma eliš (the so-called Babylonian Epic of Creation), the Tablet of Destinies is something of a peripheral device, unsurprising given that the text draws on numerous themes and motifs from other mythological traditions to justify the elevation of the Babylonian god Marduk to the kingship of the pantheon. Nevertheless, the manner in which it is integrated into the events of the composition, first bestowed upon Qingu by Tiāmat, then seized and worn by Marduk while he orders the cosmos, and ultimately presented by Marduk to his grandfather Anu, offers some insight into one of the central problems of the text: where does power legitimately reside and how – and why – is it properly transferred from one divine entity to another? This essay examines the relationship between the Tablet of Destinies, the possession and transmission of power, and the conferral of legitimacy in the context of Enūma eliš.

In the mythology of ancient Greece and Rome, the topos of physical transformation is pervasive: the boundaries between gods, humans, monsters, and animals, and occasionally plants and inanimate objects as well, are transgressed with ease in the service of seduction, punishment, escape, and reward. Zeus takes the form of a bull to seduce Europa, a swan to rape Leda, and a shower of gold to impregnate Danae. Artemis punishes the hapless Aktaion for his chance glimpse of her nudity by transforming him into a stag; the lovely Medusa is turned into a petrifying gorgon by an offended Athena; and the tyrant Lykaon becomes a ravening wolf, making visible the natural depravity of his character. More sympathetically, the sea goddess Thetis, a talented shape shifter, undergoes a brilliant if futile series of metamorphoses in the attempt to escape the embrace of the mortal Peleus; Artemis saves the terrified nymph Daphne from Apollo’s lust by turning her into a laurel tree; and Pygmalion’s hopeless love for the statue he has carved from ivory is pitied by Aphrodite, who turns the frozen form into living female flesh. By and large, those transformations deliberately imposed by the gods on other entities, unlike instances of typically reversible divine self-transformation, represent permanent and absolute rather than transitory changes of state. The ability to change shape or to confer a change of shape is not restricted to any single god but appears to be a universal divine prerogative exploited by most of the Olympian gods and some of the lesser deities at one time or another.

The role of such alterations in the surviving literary texts of ancient Mesopotamia, a subject that has not yet been the subject of any comprehensive study, stands in stark contrast: the topos of metamorphosis, here defined specifically as radical physical transformation from one category of being to another (as from human to animal), is rarely invoked and is associated with only a few deities in a very restricted set of circumstances. This study considers three apparent examples of metamorphosis from the surviving Sumerian and Akkadian literary texts: the turning of Dumuzid into a lizard or gazelle in several texts from the Inana and Dumuzid Cycle; the turning of Bilulu into a waterskin in Inana and Bilulu; and the turning of Ishtar’s shepherd lover into a wolf in the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. These transformations are explored in the attempt to define the nature of the boundaries between different classes of being in Mesopotamia, the common elements involved in the transgression of such boundaries, and the meaning of such transgressions in the context of the Mesopotamian world view.

The role of the frontally rendered, and specifically en face, figure in art of all mediums, spanning the period from the ancient through to the contemporary world, and the effect of its direct gaze on the viewer, has been a subject of active art historical and psychological discourse since the early publications of Alfred Yarbus, Ernst Gombrich, and Meyer Schapiro on how we look at images, on the relationship in image making between form and meaning and form and function, and on frontal and profile figures as potential symbols, capable of encoding and communicating messages to the viewer through their juxtaposition or interaction. In Mesopotamia, en face figures are depicted on cylinder seals from at least the Uruk Period, continuing to appear in that and other mediums through to the Neo- Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Periods. Outside of so-called popular art such as the terracotta plaques, however, the form is rare and seems to have been reserved primarily for two types of figures: female divinities such as Ishtar and the frontal nude goddess, and Zwischenwesen, figures of intermediate or “in-between” nature existing in the space between men and their gods and functioning as masters of animals, guardians and gatekeepers, and as apotropaic or threatening supernatural forces. This paper takes up recent studies in evolutionary psychology and visual and social cognition, seeking to elucidate some of the factors governing the use and meaning of the frontal face and direct gaze in Mesopotamian art as these pertain to the representation of Zwischenwesen (with an emphasis on monsters and daimons).

The monsters and daimons (demons) of Mesopotamia belonged to a constellation of Zwischenwesen – interstitial beings with supernatural qualities or capacities – that occupied the space between humans and their gods. As the “Other,” if not always the enemy, their alterity was not only inscribed in their bodies but also reflected in their social alienation and geographical isolation. Strikingly imagined, where depicted or described, as morphologically anomalous or hybrid (Mischwesen), the monsters and daimons lacked the kinship affiliations of both city-dwelling humans and their gods and properly dwelt at the wild and inhospitable margins of the known world. This study explores their definition, functioning, and classification in a cosmos in which the overarching conflict was between order and chaos rather than good and evil, in which divinely organized and guarded civilization was ever threatened by the pressing and savage forces gathered in the wilderness beyond the city walls.

This study assesses the strategic deployment and polysemic functioning of mythological imagery in both the official (Machtkunst) and popular arts of Mesopotamia. It also addresses, as a corollary, such issues as the definition and status of art and the artist in the ancient Near East; the relationship between patron and artist or artisan; the implications of mass production or the deliberate copying of certain art forms or images, as through the use of molds or sketch- or pattern-“books”; degrees of literacy among the general population, and especially among those involved in the crafting of individual artworks or the designing of larger visual programs; the cultural role of mythology in Mesopotamia and the relationship between those myths extant in writing and those (now lost) circulating as oral compositions; and the striking mismatch between text and image, and especially between written (Sumerian and Akkadian) mythological narrative and pictorial narrative or visual mythological representation. It is concluded that the numerous and varied mythologies of Mesopotamia, both oral and written, were conventionalized through two deliberate visual strategies: (1) the circulation and replication of certain figural stereotypes; and (2) the visual representation of even complex mythological scenes or episodes in iconic form. Both strategies yielded a conventionalized composition capable of circulating independently of any single or immutable signification, allowing for its flexible deployment and investment with meaning by those representing it and its interpretation on multiple levels by a diverse audience of heterogeneous cultural knowledge and experience.

Focusing on the divine image in Mesopotamia, this essay explores the construction and implications of the anthropomorphized divine body; the nature of the relationship between the image (specifically the ṣalmu) and its divine referent; and the means by which the authoritative and authorized status of a divine image might be established, in order that the image might successfully presence the deity.

Taking the ninth century BCE Sun God Tablet (SGT) from Sippar as case study, Sonik specifically examines the embedding of images within the pictorial stream of tradition as a means of establishing their authoritative status. Such an embedding might be accomplished through both pictorial and written strategies: pictorial compositions may be deliberately designed to incorporate archaizing motifs or elements, visually announcing their ties to the (or even a specific period of the) ancient and esteemed past; written accounts, for their part, might trace or deliberately construct an object’s relationship to a more ancient model or even authoritative prototype with origins in the divine sphere

Addressing the means and manner whereby the divine might be materialized or presenced in a particular matrix, divine images might act on and interact with individuals, and inanimate or even animate objects or entities might acquire a measure of divine agency so that they come to function, in effect, as (secondary) divine agents, this chapter explores the communicative potential and actuality of the material divine. It also examines, as a corollary, such issues as mimesis and portraiture in the context of divine representation, the definition and application of the terms  animate and anthropomorphic to the material and materialized divine, and nuanced distinctions between the concepts of image, likeness, and representation as these are negotiated in diverse cultural and spatiotemporal contexts.

The Penn Museum has a long and storied history of research and archaeological exploration in the ancient Middle East. This book highlights this rich depth of knowledge while also serving as a companion volume to the Museum's signature Middle East Galleries opening in April 2018. This edited volume includes chapters and integrated short, focused pieces from Museum curators and staff actively involved in the detailed planning of the new galleries. In addition to highlighting the most remarkable and interesting objects in the Museum's extraordinary Middle East collections, this volume illuminates the primary themes within these galleries (make, settle, connect, organize, and believe) and provides a larger context within which to understand them. The ancient Middle East is home to the first urban settlements in human history, dating to the fourth millennium BCE; therefore, tracing this move toward city life figures prominently in the book. The topic of urbanization, how it came about and how these early steps still impact our daily lives, is explored from regional and localized perspectives, bringing us from Mesopotamia (Ur, Uruk, and Nippur) to Islamic and Persianate cites (Rayy and Isfahan) and, finally, connecting back to life in modern Philadelphia. Through examination of topics such as landscape, resources, trade, religious belief and burial practices, daily life, and nomads, this very important human journey is investigated both broadly and with specific case studies.

Two topics of current critical interest, agency and materiality, are here explored in the context of their intersection with the divine. Specific case studies, emphasizing the ancient Near East but including treatments also of the European Middle Ages and ancient Greece, elucidate the nature and implications of this intersection: What is the relationship between the divine and the particular matter or physical form in which it is materially represented or mentally visualized? How do sacral or divine "things" act, and what is the source and nature of their agency? How might we productively define and think about anthropomorphism in relation to the divine? What is the relationship between the mental and the material image, and between the categories of object and image, image and likeness, and likeness and representation? Drawing on a broad range of written and pictorial sources, this volume is a novel contribution to the contemporary discourse on the functioning and communicative potential of the material and materialized divine as it is developing in the fields of anthropology, art history, and the history and cognitive science of religion.

Slingerland, Edward, M. Willis Monroe, Brenton Sullivan, Robyn Faith Walsh, Daniel Veidlinger, William Noseworthy, Conn Herriott, Ben Raffield, Janine Larmon Peterson, Gretel Rodríguez, Karen Sonik, William Green, Frederick S. Tappenden, Amir Ashtari, Michael Muthukrishna, Rachel Spicer. 2018–2019. “Historians Respond to Whitehouse et al. (2019), “Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods Throughout World History.” Journal of Cognitive Historiography 5 (1-2): 1–16.

Historians explain the serious shortcomings of the historical data coding and vetting procedures behind a recent Nature article that received a great deal of press.

This volume assembles leading art historians, archaeologists, and philologists to critically examine contemporary approaches to the arts and artifacts of the ancient world. The thirteen contributions address seven principal themes: Art | Artifact, Representation, Context, Complexity, Materiality, Space, and Time | Afterlives. A number of sub-themes and questions also thread through the work as a whole: How might art historical, archaeological, anthropological, and philological approaches to the ancient world complement and inform each other? What material and conceptual slippages characterize our contemporary engagement with things from the past? Where might a thing’s meaning and authenticity inhere if not in its form and matter? What are the processes through which the past is actively recreated and re-imagined in the present? And how do analyses of the arts and artifacts of the ancient world participate in and contribute to contemporary discourses emerging from a diverse array of other disciplines?

The Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic is the best known of the Mesopotamian narratives to survive to the present day. It has been the subject of numerous studies and analyses over recent decades, but many of its features remain to be fully explored. This study, conceived as a contribution to the larger task of defining the (or, rather, a) system of emotions prevalent in Mesopotamia, specifically examines and compares those characters in the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic who take counsel before acting—who take thought for consequences and outcomes—and those who demonstrate unthinking willfulness, and who act (without taking counsel) on the basis of impulse and overwhelming or excessive emotion.

This opening chapter of the volume Art/ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World examines the marginal and contingent integration of the ancient Near East into the narrative of Western (art) history and the consequences of this integration for the study of Near Eastern things. It also outlines the volume’s contributions, which are centered around the themes of Art | Artifact; Representation; Context; Complexity; Materiality; Space; and Time | Afterlives.

This essay addresses key issues relating to the classification, analysis, and (mis-)representation of the types of ancient and non-Western things. It explores how and why, and through what processes and with what implications, some ancient and non-Western things have been selected as “authentic art” objects and others relegated to “mere artifacts.” It examines the manner and locations in which such things are typically displayed or experienced, as well as the effects of physical and other frameworks on how we reconstruct—or, arguably, construct—the civilizations to which such things belong(ed). It also examines how we define, understand, and apply (and with what consequences) terms such as art and artifact; Western and non-Western; and thing, object, and work. Issues of space, time, and context, and the ways in which these intersect with matter, recur throughout. The essay concludes with an investigation of whether the locus of a thing’s (and specifically an artwork’s) authenticity and identity must reside in its matter or whether it might reside instead in the thing’s action and use in rather than against time—even to the point of being changed and, ultimately, used up. What if a thing’s identity depends not on removal from or denial of time but rather on the full acceptance of it and its consequences?