ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near East
Brown University ~ Fall 2009
Presence of the Past
September 15, 2009
The torch of civilization
Tympanum over the entrance to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago
presence of the past
history: a thing of the past?
that gathers “lessons” form the past for today
history – objectified, distant and mysterious?
positively studied with the help of appropriate “scientific” methods
(the traditional view)
in this view, history is static, “out-there” as it always was!
the past is always present in the present,
it haunts us with its materials, texts, objects, residues, memories,
monuments or ruins
archaeology: a discipline of memory
Orthodox Christian rock cut churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia (12th- 13th centuries)
and the contemporary worshippers
the long-term presence of cult places
Ayodhya, India
December 6, 1992
Destruction of the 16th
century Babur mosque
Destruction of
Bamiyan Buddhas,
Afghanistan
March 2001
Antiquarians, locals and the bedrock
of Anatolian antiquity
Yazılıkaya Rock-cut sanctuary
(Texier 1839)
Eflatunpınar Spring Monument
(Perrot-Chipiez 1887)
Karabel rock relief
(M. Busch, Bilder aus dem Orient 1864)
Yazılıkaya Rock-cut sanctuary in the 19th century: documentary representations
Drawings by Charles Texier (1834)
Photograph by Jules Delbet (1861)
Hittite Spring sanctuary and sacred pool at Eflatunpinar,
South-central Turkey
Naqsh-e Rustam, Iran (near Persepolis) Achaemenid and Sasanian rock-cut tombs.
Naqsh-e Rustam, Iran (near Persepolis) Achaemenid and Sasanian rock-cut tombs.
Rock-face relief at Naqsh-e Rustam of Sasanian ruler Shapur I (on horseback)
with Philip the Arab and Emperor Valerian.
Akkadian words of bodily orientation and
the sense of time
warku: back, future
panu: front, past
Babylonian archaeologists of their Mesopotamian past
Foundation deposits:
Mesopotamian practices of remembering
and the building as a repository of history,
an archive
the politics of claiming the glorious past,
and linking oneself to the long-term
Mesopotamian tradition.
Babylon = TIN.TIRKI
Old Babylonian royal statues from Mari,
Found in the “museum: in Babylon
Memory p(a)laces:
Babylon’s ancient “museum” and its “antiquities”
Early Iron Age Stele of the Storm God
from North Syria, Found in the “museum:
in Babylon
The art of collecting
Cabinet of curiosities Musei Wormiani Historia
Memory: forms of memory/residues of the past
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Artifacts, objects of the past
Written documents, archives
Monuments and memorials, architectural spaces, urban spaces
Visual culture, representations, images, pictures, art
Memory of the environment, landscape, the countryside
Geological histories
Environmental histories, pollen records
Oral histories, stories from the oral tradition, ethnography
ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near East
Brown University ~ Fall 2009
Presence of the Past, episode II
archaeology and text- tense relationship
September 17, 2009
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”
Faulkner, Requiem for a nun
Kunstkammer/Wunderkammer: a microcosm, a theater of the world
Cabinet of curiosities Musei Wormiani Historia
Memory p(a)laces:
Modern archaeological/
ethnographic museum
and its objects
Modern display of material culture
The ethnographic and the archaeological
Cabinet of curiosities
Musei Wormiani Historia
Memory: forms of memory/residues of the past
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Artifacts, objects of the past
Written documents, archives
Monuments and memorials, architectural spaces, urban spaces
Visual culture, representations, images, pictures, art
Memory of the environment, landscape, the countryside
Geological histories
Environmental histories, pollen records
Oral histories, stories from the oral tradition, ethnography
in the field
in the office
archaeologist’s dilemma
(how does archaeological knowledge get produced?)
fieldwork/data
processing/writing/interpretation
Archaeology and Text a difficult relationship
When the house is on fire
and the children are gone
Ur-Utu’s house and archive
in Sippar-Amnanum (Tell ed Der)
17th c. BC
Ur-Utu was a landholder and the
“kalamahhum-priest of Annunitum”
(chief lamentation priest)
the house 225 m2
was excavated in mid 1970s by Belgian
archaeologists
ca 2000 tablets burnt with the house
In 1975 the house was fully exposed. In four rooms to the northwest
tablets were found, many belonging to distinct "archives," which were
sealed by the fire that destroyed the building.
Altogether about 2,000 documents were found in the "house of UrUtu," mainly dating to the last phase of occupation (IIIb), Ur-Utu's
house renovation.
Some tablets were, however, archived in distinct groups for several
hundred years. 1283 texts have been dated.
Most of these tablets in this large house were found in room 22 (which
could have served as a [sealed] storeroom), to the northwest of the
central court, while the rooms 17 and 18 (forming one large residential
room in phase IIId, but apparently not communicating with each other
in IIIb) contained "archived" material....
Gudea, king of Lagash
A commemorative monument of the Akkadians... War booty for the Elamites...
Stele of the Akkadian king Naram Sin
(2254-2218 BC)
Myth and History:
Stele of Eannatum. ca. 2460 BC. from Girsu (Telloh)
archaeology and text- a complementary relationship
• materiality of texts
• material culture as text
What is an archive?
The Cairo Geniza Documents
About 200,000 medieval and later manuscripts on vellum and paper that were
found in the genizah or store room of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Cairo,
the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that
were bought in Cairo in the later 19th century. Mostly written in Arabic using
Hebrew Script and belonging to the Jewish community of Cairo, the date of the
documents range from 870 AD to 1880. Includes religious writings, court
documents, legal writings and the correspondence of the local Jewish
community.
The Genizah: secret place, archive
A genizah is a storage room where copies of respected texts with scribal errors or
physical damaged, or unusable documents, are kept until they can be ritually
buried. The dark, sealed, room in the arid Egyptian climate contributed to the
preservation of the documents, the earliest of which may go back to the eighth and
ninth centuries.
Friedberg Genizah Project
Materiality of the text:
textual records as objects of memory, texts as artifacts
In a nutshell
Mesopotamian archival tradition
uruk/warka: first tablets from the storehouses of Inanna.
Examples of Uruk IV (above, excavation no. W 7227,a)
and Uruk III (below, no. W 14804,a) tablets
Cuneiform writing on clay tablet using a stylus that has a wedge shaped (cuneiform) tip.
Letters
Literary texts, epic poetry
lamentations
Administrative texts,
economic documents
Lexical lists
Contracts, land grants,
sale documents,
Law codes
Royal annalistic texts
(historical documents)
Ritual texts, omen literature,
(divination)
Cuneiform tablet inscribed with omens
Old Babylonian, about 1900-1600 BC
From Sippar, southern Iraq
Nabonidus Cylinder from Ur (556-539) describes how he repaired the ziggurat
called E-lugal-galga-sisa, which belonged to the temple of Sin in Ur,
called Egišnugal.
Clay model of a sheep's liver
Old Babylonian, about 1900-1600 BC
From Sippar, southern Iraq
what is an archive?
archival practices/record keeping
as a memory practice
as creative rethinking of the past
Records continuum: that enhances unbroken chains of
material-textual documentation of the past
Legal evidence-bearing institution?
Life cyclical model of archival practice:
cultural biography of records
from birth, active use, “retirement” and destruction
(a wobbly model)
Records may take on new meanings as authentic artifacts of the past
the aesthetics and authority of the archive:
Writing Mesopotamian history through archives
historiographical operation that
prioritizes particular kinds of knowledge practices
memory and archive: particular memory-practices of scribes and
archive-keepers of the cuneiform tradition
How is memory sustained and (re-)configured?
ritual performances, festivals, commemorations
(gatherings)
construction activity, building practice
(technological knowledge)
oral traditions, oral culture, storytelling, desire
archiving, collecting, hoarding, digital storing,
back-up (museums, mementoes, computing)
production of texts, annals, inscriptions
writing of official histories
visual representations, imaging, imagining
mapping the world: located, site-specific practices
(topographies of remembrance)
also known as “worlding of the world”
Topographies of remembrance