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The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East [1 ed.]
 0367235285, 9780367235284

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Figures
Tables
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Editors’ Note
Introduction
What Is Sensory Studies? The New “Sensory Turn”
How Does the Field of Sensory Studies Intersect With the Study of the Ancient Near East?
How Is this a New Compilation?
The Sections and Chapters in this Volume
Note
Bibliography
Part I Practice, Production, and Taskscapes
1 The Sense of Practice: A Case Study of Tablet Sealing at Nippur in the Ur III Period (C. 2112–2004 BCE)
Introduction
Learning and Practice
Sealing Practices and the Ur III Period
The Case of Nippur
The Sense of Sealing
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
2 Senses and Textiles in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (1550–1100 BCE)
Introduction
The Sensory Experience of Textile Production
Spinning and Weaving
Dyes and Dyeing
Sensory Experience of Clothing and Textiles
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
3 New Sensory Experiences Through Technological Innovation: The Use and Production of Transparent Drinking Bowls in the ...
Introduction
Methodological Background
Glass and Its Transparency
Archaeological Contexts of Transparent Hemispherical Glass Bowls
Use
Production
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
4 To Touch Upon: A Tactile Exploration of the Apadana Reliefs at Persepolis
Introduction
The Apadana of Persepolis
Touch of the Craftsmen
Touch Carved in Stone
Curating and Producing Interactions With Art
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
5 Soundscapes and Taskscapes in the Ancient Near East: Interactions and Perceptions
Introduction
Work and Taskscapes
Music and Soundscapes
Approaching and Delimiting Work Songs
Sensing the Past: an Overview
Ancient Near Eastern Work Songs as Indicators of Multisensoriality
The Song of the Millstone
The Song of the Plowing Oxen
Two Songs to Soothe a Child’s Crying
Conclusion: Singing at Work in the Ancient Near East
Notes
Bibliography
Part II Dress and the Body
6 Adornment Practices in the Ancient Near East and the Question of Embodied Boundary Maintenance
Introduction
The Data
The Grave Goods
The Iconography
Discussion
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
7 Dress, Sensory Assemblages, and Identity in the Early First Millennium BCE at Hasanlu, Iran
Introduction
Hasanlu in Period IVb (1050–800 BCE)
Assemblages and Phenomena
Sensorial Assemblages and Intersubjectivity
Senses and Power Dynamics
Accumulated Magnificence
Pins
Finger- and Toe-Rings
Head, Neck, and Body Beads
Armour Scale Pectorals
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
8 Beyond the Flesh: Sensing Identity Through the Body and Skin in Mesopotamian Glyptic Contexts
Introduction
Things, Cognition, and the Haptic Sense
The Mesopotamian Body: a Sense of the Body, the Divine, and Stone
The Mantic Body and Clay
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
9 A Sense of Scale: Proprioception, Embodied Subjectivities, and the Space of Kingship at Persepolis
Introduction: Touch, Sight, and Productive Entanglements
Performative Inclusion: Mirroring, Reduplication, and Mimetic Slippage
Persuasive Stairways: Proprioception and Bodily Interrogation
Immanent Encounters: Scale, Mediation, and the Body of the King
Conclusions: the Space of Kingship
Bibliography
Part III Ritualised Practice and Ceremonial Spaces
10 Temple Ritual as Gesamtkunstwerk: Stimulation of the Senses and Aesthetic Experience in a Religious Context
Introduction
Sight
Sound
Taste
Smell and Touch
Kinetics
Gesamtkunstwerk
Notes
Bibliography
11 Pure Stale Water: Experiencing Jewish Purification Rituals in Early Roman Palestine
Introduction
Modern Mikva’ot and Western Modernity
The Archaeology of Ancient Jewish Ritual Baths
Sensing Stepped Pools
Getting Wet! Towards a Sensorial Experience of Stepped Pools
Changing Settings, Changing Sensorial Experiences
Ritual Bath AA209 in the Hasmonean Buried Palace, Jericho
The Southern Mikveh, Masada
Stepped Pool “Mkv1,” Magdala
Ritual Bath L1060, Gamla
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
12 Megaliths and Miniatures: Scale and the Senses in the Early Neolithic
Introduction
Context: the Early Neolithic Period
Megaliths
Miniatures
A Sensory Perspective
Bibliography
13 Sensing Salience in the Landscapes of Egyptian Royal Living-Rock Stelae
Introduction
Sensing the Stelae
Egyptian Geologics—and Geoaesthetics
Stelae at Konosso Island, Gateway to Egypt
Shouting From the Hilltops: the Nauri Decree Stela
The Medium Is the Message
Notes
Bibliography
14 In the Light and in the Dark: Exhibiting Power, Exploiting Spaces in Early and Old Syrian Ebla—an Analysis of the Five ...
Introduction
In the Light: Exhibiting Power in Early Syrian Ebla
In the Dark: Exploiting Spaces in Old Syrian Ebla
Who Was There?
Conclusion
Note
Bibliography
15 The Ishtar Gate: A Sensescape of Divine Agency
Introduction
The Affect of Architecture and the Protective Powers of City Gates
City Walls and City Gates in Mesopotamia
Craftsmanship and the Affect of Monuments
Decorating the Walls and Infusing Them With Agency
Colour and Affect at Babylon
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
16 The Jerusalem Temple: A Sensory Encounter With the Sacred
Introduction
Journey to the Temple
Musical Performance
Ritual of Sacrifice
Aromas of Worship
Feasting in Yahweh’s Presence
Sacred Space and the Dimming of the Senses
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
17 The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein: The Acoustic Dynamics of Architectural Change
Introduction
The Ritual of Scripture Reading and Translation
The Two Architectural Arrangements of Nabratein Synagogue 1
The Acoustics of a Scripture Reader’s Or a Scripture Translator’s Voice
The Acoustics of Synagogue 1a
Direct Sound
Location 1: the Impact of First Reflections On the Listener in Front of the Scripture Reader
Side Reflections, Step 1
Side Reflections, Step 2
Side Reflections, Step 3
Ceiling Reflection: Steps 1 Through 3
Location 2: the Impact of First Reflections On the Listener Behind the Scripture Reader
Location 3: the Impact of First Reflections On the Listeners to Each Side of the Scripture Reader
The Acoustic Zones of the Open-Centre Synagogue, Nabratein Synagogue 1a
The Acoustics of Nabratein Synagogue 1b
Listener at Four Metres
Listener at Seven Metres
The Acoustic Character of Nabratein’s Pre-Basilical Synagogue, Synagogue 1b
Conclusion: From the Open-Centre Synagogue to the Basilica Synagogue
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Part IV Death and Burial
18 Sensing the Ancestors: The Importance of Senses in Constructing Ancestorship in the Ancient Near East
Introduction
Senses and the Cult of the Ancestors in the Ancient Near East
The Power of Touch: Fragmentation, Manipulation, and Decoration of the Human Body as a Proxy for Ancestral Veneration
Don’t Open That Door! Residential Graves as Locales for Creating a Visual Reference for the Cult of the Ancestors
Do You Remember That Smell? Human Decay and the Use of Perfumes for a Sensorial Experience of the Dead Ancestors
Feasting With the Spirits of the Ancestors: Offerings and Lamentations During Postmortem Rituals
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
19 Sensing the Dead in Household Burials of the Second Millennium BCE
Introduction
Research Questions, Data, and Methodology
From Flesh to Bone: the Funerary Sequence Approach
Case Study: the Funerary Sequence of Qatna’s Royal Hypogeum
Pre-interment Phase: Navigating the Burial Chamber
Interment Phase: Inhumation and Disturbance
Scents and Sensibility
Post-interment Phase: Body Curation and Representations
Discussion: Corporealities and Sensing the Dead at Qatna
Sensing the Dead in Tomb 100 at Megiddo
Materializing Mourning: Burial Assemblages
Sight and Light
Altered Minds
Discussion and Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
20 The Smells of Eternity: Aromatic Oils and Resins in the Phoenician Mortuary Record
Introduction
Death and the Sense of Smell
The Phoenician Evidence
Smelling in Phoenician?
Buried in Myrrh and Bdellium
Aromatics in Phoenician Mortuary Contexts
Myrrh (Commiphora Myrrha): Phoenician Mr; Akkadian Murru; Hebrew Môr; Greek Σμύρνα
Bdellium Or Bdelium (Commiphora Mukul): Phoenician Bdlh; Akkadian guḫlu/ budulḫu; Hebrew Bedolaḥ; Greek Βδέλλιον
Cedar (Cedrus Libani): Phoenician ʿṣ (?), Akkadian Erēnu, Hebrew ʿeren/ ʿerez, Greek Κέδρος
Other Aromatic Woods
Other Oleo-Resins and Scented Oils
Smells of Life, Smells of Death
Notes
Bibliography
21 The Sixth Sense: Multisensory Encounters With the Dead in Roman Egypt
Introduction
Seeing the Dead: Shrouds and Portraits
Sensing the Dead: the Mummified Body
Engaging With the Dead: Ritual Interactions
Experiencing the Dead: Tombs and Catacombs
Death in a New Light: Portraits and Torches
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part V Science, Medicine, and Aesthetics
22 Seeing Stars: Knowing the Sky in Mesopotamia
Introduction
Astronomy and Astrology in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamian Observation in Later Sources
The Mechanics of Observation
The Language of Observation
Amāru: “To See”
Naṣāru: “To Watch”
Tāmartu: “Appearance”
“Seeing” in Mathematics
Sources of Observations
Neo-Assyrian Observational Reports
Late Babylonian Astronomical Records
Observation and Thought Collectives
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
23 Sensory Experience in Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine
Introduction
Cuneiform Medical Texts and the Art of Diagnosis: Perception and Interpretation
Modes of Sensory Perception in Mesopotamian Medical Diagnosis
Vision
Auditory Perception
Touch
Smell and Taste
Kinaesthesia and Interoception
The Senses and Mesopotamian Therapeutics
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
24 The Understanding of Intellectual and Sensorial Impairment in the Hebrew Bible
Introduction
Links Between Sensory Studies and Disabilities
Evaluations of the Intellect
Aspects of Sensorial Deficits Beyond Intellectual Impairment
Multisensorial Festivals: Chances for Repetition
Ambiguous Aspects of the Sense of Touch
Conclusion: Power and Disability
Notes
Bibliography
25 The Distant Eye and the Ekphrastic Image: Thinking Through Aesthetics and Art for the Senses (Western/non-Western)
Introduction
Confronting the Legacy of Fine Art and Disinterested Aesthetics
The Distant Object: Constructing the Modern System of the Arts
The Distant Eye: Disembodied Aesthetics and the Denigration of Sensual Pleasure
Ancient and Non-Western Art and Aesthetics: Other Ways of Sensing and Seeing
The Intimate Eye: Aesthetics and Art for the Senses in Mesopotamia
The Intimate Image: Ekphrasis and the Sensuous (And Affective) Body
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part VI Languages and Semantic Fields
26 Language Technology Approach to “Seeing” in Akkadian
Introduction
Semantic Fields
Data and Preparations
Methods
Analysing the Collocates
amāru
naṭālu
palāsu
dagālu
barû, Ḫiāṭu, and Ṣubbû
Discussion of the Results
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
27 Metaphors of Perception Verbs in Ancient Egyptian: The Proximal Senses
Introduction and Preliminary Considerations
The Perceptive Research History
Perception in the Works of Lakoff and Johnson
The Structuring of Metaphorical Mappings
Property Selection Processes
The Distant Senses and Their Metaphorical Extensions
Metaphors of Sight
Metaphors of Hearing
The Proximal Senses in Egyptian: Prototypical and Metaphorical Meanings
Prototypical Meanings of the Proximal Senses
Prototypical Meanings of Touch
Prototypical Meanings of Smell
Prototypical Meaning of Taste
Metaphorical Meanings of the Proximal Senses
Touch Domain
Smell Domain
Taste Domain
Final Comment and Conclusion
Appendix A. List of Egyptian Text Examples
Appendix B. Glossing Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
28 Metaphors of Sensory Experience in Ancient Egyptian Texts: Emotion, Personality, and Social Interaction
Introduction
Theoretical Bases: Emotion Research, Historical Semantics, and Sensory Studies
Emotion and Metaphor
Historical Semantics: Metaphor and Semantic Change
Sensory Studies
Research Questions
Method
Findings
Sounds
Quiet
Noise
Temperatures
Heat/Warmth
Cold/Coolness
Visual Stimuli
Colour
Shade and Luminosity
Physical Beauty
Tastes
Sweetness
Bitterness
Tactile Stimuli
Unevenness
Smoothness
Heaviness and Lightness
Firmness
Softness
Smells
Stinkiness
Discussion and Conclusion
1. What Kinds of Sensory Phenomena Are Used to Depict Specific Emotions and Temperaments?
2. Can Lexemes of Emotion and Temperament be Distinguished Semantically From Each Other? Do Compounds Play a Role Here?
3. Do These Terms Exist in Complementary Distribution With Each Other? Are there Relationships of Synonymy, Antonymy, ...
4. Are Diachronic Forces of Language Change at Work? If So, What Effect do they Have?
5. What Is the Role of Genre in the Appearance and Use of Emotion Terms?
Notes
Bibliography
29 Smellscapes in Ancient Egypt
Why Smell?
Smell and the City
Ancient Smellscapes
Methods, Difficulties, and Goals
Smellscapes in Ancient Egypt
Smell of the Palace
Smell of the Temple
Smell of a Garden
Smell of the House of Life
Smell of Streets
Smell of Stables
Smell of Private Houses
Smell of Lower-Class Housing
Smell of Middle-Class Housing
Smell of Upper-Class Housing
Smell of Workshops
Smell of Festivals
Smell of a Banquet
Discussion
Notes
Bibliography
30 Crossing Sensory Boundaries: From Vocabulary to Physical Experience
Introduction
Tracking Sensory Dimension in Akkadian Vocabulary: a Methodological Approach to Vocabulary
Identifying the Semantic Value of Vocabulary
The Multisensory Dimension of Akkadian Vocabulary
Material, Substances, and Their Sensory Descriptions
Linking Words and Experience: the Ritual Scene as a Case Study
The Ritual Scene: Presencing the Divine With Sensory Effects
Sensory Metaphors and Physical Experience in Ritual
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
31 Open Your Ears and Listen!: The Role of the Senses Among the Hittites
Introduction
Sight
Hearing
Smell
Taste
Touch
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
32 Hearing and Seeing in Hurrian
Hearing in Hurrian
ḫaž- and Šalġ- in the Hurro-Hittite Bilingual
ḫaž- in Other Contexts
ḫaž- With Patient = Utterance
ḫaž- With Patient = Oblique Reference to “Word”
ḫaž- With Speaker as Patient
šalġ- “To Listen”
ḫaž- and Šalġ- in the Same Context
Verbs of Seeing
for- “To See”
am- “To Look Upon, Gaze Upon”
ši- “To Witness, Observe, Examine”
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East

This Handbook is a state-​of-​the-​field volume containing diverse approaches to sensory experience, bringing to life in an innovative, remarkably vivid, and visceral way the lives of past humans through contributions that cover the chronological and geographical expanse of the ancient Near East. It comprises thirty-​two chapters written by leading international contributors that look at the ways in which humans, through their senses, experienced their lives and the world around them in the ancient Near East, with coverage of Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia, from the Neolithic through the Roman period. It is organised into six parts related to sensory contexts: Practice, production, and taskscapes; Dress and the body; Ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces; Death and burial; Science, medicine, and aesthetics; and Languages and semantic fields. In addition to exploring what makes each sensory context unique, this organisation facilitates cross-​cultural and cross-​chronological, as well as cross-​sensory and multisensory comparisons and discussions of sensory experiences in the ancient world. In so doing, the volume also enables considerations of senses beyond the five-​sense model of Western philosophy (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), including proprioception and interoception, and the phenomena of synaesthesia and kinaesthesia. The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East provides scholars and students within the field of ancient Near Eastern studies new perspectives on and conceptions of familiar spaces, places, and practices, as well as material culture and texts. It also allows scholars and students from adjacent fields such as Classics and Biblical Studies to engage with this material, and is a must-​read for any scholar or student interested in or already engaged with the field of sensory studies in any period. Kiersten Neumann is Curator and Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, USA, and has published numerous articles on topics pertaining to sensory experience, ritualised practice, and visual culture of the first millennium BCE , as well as museum practice, collections histories, and the reception of Assyrian and Achaemenid art. Allison Thomason is Professor of History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA. Her book, Luxury and Legitimation: Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia (2005), and her subsequent publications explore portable objects, dress, and sensory experiences in the ancient Near East.

The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East

Edited by Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Neumann, Kiersten, editor. | Thomason, Allison, editor. Title: The Routledge handbook of the senses in the ancient Near East / edited by Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021011731 (print) | LCCN 2021011732 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367235284 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032065663 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429280207 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Senses and sensation–Middle East–History. | Civilization, Ancient. Classification: LCC BF233 .R68 2022 (print) | LCC BF233 (ebook) | DDC 152.10956–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011731 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011732 ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​23528-​4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​06566-​3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​28020-​7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207 Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements Editors’ Note Map Introduction Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

ix xv xvi xxii xxiii xxviii 1

PART I

Practice, production, and taskscapes

15

1 The sense of practice: a case study of tablet sealing at Nippur in the Ur III period (c. 2112–​2004 BCE ) Marian H. Feldman

17

2 Senses and textiles in the eastern Mediterranean: Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (1550–​1100 BCE ) Caroline Sauvage

35

3 New sensory experiences through technological innovation: the use and production of transparent drinking bowls in the Neo-​Assyrian palace Katharina Schmidt

62

4 To touch upon: a tactile exploration of the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis Kiersten Neumann 5 Soundscapes and taskscapes in the ancient Near East: interactions and perceptions Agnès Garcia-​Ventura and Mireia López-​Bertran

77

100

v

Contents

PART II

Dress and the body

125

6 Adornment practices in the ancient Near East and the question of embodied boundary maintenance Josephine Verduci

127

7 Dress, sensory assemblages, and identity in the early first millennium BCE at Hasanlu, Iran Megan Cifarelli

141

8 Beyond the flesh: sensing identity through the body and skin in Mesopotamian glyptic contexts Sarah J. Scott

167

9 A sense of scale: proprioception, embodied subjectivities, and the space of kingship at Persepolis Neville McFerrin

189

PART III

Ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces

211

10 Temple ritual as Gesamtkunstwerk: stimulation of the senses and aesthetic experience in a religious context Irene J.Winter

213

11 Pure stale water: experiencing Jewish purification rituals in early Roman Palestine Rick Bonnie

234

12 Megaliths and miniatures: scale and the senses in the early Neolithic Sarah Kielt Costello

254

13 Sensing salience in the landscapes of Egyptian royal living-​rock stelae Jen Thum

267

14 In the light and in the dark: exhibiting power, exploiting spaces in Early and Old Syrian Ebla—​an analysis of the five senses in an Early–Old Syrian court Frances Pinnock 15 The Ishtar Gate: a sensescape of divine agency Beate Pongratz-​Leisten vi

297 320

Contents

16 The Jerusalem Temple: a sensory encounter with the sacred Christine Elizabeth Palmer 17 The ancient synagogue at Nabratein: the acoustic dynamics of architectural change Paul V. M. Flesher

344

364

PART IV

Death and burial

391

18 Sensing the ancestors: the importance of senses in constructing ancestorship in the ancient Near East Nicola Laneri

393

19 Sensing the dead in household burials of the second millennium BCE  Melissa S. Cradic 20 The smells of eternity: aromatic oils and resins in the Phoenician mortuary record Helen Dixon 21 The sixth sense: multisensory encounters with the dead in Roman Egypt Lissette M. Jiménez

405

429 451

PART V

Science, medicine, and aesthetics

469

22 Seeing stars: knowing the sky in Mesopotamia M.Willis Monroe

471

23 Sensory experience in ancient Mesopotamian medicine Ulrike Steinert

489

24 The understanding of intellectual and sensorial impairment in the Hebrew Bible Edgar Kellenberger

517

25 The distant eye and the ekphrastic image: thinking through aesthetics and art for the senses (Western/​non-​Western) Karen Sonik

530

vii

Contents

PART VI

Languages and semantic fields

559

26 Language technology approach to “seeing” in Akkadian Aleksi Sahala and Saana Svärd

561

27 Metaphors of perception verbs in ancient Egyptian: the proximal senses Elisabeth Steinbach-​Eicke

576

28 Metaphors of sensory experience in ancient Egyptian texts: emotion, personality, and social interaction Camilla Di Biase-​Dyson and Gaëlle Chantrain

603

29 Smellscapes in ancient Egypt Dora Goldsmith

636

30 Crossing sensory boundaries: from vocabulary to physical experience Anne-​Caroline Rendu Loisel

663

31 Open your ears and listen! The role of the senses among the Hittites Richard H. Beal

678

32 Hearing and seeing in Hurrian Dennis R. M. Campbell

699

Index

718

viii

Figures

This volume includes images of skeletal human remains. 1.1 1.2

Scan of tablet UM 29-​15-​916 Ur III cylinder seal and impression, with two-​line inscription, “Aḫa-​nīšu, the servant of Nūr-​Šulgi” 1.3a Tablet UM 29-​15-​916 1.3b Reconstructed drawing of seal impressed on UM 29-​15-​916 1.4 Tablet sealed with the seal of En-​engar 1.5 Photograph of author holding CBS 8678 1.6 Reverse of tablet UM 29-​15-​893 1.7 Detail of corrected area on reverse of tablet UM 29-​15-​893 2.1a–​b Examples of dome-​shaped and biconical spindle whorls from Enkomi 2.2 Variation from thinner to thicker threads 2.3a–​d Spinning set from British Tomb 24 at Enkomi 2.4 Spindles from Ugarit RS 4.221[A]‌and RS 34.210 2.5 Pomegranate knobbed shaft 132 from Kition tomb 9 2.6a–​b Bone shafts from Tell Deir ‘Alla 2.7a–​b Decorated spindles from Megiddo 2.8 Representation of the king on the Ugarit ivory bed 2.9 The “Syrian” embroidered tunic, tomb of King Tutankhamun 2.10a–​b Textiles decorated with beads and bracteates, tomb of King Tutankhamun 2.11 Detail of an appliqué and embroidered panel with gold bracteates from a linen garment, tomb of King Tutankhamun 2.12 Canaanite jar from the Uluburun shipwreck filled with glass beads 2.13 Gold bracteates from the Aigina Treasure 3.1 Hemispherical, transparent drinking bowl 3.2 The principle of slumping a transparent glass blank over a dome-​shaped mould (slumping technique) 3.3 Carved ivory depicting Ashurnasirpal II holding a hemispherical bowl between his fingertips 3.4 Fragment of a rock crystal bowl with engraved design from the Burnt Palace, Nimrud 4.1 Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Lady of Sorrow), statue by Juan Prieto, Cordoba, Spain, 1719 4.2 Plan of Persepolis 4.3 Eastern façade of the Apadana 4.4 Close-​up of a tribute bearer from the eastern façade of the Apadana

19 22 25 25 27 28 29 30 37 37 39 39 39 40 40 40 41 43 44 44 45 64 65 66 67 78 80 81 84 ix

List of figures

4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16

Close-​up of a camel from the eastern façade of the Apadana Close-​up of a ram from the eastern façade of the Apadana Details from the eastern façade of the Apadana Sculptors’ mark on the eastern façade of the Apadana Vessels on the eastern façade of the Apadana Representations of clasped hands on the eastern façade of the Apadana Delegate on the eastern façade of the Apadana Grooms on the eastern façade of the Apadana Delegates leading animals on the eastern façade of the Apadana Lion and bull in combat on the eastern façade of the Apadana Ushers leading delegates on the eastern façade of the Apadana Central panel from the eastern façade of the Apadana, excavated in the Treasury, on display at the National Museum of Iran, Tehran 4.17 North side of the eastern façade of the Apadana 4.18 The Gallery of Cornelis Van der Geest, by Willem van Haecht II, 1628 4.19 Western interior face of the central flight of stairs of the eastern façade of the Apadana 6.1 Anklets in Egyptian iconography 6.2a–​b Burial 246, Ashkelon 6.3 Anklets on skeleton in Tomb 123, Tell es-Sa’idiyeh 6.4 Leg-​bones and feet of burial in Grave 411, Tell es-Sa’idiyeh 6.5 Figurine, Tel ‘Ira (A.42) 6.6 Gold pear-​shaped pendant from the Uluburun shipwreck 7.1a–​b Excavation photograph and contour plan of Hasanlu, Iran 7.2 Map of the ancient Near East showing location of Hasanlu 7.3 Graph showing the relationship between female and male identified burials and classes of artefacts and materials in Period IVb burials at Hasanlu 7.4 Hasanlu Period IVb burials showing distribution by sex/​age categories and relative wealth 7.5 Excavator’s drawing of Burial SK493a, Hasanlu 7.6 Excavation photograph of Burial SK448, Hasanlu 7.7 Examples of the long and ordinary copper-​alloy garment pins from elite women’s burials, Hasanlu 7.8 Garment fastening using two pins at shoulders 7.9 Excavation photograph and drawings of finger-​r ings 7.10 Sample bead types from elite women’s burials 7.11 Gold spreader bead from Burial SK448, Hasanlu 7.12 Drawing of headdress found under skull of SK59, HAS 59-​111 7.13 Composite photograph of HAS 64-​193 8.1 Early Dynastic cylinder seal impression in clay from Ur, Iraq 8.2 Tablets with seal impressions 8.3 Inlay of a woman wearing a cylinder seal and playing a flute from Nippur, Iraq 8.4 Rolling the cylinder seal 8.5 Unicorn and lynx from a Medieval manuscript 8.6 Modern impression of a cylinder seal from Iran depicting the goddess Ishtar welcoming a devotee 8.7a–​b (a) Cylinder seal from Ur made of lapis lazuli; and (b) modern impression 8.8 Liver tablet from Sippar x

85 85 85 86 88 88 89 89 90 90 91 92 92 94 96 128 130 131 131 132 133 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 154 155 156 157 158 159 168 169 170 170 173 176 177 181

List of figures

8.9 9.1

Tablet with incised entrails Persian usher taking the hand of a member of the Babylonian delegation on the eastern stairway of the Apadana 9.2 The lioness led by the Elamite delegation turns to roar at her cubs on the eastern stairway of the Apadana 9.3 Two incense burners stand before the enthroned king in a detail of one of the original central panels of the Apadana 9.4 Two guards stand atop the stairs on the inner face of a stairway leading into the Apadana 9.5 Plan of Persepolis 9.6 Courtiers traversing the north stairway of the east wing of the inner north balustrade of the Central Building 9.7 Two members of the Assyrian delegation direct rams in procession on the eastern stairway of the Apadana 9.8 Original central panel of the Apadana reliefs 9.9 View across the northern stairway of the Apadana 9.10 The king stands under a parasol on the western doorjamb of the southern doorway of the Central Building 10.1 Spouted vessel, Tomb PG 800, Ur 10.2 Display case with Early Dynastic period spouted vessels 10.3 Plaque showing spouted vessel in use, libation before the goddess Ninhursag (?) 10.4 Spouted vessel in use at ritual bathing (abhisheka) of Krishna, Rādharamāna temple,Vrindavan 10.5 Votive sculptures from the Square Temple, Tell Asmar 10.6 Modern impression of a marble seal, likely showing the god dNanna/​Su’en seated before a shrine 10.7 Plaque from Ishchali, adorned female (likely deity), Ishtar kititum temple 10.8 Detail, “Banquet” side of the so-​called “Standard of Ur,” Royal Cemetery 10.9 Gudea stele fragment, large drum played in a ritual context 10.10 Back of Gudea Statue B 10.11 Devotees receiving nectar from the bathing ritual of the deity Krishna, Rādharamāna temple,Vrindavan 10.12 a–​b (a) Fragment of cedar wood, Nimrud, (b) Devotional flowers for worship, India 10.13 Ur-​Namma stele fragment, showing Ur-​Namma pouring a libation before a seated deity presumably dUtu 10.14 Reconstruction drawing, Ziggurat and precinct of dNanna at Ur 11.1 Distribution map of stepped pools in the southern Levant 11.2 Rabbi Muntzberg and others inspecting the Southern Mikveh at Masada 11.3 Jericho, the Hasmonean Buried Palace, ritual bath and settling pool 11.4 Masada, Casemate room 1196, the Southern Mikveh complex 11.5 Magdala, stepped pool “Mkv3” 11.6 Gamla, ground plan of ritual bath L1060 and synagogue area 12.1 View of Göbekli Tepe, Enclosure D 12.2–12.5 Stone plaquettes from Göbekli Tepe 12.6 Miniature stone mask from Göbekli Tepe 12.7 Porthole stone, Göbekli Tepe

182 190 192 193 194 195 196 198 202 203 205 214 214 215 216 217 217 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 227 237 238 242 243 245 247 256 258 261 261 xi

List of figures

13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.8 13.9 13.10 13.11 13.12 13.13 13.14 13.15 13.16 13.17 13.18 13.19 13.20 13.21 13.22 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 14.9 14.10 14.11 14.12 14.13 14.14 14.15 14.16 15.1

xii

The pinnacle of the Gebel Barkal, a ḏw w  b Relief from the Temple of Mut and a graffito on the exterior of the Gebel Barkal Map showing the locations of the First Cataract, where Konosso Island is situated, and Nauri Map of the First Cataract area with an inset of Konosso Island Konosso Island Konosso, or Sawabʿa The scene from the Year 7 Stela of Tuthmosis IV The scene from the Year 8 Stela of Tuthmosis IV The scene from Amenhotep III’s stela at Konosso Amenhotep III’s stela at Konosso View of Konosso from the south, as it appears in the Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien Frank Mason Good, View of Granite Rocks, Island of Philae, c. 1870 J. P. Sebah, Konosso. Les Rochers & Cataracte d’Assouan, second half of the 19th century Late 19th-​century photograph by W. M. F. Petrie, Konosso, with Tablets The Nauri Decree Stela of Seti I Line drawing of the lunette of the Nauri Decree Stela The two sandstone hills at Nauri Drone photograph looking eastward, showing the location of the stela on the hill, Nauri Line drawing of the layout of the Nauri Decree Stela The Nauri Decree Stela as seen from the bottom of the hill The location of the hills with respect to the course of the Nile The Nauri Decree Stela as seen from the river General plan of the Royal Palace G, Ebla Seal of the high official Ushra-​Samu Proposed reconstruction of an inlaid wall panel, depicting the king front-​facing and a procession of high officials turned towards him, Ebla Proposed reconstruction of the northern façade of the Court of Audience Group of drinking vessels from the Court of Audience Group of burners from the Royal Palace G General plan of the site of Ebla Schematic plan of Ishtar’s Cult Area Representative group of objects from one of the votive pits in Ishtar’s Cult Area Three vases with applied figures from one of the votive pits in Ishtar’s Cult Area Section of the votive pit in Area HH Group of bowls from the votive pit in Area HH Drawings of bowls from the votive pit in Area HH Three clay bowls with wick marks from the votive pit in Area HH Unbaked clay female figure from the votive pit in Area HH Unbaked clay female figure from the votive pit in Area HH Mark Rothko, “No. 3,” 1967

271 271 273 274 275 275 276 277 278 278 279 280 281 282 284 284 285 286 287 288 289 289 300 301 301 302 303 303 306 308 309 309 310 311 311 312 313 314 327

List of figures

15.2 15.3 15.4

Mark Rothko, “Untitled,” 1968 Standard North American Stop Sign Sebetti figures from a doorway at the North Palace of Ashurbanipal, Nineveh, Exhibition, I am Ashurbanipal, at the British Museum 15.5 Portion of the Reconstructed Processional Way, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin 15.6 Reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate, Voderasiatisches Museum, Berlin 15.7 Astroglyphs on the wall of the Sin Temple at Khorsabad 15.8 Astroglyphic inscription on Lord Aberdeen’s Black Stone 15.9 Seleucid astrological tablet showing a lion (= Leo) standing on a winged dragon-​snake (= Hydra) with eight-​pointed star 15.10 Seleucid astrological tablet showing a group of seven stars (= Pleiades), a man in the moon holding a crouching leonine creature by the tail, and a bull in jumping posture (= Taurus) 15.11 Stamp seal impressed on a baked brick from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II 15.12 Drawing of the rock relief from Wadi Brisa, Lebanon, showing Nebuchadnezzar II stabbing a rampant lion 16.1 Artist’s reconstruction of the Temple Mount in the First Temple Period 16.2 Megiddo ivory inlay of a tribute procession before Canaanite ruler 16.3 Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III depicting prostration of Assyrian vassal Jehu 16.4 Ceremonial bowl for collecting and dashing sacrificial blood 16.5 Reconstruction of the Arad sanctuary’s Holy of Holies at the Israel Museum 16.6 Altar area of Tel Dan’s sacred precinct 17.1 Top plan of Nabratein Synagogue 1 17.2 Artist’s rendering of Nabratein Synagogue 1 17.3 Reconstruction of Nabratein Synagogue 1 17.4 Reconstruction of Nabratein Synagogue 1a 17.5 Reconstruction of Nabratein Synagogue 1b 17.6 Exponential decay of sound pressure by distance 17.7 Map of sound pressure around the head at one-​metre distance 17.8 Synagogue 1a schematic with the sound zones from the central position indicated 17.9 Synagogue 1b, with arcs indicating 4 metres, 5.5 metres, and 7 metres from Torah reader 19.1 Aerial image of House 12/​K/​15 marked with the locations of intramural burials, Megiddo 19.2 Plan of the Qatna royal palace showing the route from the Royal Hypogeum to Tomb VII 19.3 Excavation of Tomb 100 interior with contents in situ, Megiddo 19.4 Tomb 100: hand-arm-shoulder in articulation 19.5 Tomb 100: lamp balanced on jug 20.1 Inscribed marble sarcophagus fragment of an unknown king of Byblos 20.2 Anthropoid amphibolite sarcophagus of King Tabnit of Sidon 21.1 Elaborately painted shroud of Neferhotep, son of Herrotiou 21.2 Painted shroud of a child on display 21.3 Painted shroud of a child on mummified body 21.4 Painted portraits exhibiting strong luminescence in the near infrared

328 328 329 331 333 335 335 336

336 337 337 346 349 350 351 355 356 367 368 369 370 370 372 373 375 384 409 411 417 418 420 435 440 453 455 456 463

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List of figures

25.1 25.2 25.3 25.4 25.5 27.1–​27.2 27.3–​27.5

xiv

William Hogarth, The Battle of the Pictures William Hogarth, Time Smoking a Picture William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, plate 1 William Hogarth, The Laughing Audience William Hogarth, Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn Paintings of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep in their tomb at Saqqara The divine Hathor-​cow licks Queen Hatshepsut’s hand, Shrine of Hathor, Deir el-Bahari

538 539 540 541 542 589 591

Tables

17.1 17.2 17.3

Look-​up table for estimating the addition of two sound sources Total sound experience of listener 4 metres directly in front of speaker Table of direct sound and first reflections for the listeners at the four key locations of Nabratein Synagogue 1a 17.4 Total sound experience for listeners in two locations of Nabratein Synagogue 1b 19.1 Burial assemblage of Tomb 100 19.2 Burial assemblage (vessels) in Tomb 100 20.1 Select interpretations of the Phoenician, Punic, and Neo-​Punic title mqm ’ilm mtrḥ ‘štrny 26.1 Most prominent time periods, their word counts, and most common genres in our data for “seeing” in Akkadian 26.2 Summary of the semantic aspects of the Akkadian verbs, comparing Dicks (AD) and PMI 27.1 The five senses model 27.2 Selected examples of classifiers of perceptive verbs 27.3 THE MIND IS A BODY metaphor 27.4 Additional metaphors 27.5 Properties of the five sensory modalities 27.6 “to see” 27.7 “to hear” 27.8 Lexemes for haptic perception 27.9 Main verbal lexemes for olfactory sensation 27.10 UNDERSTANDING is TOUCHING metaphor

377 378 378 381 419 419 433 563 571 577 577 579 579 580 581 582 584 585 589

xv

Contributors

Richard H. Beal is Senior Research Associate on the Hittite Dictionary Project at the Oriental

Institute of the University of Chicago, USA, a project he has worked on since its inception in January 1976. After beginning Hittite at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, under James Muhly, he received his Ph.D. in Hittitology at the University of Chicago under Harry A. Hoffner and Hans Gustav Güterbock. He is author of The Organisation of the Hittite Military (1992) and many articles in academic journals. He is married to Assyriologist JoAnn Scurlock. Rick Bonnie is University Researcher in the Department of Cultures at the University of

Helsinki, Finland, and is associated as a vice-​team leader to the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires. He is the author of Being Jewish in Galilee, 100–​200 CE: An Archaeological Study (2019) and a co-​editor of The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends (2020). Dennis R. M. Campbell is an Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State University,

USA. His work focuses on the Late Bronze Age Near East with a focus on the Hurrians and Hittites. Previous publications have explored philological topics on the Hurrian language as well as historical research on the Hittites, Hurrians, and their place in the ancient world. Gaëlle Chantrain is currently a Post-​Doctoral Associate and Lecturer in Egyptology at the

Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization of Yale University, USA, and post-​ doctoral researcher in absentia at the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), Belgium. She completed her M.A. degree at the University of Liege, Belgium, where she was also a collaborator on the Ramses Project. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Louvain, Belgium, with a research fellowship from the FNRS. She has also held post-​doctoral positions at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and the Czech Institute of Egyptology of Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Her main research interests are Egyptian philology, lexical semantics, classifiers studies, cognitive linguistics, and semantic typology. Megan Cifarelli is Professor of Visual Studies and Art History at Manhattanville College, USA,

and a Consulting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, USA. Her research focuses on applications of dress, gender, and archaeological theory to the visual and material cultures of the ancient Near East, particularly during the first millennium BCE . Sarah Kielt Costello is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Houston –​Clear

Lake, USA. She is a specialist in the visual culture of early Western Asia. She is co-​editor and

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List of contributors

contributor to Object Biographies: Collaborative Approaches to Ancient Mediterranean Art (2021), and Seals and Sealings in the Ancient World: Case Studies from the Near East, Egypt, the Aegean and South Asia (2018). Melissa S. Cradic received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and is

Curator of the Badè Museum in Berkeley, CA, USA; Lecturer in the Department of History and Judaic Studies Program at the University at Albany, SUNY, USA; and NEH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, USA (2021–2022). Her research and fieldwork investigate ancestor commemoration, embodiment, and the social status of the dead after burial in household contexts of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. She has held fellowships at Harvard University, USA; W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, Israel; and University of Pennsylvania, USA. Camilla Di Biase-​ Dyson received her B.A. (Honours) and Ph.D. in Ancient History from

Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, specialising in Egyptology (2008). She then held post-​ doctoral fellowships at the Humboldt-​Universität in Berlin, Germany, within the Excellence Cluster TOPOI and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2009–​2012). She was Junior Professor for Egyptology at the Georg-​August-​Universität in Göttingen, Germany, from 2012–​ 2019; a research fellow at the Universität Wien, Austria, from 2019–​2020; and since April 2020 is Lecturer of Egyptology at Macquarie University, Australia. She works on Egyptian language, texts, medicine, and religion, from linguistics and cognitive perspectives. Helen Dixon is an interdisciplinary scholar of the ancient Mediterranean world specialising

in Phoenician history and culture in the first millennium BCE . Dixon holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, USA, and enjoyed post-​doctoral appointments at North Carolina State University, USA, and the University of Helsinki, Finland, before serving as Assistant Professor at Wofford College, USA, and now, at East Carolina University, USA. Her research has evolved from archaeological excavation, museum study, and archive work in Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Greece, and focuses on how Phoenicians and their neighbours shaped and negotiated their social identities in both life and death. Marian H. Feldman is the W. H. Collins Vickers Chair in Archaeology and a Professor in the

Departments of the History of Art and Near Eastern Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, USA. She is the author of Diplomacy by Design: Luxury Arts and an ‘International Style’ in the Ancient Near East, 1400–​1200 BCE (2006) and Communities of Style: Portable Luxury Arts, Identity and Collective Memory in the Iron Age Levant (2014). Feldman has also co-​edited several volumes, including Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art (with Brian A. Brown; 2013), and is the author of several articles and catalogue essays. Paul V. M. Flesher is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Wyoming, where he

directs the American Heritage Center. He earned a B.A. from the University of Rochester, USA; an M.Phil. from Oxford University, UK; and a Ph.D. from Brown University, USA. Trained as a historian of ancient Judaism, his expertise lies in Targum translations and ancient synagogues. His books include The Targums: A Critical Introduction (with Bruce Chilton; 2011) and he edited the series Studies in the Aramaic Interpretation of Scripture for two decades. More recently, he was one of the editors of The Old Testament in Archaeology and History (2017). A past president of the

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List of contributors

International Organization for Targumic Study, he currently serves as a Trustee of ASOR (the American Society of Overseas Research). Agnès Garcia-​Ventura is Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,

Spain. Her main interests are gender and the historiography of Ancient Near Eastern studies. She is the co-​editor of several books, including Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East (2018) and Perspectives on the History of Ancient Near Eastern Studies (2020). Dora Goldsmith is an Egyptologist at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her specific

area of research focuses on the sense of smell in ancient Egypt. Based on the written sources, Goldsmith investigates the ancient Egyptians’ perception of the world through the sense of smell and recreates their smellscapes. Her published works include “Fish, Fowl, and Stench in Ancient Egypt” (2019), and “The Smell of Mummification” (2019). Lissette M. Jiménez is Assistant Professor in Museum Studies in the School of Art at San

Francisco State University, USA. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies with an emphasis in Egyptian art and archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Her research interests include museum and curatorial studies, postcolonial and decolonial museum theory, and ancient Egyptian art and archaeology, with a focus on Greco-​Roman period commemorative funerary practices and material culture. Edgar Kellenberger studied theology and the ancient Near East at Basel, Switzerland, and Paris,

France. He also serves as a research fellow at the University of Basel, with several publications about the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Near East, and disability studies. Nicola Laneri teaches Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East at the University

of Catania, Sicily. Since 2003, he has been the Director of the Hirbemerdon Tepe Archaeological Project and since 2018 the Co-​director of the Ganja Region Kurgan Archaeological Project in western Azerbaijan. He is also the Director of the School of Religious Studies and of the Archaeological Museum at the University of Catania. He has published more than 100 scientific articles in journals and books, including recently The Hirbemerdon Tepe Archaeological Project 2003–​2013 Final Report: Chronology and Material Culture (2016), Archeologia della morte (2011), and the edited volume Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East (2015). Mireia López-​Bertran is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the Universitat

de València, Spain. Her main interest is art and iconography of the Iron Age Mediterranean from an embodied and gender perspective. More specifically, she specialises in Phoenician-​Punic archaeology and focuses on coroplastic artworks. Neville McFerrin’s work focuses on intersections between dress, perception, materiality, and

embodiment at the sites of Persepolis and Pompeii. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of North Texas, USA. M. Willis Monroe is a Research Associate in the Department of Asian Studies at the University

of British Columbia, Canada. His work focuses on the history of scholarship in the first millennium BCE of Mesopotamia, especially during the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods. In particular he is interested in the ways in which astronomical and astrological knowledge intertwine xviii

List of contributors

on material objects through the use of complex structural and formatting schemes enacted by cuneiform scribes. Kiersten Neumann is Curator and Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University

of Chicago, USA, having earned her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Her research is grounded in theoretical approaches to ancient art, with a focus on sensory experience and visual culture of the first millennium BCE . Neumann has published numerous articles on topics pertaining to ritualised practice, built environments, and sensory experience in Assyria; museum practice, collections histories, and the reception of Assyrian and Achaemenid art; and curated the Oriental Institute Museum special exhibit, “Persepolis: Images of an Empire” (2015–​2017). Christine Elizabeth Palmer is on the faculty of Gordon-​Conwell Theological Seminary, USA,

where she teaches Hebrew Bible and leads archaeological study tours to Israel, Jordan, and her own native country of Greece. Her research focuses on ancient Israelite ritual at the intersection of text, material culture, and embodied experience. Frances Pinnock was Associate Professor of Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near

East at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. She is Co-​director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Syria (Ebla). She is author of nearly 200 contributions, including monographs and scientific articles. Beate Pongratz-​Leisten is Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Institute for the

Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), New York University, USA. Her recent books include Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism (2011), Religion and Ideology in Assyria (2015), and the co-​edited (with K. Sonik) The Materiality of Divine Agency (2015). She is also the author of Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien: Formen der Kommunikation zwischen Gott und König im 2. und 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (1999); ina šulmi īrub: Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akītu-​Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im I. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (1994); and numerous articles on topics pertaining to the cultural, intellectual, religious history, and art history of Mesopotamia. Her current research focuses on myth as episteme for world-​making in image and text drawing on cognitive and narratology studies as well as studies in interpictoriality, intericonicity, intermediality, and multimodality. Anne-​Caroline Rendu Loisel is maîtresse de conférences in Assyriology at the University of

Strasbourg, France. She is a member of the epigraphical and archaeological mission at Eridu –​ Abu Shahrain (Iraq). Aleksi Sahala has a combined Master’s Degree in Language Technology and Assyriology from

the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. thesis “Contributions to Computational Assyriology” under the supervision of Saana Svärd and Krister Lindén. Caroline Sauvage is the NEH Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies and the

Director of the archaeology centre and museum in the Department of Classics and Archaeology at Loyola Marymount University, USA. She specialises in the study of Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean textile technology and maritime trade.

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List of contributors

Katharina Schmidt is an ancient Near Eastern archaeologist who received her Ph.D. from the

University of Munich, Germany. She is currently the Director of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Amman, Jordan. A central focus of her research is glass and glass production in the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Sarah J. Scott received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania,

USA, and worked on the Ur Seal Impression Strata for her dissertation. Her research focuses on the intersection of art and writing in fourth-​and early third-​millennium BCE southern Mesopotamia, and how cylinder seal imagery functioned in temple economies. She is currently a Professor in the Visual Arts Department at Wagner College, USA, where she teaches a range of courses encompassing the broader Mediterranean and Middle Eastern visual worlds. She employs an interdisciplinary approach with students as they explore themes dealing with narrative, semiotics and identity, and experience museums in New York City as an extension of the classroom. Karen Sonik is an art and cultural historian specialising in Mesopotamia. She earned her Ph.D. in

the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, with a focus on the ancient Near East, and is currently Associate Professor of Art History at Auburn University, USA. Among her recent publications are Art/​ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World (2021), Journey to the City: A Companion to the Middle East Galleries at the Penn Museum (ed. with S. Tinney, 2019), and The Materiality of Divine Agency (ed. with B. Pongratz-​Leisten, 2015). Elisabeth Steinbach-​Eicke, M.A., is a Doctoral Student at Humboldt-​Universität in Berlin,

Germany, and a Research Assistant at the Egyptological Seminar of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her main research focuses on the semantics of perception verbs in Ancient Egyptian. Ulrike Steinert is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Research Training Group 1876 “Early

Concepts of Humans and Nature” at Johannes Gutenberg-​University in Mainz, Germany. Her research and publications focus on the history of Mesopotamian medicine, women’s health, the Akkadian language, body and gender concepts, as well as on the study of metaphor and emotions. She is the author of a book on the body, self, and identity in Mesopotamian texts, entitled Aspekte des Menschseins im Alten Mesopotamien: Eine Studie zu Person und Identität im 2. und 1. Jt. v. Chr. (2012), and is currently preparing a monograph, Women’s Health Care in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Edition of the Textual Sources. Saana Svärd is an Associate Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies and the director of the

Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Much of her work focuses on women and gender in Mesopotamia. In recent years, her focus has expanded to adapting and developing approaches from social sciences, digital humanities, and linguistic semantics to gain new perspectives on cuneiform sources. Allison Thomason received her Ph.D. in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at

Columbia University, USA, in 1999. Since receiving her degree, she has taught ancient history in the Department of History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA, where she currently serves as Professor and Chair. Her book, Luxury and Legitimation: Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia (Routledge 2005), explores the importance of portable objects in the Mesopotamian world. She has continued her study of human interactions with material culture

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List of contributors

in numerous articles and book chapters on portable objects, dress, and sensory experiences in the ancient Near East. Jen Thum is Assistant Director of Academic Engagement and Assistant Research Curator at the

Harvard Art Museums, USA, where she works at the intersection of Egyptology and museum education. Her research has included a range of object-​based studies in museums and a dissertation on Egyptian royal living-​rock stelae. Thum is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary conversations about the ancient world with students and the public alike. Josephine Verduci holds a Ph.D. in Archaeology from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

She has worked for several years on archaeological excavations in Israel and Jordan, and published studies on Bronze and Iron Age adornment practices from across the eastern Mediterranean. She is the author of Metal Jewellery of the Southern Levant and its Western Neighbours: Cross-​Cultural Influences in the Early Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean (2016). Currently, she is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Research Fellow of the Australian Institute of Archaeology. Irene J. Winter received her undergraduate degree in Anthropology at Barnard College, USA,

her M.A. in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, USA, and her Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, USA. She has taught at Columbia, at Queens College CUNY, at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Harvard University, from which she retired in 2009 (all in the USA). She has lectured widely in a variety of contexts. Her principal scholarly interests have been the relationships between image and text, and the contextual grounds for understanding the role of imagery in ancient Mesopotamia. She has also participated in excavations in Iran and Iraq.

xxi

Acknowledgements

Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason would like to thank the entire staff at Routledge/​ Taylor & Francis who helped to produce this volume, most notably commissioning editor, Amy Davis-​Poynter, and senior editorial assistant, Elizabeth Risch. We extend our gratitude as well to Émilie Sarrazin, Ph.D. candidate in Egyptian archaeology at the University of Chicago, whose skilled work on the map in the front of the volume was invaluable. We would also like to acknowledge all of our wonderful colleagues at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and the Department of History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for their support and encouragement throughout this ambitious project. We sincerely thank the many contributors and anonymous readers of the chapters for helping to shape the volume and their constructive suggestions. Finally, we thank our friends and family for supporting our efforts in producing such a large body of work, which was initially proposed in response to the member-​ organised sessions on the senses at the Annual Meetings of the American Society for Overseas Research in 2016–​2018.

xxii

Editors’ Note

In this volume, transliteration and normalization of ancient languages are rendered in italics, except for Sumerian, which is in lower-case bold face. In addition, for the cuneiform script, sign names and logograms are presented in small upper-case letters and determinatives are in superscript lower-case. The following abbreviations are used: AAA ACL AfO AHw AJA AMD AMT ANEM AOAT ARA ARM BAe BAM BASOR BGH BM CAD

CAJ CAT CDLI CELCR CHANE

Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology (Liverpool, 1908–​1948) Applications of Cognitive Linguistics Archiv für Orientforschung Von Soden, W. 1965–​1981. Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. 3 Volumes. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz American Journal of Archaeology Ancient Magic and Divination Thompson, R. C. 1923. Assyrian Medical Texts. London: Oxford University Press Ancient Near East Monographs Alter Orient und Altes Testament Annual Review of Anthropology Archives royales de Mari (Paris, 1950–​) Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca Köcher, F. 1963–​1980. Die babylonisch-​assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen. 4 Volumes. Berlin: De Gruyter Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Richter, Thomas. 2012. Bibliographisches Glossar des Hurritischen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz British Museum Gelb, I. J., et al., eds. 1956–​2006. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Cambridge Archaeological Journal Dietrich, M., O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín. 1995. The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. http://​cdli.ucla.edu/​ (Los Angeles/​ Berlin) Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research Culture and History in the Ancient Near East

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List of abbreviations

CHD

ChS CIL CIS I CT CT VII CTH DBH Dendera DZA Edfu ETCSL

GOF HED HEG HW 2 IRT JAAC JANER JAOS JARCE JCS JEA JMC JNES KAI KAR KBo 32

KRI

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Güterbock(†), H. G., and H. Hoffner(†), et al. 1980–​. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Corpus der hurritischen Sprachdenkmäler Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin, 1863–) de Vogue, M., ed. 1881. Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Pars Prima: Inscriptiones Phoenicias Continens. Paris Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum (London, 1896) de Buck, A. 1961. The Egyptian Coffin Texts VII:Texts of Spells 787–​1185. OIP 87. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Laroche, L. 1971. Catalogue des textes hittites. Paris: Klincksieck Dresdner Beiträge zur Hethitologie Chassinat, E., ed. 1934–​1952. Le temple de Dendera. 5 Volumes. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale Digitales Zettelarchiv. https://aaew.bbaw.de Chassinat, E., ed. 1892–​1933. Le temple d’Edfou. 8 Volumes. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale Black, J. A., G. Cunningham, J. Ebeling, E. Flückiger-​Hawker, E. Robson, J. Taylor, and G. Zólyomi. 1998. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Oxford. http://​etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/​ Göttinger Orientforschungen Puhvel, J. 1984–​. Hittite Etymological Dictionary. Berlin/​New York: Mouton de Gruyter Tischler, J. 1977–​2016. Hethitisches etymologisches Glossar. Innsbruck: Institut fur Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck Friedrich, J. (†), A. Kammenhuber (†), et al. 1975–​. Kammenhuben. Hethitisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag Reynolds, J. M., and J. B. Ward Perkins, eds. 1952. The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania. Rome: Officine Apollon Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Le Journal des Médecines Cunéiformes Journal of Near Eastern Studies Donner, H., and W. Röllig. 2002. Kanaanaische und aramäische Inschriften, Band 1: 5., erweiterte und überarbeitete Auflage. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Ebeling, E. 1919–​1923. Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts I. Leipzig: Hinrichs Otten, H., and Chr. Rüster. 1990. Die hurritisch-​hethitische Bilingue und weitere Texte aus der Oberstadt. Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi 32. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Kitchen, K. A. 1969–​1990. Ramesside Inscriptions, Historical and Biographical. 8 Volumes. Oxford: Blackwell

List of abbreviations

KTU

KUB LÄ LANE LCL LD LEM LES LingAeg MÄS NABU OBO OIMP OIP OIS OLA PM

RA Ramsès RÉS

RIA RIMA 1

RIMA 2

RIMA 3

RIMB 2

RIME 1

Dietrich, M., O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín. 2013. Die Keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit, Ras Ibn Habi und anderen Orten: KTU3. Third Edition. AOAT 360. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag Keilschriften aus Boghazköi (Berlin, 1921–​1990) Helck, W., E. Otto, and W. Westendorf, eds. 1972–​1990. Lexikon der Ägyptologie. 7 volumes. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Languages of the Ancient Near East The Loeb Classical Library Lepsius, K. R. 1849–​1859. Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien. 12 Volumes. Berlin: Nicolaische Buchhandlung Gardiner, A. H. 1937. Late Egyptian Miscellanies. BAe 7. Brussels: Édition de la Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth Gardiner, A. H. 1932. Late Egyptian Stories. BAe 1. Brussels: Édition de la Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth Lingua Aegyptia Münchner Ägyptologische Studien Nouvelles assyriologiques brèves et utilitaires Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Oriental Institute Museum Publications Oriental Institute Publications Oriental Institute Seminars Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta Porter, B., and R. L. B. Moss. 1927–​1951. Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings. 7 Volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale Ramses Online. http://​ramses.ulg.ac.be/​ Académie des inscriptions et belles-​lettres. 1900–​1905 (Tome 1); 1907–​ 1914 (Tome II). Répertoire d’épigraphie sémitique, publié par la commission du Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (Tome I: 1–​500;Tome II: 501–​1200). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie Grayson, A. K. 1987. Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (To 1115 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Grayon, A. K. 1991. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114–​ 859 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Grayson, A. K. 1996. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC Part II (858–​745 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 3. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press Frame, G. 1995. Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157–​612 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Babylonian Periods 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Frayne, D. 2008. Presargonic Period (2700–​2350 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press

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List of abbreviations

RIME 2

RIME 3/​1

RIME 3/​2 RIME 4

RINAP 1

RINAP 3/​1

RINAP 3/​2

RINAP 4

RITA

RITANC

SAA 2 SAA 3 SAA 8 SAA 10 SAA 18

SAA 20 SAAB SAAS SDAIK SPAAA SpTU StBoT xxvi

Frayne, D. R. 1993. Sargonic and Gutian Periods (2334–​2113 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Edzard, D. O. 1997. Gudea and His Dynasty. Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods 3/​1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Frayne, D. R. 1997. Ur III Period (2112–​2004 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods 3/​2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Frayne, D. R. 1990. Old Babylonian Period (2003–​1595 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods 4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Tadmor, H., and S.Yamada. 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-​pileser III (744–​727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726–​722 BC), Kings of Assyria. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-​Assyrian Period 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns Grayson, A. K., and J. Novotny. 2012. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–​681 BC), Part 1. Royal Inscriptions of the Assyrian Period 3/​1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns Grayson, A. K., and J. Novotny. 2014. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–​681 BC), Part 1. Royal Inscriptions of the Assyrian Period 3/​2. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns Leichty, E. 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–​ 669 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-​Assyrian Period 4. Winona Lake, IN; Eisenbrauns Kitchen, K. A. 1993–​2014. Ramesside Inscriptions,Translated & Annotated:Translations. 7 Volumes. Oxford: Blackwell; Chichester: Wiley-​Blackwell Kitchen, K. A., and B. G. Davies. 1993–​2014. Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated: Notes and Comments. 4 Volumes. Oxford: Blackwell; Chichester: Wiley-​Blackwell Parpola, S., and K. Watanabe. 1988. Neo-​Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. State Archives of Assyria 2. Helsinki: The Neo-​Assyrian Text Corpus Project Livingstone, A. 1989. Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea. State Archives of Assyria 3. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Hunger, H. 1992. Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. State Archives of Assyria 8. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Parpola, S. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. State Archives of Assyria 10. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Reynolds, F. 2003. The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon and Letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-​šarru-​iškun from Northern and Central Babylonia. State Archives of Assyria 18. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Parpola, S. 2017. Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts. State Archives of Assyria 20. Helsinki: The Neo-​Assyrian Text Corpus Project State Archives of Assyria Bulletin State Archives of Assyria Studies Sonderschrift des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo Selected Papers in Ancient Art and Architecture Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk (Mainz, 1976–​1998) Studien zu den Boğazköy-​Texten

List of abbreviations

TLA Tripolitania TSSI 3

UET Urk. VAM Wb.

ZA ZÄS

Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae. https://aaew.bbaw.de Reynolds, J. M., and J. B. Ward Perkins, eds. 1952. The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania. Rome: Officine Apollon Gibson, J. C. L. 1982. Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions.Volume III: Phoenician Inscriptions including inscriptions in the mixed dialect of Arslan Tash. Oxford: Clarendon Press Ur Excavations Texts (London, 1928–​) Sethe, K., H. W. Helck, H. Schäfer, H. Grapow, and O. Firchow. 1903–​1957. Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums. 8 Volumes. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs Vorderasiatisches Museum Erman, A., and H. Grapow. 1971 [1926–1931]. Wörterbuch der ägyptische Sprache. 7 Volumes (and 5 Belegstellen). Leipzig: Hinrichs; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete, (from 1939) und Vorderasiatische Archäologie Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde

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Introduction Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

Humans are universally sensing beings. That is the premise with which we begin this Handbook. However, in addition to not being the only sensing beings, humans do not sense in a universally similar way, whether today in contemporary life or in the lived experiences of past worlds and cultures. Notwithstanding, all humans have common sensory organs and apparatuses in their bodies: sensory neurons receive and transport environmental stimuli as well as convert them to electrochemical signals that travel to the brain. Humans perceive and make sense of these signals in the neural networks of the body and brain and translate them into meaningful memory, experience, and response. This volume explores the ways in which humans, through their senses, experienced their lives and the world around them in the ancient Near East,1 a region that gave rise to the first urban settlements, the world’s earliest civilisations, as well as the advent of writing and other technologies, and whose cultures had strong linguistic, cultural, religious, and ethnicties, making this area a crossroads of the ancient world. The use of sensory experiences to cast a lifeline to the “dead” ancient past offers a way for scholars and students of the ancient Near East to better understand, reimagine, and bring to life the human experience in antiquity. When we unearth remnants of a commemorative banquet, an ancient synagogue, a home’s dark corners, or a palace archive with written documents from the past, we can begin to conjure and intimately connect with the sensing lives of our deep ancestors. This connectivity is something that scholars of the ancient world crave when attempting to reconstruct past lives, and it is a connectivity, even perhaps an empathy, that is best achieved through the shared knowledge and appreciation of the fact that all humans have always and will continue to sense. While the ability for humans to sense is pre-​cultural, how and what we sense, and how we interpret or perceive of those sensory moments are not. That is to say, despite a universal ability to sense, sensory experiences have the potential of differing vastly, both over time and in space; therefore, it is the task of the philologist, archaeologist, and art historian to cast diverse nets of inquiry, unearth a multitude of evidence, and interpret the unique and/​ or shared sensory experiences of individuals, communities, and societies of the past. Sensory studies as an intellectual pursuit allows scholars to bring to life in a remarkably vivid, sometimes imaginative, as well as visceral way the lives of past humans. As David Howes and Constance Classen (2014: 7) write, “what makes sensations so forceful is that they are lived experiences, not intellectual abstractions.” DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-1

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Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

What is sensory studies? The new “sensory turn” This volume was inspired by and adheres to the tenets of the growing field of sensory studies, which began to emerge at the end of the twentieth century and gained momentum in the twenty-​first century CE . This “sensory turn” in humanistic and anthropological scholarship follows the “linguistic turn”—​the hermeneutical understanding of cultures and cultural systems (Geertz 1973)—​in reading the ancient past of the 1970s and grew out of the theoretical viewpoints of 1980s post-​processualism, including facets of cognitive archaeology, as espoused by Ian Hodder, which understands evidence from the past not simply as utilitarian items connected with human survival, but as objects with multiple cognitive and contextually specific meanings related to lived experience. The sensory turn has also been invigorated by new discoveries in fields that study humans through a physiological framework, such as psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and medical imaging technology. Moreover, the field of sensory studies has engaged with philosophical inquiries, by examining the ontological categorisations of different societies: did every culture have a concept of an individual self, a body, separate from “nature” or the environment? Indeed, this idea might be anachronistic for the ancient Near East, where the concepts of self/​not-​self or even of distinct senses were more ontologically and phenomenologically fluid than our own modern ones. The latter, in contrast, most notably for the West, conceive of the body as a vessel, with skin as a barrier, and as capable of experiencing only a limited number of senses that function in a mutually exclusive way. As Nicole Tilford (2017: 7) writes in her study of sensory metaphors in the Hebrew Bible: The ontological division between mind and body is a cultural construct of the modern West, one that does not seem to have been prevalent among the majority of ancient communities … Yet this sharp division between mind and body is problematic. Although modern Western individuals think in terms of a mind-​body divide, the division is not naturally predetermined. Since the late nineteenth century/​early twentieth century, such philosophers as William James, John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty and the cognitive scientists who followed them have increasingly argued that there is no autonomous faculty of reason distinct from normal bodily function. Unfortunately, while a mind–​body dualism is not applicable to all cultures, it is hard for modern scholars, particularly those who developed their disciplinary knowledge in Western contexts, to jettison it from our own descriptive language: we frequently refer to bodies, ideas, sensing versus perception. It is a dualism that much of our own written language structures and reinforces. Perhaps a solution to this conundrum of anachronism arrives through the pioneering work on bodily phenomenology of the philosopher Maurice Merleau-​Ponty (Phénoménologie de la perception, 1945; first English edition, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962), who understands life as a series of lived experiences, where the body and the mind, sensation and cognition intertwine, and where the sensing individual has a dialectical relationship with their surrounding environment. Contra Descartes, Merleau-​Ponty (2012: xvi–​xvii) proclaims, “the world is not what I think but what I live through.” An understanding of the mind/​body/​environment spheres not as separate or exclusive, but as mutually constitutive and fluid allows scholars studying people of the past to understand, reimagine, and bring to life their “lived experiences” at the level of the individual, and in as emic a way as possible. Eschewing a phenomenological perspective in favour of one that emphasises the communal and social, humanistic scholars Howes and Classen explore sensory perception as a cultural construct among past and contemporary cultures, offering another avenue for escaping, as much as 2

Introduction

possible, the rigidly structured post-​Enlightenment understanding of living with and through the senses. Howes has written and edited numerous books and contributions on the field of sensory studies (1991), and convenes a conglomeration of scholars at the website, sensorystudies. org. Howes’ and Classen’s scholarship has attracted researchers who are multi-​and interdisciplinary, as their idea of scholarly practice is itself connective, bringing together varied and diverse interests from across the globe and an array of academic disciplines. But most important, Howes and Classen have essentially redefined and revitalised the field of sensory studies beyond psychology, allowing it to become a socio-​cultural and historical endeavour by bringing interpretive and methodological critiques to past understandings of the senses in the Euro-​American imagination. In historical scholarship, where scholars have typically dealt with two-​dimensional textual or printed materials from the post-​antique world, Alain Corbin’s earlier work The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (1986), a study of smells and their contextually specific perception from a nineteenth-​century French town, was seminal. Corbin influenced explorations of sensory experiences and the senses in other historical periods and spaces, led by Peter C. Hoffer’s Sensory Worlds in Early America (2003) and Mark M. Smith’s How Race is Made: Slavery, the Senses, and Segregation (2006). As is often the case, methodological or theoretical forays in other fields eventually reach the confines of the study of the deeper ancient past, and by the late 2000s, numerous anthologies and monographs on senses in the ancient world appeared, most notably A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (Toner 2016), and the series The Senses in Antiquity (also published by Routledge/​Taylor & Francis). Each of the five volumes in the series is dedicated to textual explorations of a separate sense of the Greco-​Roman periods, which are arguably rich with textual evidence. This work on sensory experiences from the 1980s through the late 2000s approached the evidence from Classical cultures with the goal of creating sensory inventories, a “serial sense-​by-​sense approach” (Howes and Classen 2014: 12), inquiring: what were common/​good/​bad smells, sights, sounds, tastes, and touches, and how were they related to other cultural concepts? In its critique of the post-​ Enlightenment understanding of sensory experiences, however, the sensory turn, espoused by Howes and Classen, pushes against a rigid adherence to the five-​sense model of individually recognisable senses and their respective sensory nouns/​ actions/​organs: vision/​seeing/​eyes, sound/​hearing/​ears, taste/​eating/​mouth, smell/​sniffing/​ nose, touch/​feeling/​skin. Although the five senses, and primarily vision, were emphasised and deemed superior in Eurocentric philosophy influenced by Aristotle, and consequently taken up by Enlightenment figures such as Descartes for a number of historically and philosophically contingent reasons, discussed in more depth later (Hamilakis 2013: 25–​26; Classen 1993: 15–​36), Howes (1991: 257–​258) has pointed out repeatedly that not all contemporary cultures studied ethnographically recognise these five senses in their linguistic repertoires, rather some recognise fewer, more, and also other senses. What is more, the best practice of sensory studies does not assume a monolithic individual sensing body; it is a socio-​cultural exercise in ontology and taxonomy that should envision the range of individual human practice and agency within a specific cultural environment. It should anticipate how humans from various stages of life, socio-​ economic spheres, involved in acts of production and consumption, differentially sensed. As Yannis Hamilakis (2013: 10) reminds us: “Sensorial experience is universal and cross-​cultural, but the definition and meaningful understanding of sensorial modalities and interactions are context specific, and depend on class, gender, age, and other attributes.” In addition to the above, contributors to this volume and our own ideas of how to explore sensory experiences in the ancient world have been markedly influenced by archaeologists’ understanding of how humans affect and are mutually affected by their surroundings, including 3

Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

that of Christopher Tilley (1994), whose work in the field of landscape archaeology drew upon phenomenological approaches to landscapes and built environments. Spurred by this idea of affect and embodiment, other archaeologists have approached lived experiences phenomenologically, the most influential of whom are Robin Skeates (2010) and Hamilakis (2013). Hamilakis critiques Tilley’s visual and monumental focus, instead emphasising an embodied archaeology that studies multisensory experiences as humans interact with portable or monumental material culture through many senses. Many of our contributors draw on Hamilakis’ multisensory and embodied approach, and we consider it equally important to the sensory inventory methodology in this volume as a means of better understanding sensory experiences. The phenomenological approach attempts to reconstruct sensescapes or “sensorial assemblages [which] produce place and locality through evocative, affective, and mnemonic performances and interactions” (Hamilakis 2013: 127). An assemblage approach asks, what would a body multisensorially experience as they moved through events and spaces, and what memories would these interactions evoke or create? And what did it mean to be a part of these experiences in the moment? This is an intersensory and multisensory approach that attempts to reconstruct holistically how senses interacted with each other, and ultimately how those sensorial moments were perceived in humans’ lived experiences. In the field of sensory studies in general and in our own solicitation of contributions to this volume, we recognise five common tenets. First, sensing is both culturally bound and physiologically influenced; societies develop “sensory orders” (Howes 1991; Howes and Classen 2019: 5) or perceived sensoria that are unique and long-​lasting, but also ephemeral and capable of dynamism—​their perceptions change over time. These sensory orders can also be acculturated and politicised. The best examples of this would be the association of odours deemed foul-​ smelling with the urban working classes or immigrants in the nineteenth century, and the subsequent attempt to sanitise or eliminate those smells within middle-​class contexts in Europe (Corbin 1986: 158; Laporte 2000). The phenomenological approach to sensory experiences further appreciates that sensing is not only a culturally determined phenomenon but also a bodily process of the individual influenced by genetic and congenital bodily structures. Thus, in keeping with the attempt to move outside of the Western-​centric idea of mind–​body dualism, the idea of nature versus nurture does not work for understanding what causes the unique experiences of individuals and groups; it is not a question of either/​or, but and. Second, we recognise that the privileging of five senses is not universal in time and space, nor do all cultures “equally divide the sensorium as we do” (Howes and Classen 2019: 3). Senses beyond the five-​sense model have been identified for our own society as well as others. For example, a number of neurological and psychological studies have identified bodily mechanisms and neurons for other senses. These senses were “hidden” to Enlightenment thinkers, as their physical apparatus and sensory organs were under the skin and not easily visible to the naked eye, thus they were left out of the five-​sense inventory. They include, among others, the sense of proprioception, where the body has mechanisms that help it to orient and move in space, the sense of thermoception, or temperature awareness, and the sense of interoception, the neurons and systems in the body that allow internal organs to operate and transmit sensations. Some scholars have also proposed that humans have a “sense of time” with neurological apparatuses related to our daily circadian rhythms, seasonality, and temporal awareness (Wittman 2009). Third, different senses hold relative importance to cultures past and present. Not all cultures hierarchically rank which senses are deemed the most important, as Western thinkers and scholars have suggested. For historically contingent reasons, the sense of sight has been privileged in the modern Eurocentric quest to categorise and find hierarchy within systems in the universe, including the sensorium. Such a quest was culturally and politically motivated and related to 4

Introduction

discussions about animal diversity and human races in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE . The sense of sight was considered by philosophers and naturalists to be most connected to the intellect and rationality, and ultimately to being human (as opposed to animal), followed in order of importance/​humanness by hearing, smell, taste, and touch. This modern Eurocentric quest to find hierarchy within the sensorium (Hamilakis 2013: 28–​29) came along at the same time as an expansion of print and visual culture, and set the stage for sight’s promotion. The hierarchy and privileging, much less restriction to identification of only five senses, is therefore a historically contingent concept that begs interrogation and deconstruction, and forces reconsideration for other times and places. Ultimately, the sensory studies approach asks, “which senses are emphasised and which senses are repressed, by which means and to which ends?” (Howes and Classen 2019: 6). Fourth, sensory studies scholars also recognise the important sensory experiences of kinaesthesia, sensing as a body moves through space and time or as sensory stimuli move to and through the body, and synaesthesia, where two or more senses combine, such as the idea in modern psychology that some people can smell colours. Many cultures, including some in the ancient Near East, have a concept distinguishable in texts and material culture of haptic visuality, in which visual attention or gaze can affect bodily feelings beyond vision (Hamilakis 2013: 75). Sensory scholars acknowledge that no sense acts in isolation from another; or as Howes and Classen (2019: 4) state, “the senses interact with each other first, before they give us access to the world; hence the first step, the indispensable starting point, is to discover what sorts of relations between the senses a culture considers proper.” This demands that scholars adopt a multisensory approach to the evidence from the past, and acknowledge that senses can be “combined,” rather than separated as they are in considerations of the sensorium that insist on the autonomy of each sense. And fifth, sensory studies scholars understand that philologists, archaeologists, and art historians who study past cultures are still bound by the ways in which they are able to access past evidence about sensory experiences, and the ways in which they can present that evidence to an audience, and most often a reading one for which vision is the most relevant sense. Since the advent of the printing press, our own method of presenting evidence has been dominated by our sense of vision and visual materials due to their Western associations with rationality and objectivity (Howes and Classen 2019: 4; Hamilakis 2013: 8). Archaeological site reports and editions of literary texts are published typically in written form in two-​dimensional media (though that is also changing with the ability to present reports and materials in three visual dimensions using various digital platforms). For example, what survives to us from the past rarely allows for direct olfactory or gustatory access to the evidence. Original smells and tastes from actual ancient objects are ephemeral; they do not survive completely in the dirt over millennia (although some traces may remain, as evidenced by a rare ancient Roman latrine “smell” witnessed by archaeologists when excavated; Koloski-​Ostrow 2018). Howes and Classen (2019: 47) argue that our goal as sensory scholars of the past is to “summon up the sensory worlds of past societies;” yet, our presentation of those sensory worlds is dependent on and conditioned by “all the assumptions regarding the ‘nature’ of the senses embedded in conventional Western constructions of the sensorium.” Thus, we have the unenviable task to “clear the mind of all such assumptions and redirect attention to finding out how the senses are constructed and lived locally, in the culture one studies.” In some ways, archaeological materials are best suited to sensory investigations, as even in museum contexts they have the potential of allowing more-​than-​visual access to their materiality and affordances. The ability of archaeological materials to allow some “feel” for the past has led proponents of sensory studies to experiment with alt(ernative)-​archaeologies (Hamilakis 2013: 35) in both practice and presentation. For 5

Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

example, one of our contributors, Dora Goldsmith has presented numerous reconstructions of ancient Egyptian perfumes, re-​created using ingredients that are as close as possible to the ancient ones. At many sensory studies panels at conferences, presenters will often bring modern versions of frankincense and myrrh resins and oils and pass them around the audience in order to evoke the ancient smellscape. Considered kitschy and cute in the academic settings, they usually elicit an initial laugh or two from the serious audience. Yet such modern performances and re-​creations are useful and accepted in understanding past sensory experiences. Museums are even getting into the act, with some attempting to create “four-​dimensional” experiences that integrate visitors spatially, tactilely, visually, and olfactorily into reconstructed exhibits of sensescapes (Howes 2014). Some sensory studies proponents also encourage creative pedagogical and writerly approaches to presenting the past—​where the sensing self of the archaeologist is allowed to (or readers are comfortable with) describe the past in some cases via their own sensory confrontation of the ancient, excavated material—​as long as that is made self-​conscious and explicit in the narration. Hamilakis (2013: 12) has argued that alternative ways of presenting our archaeological evidence about sensory experiments, such as theatre performances, might be “more appropriate for the exploration of sensoriality.” Local alternative archaeologies that are based on community practice and engagement with materials from the past and cultural heritage are also encouraged. Even in the visuality of two-​dimensional book-​writing, our language can be sensorially more evocative than a dry “distanced” scholarly article, and a writerly persona within the text can evince more bodily connection and acknowledgement of the senses. In other words—​it is appropriate to write imaginatively and evocatively when describing past sensory experiences, which can ignite and entangle with our own modern experiences, and must therefore transcend objectivity and rationality.

How does the field of sensory studies intersect with the study of the ancient Near East? This moment marks a critical point in the study of the senses and sensory experiences in world history and culture. The field of sensory studies is growing rapidly, and attracts constituent scholars from multiple disciplines and time periods. In 2018–​2021, the period in which we have been working on this project, we have counted at least five conferences in Europe and the United States on senses in the ancient world, including the second and third annual panel on “Senses and Sensibilities in the Near East” at the American Society of Overseas Research Annual Meeting chaired by Kiersten Neumann (2016–​2018). An even greater number of conferences, panels, and workshops devoted to the senses in the past can be counted if we look to later time periods and other geographical regions, including an early foray into cross-​cultural comparisons edited by Jo Day, Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology (2013), which was based on a conference held at Southern Illinois University in 2010 and a recent cross-​cultural anthology not proceeding from a conference and also from the publisher of this volume, the Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology (2020), edited by Robin Skeates and Jo Day. Two recent anthologies on sensory studies in the ancient Near East resulting from scholarly gatherings were published in 2019, edited by Ainsley Hawthorn and Anne-​Caroline Rendu Loisel, and Annette Schellenberg and Thomas Krüger. Most recently, a third conference volume focusing on the senses in the ancient Near East was published, Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Near Eastern Contexts. Proceedings of the Conference Held in Rome, Sapienza University June 4th, 2018, edited by Davide Nadali and Frances Pinnock (2020). All three of these volumes contain contributions by individual presenters reporting on their current research, typically focused on one of the “higher five” senses, and they are not necessarily organised 6

Introduction

according to themes or a consistent structural framework. Other singular contributions to the study of the senses in specific places in the ancient Near East tend to be Mesopocentric; this group includes an influential article by Augusta McMahon on architectural acoustics and light studies at the Neo-​Assyrian capital of Dur-​Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad) (2013), as well as Mary Shepperson’s Sunlight and Shade in the First Cities, a volume on light and architecture in early Sumer (2017); Allison Thomason’s article from 2016 on Neo-​Assyrian sensescapes; and Kiersten Neumann’s discussions of sensory experiences and ritualised practice in Assyria (2018; 2019; forthcoming). For the Levant, the most important work is Yael Avrahami’s The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible (2012), a sensory inventory approach organised by the five senses, which influenced a number of conference sessions at the Society for Biblical Literature Annual Meetings on senses in that textual tradition, as well as contributions in this volume. In a related venture, scholars and students of the ancient world have become increasingly interested in the cognitive and emotive aspects of human experience, areas in which the senses play key roles, as evidenced by anthologies such as that of Shih-​Wei Hsu and Jaume Llop Raduà (2020), which are again derived from conference gatherings. Another handbook, on emotions in the ancient Near East, edited by Karen Sonik, is in preparation in this same series published by Routledge/​Taylor & Francis. What is made clear by this growing and ongoing interest in sensory studies is that there has never been a more opportune and favourable time for scholars of the ancient Near East to explore all of the aspects of the lived experience of this complex and diverse region, with archaeological and textual materials in abundance, in order to more carefully and empathetically humanise the actors of the past. As Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel (2019: 7) declare, “although we cannot experience first-​hand the sensations of the ancient world, it remains possible to reconstruct part of the sensory reality of ancient societies.”

How is this a new compilation? This volume consists of contributions by authors—​on a variety of spaces, places, and periods in the ancient Near East—​grouped into thematic sections that are based on contexts of lived experience: practice, production, and taskscapes; dress and the body; ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces; death and burial; science, medicine, and aesthetics; and languages and semantic fields. These sections are modern groupings, indeed, but they represent formidable and noteworthy moments of sensory experience, whether quotidian or unique, encountered and shared by people in the past. With this organisational schema, the volume can facilitate cross-​cultural, as well as cross-​sensory and multisensory, comparisons and discussions, and serve as a comprehensive “state of the field” volume that explores critical issues and current approaches to senses and sensory experience in the ancient Near East. The volume understands the ancient Near East to be a geographical area that includes portions of the continents of Africa, Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula. In more recent history, this region has been divided into modern nation-​states with fixed political boundaries, a legacy that is difficult to overcome. Accordingly, some of the terminology of geography and periodisation that we utilise is also by necessity modern rather than ancient. Anachronistic as it may be, the modern terminology serves as an important tool for describing the region for contemporary audiences, and has defined the boundaries of disciplinary training for students and scholars of the ancient Near East. The geographical breadth of contributions to this volume, ranging from Egypt to Iran, Israel to Turkey—​a feat rarely attempted in other anthologies about the ancient Near East—​seeks to capture the diversity and uniqueness of the material and experiential 7

Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

encounters produced within environments throughout the region, while simultaneously celebrating the strong linguistic, cultural, religious, and ethnic ties of its cultures, which makes this area a crossroads of the ancient world. Our time span is also by necessity inclusive and broad since we are trying to explore a range of lived experiences and understand how they may have changed over time even in a single area. Thus, the contributions in this volume begin with the early Neolithic period around 10,000 BCE and continue into the Roman period, ending by the mid-​third century CE . Yet, this volume is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of all sensory experiences in all periods of all regions of the ancient Near East. The limited and sometimes haphazard preservation of archaeological and textual evidence precludes such comprehensive coverage. What is more, some of the archaeological sites and materials explored here lack textual materials because writing was not yet a technology adopted by the inhabitants. Additionally, even when the areas under discussion did have texts, they were rarely self-​conscious about something we call “the senses” and did not dedicate large expository passages to them. In addition, due to the nature of archaeological fieldwork for much of the last 200 years—​which privileged excavation within city walls and institutional structures at sites with monumental architecture—​most of the archaeological and textual evidence available relates to the elite spheres of society, such as temple priests, the king and royal court, and wealthy families. The benefit of a sensory approach, however, is the affordance that the materiality of archaeological objects allows for any single sensing body, of whichever socio-​economic sphere, if not all sensing bodies. Sensory studies might indeed be one of the few methods through which modern scholars can gain access or imagine the experiences of less elite members of society, in keeping with the idea that all humans are sensing bodies, no matter what sensory stimuli they encounter. The commonality of humanness, however, must always be tempered by the recognition that individuals or groups within societies might respond differently to the same sensory stimuli, and our contributors are often keen to point this out. While other anthologies on the senses have been organised based on the study of individual senses in specific places/​time periods, therein creating a kind of sensory inventory, as noted above, this volume embraces a multisensory approach and an organisational schema that is based on lived experiences, recognising that ancient people encountered a multitude of lived events and moved through complex sensorial moments. This format encouraged our contributors not only to view all potential sensory phenomena in their particular contexts, but also to complicate their discussions by moving beyond the Aristotelian hierarchical five-​sense sensorium (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch)—​a hierarchy that is anachronistic for the ancient Near East—​ acknowledging that additional senses likely existed for the cultures of this region. For example, some contributors explore the senses of time, proprioception (comportment in space, balance), and synaesthesia (the combination of sensory experiences, such as haptic vision through the Mesopotamian concept of melammu). The study of sensory experience, whether focused on the five-​sense model or other sense perceptions, for scholars of the ancient Near East is a relatively new albeit fast-​g rowing area of research, as discussed above, and one that does not conform to a single methodological or theoretical approach. In calling the volume a “handbook” we have intended to give a range of methodologies and approaches across a broad spectrum. For this reason, contributors were asked to clearly define and outline their chosen approach with respect to their subject matter and to situate their work within the larger field of sensory studies. Contributors were also asked to articulate the way(s) in which taking such an approach to their subject matter allows for a greater understanding or a new perspective of their area of study—​in other words, to answer the

8

Introduction

question how their study gives something back to the field of ancient Near Eastern studies, as well as to the field of sensory studies as a whole. Few anthologies address such a considerable geographical and temporal breadth, in addition to archaeological, architectural, and textual contexts altogether. We endeavour with the contributions here to show not only what scholars are understanding about sensory experience, but how they are arriving at such ideas, including how they compare and differ in their choice of evidence, theoretical concepts, and ontological approaches as we embrace the sensory turn to understand the ancient Near Eastern past. What is more, this volume strives to allow sensory studies scholars who specialise outside of the geographic and temporal ancient Near East to understand the range of approaches and materials available, and to see how the major concepts of “the sensory turn” can be applied and investigated, as they have been for more modern (and Western) cultures by historians and anthropologists, for societies of the deeply ancient past.

The sections and chapters in this volume The methodologies of sensory studies demonstrated in the contributions in this volume allow researchers to understand the relevance and meaning of sensing moments in a culturally specific context, and to integrate how those sensed moments—​integrated into events and spaces—​related to memories and concepts held by individuals, communities, and societies of the past, as revealed by aspects of performance and space left behind in the archaeological and textual material. The first section,“Practice, production, and taskscapes” begins with Marian Feldman’s exploration of the haptic, visual, and kinaesthetic sensory experiences associated with sealing practices of the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100–​2000 BCE ). Taking up as a case study a set of administrative documents from the southern Mesopotamian site of Nippur, Feldman defines the repetitive act of impressing cylindrical seals into the clay as “practicisation”—​a fully embodied, experiential sensation of doing that generated a sense of community among its participants. Looking similarly at the intersection of the body and practice, Caroline Sauvage’s chapter looks at the senses associated with the production and consumption of textiles, foregrounding instances of synaesthesia that produced cultural meaning and class differentiation in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Moving from textiles to glass, Katharina Schmidt considers sensory experiences with respect to hemispherical transparent glass bowls of the Neo-​Assyrian period, from the perspective of both producers—​glassmakers—​and consumers—​guests at the royal banquet. Kiersten Neumann’s chapter takes us from portable works of art to the monumental with a multilevel tactile exploration of the Apadana relief sculpture at Persepolis, both bringing to light sensory traditions of the past and complicating our conceptions and reception of this architectural decoration in contemporary discourse. Completing this first section of the volume is Agnès Garcia-​Ventura and Mireia López-​Bertran’s pioneering approach to work songs and lullabies from Mesopotamia. Through a selection of both Sumerian and Akkadian primary sources, Garcia-​Ventura and López-​Bertran reveal the rhythmic aural and acoustic experiences of workers—​the soundscapes and taskscapes as they repetitively produce and craft—​captured in songs and lullabies. The second section of the Handbook, “Dress and the body,” opens with Josephine Verduci’s innovative study of southern Levantine metal anklets. In exploring the jewellery’s somatic effects and other sensory qualities, Verduci considers both the bodily perceptions and physiological implications of the sensory experiences of this form of bodily adornment. Megan Cifarelli’s study of dress artefacts at Hasanlu, Iran similarly looks not only at the impact of dress assemblages on the senses of observers, but also delves into the rich synaesthetic, kinaesthetic, and cognitive feedback that would have been experienced by its wearers, and how these sensorial assemblages 9

Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

were connected with the generation of politically charged identities at Hasanlu. The relationship of bodily perception and identity carries into the next chapter, in which Sarah Scott mines the field of Mesopotamian glyptics in an exploration of the somatic experience of seal users and sealing practices, arguing for an understanding of clay as a second body—​a body of flesh. Neville McFerrin’s study of the multisensory interactions at play across the sculptured environment of Persepolis completes this second section of the volume, guiding the reader through a consideration of the proprioceptive engagements of the site with the kinaesthetic movement of bodies and how these connect with the overarching Achaemenid imperial endeavour. The third section, “Ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces,” opens with Irene Winter’s exploration of the affective sensory experience, the “aesthetics,” of ritual practice in ancient Mesopotamia. Winter enlivens her study with comparanda and concepts from beyond the ancient Near East, including aspects of worship in modern Hindu temples in India and a consideration of the concept of Gesamtkunswerk—​of Western operatic tradition—​as applicable to the multisensory temple/​ritual experience of Mesopotamia. Similarly emphasising context at the intersection of sensory experience and ritualised practice, Rick Bonnie’s investigation of stepped water installations in early Roman Palestine demonstrates how the varying soundscapes, smellscapes, and sense of place experienced at the pool installations at Jericho, Masada, Magdala, and Gamla during purification rituals created a diversity of experiences for different Jewish communities. Sarah Costello’s investigation of ritualised practice at the site of Göbekli Tepe continues the inquiry into the connection between multisensory experience and community, presenting an innovative exploration of how interactions with the megaliths and miniatures at this early Neolithic site reinforced the community’s shared cosmological view. Jen Thum’s contribution also engages with truly monumental material—​two Egyptian royal living-​rock stelae. The choice of location for these features, Thum argues, demonstrates that their sensorial potentials—​as experienced by passers-​by—​was integral to their purpose as media through which royal messages were transmitted. Next, Frances Pinnock takes us back to an urban context with a multilevel exploration of performative spaces at Ebla, guiding the reader through the complex sensescape of ceremonial activities of kingship at the site and drawing upon both archaeological and textual evidence. Focusing on a single royal monument—​the Ishtar Gate of Nebuchadnezzar II at Babylon—​as a case study, Beate Pongratz-​Leisten takes a cultural-​historical approach to multisensory built environments of Mesopotamian cities, specifically city walls and city gates, in order to investigate questions of agency, social memory, and collective imagination. Christine Palmer similarly draws attention to bodily movement and engagement with architecture in her study of a worshipper’s pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple, connecting the particulars of this sensory experience with the creation and shaping of a shared cultural narrative and distinctive Israelite identity. The section concludes with Paul Flesher’s meticulous analysis of the acoustic dynamics of the early stages of the Nabratein synagogue hall. Flesher’s findings demonstrate the importance of such a study for understanding not only ancient architectural spaces but also the forms of ritualised practice and worship carried out within them. Contributors to the fourth section, “Death and burial,” investigate not only burial spaces and associated sensory experiences, but also the powerful multisensory performances associated with death and the deceased, drawing on textual sources as well as preserved archaeological material. Nicola Laneri begins the section with a consideration of the potent senses associated with ancestor worship and veneration across the ancient Near East, with case studies ranging from prehistoric to Bronze and Iron Age societies. Narrowing the focus to intramural burials from two Levantine mortuary contexts—​at Qatna and Tel Megiddo—​Melissa Cradic argues for the importance of continued interaction between the living and the deceased through mortuary rituals and for associating their constructed sensory environments with a sensibility of death. 10

Introduction

Helen Dixon keeps us situated in the Levant with her invigorating exploration of the tapestry of smells and olfactory substances associated with Phoenician mortuary practices, beginning with a discussion of the relevant vocabulary before moving on to considerations of both archaeological and textual evidence connected with death and burial. Wrapping up the section is Lissette Jiménez’s study of funerary practices in Roman Egypt. Taking the reader on a multisensory journey—​beginning with the painted portraits and shrouds attached to the mummified remains of the deceased to magical texts, ritual offerings, and the tomb landscape—​Jiménez brings to light how these commemorative practices were experienced not only by the dead, but by the living. In the fifth section of the volume, “Science, medicine, and aesthetics,” contributors offer detailed analyses of the role of sensory experiences in the ancient Near Eastern understanding of the universe, and the relationship of humans to it. Relying heavily though not exclusively on textual evidence, the authors demonstrate how the fields of philosophy, intellectual history, and sensory studies intersect in a rich way. Willis Monroe’s exploration of the relevance of the sense of vision in Mesopotamian astronomical observations reminds us that in the most elite, literate corners of the ancient world—​the scribal contexts that produced scholarly compendia—​ visual experiences were indispensable. Ulrike Steinert’s exploration of sensing in both health care practice and illness from medical (and related) texts provides numerous insights about the Mesopotamian understanding of the sensory effects of disease and the bodily experiences of sensing physicians, healers, and patients. An important facet of sensory studies and of how humans navigate their way in the universe is the exploration of sensorial deficits, a part of the larger and multidisciplinary field of disability studies. Edgar Kellenberger provides a reading of the Hebrew Bible/​Old Testament that demonstrates through the analysis of terms within their contexts how individuals who could not always sense or perceive were understood in biblical society. Continuing the comparison of ancient Near Eastern phenomenological understandings with our own modern ones, Karen Sonik interrogates the Eurocentric concepts of aesthetics and art, and discusses how Mesopotamian ideas related to vision differed greatly. In the sixth section of the Handbook, entitled “Languages and semantic fields,” numerous scholars work with texts in various languages and scripts from the ancient Near East to arrive at contextual understandings of words and phrases related to the senses and sensing. The linguistic diversity of the ancient Near East requires an equally diverse range of contributions, with experts on ancient Egyptian, Hittite, Hurrian, Sumerian, and Akkadian weighing in on conceptions of sensory experiences from various regions. Methodologically, the contributors to this section also diverge in their approaches to the ancient texts. In their innovative chapter, Aleksi Sahala and Saana Svärd utilise linguistic algorithms and statistical analysis to understand the uses and contexts, the semantics, of words related to the sense of vision in Mesopotamia. Turning toward metaphors for perception, Elisabeth Steinbach-​Eicke distinguishes between the “proximal” and “distal” senses, and explores their semantic fields in the ancient Egyptian language and script. This chapter is followed by a study of the perception, cognition, and emotional responses to sensory experiences in ancient Egypt derived from conceptual metaphors, offered by Camilla Di Biase-​Dyson and Gaëlle Chantrain. The semantic approach continues in this section with a focus on one sense, olfaction, and Dora Goldsmith’s walk through an idealised ancient Egyptian city. Using a variety of ancient Egyptian papyri and inscriptions, Goldsmith evokes the range of smellscapes that greeted residents in various sections of the urban environment on a daily basis. Extending the idea of semantic analysis for sense-​related words to the Akkadian language, Anne-​Caroline Rendu Loisel explores how the discussion of the materiality of certain objects and substances in Mesopotamian texts can afford access to multisensory experiences through the study of their meanings and contexts. The section concludes with two chapters that employ 11

Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason

the traditional approach of dictionary-​based analysis so fundamental to basic research in ancient languages. Richard Beal delivers an extensive study of textual attestations related to the “five” senses in the Hittite world. And finally, Dennis Campbell offers a concise and complete analysis of the semantic fields related to the senses of “seeing” and “hearing” in Hurrian, the language of the region of Mitanni. Ultimately, the sectional organisation of the volume is driven in large part by methodological approaches, as we have attempted to allow readers to move beyond conceiving of the world along strictly geographic, temporal, or material boundaries. At the same time, this organisational scheme allows readers to explore in their fullest potential the multisensory and synaesthetic moments in the lives of ancient people. Therefore, our approach to the ancient evidence attempts a comparative methodology that is cross-​cultural and cross-​sensorial. We hope that this organisation allows scholars outside of the field of ancient Near Eastern studies to understand the state of the field of sensory studies as applied to a fundamentally important early time and space in the history of the world, while offering to scholars within the field new perspectives on and conceptions of familiar spaces, places, and practices. In our efforts to reconstruct, reimagine, and re-​create the sensory moments of the ancient past, this multidisciplinary and cross-​cultural Handbook acknowledges that those who study the past today desire to come as close to “being there” as possible—​that is, to reconnect with our sensing ancestors through our shared humanity.

Note 1. The “ancient Near East” (also, “ancient Middle East”) is a transcontinental term that refers to a geographical area which includes portions of the continents of Africa, Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Due to the colonial, Western-​centric implications of the terms “Near East” and “Middle East,” the use of continental and geographically oriented terms to refer to this region, including “Western Asia,” “Southwest Asia,” “North Africa,” and “Eastern Mediterranean,” is becoming more widespread. While no term is without its complications and the terminology is fraught with issues, we have chosen to utilise “ancient Near East,” in keeping with disciplinary tradition and previous volumes by our publisher.

Bibliography Avrahami, Y. 2012. The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible. The Library of Hebrew Bible/​Old Testament Studies 545. London: T&T Clark International. Classen, C. 1993. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures. London: Routledge. Corbin, A. 1986. The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Day, J., ed. 2013. Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hawthorn, A., and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds. 2019. Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. Hoffer, P. 2003. Sensory Worlds in Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Howes, D., ed. 1991. The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Howes, D. 2014. “Introduction to Sensory Museology.” The Senses and Society 9 (3): 259–​267. Howes, D., and C. Classen. 2014. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London: Routledge. Howes, D., and C. Classen. 2019. “Sounding/​Resounding Sensory Profiles,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Kruger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press, 3–​54. Hsu, S.-​W., and J. L. Raduà. 2020. The Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Leiden: Brill.

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Koloski-​Ostrow, A. 2018. The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Laporte, D. 2000. The History of Shit. Boston: MIT Press. McMahon, A. 2013. “Space, Sound, and Light: Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monumental Architecture.” AJA 117 (2): 163–​179. Merleau-​Ponty, M. 2012 [1945]. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Donald Landes. London: Routledge. Nadali, D., and F. Pinnock, eds. 2020. Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Near Eastern Contexts. Proceedings of the Conference Held in Rome, Sapienza University June 4th, 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz. Neumann, K. 2018. “Reading the Temple of Nabu as a Coded Sensory Experience.” Iraq 80: 181–​211. Neumann, K. 2019. “Sensing the Sacred in the Neo-​Assyrian Temple: The Presentation of Offerings to the Gods,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 23–​62. Neumann, K. Forthcoming. “From Raw to Ritualized: Following the Trail of Incense of the Assyrian Temple,” in A. Grand-​Clément, A. Vincent, M. Bradly, and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Sensing Divinity: Incense, Religion and the Ancient Sensorium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schellenberg, A., and T. Krüger, eds. 2019. Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. ANEM 25. Atlanta: SBL Press. Shepperson, M. 2017. Sunlight and Shade in the First Cities: A Sensory Archaeology of Early Iraq. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Skeates, R. 2010. An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta. New York: Oxford University Press. Skeates, R., and J. Day, eds. 2020. The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. London: Routledge. Smith, M. M. 2006. How Race is Made: Slavery, the Senses, and Segregation. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Thomason, A. 2016. “The Sense-​Scapes of Neo-​Assyrian Capital Cities: Royal Authority and Bodily Experience.” CAJ 26: 243–​64. Tilford, N. 2017. Sensing World, Sensing Wisdom: The Cognitive Foundation of Biblical Metaphors. Ancient Israel and its Literature 31. Atlanta: SBL Press. Tilley, C. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape. Oxford: Berg. Toner, J., ed. 2016. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity. Cultural Histories 1. London: Bloomsbury. Wittman, M. 2009. “The Inner Experience of Time.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biology 364: 1955–​1967.

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Part I

Practice, production, and taskscapes

1 The sense of practice A case study of tablet sealing at Nippur in the Ur III period (c. 2112–​2004 BCE ) Marian H. Feldman

Introduction Catherine Bell (1992: 67), in a section titled “The Sense of Ritual” of her seminal book, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, writes about the primacy of the social act itself, “how its strategies are lodged in the very doing of the act.” For Bell, the act of doing creates the “sense of ritual,” what she calls ritualisation. This sense of ritual is additional to the traditional five senses of Western (Aristotelian) philosophy, and indeed, it incorporates and draws upon the traditional five senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Ritual is, according to Bell, a fully embodied experiential thing. Bell’s argument relies heavily on practice theory, espoused by scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens. Following Bell’s logic, one can therefore understand practice to engage with and generate (at least some) bodily senses. This chapter explores this claim, specifically examining embodied crafting practices. It argues that a sense of practice emerges from acts of learning and doing and that this sense is critical to the formation of community. I consider this argument through the lens of one specific form of practice, that of sealing tablets, situating my study during the Third Dynasty of Ur (or Ur III period for short, c. 2112–​2004 BCE ) in southern Mesopotamia.

Learning and practice What does it mean to learn something? To know something or know how to do something? How does one learn? These are not simple questions, and they have bedevilled the fields of cognitive science, sociology, psychology, and educational theory. Two basic opposing frameworks exist to explain the process of learning, although in reality they both operate simultaneously and in tandem with one another. One comes out of a Cartesian duality of mind and body, which locates cognitive functioning and knowledge in the mind/​brain. In this view, learning is the feature by which a student grasps in the brain specific propositions. This model underlies much of our school-​based learning frameworks, whereby a teacher imparts discrete chunks of knowledge to the students in a unilateral fashion, such as when a university professor stands at the front of the classroom and lectures while the students take notes to be memorised and repeated later.

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-2

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Marian H. Feldman

An alternative model has developed during the latter part of the last century. This model—​ known as situated learning or situated cognition—​posits learning as an inherently social activity in which the entire body and even collective groups participate (Lave and Wenger 1991). This is an embodied form of knowledge acquisition: learning by doing. We all do a great deal of this, often without even realising it, and it is becoming more commonplace within educational institutions, exemplified in the US collegiate realm by the ever-​increasing emphasis on internships and non-​classroom-​based activities, also called “experiential learning.” The model of embodied, situated learning, though developed to address educational issues in contemporary times, offers a powerful way to look at ancient ways of doing—​that is, ancient practices—​and how these practices engage and stimulate bodily senses to produce a composite “sense of belonging” or “sense of community.” The model postulates that learning entails social participation, in which participants are active in the practices of social communities and construct their identities in relation to these communities (Wenger 1998: 4). In other words, learning and the subsequent doing are both a kind of action (something you do) and a form of belonging (something you become). They are vehicles for the evolution of practices, the inclusion of newcomers, and the development and transformation of identities (Wenger 1998: 13). If learning and doing are inherently social, much of which happens through bodily practices, then the traces of these bodily practices found in the material products left behind (that is, ancient artefacts) should allow us to infer both the mechanics of learning/​doing and the social communities in which they occurred. Taken as a whole, these mechanics of learning/​doing, felt through the actions of the body, produce a sense, or a feeling, of individual and community belonging. Since learning changes who we are and creates histories of becoming, looking at learned practices of doing offers access to past communities and identities. Within the context of ancient Egypt, Willeke Wendrich (2012) has dissected the different components of learning through apprenticeship (which is a quintessential form of situated learning). She breaks the process into the following: dexterity, skill, endurance, memory, consideration, and properness (Wendrich 2012: 3). The entwining of bodily and conceptual components is critical for discerning how practice generates a sense of community. Dexterity, skill, and endurance—​what Wendrich (2006) calls “body knowledge”—​all focus on bodily actions: the physical ability to perform an activity in the proper sequence and for the required amount of time (Wendrich 2012: 3). At the same time, apprenticeship develops a collective memory of the activity and its products, an attention to the activity (consideration), and an awareness of the appropriateness of the activity (properness) (Wendrich 2012: 3). The bodily actions produce sensations through the doing of the actions, which in turn are integrated into the cognitive realm of memory. In other words, the collective memory and discernment of propriety emerge from the bodily doing as it is situated within a community of practitioners, and these memories and discernments fold back into the community as traditions of doing. While one direction to follow in thinking about learning and doing is that of practice theory, drawing on the seminal scholarship of Pierre Bourdieu (1977; 1990), André Leroi-​Gourhan (1993), Pierre Lemonnier (1992), and others (particularly in the French sociology/​anthropology tradition), another—​not mutually exclusive—​way to approach the question is through sensorial effects. Practice theory convincingly proposes that bodily and material processes of doing encompass, condition, constrain, and shape social relations. Yet one could argue that the theory lacks a foundational explanation for why this should be, an explanation that I suggest is rooted in the bodily senses. It is through the feeling and sensing of the bodily practices that the memories and identities are enacted. Wendrich (2006; 2012: 4) hints at this when she describes “body knowledge” as “a physical memory embedded in muscle and the central nervous system” (muscle

18

Case study of tablet sealing at Nippur

memory). Thus, bringing sensory studies into conversation with practice theory offers a compelling explanation for identity and community emergence—​a sense of belonging.

Sealing practices and the Ur III period One could apply the above proposals to the production and creation of any number of different material objects that have survived for us today. For this chapter, I concentrate on the practice of sealing tablets during the Ur III period, and in particular, on a restricted corpus from the site of Nippur.1 Ur III sealed tablets offer a particularly valuable corpus to think through the engagement of the senses with productive practices for two reasons (Figure 1.1). First, the methods and sometimes also the sequence of different practices, such as inscribing and sealing, can be discerned through close analysis of the tablets, permitting a reconstruction of the bodily actions involved in their production. Second, the inscription of the names of individuals, both those who owned the seals and those involved in the recorded transactions, allow for some educated guesswork regarding the association of various activities with specific human bodies. It is worth noting at the outset that while sealing is a widespread and characteristic activity throughout most periods of the ancient Near East, sealing practices differ in significant ways from period to period and from place to place (Gibson and Biggs 1977; Hallo and Winter 2001; Pittman 2013; Otto 2019). It is, therefore, necessary first to discuss briefly general sealing practices in the ancient Near East and then to qualify the specific features of sealing practices during the Ur III period.

Figure 1.1  Scan of tablet UM 29-​15-​916 (NATN 663; CDLI P121361). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

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The use of seals to mark malleable surfaces such as clay is evidenced in the Near East already in the late Neolithic period, for example at Sabi Abyad in the Balikh River valley of northern Syria, where large quantities of containers were covered by clay which was then impressed by seals (c. 5200 BCE ; Akkermans and Duistermaat 1996). Early examples of seals from the sixth through fourth millennia BCE are relatively numerous and take the forms of various stamping devices (Buchanan 1981: 5–​41; Pittman 2001). Sometime around the middle of the fourth millennium, a new form of sealing device appears in the shape of a spool. This spool shape, in which the design is carved around the circumference, effectively eliminating any starting or ending points, seems to develop in conjunction with administrative experiments in information storage methods that eventually lead to the cuneiform writing system. While the precise trajectory of this development remains contested, one technique for storing information that is found at sites associated with an exchange network dating to the Uruk period (roughly the fourth millennium BCE ) throughout the Near East (for example, at Susa in southwestern Iran, Habuba Kabira in Syria, and Hacınebi in Turkey) uses clay balls (referred to in the scholarly literature as bullae; Nissen et al. 1990; Schmandt-​Besserat 1992; 1996; Woods 2010; Pittman 2013: 324–​325; Frahm and Wagensonner 2019). The clay balls enclosed groups of small tokens that presumably conveyed information about quantity and type of transacted items. The cylindrically shaped seals were rolled over the entire outer surface of the ball, securing the tokens inside. Tablets (which may be understood to be flattened bullae, although this developmental relationship is not secure) were also rolled with cylinder seals in the earliest periods of the development of writing, during the Late Uruk and subsequent Jemdet Nasr periods (from around 3500–​2900 BCE ). Once introduced, the cylinder seal remains the dominant form of sealing device through the first millennium BCE , operating in tandem with the cuneiform writing system. However, tablets themselves were not impressed with seals in all periods, and in fact, after the initial development during the Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods, tablets were rarely sealed until the Ur III period at the end of the third millennium (Steinkeller 1977: 41; Tsouparopoulou 2015: 17). Instead, during the Early Dynastic and Akkadian periods (c. 2900–​2112 BCE ), cylinder seal use occurs primarily on sealings securing items such as containers and rooms. The Ur III period sees a dramatic increase in the sheer number of administrative documents, the vast majority produced in relation to the state apparatus to record basic economic transactions. Earlier in the dynasty, these documents were often encased in envelopes which were sealed; whereas in the latter part of the period, at the very end of the reign of King Amar-​Suen (around year nine) and from the reign of Šu-​Suen on, envelopes became rarer and the tablets themselves began to be sealed with increasing frequency and astonishing consistency (Steinkeller 1989: 113; Fischer 1997: 99–​100; Garfinkle 2015: 150; Tsouparopoulou 2015: 17). The so-​called Third Dynasty of Ur emerged at the end of the third millennium BCE as the primary territorial state following the collapse and disintegration of the Akkadian state, the first polity to control all of southern Mesopotamia.2 As is often the case during transitional periods between strong ruling institutions, written documentation is spotty, and our understanding of Ur’s rise remains uncertain. Sometime around 2100 BCE , a ruler by the name Ur-​Namma established a dynasty that would survive over five successive rulers: following Ur-​Namma’s 18-​year rule is his son, Šulgi, who rules for 48 years and is succeeded by three of his sons, Amar-​ Suen (nine years), Šu-​Suen (nine years), and Ibbi-​Sin (25? years). The dynasty, while instituting a variety of centralised practices to facilitate the cohesion of the territorial state, lasted not much more than one hundred years. Despite the relatively short length of the Ur III Dynasty, certain aspects of the state—​in particular the official state economic apparatus—are exceptionally well documented. In fact, the Ur III state is best known to us today through its massive bureaucratic structures that administered 20

Case study of tablet sealing at Nippur

the state’s activities both in the heartland and more distantly and that generated an immense quantity of cuneiform documents, more than 100,000 of which survive today. Of particular note, these administrative documents derive from a variety of different locales throughout the state, although unfortunately, most of them have been recovered through illicit digging. These include texts from the capital of Ur, the cities of Umma, Girsu (modern Tello), Puzriš-​ Dagan (modern Drehem), Nippur, Garšana (modern location unknown), and Irisaĝrig (possibly Tell al-​Wilaya [Viano 2019]), as well as smaller collections from numerous other sites across Mesopotamia (Garfinkle 2015; Sallaberger 1999: 200–​211). The documentation focuses almost exclusively on state-​sponsored activities, providing a highly skewed view on the period (Van De Mieroop 2016: 81). The texts from Nippur offer an exception to this, presenting what appears to be more private enterprise (Garfinkle 2012). What all the texts reveal, in abundance, is the highly centralised nature of Ur III control, which incorporated formerly autonomous areas into the state by means of governors and military leaders and which derived its wealth from a complex system of taxation. Many scholars of the Ur III period have noted the high degree of standardisation that characterises the administrative texts of the period. Van De Mieroop (2016: 84–​85) writes, “The scribes who wrote them [the administrative records] had to be trained to use proper accounting techniques and formulae. We see a uniformity of the writing system in official documents through the Ur III state, and it is likely that schools were established to teach this.” Just as there was uniformity in the writing system, so too was there extraordinary consistency in the specific ways of sealing the documents. Numerous studies over the last 40 years have investigated the general sealing practices of the Ur III period, providing an important window onto the degree to which these practices were shared across regions and communities (for example, Hattori 2001; 2002; Reichel 2003; Tsouparopoulou 2015). In general, in the later part of the Ur III period when tablets were routinely sealed, the seal impressions cover the obverse and reverse of the tablet, as well as usually three or four of its edges. Atsuko Hattori (2001) demonstrated that typically the tablet was inscribed first and then impressed. Most sealed Ur III tablets can be classified as administrative in nature. Piotr Steinkeller (1977) established a basic typology of these tablets still drawn upon today, dividing the corpus into three main groups: standard administrative texts (ration lists, receipts, disbursements, and so forth); bullae; and letter orders. Steinkeller (1977: 42) notes that among the standard administrative texts, seal impressions occur almost exclusively on receipts and disbursements. They appear most frequently on receipts characterised by certain Sumerian keywords: šu ba-ti (“he received” + inanimate entities), i3-​dab5 (“he received” + animate entities), and kišib (“seal (of PN)”). Christina Tsouparopoulou (2015: 9, 80–​81), in her study of the sealed tablets from the administrative centre of Puzriš-​Dagan, argues that tablet sealing served multiple, sometimes overlapping, purposes during the Ur III period: to identify the responsible individual in a transaction; to identify the tablet writer; to prevent tampering with the text; and to confirm receipt of goods. The seals used to impress the tablets also exhibit highly standardised compositions (Winter 1986; 1987). The most common design is the so-​called presentation scene, in which a standing individual, often with one or more lesser divine figures, comes before a seated deity or ruler (Figure 1.2). While there is some degree of variation occurring within this composition, and there are seals carved with alternative motifs (most notably animal combats), the vast majority of Ur III seals follow the basic presentation scene format (Collon 1982; Tsouparopoulou 2015: 27–​36). The visual depiction is almost always accompanied by a cuneiform inscription (or legend) arranged in a rectangular field (referred to as a cartouche) that is divided by lines into vertical boxes. The legend, of two to six lines, names the seal owner, and, depending on the length of the inscription, also his occupation, patronym (or father’s name), the father’s occupation, and name 21

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Figure 1.2  Ur III cylinder seal and impression, with two-​line inscription, “Aḫa-​nīšu, the servant of Nūr-​Šulgi.” Black stone (hematite?). Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum (FIC.07.178). Source: Courtesy of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum.

of the seal owner’s overlord (Tsouparopoulou 2015: 22–​27). The legends are oriented 90 degrees in relation to the image such that, visually, they run vertically next to the upright forms of the standing and seated figures. Thus, in order to read the inscriptions, the seal must be turned at a right angle relative to the image—​a compositional strategy with implications for the sealing process.3

The case of Nippur Studies of Ur III sealing practices have examined which types of administrative documents are sealed and by whom, showing that, for example, at some locations, the shapes of tablets correspond to their content and that particular types of tablets tend to be sealed in specific ways (Hattori 2001; Tsouparopoulou 2015: 43–​44). Hattori (2001: 89–​97) presents the case of five sale tablets from Nippur that exhibit an idiosyncratic method of sealing by high-​ranking officials (see also Tsouparopoulou 2015: 81). These five tablets, which are larger than the typical Ur III tablet, contain only one sealing, rolled vertically down the centre of the reverse of the tablet in such a way that both the entire imagery and the inscription are visible. The seals belong to high officials, including judges, and they authorise transactions of relatively large amounts of money. Hattori (2001: 95) notes that although only five such sale documents exist, they span a considerable period of time, approximately 20 to 30 years, lasting from year 36 of Šulgi’s reign into the early years of Šu-​Suen and possibly as late as Ibbi-​Sin. For this reason, Hattori (2001: 95–​96) suggests that the unusual method of sealing may be more than just a single individual’s idiosyncratic way of rolling a seal, and instead proposes “an established sealing practice involving a high-​ ranking officer as transaction authorizer.” Hattori (2001: 89) concludes that, “the content of the texts and of the seal impressions suggests that this distinctive way of sealing is a special procedure observed among the upper echelons of Nippur.” This in turn suggests that this distinctive way of sealing was “taught” (or passed along) to individuals who formed part of a small elite group. 22

Case study of tablet sealing at Nippur

Products of everyday practice by individuals of lower status—​though still in the upper levels of society—​provide further insight into how sealing practices were learned and shared, and how these practices formed communities. The ways in which these individuals learned to do everyday procedures would have enmeshed those individuals in communities of shared experiences, forming bodily memories.4 Nippur is a particularly useful site with which to conduct such an investigation. First, the tablets from the site derive from accredited archaeological excavations conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, even if these excavations, undertaken in the early years of Near Eastern archaeology at the end of the nineteenth century, provide only imprecise findspots within the site itself (Hattori 2002: 7–​6; Garfinkle 2012: 110–​112). Second, the corpus of Ur III texts from Nippur has been associated with non-​institutional (“private”) entities despite the fact that many of the individuals documented in the texts have close associations with the state administration (Garfinkle 2012: 110–​112). Steven Garfinkle (2012) argues for a flourishing non-​institutional economy during the Ur III period, evidence for which has seldom survived in the state archives, but which is discernible from the Nippur texts. Last, Nippur was one of the most important cities of southern Mesopotamia, with archaeological evidence for continuous occupation from the Ubaid period in the sixth millennium BCE into the Common Era (for some summaries and bibliography, see Ellis 1992; McMahon 2006). Throughout the third millennium BCE , Nippur—​as the city housing the temple of the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon, Enlil—​served as the central religious site for all of southern Mesopotamia. The main temple complex of Enlil, called the Ekur, was an extensive religious institution containing multiple buildings within a large courtyard situated on a high point of one of the ancient tells. The Ur III rulers lavished attention on the city, with Ur-​Namma and his son Šulgi rebuilding the Ekur and erecting an enormous stepped ziggurat in the precinct. For this chapter, I examined sealed administrative tablets from the University of Pennsylvania Nippur excavations that are attributed to less-​high-​ranking officials and that appear to relate to non-​institutional transactions.5 It should be noted that terms such as “non-​high ranking” and “non-​institutional” are not without problems, especially as we know that the relationship between so-​called private and public spheres was complex and not necessarily aligned with our own understanding of these terms in today’s economy (Garfinkle 2012: 18–​27). I use them here principally as a way to signal an attempt to avoid the unusual and special and to focus instead on the more mundane and everyday segments of society in order to access these communities. I concentrate primarily on receipts, because these are the most commonly sealed documents, and because there is evidence that sealing practices could vary depending on the type of text. Receipts are by far the most common type of document to be sealed during the Ur III period, and they present an ideal corpus of everyday transactions that took place among a diverse group of people. Nonetheless, because I analysed sealing practices of five different “individuals” (see below on this), not all the sealed documents belonging to a given individual are receipts. The sealing practices for receipts are generally fairly straightforward—​almost always the tablet was sealed with a seal belonging to the recipient of the goods being recorded or by someone closely related to the recipient. Tsouparopoulou (2015: 79), discussing official documents from Puzriš-​ Dagan, suggests that it was the recipient’s responsibility to write up the receipt and seal it, and then send it to the dispenser as confirmation of receipt of the goods. Receipts offer, therefore, a self-​contained glimpse into personalised sealing practices, belonging both to a larger community of practice (that is, generalised ways of doing things) as well as smaller or even individual identities as revealed by idiosyncratic ways of doing things. I also limited my corpus to tablets dated to the reign of Šu-​Suen, with an occasional tablet from Amar-​Suen’s final years eight and nine, due to the major shift in sealing practices that occurred at the end of Amar-​Suen’s reign (Fischer 1997: 99–​100). 23

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Working from Hattori’s 2002 dissertation on Ur III sealings on Nippur tablets, in which she catalogues all the occurrences of sealings belonging to specific, identified individuals, I isolated subsets in which there are four or more tablets bearing an individual’s seal. According to Hattori (2001: 73), of 1,372 sealed tablets that she examined, 544 are sealed by 489 different individual seals. Only 41 seals were found on more than one document, 26 of which were found only twice. Only five seals occurred on four or more documents, constituting my five groups. A quick caveat regarding my use of the term “individual:” I am starting from the base assumption that the person named in the seal legend is the person who impressed the seal on the tablet. This of course may not have been the case, especially when the named recipient, who is usually the one to seal receipt tablets, is different from the person named on the seal. However, it does appear to be the case most of the time. Of my five groups, three contain four documents, one contains five documents, and one has at least ten (possibly 126) documents. The vast majority of the tablets in my five groups are receipts of the šu ba-ti type, often for grains. Briefly, my groups are the following: (1) four tablets sealed with the seal of En-​engar, all dated to the reign of Šu-​Suen, all šu ba-ti receipts; in only one of the four receipts was En-​engar the recipient (Hattori 2002: SI n. 56); (2) four tablets sealed with the seal of Ur-​du6-​ku3, son of Ur-​me-​me; two are dated to the reign of Šu-​Suen, the other two are undated; one of the tablets is a šu ba-ti receipt, the other three are legal agreements (Hattori 2002: SI n. 102); (3) four tablets sealed with the seal of Lugal-​ma2-​gur3-​re, scribe and servant of Lugal-​me-​lam2; these are various receipts involving textiles; two of the four are dated to Amar-​Suen years eight and nine, the other two date to the first year of Šu-​Suen (Hattori 2002: SI n. 354); (4) five tablets sealed with the seal of Ma-​(an)-​gu-​ul; four of these are receipts and one is fragmentary and preserves only the date; four tablets bear dates, all in the reign of Šu-​Suen (Hattori 2002: SI n. 75); and (5) ten tablets sealed with the seal of Ur-​dma-​mi, son of Ḫu-​ḫa; they are all receipts: nine with the šu ba-ti clause, one with the i3-​dab5 clause; of the six that have a date, five are from Šu-​Suen’s reign and the sixth one probably is (Hattori 2002: SI n. 73). These Nippur tablets conform to the general conventions of sealing administrative tablets, and especially receipts, already studied by other scholars (for recent review, see Tsouparopoulou 2015: 43–​84). Tablet UM 29-​15-​916 is representative of the general sealing practices seen among all the tablets that I examined and can serve as an example (Figures 1.1 and 1.3a–​b). UM 29-​15-​ 916 is a šu ba-ti receipt for barley seed (Owen 1982: no. 663; CDLI P121361). The tablet itself is of whitish-​yellow clay and takes a neatly flattened, square form about 3.8 centimetres on each side, with flattened edges. Today, it has a somewhat matte, slurried surface and is cracked along the reverse and two edges. As with the other Nippur tablets, it was written first and then sealed. The recipient and sealer of the tablet is Ur-​dma-​mi, son of Ḫu-​ḫa (Hattori 2002: SI n. 73). This is one of at least ten sealings using Ur-​dma-​mi’s seal, the largest number of sealed documents for any individual among the Nippur corpus. The seal impressions preserve areas of the seal’s presentation scene, showing parts of the seated deity (a goddess in a flounced garment), crescent moon, and a standing figure (Figure 1.3b).7 As is usual on these receipts, the seal legend is impressed in the empty space on the reverse of the tablet. The two-​line seal legend is entirely visible in this placement, along with part of the standing “worshipper” to the right of the legend. Because the edge of the seal legend directly abuts the left edge of the tablet, and because the height of the seal (down which the seal legend runs perpendicularly) is shorter than the breadth of the tablet, the empty space that would have remained to the right side of the impressed legend 24

Case study of tablet sealing at Nippur

Figure 1.3a  Tablet UM 29-​15-​916 (NATN 663; CDLI P121361) with seal impressions drawn onto it. Source: Image created by Laurel Poolman; © Marian H. Feldman.

Figure 1.3b  Reconstructed drawing of seal impressed on UM 29-​15-​916, showing seal legend with goddess and standing worshipper. Source: Drawing by author; © Marian H. Feldman.

was filled with another, partial impression of the seal, ensuring that no blank space would remain. Whereas on many of these small Nippur tablets, the entirety of the inscribed text was impressed with the seal legend, I could not see any traces of impressions over the reverse text, although the surface, as noted, was slurry and the impressions might not have been visible to my eye. The obverse also conforms to the pattern seen in the other Nippur tablets, with two columns of impressions running vertically from top to bottom over the inscribed text. These impressions highlighted the legend area of the seal, although occasional parts of the figures to either side of 25

Marian H. Feldman

the legend were also included. In all the sealings found on the tablet, the seal appears to have been pressed into the clay more so than rolled, with the seal legend repeating at least two times in both left-​and right-​hand columns. Because of the small size of the tablet relative to the height of the seal, the left-​hand column preserves the full vertical extent of the seal (that is, the entire width of the inscription), while the right-​hand column is narrower and only captured part of the length of the inscription. Two separate imprints of the seal legend, along with part of the back of the seated goddess to the left, can be clearly seen in the left-​hand column, as well as fainter impressions of at least two imprints of this same seal, including part of the seated goddess, in the right-​hand column. Interestingly, these imprints seem to indicate that the seal was pressed down and rocked slightly leftward, capturing the two lines of the legend and part of the seated goddess, while on the reverse, in the empty space, the seal appears to have been pressed down and rocked slightly rightward, capturing the legend and the standing figure to its right. One might imagine that the reverse imprint would be made first, since its clarity and legibility appear to have been of prime consideration, as seen in the “fixing” and re-​impressing of this part of another Nippur tablet (see below and Feldman forthcoming). The sealings on the obverse then would follow and would require the tablet to be flipped vertically. All four tablet edges were also impressed with the seal, and in a consistent manner: the seal was pressed into the edge at least twice on each side with the seal held at a right angle to the edge. The seal was not rolled, which would have generated a horizontal slice through the seal iconography, but rather pressed down and picked up in order to only impress the area of the seal legend. However, the seal legend inscription is not fully preserved because it was impressed perpendicular to the seal edge. Hattori (2001: figs. 3–​6) illustrates examples of edges impressed with a seal held lengthwise to the edge (what she refers to as a “vertical” impression; 2001: fig. 1), which leaves an impression of the entire seal legend, although none of the tablets that I examined were sealed in this way. It seems clear that the impressing of the edges was performed in a somewhat rote manner so that the same part of the legend—​the dingir and HU signs—​were consist˘ ently imprinted. These signs fall in the middle-​left part of the legend and therefore would have been located in the upper-​middle of the seal itself. One might reconstruct the manual process of impressing the edges, holding the seal vertically in one hand and the tablet horizontally in the other, as a series of quick pressures while rotating the tablet from edge to edge. A characteristic feature that I observed on many of the Nippur tablets I examined is a slight displacement of clay in the upper left corner of the obverse, where it appears the act of impressing the seal was begun with a certain amount of force creating a depression in the tablet surface. This feature is a good indicator of, on the one hand, the consistent order in which a seal was impressed on a tablet, and on the other hand, idiosyncratic bodily movements that appear to correlate with specific sealers who use greater or lesser force in the application of the seal. While this appears idiosyncratically more clearly on certain of the tablet groups, for example, a group of four tablets bearing the seal of En-​engar (CBS 8131, CBS 8678, CBS 8686, and CBS 8705; Hattori 2002: SI n. 56), it is apparent on almost all of the other sealed tablets from my five groups, suggesting that it was the result of a shared, habitual way of sealing (Figure 1.4). According to this scenario, one would begin sealing a tablet in the top left corner, then proceed downward, picking the seal up and starting the impressing again, and then making a second set of impressions along a narrower band on the right side of the tablet. We may surmise that these “non-​institutional” individuals learned a particular sequence of sealing that was widely shared, although some individuals executed it with greater bodily energy. The complete sequence of sealing obverse, reverse, and edges is not entirely certain. The force of the indentation made on the upper left of the obverse might suggest that this would be the very first place of impression, followed by the reverse with the edges being the last to be 26

Case study of tablet sealing at Nippur

Figure 1.4  Tablet sealed with the seal of En-​engar showing displacement of clay in upper left-​ hand corner of obverse. Penn Museum (CBS 8131). Source: Photo by author; courtesy of Penn Museum.

impressed. However, the imperative to have a clearly rendered, legible impression of the entire seal legend in the space on the reverse (see below and Feldman forthcoming) may indicate that the sealer began on the reverse and then turned to impress the obverse and the edges. If, as has been proposed by Tsouparopoulou (2015: 47–​48, 68, 79, 84), the sealer was also the person who inscribed the tablet (and, thus, also the person under the obligation recorded on the tablet), one might envision a sequence in which the transaction was inscribed beginning on the obverse, then flipped over to the reverse, upon completion of which the seal was impressed in the empty space of the reverse. Additional impressions on the reverse would follow, with the tablet then flipped back again to the obverse for impressing, ending with the edges. Given the need to both inscribe and impress the tablet within a short period of time before the clay dried out too much, this latter sequence makes the most sense and could be quickly performed in several seamless motions.

The sense of sealing Multiple sensory engagements would have contributed to the overall experience of sealing a tablet. These sensory experiences would have been shared among groups of people, not only those in physical proximity to one another, but also among anyone whose learned bodily motions derived from performing similar sealing practices. Learning to seal in particular ways, thus, created a community of practitioners who would be bound to one another through the shared physical (bodily and sensory) activity of sealing. What, however, were these sensory experiences that created the community? We can deduce at least some of them from the close analysis of the sealing practices described above. Working back from the surviving sealed tablets, the easiest sensory affects for us to access are haptic, visual, and kinaesthetic experiences.8 27

Marian H. Feldman

The sensory experiences of touching and feeling would have been central to the formation of a sense of practice. This is the so-​called muscle memory that occurs when a bodily action is engaged in repeatedly to the point that one can perform the motion without conscious thought. It is something like learning to drive a stick-​shift vehicle (now a vanishing skill). At first, you have to think about each moving part—​the hand on the gear stick, the left foot on the clutch, the right foot on the gas pedal; each action has to happen in the proper sequence and tempo in order to smoothly move forward or stop without stalling. In the early days of learning all the separate actions, it feels as if you will never be able to master the sequence, and then at some point it clicks, and the body performs the right moves in the correct order without thought. You have entered the community of manual car drivers. One imagines a similar process in the mastery of sealing a tablet, as well as a similar sense of initiation into a group bound by specialised knowledge and skills. We know from later, Old Babylonian school texts where scribes are first learning to write cuneiform, for example, that repeating the motions of horizontal, vertical, and oblique cuneiform wedge marks constituted an early part of scribal training (Wagensonner 2019: 141).9 The Ur III tablets from Nippur mostly fall within a standard size and shape, typically around three to four centimetres in height and length (usually fairly square). They fit compactly in the hand, held between the thumb, forefinger, and other fingers (Figure 1.5). On most of the tablets, there are clear indentations on the tablet edges near the corners, many of which still preserve the fingerprints of the holder (also, Taylor 2011: 13). The clay at this point would still be damp enough to be able to inscribe the text and then imprint the seal, providing a feeling of moisture and the yielding sense of the matrix as the fingers applied pressure to the tablet edges.10 As already mentioned, Tsouparopoulou (2015: 47–​48, 68, 79, 84) argues that, at least for short transactional records, a single person was responsible for writing the text and sealing the tablet.

Figure 1.5  Photograph of author holding CBS 8678. Source: Photo by author; courtesy of the Penn Museum. 28

Case study of tablet sealing at Nippur

Perhaps this same person also formed the tablet.11 Depending on the composition of the clay (the visual inspection of the tablets reveals several different clays, exhibiting colours from yellow-​ green to red-​brown and varying degrees of fineness of the particles), it could feel smoothly plastic, perhaps sticky or gritty. Considering the visual experience is complicated because of what could and could not be seen of the seal and its impression. Typically, visual experience has been accorded a privileged status in the sensorium (see, for example, Candlin 2018: 27), and when we study ancient seals we focus mostly on a visual inspection of the carved representation. However, the visual operates slightly differently on the impressed Nippur tablets. First, as has been noted, the figural depiction carved on the seal seems to be, at best, of secondary interest in the sealing practice of these tablets. Instead, the seal legend assumed primacy. On all the tablets that I examined, and a common practice among Ur III administrative tablets in general, a space on the reverse permitted the impression of a fully legible seal legend. Because such blank spaces are not found on all Ur III tablets or are occasionally found devoid of any seal impressions, there has been debate regarding the intended purpose of these spaces (Tsouparopoulou 2015: 82). One of the Nippur tablets, UM 29-​15-​893, however, suggests that at least for many documents, providing an empty space in order to create a fully legible imprint of the seal legend was paramount (Figure 1.6). UM 29-​15-​893, a legal document bearing the seal of Ur-​du6-​ku3, shows evidence that its blank space was “fixed” with added clay that was then impressed (or perhaps re-​impressed) with the seal,

Figure 1.6  Reverse of tablet UM 29-​15-​893. Source: Photo by author; courtesy of the Penn Museum. 29

Marian H. Feldman

Figure 1.7  Detail of corrected area on reverse of tablet UM 29-​15-​893. Source: Photo by author; courtesy of the Penn Museum.

providing a legible imprint of the inscription (Feldman forthcoming) (Figure 1.7). Elsewhere, I have suggested that this was in part to facilitate the visibility, legibility, and identification of the seal legend as it was impressed over the inscribed text on the rest of the tablet. Thus, the visual experience of sealing involved an intimacy with the inscription on both the part of the sealer and anyone later needing to verify the tablet (see also Chapter 8, this volume). Kinaesthetic experiences involved in sealing tablets would derive in large part from haptic engagement. Because of the small size of both the tablets and the seals, no large or exaggerated movements would be necessary to create, inscribe, or seal the documents. Indeed, the process may have appeared fairly stationary and could be performed mostly while sitting in one place. However, the possibility that the receipts were inscribed and sealed by the person named as recipient suggests that these tablets were not produced in any kind of assembly-​line fashion, nor was there a small group of trained scribes with a monopoly. Rather, when a situation required it (that is, when a transaction occurred involving a recipient and a disperser), a tablet would be drawn up by the recipient who then gave the document to the disperser for safekeeping (Tsouparopoulou 2015: 79). If the sealing practices occurred automatically, like driving a stick-​ shift car, sealers would seal the entire tablet in a series of already internalised/​learned movements. There has been some debate about when such transactions were actually textually recorded, whether at the time and place of transaction or after the fact (Garfinkle 2015: 147, n. 15). The fact of and standardised ways of sealing the tablets strongly points to a performative element, which in turn suggests that tablets were sealed in the presence of other people, a conclusion confirmed by the listing of witnesses on some documents. The sealer’s kinaesthetic experience would be, on the one hand, the repeated actions of an ingrained, learned set of motions, and on the other hand, conditioned by the assembly of other people present, the setting in which the transactions took place, and perhaps even the specifics of the transaction (fairly everyday and non-​consequential versus momentous and life-​changing).

Conclusion The practices seen on the Nippur tablets are found not just among these so-​called “private” or non-​institutional documents from Nippur, but also in all the major archives of the Ur III period, 30

Case study of tablet sealing at Nippur

most of which stem from large-​scale institutions and in particular, the state. These practices served an important function in bringing together the diverse populations of the emerging territorial state. Garfinkle (2015: 152) has recently explored this in the context of the written texts: “Perhaps the most important aspect of textual production was its ability to define, and sometimes to create, new social networks.” The huge uptick in the production of administrative texts during the Ur III period can be ascribed, according to Garfinkle (2015: 156), to the performative function that the texts served, creating “larger notions of community” through their evidentiary ability to document the participation of the individuals in a larger web of transactions and affairs. Garfinkle (2015: 146, 152) has also demonstrated the interpenetration and entangled affairs of individuals operating between and within both institutional and non-​institutional entities, noting that the Ur III texts exhibit both a standardisation indicative of centralisation, as well as showing continuing significance of local and regional social, economic, and political networks. Garfinkle views the administrative production of tablets, the vast majority of which are simple texts of just a few lines like the ones under study here, in a performative light, their actual making, including their sealing, standing as evidence of the various individuals’ participation in the larger Ur III system. The Ur III administrative tablets can be understood to have actively facilitated state formation, rather than simply being a result of it. Just as Garfinkle sees the texts as performative, sealing likewise was a performative activity. While the tablets may have served an ongoing purpose of manifesting participation through their lasting physical presence, it was the act of production, which brought a group of people together—​ the physical actions undertaken by these people—​ that generated a community through their very doing of the task. Along the lines of Bell’s notion of ritualisation, this “sense of practice” might be conceptualised as practicisation: a fully embodied, experiential sensation of doing. The sensations produced by the bodily actions—​of fingers holding damp clay, or hard stone cylindrical seals pressed into yielding material, or repeated motions of flipping and turning the tablet—​generated a shared collective memory, a body knowledge, that bound the participants into a community.

Notes 1. This chapter draws on current research for a larger project on sealing practices in Ur III Nippur, only some of which can be included here. See also, Feldman forthcoming. 2. The designation Ur III derives from the ancient composition, the Sumerian King List, which identifies the rulers of Ur during this period as the third such dynasty from Ur to rule over Mesopotamia since kingship was first given to humanity by the gods. For a comprehensive overview of the Ur III period, see Sallaberger 1999; for a more general overview, especially of the administrative corpus, see Van De Mieroop 2016: 79–​89. 3. The inscriptions are carved into the seals in mirror reverse, so that the impressed text is legible. 4. While we have preserved the evidence for scribal training “in action,” so to speak, in the form of school texts (see, below, n. 9), there are no clearly identified trial or school exercises demonstrating stages of learning how to impress a tablet. This situation appears to be similar to what Tinney (2011: 589–​590) investigates in the Old Babylonian period, when he finds different “structures of learning” between the realm of liturgical and practical texts (which do not appear as school texts) and those of the scribal curriculum. As a result, Tinney (2011: 590) proposes a “stratified education” with “a common level of elementary instruction in writing, followed by a specialized training as an apprentice.” I suggest a similar manner of apprenticeship as the means by which sealing practices were transmitted and learned. 5. Tablets were examined using a hand-​held magnifying glass on two separate visits to the Penn Museum on May 30, 2019 and July 30–​31, 2019. My sincere thanks to Phil Jones of the Penn Museum Tablet Room for facilitating this study. 31

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6. Hattori (2002: SI n. 73) lists 12 seals belonging to Ur-​dma-​mi; however, in CDLI, two of the 12 sealings identified by Hattori are catalogued as separate seals: UM 29-​15-​913/​NATN660/​CDLI P121358 (transcribed as belonging to ur-ma-mi, dumu ḫu-ḫa?; said to be the same as a seal on UM 29-​15-​ 896/​NATN645/​CDLI P121343) and UM 29-​15-​924/​NATN670/​CDLI P121368 (which is sealed on the case and transcribed by CDLI as ur-​dlamma, dumu ḫu-​x). 7. The reconstructed drawing is based only on the visible sealings on tablet UM 29-​15-​916 and remains incomplete. The sealings preserve partial evidence of the ur, dingir, dumu, and HU signs. The seal is also known ˘ from the other tablets in this group, which provides further evidence for both the image and signs. 8. I take kinaesthesia to be the sensation of one’s own bodily movements, as in Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019: 2, n. 3. 9. A considerable amount of scholarship has been undertaken regarding scribal training, mostly focused on the so-​called school texts; however, most evidence for scribal training dates to the Old Babylonian period or later, with little evidence preserved for the Ur III period. Scholarship on this topic has tended to focus on curricular content of the school texts rather than on the processes of creating the texts (but for an exploration of the student–​teacher relationship in the second and first millennia BCE, see Cohen and Kedar 2011). For a recent, general overview of scribal training, with references, see Wagensonner 2019. 10. For a general overview of the production of tablets, including the physical properties of clay, ways of shaping and forming tablets, and writing practices, see Taylor 2011 and the articles from two workshops investigating the production of tablets (Biga and Taylor 2011). 11. See, for example, an ancient exhortation: “Go! Knead your tablet! Make it! Write it! Finish your tablet!” from an Old Babylonian bilingual text, cited in Wagensonner 2019: 141; see also Taylor 2011: 12. It is unclear how such texts fit into the scribal training system, nor their relationship to the actual practices that they describe (Crisostomo 2016).

Bibliography Akkermans, P. M. M. G., and K. Duistermaat. 1996. “Of Storage and Nomads: The Sealings from Late Neolithic Sabi Abyad, Syria.” Paléorient 22 (2): 17–​44. Bell, C. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Biga, M. G., and J. Taylor, eds. 2011. “Produzione, composizione e analisi delle tavolette cuneiformi.” Scienze dell’antichità 17: 273–​426. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [first published as Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois études d’ethnologie kabyle, 1972]. Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Trans. R. Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press [first published as Le sens pratique, 1980]. Buchanan, B. 1981. Early Near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Candlin, F. 2018. “Sensory Separation and the Founding of Art History,” in D. Howes, ed., Senses and Sensation: Critical and Primary Sources, vol. 4, Art and Design. London: Bloomsbury, 27–​41. Cohen, Y., and S. Kedar. 2011. “Teacher-​Student Relationships: Two Case Studies,” in K. Radner and E. Robson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 229–​247. Collon, D. 1982. Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals II. Akkadian—​ Post Akkadian—​Ur III Periods. London: British Museum Publications. Crisostomo, C. J. 2016. “Multilingualism and Formulations of Scholarship: The Rosen Vocabulary.” ZA 106: 22–​32. Ellis, M. 1992. Nippur at the Centennial: Papers Read at the 35e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Philadelphia, 1988. Philadelphia: Distributed by the S. N. Kramer Fund, Babylonian Section, University Museum. Feldman, M. H. Forthcoming. “Making an Impression: How to Seal an Ur III Period Administrative Tablet in Nippur,” in B. M. Bryan, M. Smith, T. Di Cerbo, and M. Escolano-​Poveda, eds., Festschrift for Richard Jasnow. Atlanta: Lockwood Press. Fischer, C. 1997. “Siegelabrollungen im British Museum auf Ur-​III-​Zeitlichen Texten aus der Provinz Lagaš: Untersuchung zu den Verehrungsszenen.” Baghdader Mitteilungen 28 (1997): 97–​183. Frahm, E., and K. Wagensonner. 2019. “Cuneiform Writing: Origins, History, Decipherment,” in A. W. Lassen, E. Frahm, and K. Wagensonner, eds., Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: Highlights of the Yale Babylonian Collection. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 23–​43.

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Garfinkle, S. J. 2012. Entrepreneurs and Enterprise in Early Mesopotamia: A Study of Three Archives from the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112–​2004 BCE). Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology (CUSAS) 22. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. Garfinkle, S. J. 2015. “Ur III Administrative Texts: Building Blocks of State Community,” in P. Delnero and J. Lauinger, eds., Texts and Contexts: The Circulation and Transmission of Cuneiform Texts in Social Space. Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 143–​165. Gibson, M., and R. D. Biggs. 1977. Seals and Sealing in the Ancient Near East. Malibu: Undena Publications. Hallo, W. W., and I. J. Winter. 2001. Proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Part II: Seals and Seal Impressions. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. Hattori, A. 2001. “Sealing Practices in Ur III Nippur,” in W. W. Hallo and I. J. Winter, eds., Proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, pt. II, Seals and Seal Impressions. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 71–​99. Hattori, A. 2002. “Texts and Impressions: A Holistic Approach to Ur III Cuneiform Tablets from the University of Pennsylvania Expeditions to Nippur.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Hawthorn, A., and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel. 2019. “The Senses in the Ancient Near East: An Introduction,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 1–​20. Lave, J., and E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lemonnier, P. 1992. Elements for an Anthropology of Technology. Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Anthropology 88. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Leroi-​Gourhan, A. 1993. Gesture and Speech. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [originally published as Le geste et la parole, 2 volumes, 1964–​1965]. McMahon, A. 2006. Nippur V: The Early Dynastic to Akkadian Transition: The Area WF Sounding at Nippur. OIP 129. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Nissen, H. J., P. Damerow, and R. K. Englund. 1990. Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Otto, A. 2019. “Glyptic,” in A. C. Gunter, ed., A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art. Medford, MA: Wiley/​Blackwell. Owen, D. I. 1982. Neo-​Sumerian Archival Texts Primarily from Nippur in the University Museum, The Oriental Institute and the Iraq Museum (NATN). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Pittman, H. 2001. “Mesopotamian Intraregional Relations Reflected through Glyptic Evidence in the Late Chalcolithic 1–​5 Periods,” in M. S. Rothman, ed., Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbors: Cross-​Cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 403–​443. Pittman, H. 2013. “Seals and Sealings in the Sumerian World,” in H. Crawford, ed., The Sumerian World. London: Routledge, 319–​341. Reichel, C. 2003. “Appendix: Sealing Practice,” in M. Hilgert, Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Amar-​Suena. OIP 121. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 603–​624. Sallaberger, W. 1999. “Ur III-​Zeit,” in W. Sallaberger and A. Westenholz, Mesopotamien: Akkade-​Zeit und Ur III-​Zeit. OBO 160 (3). Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 121–​390. Schmandt-​Besserat, D. 1992. Before Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press. Schmandt-​Besserat, D. 1996. How Writing Came About. First Abridged Edition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Steinkeller, P. 1977. “Seal Practice in the Ur III Period,” in M. Gibson and R. D. Biggs, eds., Seals and Sealing in the Ancient Near East. Malibu: Undena Publications, 41–​53. Steinkeller, P. 1989. Sale Documents of the Ur-​ III-​ Period. Freiburger Altorientalische Studien 17. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH. Taylor, J. 2011. “Tablets as Artefacts, Scribes as Artisans,” in K. Radner and E. Robson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 5–​31. Tinney, S. 2011. “Tablets of Schools and Scholars: A Portrait of the Old Babylonian Corpus,” in K. Radner and E. Robson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 577–​596. Tsouparopoulou, C. 2015. The Ur III Seals Impressed on Documents from Puzriš-​Dagān (Drehem). Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 16. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag.

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Van De Mieroop, M. 2016. A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–​ 323 BC. Third Edition. Chichester: Wiley-​Blackwell. Viano, M. 2019. “On the Location of Irisaĝrig Once Again.” JCS 71: 35–​52. Wagensonner, K. 2019. “Becoming a Scribe: On Aspects of Education and Apprenticeship in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in A. W. Lassen, E. Frahm, and K. Wagensonner, eds., Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: Highlights of the Yale Babylonian Collection. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 139–​147. Wendrich, W. 2006. “Body Knowledge: Ethnoarchaeological Learning and the Interpretation of Ancient Technology,” in B. Mathieu, D. Meeks, and M. Wissa, eds., L’apport de l’Égypte à l’histoire des techniques: méthodes, chronologie et comparaisons. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 267–​275. Wendrich, W. 2012. “Archaeology and Apprenticeship: Bodily Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice,” in W. Wendrich, ed., Archaeology and Apprenticeship: Bodily Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1–​19. Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [18th printing, 2008]. Winter, I. J. 1986. “The King and the Cup: Iconography of the Royal Presentation Scene on Ur III Seals,” in M. Kelly-​Buccellati, ed., Insight through Images: Studies in Honor of Edith Porada. Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 21. Malibu: Undena Publications, 253–​268. Winter, I. J. 1987. “Legitimation of Authority through Image and Legend: Seals Belonging to Officials in the Administrative Bureaucracy of the Ur III State,” in M. Gibson and R. D. Biggs, eds., The Organization of Power: Aspects of Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 46. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 69–​116. Woods, C. 2010. “The Earliest Mesopotamian Writing,” in C. Woods, ed., Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond. OIP 32. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 33–​84.

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2 Senses and textiles in the eastern Mediterranean Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (1550–​1100 BCE ) Caroline Sauvage

Introduction This chapter explores the senses involved in textile production and consumption in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East during the Late Bronze (1550–​1180 BCE ) and Early Iron Ages (1180–​1100 BCE ). My aim is to integrate archaeological, iconographic, and textual evidence to propose a reconstruction of the perception of the textile world. In texts from the site of Ugarit in coastal Syria alone, Vita (2010) lists 35 alphabetic terms and 21 syllabic terms associated with textile terminology. Although the goal of this chapter is not to explore the diversity of textile terminology at Ugarit, it is the perfect starting point to evoke the variety of textures, colours, drapes, thicknesses, and warmth potentially produced by these textiles and clothes. All certainly contributed to a vast array of sensory experiences, potentially combining visual, tactile, and olfactory senses into a multisensorial experience, embodying the essence of the fabric of the Ugaritic society. In this chapter, the senses of touch, smell, and vision will be particularly explored. Following the approach of Howes and Classen, I have decided not to take a sense-​by-​sense approach, because I want to highlight possible dynamic interactions of sensations associated with textile production and consumption. The intermingling of sensations, also known as synaesthesia, is a vehicle for the production of cultural meaning (Howes and Classen 2014: 11), which was one of the key factors involved in textile consumption. The Late Bronze Age of the eastern Mediterranean was a period of intense exchange of goods, ideas, and people. The major and lesser powers of the time, that is to say, Egypt, Hatti, Mitanni, Babylon, Cyprus and the Levantine city-​states, had both intense relationships and extensive trade exchanges. Such widely developed trade was facilitated by a regulated system, including the establishment of a strict hierarchy among participating kings, the use of equivalent weights and measures standards, the exchange of standardised diplomatic letters in Akkadian on cuneiform tablets, the exchange of gifts to link countries and initiate trade negotiations, and finally, a shared interest in the so-​called “international style” of objects made of precious and valuable materials such as ivory, gold, faience, fine linen, and expertly woven and dyed textiles (Feldman 2014).

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-3

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Such objects bear eclectic representations and decorations combining, among other things, Levantine, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Aegean motifs. After the widespread destruction at the end of the Late Bronze Age, international exchange continued to a lesser scale during the Early Iron Age, even if the exact nature of the political organisation of most regions is still debated. Cloth and clothing were an integral part of this Mediterranean elite exchange system and were used as gifts, commodities, and means of symbolic communication, while their bright colours enhanced their materiality and reinforced their value and intrinsic message.

The sensory experience of textile production Spinning and weaving Several types of textile tools are attested in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in the eastern Mediterranean. Spindle whorls, spindles, loom-​ weights, distaffs, and beaters were often manufactured locally,1 and were respectively made of different materials (clay, stone, metal, ivory, bone, wood, reed). They could bear various amounts of decoration, generating a wide array of tactile, visual, and auditory experiences. These were of course not exclusive of each other and all contributed to a dynamic interaction of sensations, probably forming a synaesthetic experience.2 Since not all of these tools were used at the same time by the same people (or social classes), nor for the same product, I will argue that different sensorial experiences were associated with specific textile production and social classes. Although this is not the place to review specifically all the associations of textile tools within their archaeological contexts throughout the eastern Mediterranean, selected examples from sites located in the Levant and Cyprus will support our discussion. In Ugarit, spindle whorls are made of stone (steatite/​chlorite schist, serpentinite, limestone), ivory or bone, perhaps faience, wood, and clay; these whorls are mostly, if not exclusively, dome-​shaped (Sauvage 2012a: 190–​196). At Enkomi in Cyprus, the vast majority of whorls were biconical in shape and made of clay but stone and bone or ivory biconical and dome-​shaped whorls were also common (Figures 2.1a–​b) (Sauvage and Smith 2016). These whorls would have been used to manufacture threads of different thickness, and therefore produced different visual appearances and tactile sensations. I have distinguished four categories of whorls (very light, light, medium, and heavy), which would all have been used to manufacture threads of different thicknesses or could have been used for plying different threads together (for the heavy group).3 For instance, small whorls with a light weight of about four grams would have been used to manufacture a very fine and delicate thread made from carefully selected wool (Figure 2.2). The high quality and delicacy of the produced thread would have been matched by the smooth finish of the lightweight whorls, which are always carefully finished, likely to avoid breaking the delicate output (Sauvage 2012a: 203, fig. 11.7). Invariably, whorls made of bone or ivory are smaller and lighter than the other whorls made from stone and clay, a property due to the density of their material, but it is also telling that at Ugarit and Enkomi no medium or heavy weight whorls were made of ivory. This would point to the use of the ivory whorls to manufacture only high quality threads for elites. This supposition is supported by the fact that ivory whorls are not found in common households, but instead come from more prestigious contexts in Ugarit such as the royal palace, the elite structure “maison aux albâtres.” In Minet el-​Beida, the harbour site of ancient Ugarit, they were found in “dépôt 43,” which might have been a rich tomb (Sauvage in press) and in the wealthy material of tomb III.4 At Enkomi on Cyprus, they are found in rich tombs, and in the large official building of Area I (Sauvage and Smith 2016). It should also be noted that possible 36

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Figure 2.1a–​b  Examples of dome-​shaped and biconical spindle whorls from Enkomi; (a) AM 2151 and (b) AM 220a. Source: Drawings by E. Devidal; courtesy of the Musée du Louvre.

Figure 2.2  Variation from thinner to thicker threads. The first line on the left corresponds to a thread spun with a four-​gram spindle whorl; the blue line was spun with a 44 gram whorl. Source: Andersson et al. 2007: 10, fig. 8.

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faience whorls were found in the royal palace at Ugarit (Sauvage 2012a: 196, fig. 11.9), and might also have been used to manufacture fine threads. Ivory was in itself a valuable material, and according to Warburton (2019: 13), the hues of ivory would have signified visually the qualities of brightness and luxury. Ivory tools would have had a cool and smooth touch, which is very distinctive from tools made of wood or of a combination of reeds and wood (for the shaft) and stone and wood (for the whorls). As observed by Feldman (2014: 50), small objects made of ivory call out for physical caressing. Since all of the ivory textile tools are obviously designed to produce fine and delicate threads, and in many cases come from elite archaeological contexts, it is possible that the quality of the finished garment or textile was directly related to the quality and value of the textile tools used. This could also be reinforced by a reference in the Odyssey (4.133–​136) to Helen of Troy using a golden spindle to spin purple (murex-​dyed?) wool. Therefore, one would expect that high quality thread used to produce some of the so-​called fine or even “royal quality” clothes,5 would have been produced in elite and wealthy households, on smooth and glimmering ivory whorls and spindles, or even on precious metal tools. Similarly, a spindle shaft made of metal would also have provided for its user a distinctive set of experiences; metal is at first cooler, smoother, and heavier than other materials, but the shaft would have become warmer with use, or could even have been hot if left out in the sun. It is also worth mentioning that all of the whorls found in Ugarit and Enkomi show similar use-​marks, including chips on the edges of the dome-​shaped whorls (Sauvage 2012a; Sauvage and Smith 2016), some of which demonstrate that spindles could fall onto the floor during an accidental drop when the thread broke. Whorls made of stone, ivory, clay or wood mounted on reed and wood, metal or bone and ivory shafts would have produced different and distinctive clinking sounds, thus filling the production place with characteristic noises. Decorated spindle whorls, although attested, are less frequent than plain ones. They tend to be finer, well executed and of higher quality, with a better or smoother finish, unless the decoration was made for practical purposes.6 Concentric circles or radiating spokes/​motifs are the most common decorations on dome shaped-​objects (Figure 2.3a–​d), while small circles or groups of parallel lines characterise biconical whorls. In both cases, the motif would have emphasised the visual effect during rotation of the object while spinning (Sauvage 2012a). Although complete spindles with shafts and whorls attached are rare, preserved examples in bone or ivory from Late Bronze and Early Iron Age contexts in the eastern Mediterranean show that their shafts can either be plain or decorated. Overall, decorated shafts were more frequent (Sauvage 2015). This might be due to the inherent carvable quality of the ivory spindles or be related to their elite status, but it might also be due to preservation, as most examples were deposited in tombs. Similar patterns are often present on one or both extremities of the shaft. These include parallel lines framing net-​like patterns or zigzag (Figure 2.4), parallel lines with a scale pattern (Figure 2.5), or oblique lines (Figures 2.6a–​b). Some shafts have additional sets of decoration in the middle of their shafts (Figure 2.7a–​b) but these are quite rare. Additionally, deep horizontal and parallel grooves meant to hold the thread can be found on the widest extremity of the spindles (see for instance Figure 2.3a–​d). These Late Bronze and Early Iron Age decorations are strongly reminiscent of textile patterns and are especially similar to the borders of fine garments. Borders characterised by parallel lines or zigzag/​herringbone patterns can be found, for instance, on a very elite object excavated from the royal palace at Ugarit, an ivory bed also decorated with figural scenes (Figure 2.8). In the carved image, a king is wearing a kilt with a fine belt decorated with vertical parallel stripes; the border of his garment is decorated with a zigzag pattern framed by a line (or maybe two parallel lines) on each side.7 The vanquished enemy is wearing a similar quilt, with a less detailed 38

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Figure 2.3a–​d  Spinning set from British Tomb 24 at Enkomi. British Museum (BM 1897,0401.885; BM 1969,0701.30; BM 1969,0701.31; BM 1969,0701.32). Source: Photos by author; courtesy of the British Museum.

Figure 2.4  Spindles from Ugarit RS 4.221[A]‌(AO 15 757) and RS 34.210. Source: Gachet-​Bizollon 2007: nos. 136, 139; courtesy of J. Gachet-​Bizollon; © Mission de Ras Shamra.

Figure 2.5  Pomegranate knobbed shaft 132 from Kition tomb 9, upper burial. Source: Smith 2009: 98, fig. III.11; © J. Smith.

border (without zigzag) and a belt. An extreme version of a decorated “border” occurs on the embroidered edging on a tunic from the tomb of Tutankhamun (1336–​1327 BCE ) in Egypt, where parallel lines not only frame wavy lines, but also elaborate figurative scenes,8 somewhat reminiscent of cylinder-​seal impressions (Figure 2.9).9 It is therefore possible to imagine that the pattern as well as the texture created by the engraved decorations on the extremities of the spindles could have been visual and tactile reminders of finished textile borders. Therefore, 39

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Figure 2.6a–​b  Bone shafts (length 20 centimetres) from Tell Deir ‘Alla. Source: (a) Franken 1992: figs. 4–​5.18; (b) van der Kooij and Ibrahim 1989: no. 13, 101; courtesy of J. van der Kooij; © Deir ‘Alla Excavations.

Figure 2.7a–​b  Decorated spindles from Megiddo; (a) no. B433a (length 20.2 centimetres) from tomb 3018F, and (b) bone shaft (length 23.6 centimetres) from tomb 877B1. Source: (a) Loud 1949: pl. 197.2; (b) Guy 1938: pl. 95.50; courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Figure 2.8  Representation of the king on the Ugarit ivory bed. Source: Gachet-​Bizollon 2007: pl. 25, I/​H; courtesy of J. Gachet-​Bizollon; © Mission de Ras Shamra.

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Figure 2.9  The “Syrian” embroidered tunic from the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Carter 367. Source: Courtesy of the Griffith Institute, Oxford University.

spinners and weavers would either have been working together, or the same craftsperson could have been manufacturing both high-​end threads and textiles. Weaving would have created a multisensorial experience for those directly involved in the weaving process, but also for those carrying out other tasks nearby, either in the same household or in the same workshop (depending on the place of production, as both domestic and “industrial” productions are attested).10 As argued by M.-​L. Nosch (2014: 91) for ancient Greece, the “making of clothes created a background rhythm of female life … that is both visual and audible if one knows where to see and where to hear it.” Indeed, not only do spindles make characteristic sounds when they hit the floor, but looms and the action of weaving also make distinctive noises, which would all have been part of the domestic acoustic background. Ethnographic parallels and archaeological experiments demonstrate that in a warp-​weighted loom, “when the heddle bars are pulled back and forth and the shed is changed, rhythmic thumping sounds occur. They are followed by the sound of beating the weft threads into the fabric with the weaving swords. This is accompanied by the clicking sound from the impact of the loom weights, made of fired clay or stone” (Nosch 2014: 95). 41

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Other types of looms attested in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, such as horizontal looms and vertical looms with fixed beams, would also have created rhythmic sounds when changing the shed and beating the weft.11 These weaving sounds are so characteristic that modern residents of Wajo villages in Indonesia describe them as “the sound of village life (bunyi kehidupan desa)” (Morrell 2005: 85). The weaver(s) would have orchestrated these rhythms and sounds, which may have been accompanied by singing (see also Chapter 5, this volume). Songs would have been used as mnemonic devices that would presumably help the weaver remember when to change the shed and where to pass the weft, thus assisting them in executing complex patterns (Tuck 2006; Nosch 2014: 93).12 Mnemonic songs are still used today in traditional Iranian carpet manufacture.13 Therefore, a connection between music and textile production is highly possible. This proposal is not new,14 and can be reinforced by the visual similarity of hand looms and lyres (Nosch 2014: 99). According to McMahon (2013: 174), sounds are crucial to the lived experience of space, and the sound of textile production would have been no exception. In domestic settings, where weaving often took place outside on roofs or in courtyards,15 the rhythmic sounds of the looms and the singing or chatting (when several people worked the loom) that accompanied the craft would have been audible not only within the household, but also beyond, in the street or even more widely within the neighbourhood. As Devereux (2006: 23) noted, “people in early cultures would have found the act of listening to the sounds in their quieter world to be of key importance.” These sounds would have been informative, and given the prime importance of textiles and textile production in the ancient societies, one should imagine that these sounds would have been part of the frequent audible background of city life. Weavers would also have experienced a tactile sensation when weaving, which would have been dependent on the quality and type of textile produced. Indeed, a fine, high quality textile would have had a soft touch, while a coarser textile would have been rougher. The textures of open weaves and closed weaves would also have been different as would have been the textures of weft looping textiles.16 An open weave fabric would have felt like a modern gauze or in some extreme cases like a net, and would have been loose, malleable, and fragile, while a weft-​looping textile would have been soft, fuzzy, and warm and therefore comparable to the feel of a thick but soft fringe. Textiles could also be embellished with painted motifs, beads, bracteates, bands, tassels, braids, embroidery, appliqués, and other similar materials made from different ordinary or precious materials.17 Along with embroidery, gold bracteates and glass beads are preserved on several garments found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, such as on the tunic discussed above (Figure 2.10a–​b) along with several other examples excavated by Carter (for example, Figure 2.11)18 and the Nimrud Queens’ tombs from Assyria (Gaspa 2014; Hussein 2016), and were therefore probably common (although not frequent) in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Faience and glass beads could also have been either sewn on or woven into fabrics. An early example includes faience beads woven into a garment (maybe a shawl) found at the funerary temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-​Bahari, Egypt (Middle Kingdom).19 Although not preserved on textiles, tiny red-​orange faience beads probably stored in a bag as well as glass beads stored in a Canaanite amphora were found in the Uluburun shipwreck (Figure 2.12; Ingram 2014: 235–​ 236).20 They could have been used on textiles, which is confirmed by the text RS 15.43 from Ugarit, in which wool, linen clothes, and glass are listed together.21 Similarly, a small faience statue found near the royal palace at Ugarit (RS 18.246) represents a male dressed with a kilt decorated with horizontal and dotted lines, possibly representing beads, as proposed by Matoïan.22 Garments possibly decorated with golden round bracteates are worn by the king (enthroned and on his chariot) and the priestess on a plaque from Megiddo, and could also possibly 42

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Figures 2.10a–​b  Textiles decorated with beads and bracteates, tomb of King Tutankhamun, Egypt. P0105 and P0106. Source: Courtesy of the Griffith Institute, Oxford University.

correspond to the spotted garments depicted on Mycenaean vases, as well as in a treasury hoard from the Aegean island of Aegina (Figure 2.13). These gold appliqué plaques could have been sewn onto the whole surface of the garment, possibly giving the impression of a garment made of gold.23 Indeed, in a text from Mari, the king gave instructions for a garment whose interior 43

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Figure 2.11  Detail of an appliqué and embroidered panel with gold bracteates from a linen garment, tomb of King Tutankhamun, Egypt. Source: Photo by Nino Monastra; courtesy of Gillian Vogelsang-​Eastwood; see https://​trc-​leiden. nl/​trc-​needles/​regional-​traditions/​middle-​east-​and-​north-​africa/​ancient-​middle-​east-​and-​north-​ africa/​tutankhamun-​and-​decorative-​needlework-​egypt.

Figure 2.12  Canaanite jar from the Uluburun shipwreck filled with glass beads. Source: Courtesy of Cemal Pulak; © Institute of Nautical Archaeology. 44

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Figure 2.13  Gold bracteates from the Aigina Treasure, c. 1750–​1550 (BM 1892,0520.42, 33, 64, 63, 31, 47, 27, 35, 70, 66). Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

BCE .

British Museum

should look like a silver sheet, while not being too heavy to prevent tearing (Durand 1997: 274, no. 136; see also Gaspa 2014: 239). The weight of such garments might have reduced the mobility of their wearers.24 As noted by Thomason (2016: 249, quoting Feldman 2014: 50), multicoloured and beaded textiles would thus have produced a multisensorial and synaesthetic experience that she compared to Feldman’s observation on ivories: “the combination of intricacy of carved design, luminosity and diversity of colours, and tactile desire would have served to capture and ensnare viewers’ attention along the lines of Alfred Gell’s notion of enchantment by technical virtuosity.” These bracteates made of gold, glass, or faience would have acted as little mirrors, glimmering and sparkling as light played across them. These embellishments were likely selected because of their brilliance and gave clothing a dynamic and material presence. This effect would only have been increased by the motion of the worn garment, along with the changing natural light or the flickering light of oil lamps.25 Similarly, fringes, trims, and tassels could have been made of coloured fibres, shiny metals,26 or beads of various precious materials.27 These would also have reflected light, and provided extra texture and visual stimulation when the wearer was moving.28 Moreover, all of these embellishments might have produced some tinkling sounds when in movement, adding to the overall sensory experience of both the wearer and the observer, possibly creating memory-​triggering sensual experiences (Thomason 2016: 251). When a garment was entirely decorated with gold appliqués, the glimmering effect would certainly have given the audience the impression that they were facing a radiant being, and might for instance have further embodied the divine character of the pharaohs in Egypt. In the Near East, “luminosity/​ splendor” was an active force (protective or destructive) associated with gods, divine and royal emblems, kings, weapons, monsters, demons, diseases, and cultic paraphernalia (Thavapalan 45

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2018b: 15). The visual consumers of such radiant garments would certainly have been in awe. Wengrow has called this production controlled by elites as a form of “aesthetic labour” (2001; see also Gell 1999). The added value of gold, precious beads, vibrant colours, or delicately woven textiles made textile artisans and their products stand out from a mass of similar labourers and artefacts (Marín-​Aguilera et al. 2018: 127) and would have produced awe and admiration in their viewers. Larger ornaments dangling from fabrics are also well attested in the eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds (see also Chapter 7, this volume). Tassels and belts are present on several representations. For instance, at Ugarit, they are attested on masculine costumes on the ivory bed (see Figure 2.8) and on cylinder seals (Amiet 1992: nos. 98, 106, 161, 173, 291, 340; Matoïan and Vita 2009: 497). We also know that cylinder seals and metal garment pins could be worn on garments, as attested at Mari,29 but these were not permanently attached.30 These embellishments would have added texture (and value) to garments, and would have, in some instances, modified the feel, colours, and refraction properties of the garments, as will be discussed below.

Dyes and dyeing Colourful garments are attested in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean sources, from Egypt, the Levant, the Hittite Empire, Cyprus, and the Aegean.31 Textual and visual sources in particular allow us to reconstruct vibrant and colourful possibilities for garment manufacture. For instance, in Ugarit, white, black, red, yellow, purple/​blue, and multicoloured wool or garments are well attested.32 Linen was also dyed with red madder in the Levant and Egypt,33 and blue and yellow linen are attested in Egypt,34 while texts additionally mention green and light-​coloured linen (Herslund 2010: 72). Identified dyes in the eastern Mediterranean include: red from madder (Rubia tinctorium; Pfister 1937: 209), kermes (Kermes vermillo),35 the Armenian cochineal (Porphyrophora hamelii),36 “arsenic ruby” or realgar,37 henna (Lawsonia sp.),38 and certain lichens;39 yellow or red from safflower (Carthamus tinctorium; Pfister 1937: 210; Barber 1991: 227, 232), yellow from saffron (Crocus sativus or Crocus cartwrightianus), turmeric (Curcuma longa; Campbell Thompson 1934: 780), pomegranate rinds (Punica granatum),40 and onion skins; blue from a variety of berries (Barber 1991: 233), woad (Isatis tinctoria), and indigo (Indigofera tinctoria);41 and blue/​purple from murex molluscs (Murex brandaris, Murex trunculus, Purpura haemastoma),42 and from the root of alkanet and dyer’s bugloss (Alkanna tinctoria; Thavapalan 2020: 181; Cardon 2003: 60–​62). Temperature and time are key factors to successfully bond dyes to fabrics. Temperatures are often controlled through active heating but good results also could be achieved in a closed container left out in the sun to steep for several days, called “direct dyeing.”43 It is also possible to produce purple dye with murex shells through the direct dyeing method. We also know that in some cases, imported garments could be dyed after being received in Ugarit, as revealed by the archives from the Urtenu’s House.44 Such a process would have necessitated larger vats to ensure dye penetration, and possibly specialised facilities. In term of senses, heated dye baths would all have produced distinctive odours. Some were stronger and definitively more characteristic or recognisable than others. For instance, according to modern dyers, madder (Rubia tinctorium) has a rich, pleasant, and earthy smell,45 which can be identified on a textile well after the dyeing process.46 Seemingly, onion skin can smell like onion soup; henna has a strong earthy smell (distinctive from madder); woad can be pungent (depending on the form used in the vat); and indigo can be sweet and pungent.47 Indigo is sometimes described as in between earthy, musty, smoky with a hint of grass and manure,48 or as a ripe, sweaty scent. 46

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Of course, the most characteristic and persistent smell would have come from purple murex dye. Although textile workshops are hard to identify, it is likely that as with other Near Eastern smell-​ producing workshops, installations or architectural configurations limiting the olfactive impact of the dyeing process did not exist.49 Purple dye production was certainly conducted near the seashore50 in shaded areas to prevent direct sunlight interfering with the dyeing process.51 Installations relating to this industry were technically outside of the main cities, for instance, carried out in the harbour town of Minet el-​Beida,52 located less than two miles from the main city of Ugarit. But, despite the distance, the smell of the production would have been regularly carried to the main city with prevailing westerly winds. Later Classical sources discuss this olfactory experience: Strabo mentions that the city of Tyre (near Ugarit) was unpleasant to live in due to the purple murex dye industry;53 while Martial refers to the strong smell of garments54 and the pungency of a fleece dyed twice with purple (Epigrams IV.4). Still, according to Ruscillo (2005: 105), the odour encountered during the dyeing process was not only terrible according to our modern standards, but textiles dyed with murex purple dye retained their stench long after washing. Therefore, she proposes that perfume would likely have been required on new garments. However, it can be argued that odours and their associations are cultural, and that depending on one’s (cultural) background, a similar odour can have positive or negative associations.55 For instance, most of us would agree that some cheeses are particularly smelly, leading to some people being turned off by the odour and unwilling to eat them; while for others, the smell is associated with a pleasant gustatory experience. The same might have been true in the Levant, or at least in Ugarit, as in the Epic of Baal, there is a clear reference to henna perfumed with coriander and murex,56 and references from Ugaritic literature for murex being used as rouge: “she washed and put on rouge, she put on rouge of sea-​dye, from a thousand fathoms in the vast expanse of the sea.”57 If the odour produced by murex was so putrid and pungent for the inhabitants of the Levant, it would seem unlikely that they would have applied murex on their faces, or used it as a perfuming agent. Although textile workshops are extremely hard to identify, we know that textile activities took place within domestic, official or institutional, and religious settings.58 We should therefore expect that at least some households were dyeing fibres with those readily available and easy-​ to-​use vegetal dyes such as onion skins, lichen, pomegranate rinds, woad, and perhaps madder. However, madder requires the use of alum as a mordant to aid in the binding process, which had to be imported from Egypt, Cyprus, or Melos (Picon et al. 2004). Natural hues of wool would also have been used to create coloured garments. Other, harder-to-acquire dyes such as madder-​ plus-​alum, kermes, realgar, murex, or perhaps imported indigo would have been more exclusive and produced by wealthier households or specialised institutional workshops. Some of those processes would have contributed to the olfactive atmosphere of cities, and specific ingredients would have been easily recognisable outside of the immediate dyeing area thus dominating other urban odours.

Sensory experience of clothing and textiles Beyond the synaesthesia involved in producing these textiles, another set of intermingling sensations would have been involved in their consumption. Multiple types of textual evidence attest to this. In Ugarit, we know that textiles were brought and distributed by the palace (McGeough 2007: 168), and different types of textiles or garments are attested. Although it is challenging to precisely translate textile terminology,59 diverse layers (capes, undergarments, coats and cloaks), textures, weights, qualities and materials60 are mentioned in administrative texts. As confirmed by textile tools, a variety of textiles were manufactured in the eastern Mediterranean, and many circulated as diplomatic gifts by the elite of the time, thus serving to fulfil tribute 47

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requirements.61 Textiles and finished garments were meant to be consumed directly by their wearer and indirectly by the wearer’s audience. Both direct and indirect consumption would have created distinctive sets of experiences. Indirect consumption might not have been passive and may have been considered as a performative act.62 For instance, a magnificent garment could leave an audience in awe, while being heavy, uncomfortable, and motion-​restrictive to its wearer, affecting their sense of proprioception. Both direct and indirect consumers would have been able to assess or at least recognise textile qualities. This would have been especially important from an economic perspective when evaluating the value of diplomatic gifts and tribute, or for assessing someone’s social status. Textile quality can be estimated by a visual and tactile experience, as well as by the know-​how of the observer. As discussed by Wingate and Mohler (1984: 36): Factors [such] as warmth, coolness, pliability, texture, bumpiness, smoothness or strength of a fabric can be discerned by the sense of touch. To develop a sense of touch, grasp the edge of a cloth between the thumb and index finger, with the thumb on top. Rub the thumb and forefinger across the cloth, then lengthwise, then in a circle. Each time a fabric is felt, words that best describe the feel should be brought to mind: pliability, elasticity or ‘give,’ warmth, softness, smoothness, and so on.63 And as Herring argues (1949: 209), degrees of lightness to heaviness (weight dimension), softness to hardness (solidity dimension), warmth to coldness (temperature dimension), smoothness to roughness (texture dimension), pliability to rigidity, friability to strength, etc. can be distinguished. Practice and knowledge would increase and refine the “sensitivity of discrimination” (Wingate and Mohler 1984: 36). A visual examination could also assess degrees of lustrous or shine qualities, some weight dimension and pliability as well as texture, especially for textiles with a border, embroideries, bracteates, or tassels. These visual assessments might be defined as “tactile vision.” This synaesthetic sense of tactile vision would have been especially important for the audience of religious festivals, attendees of royal ceremonies, or conspicuous acts of communal consumption. Undoubtedly, each fibre had a different visual appearance: linen was certainly sought after for its fineness and its whiteness and considered bright and shiny; while sea-​silk (byssus), if it was already exploited in the second millennium BCE ,64 would have been rare and characterised by its lightness/​thinness and by a shiny golden appearance when placed under direct light, which would certainly have been stunning and restricted to the highest elites of the time. Wool would have been coarser and heavier, although it was possible to produce very fine and lightweight fabrics. Wool’s natural colours varied from white/​beige to brown and black/​dark,65 and it is unknown what shades were the most common. White wool would certainly have been sought after as it is easy to alter its colour with natural dyes, but it would also have been considered as a bright colour on its own. This is confirmed by earlier textual sources from the Ur III Dynasty (2112–​2004 BCE ) in which white wool was reserved for the king (Breniquet 2014: 65; Steinkeller 1995). Although in the eastern Mediterranean regions, we have fewer sources relating to the importance of vision and gaze than in Mesopotamia,66 we know that visual impressions were of prime importance. For instance, in the Ugaritic Story of Kirta, a legendary Hurrian king, Kirta’s description of his lover emphasises these aspects along with the importance of colours (Tablet 1, col. 3, 41–​45; after Coogan and Smith 2012: 77): Her loveliness is like [the goddess] Anat’s, her beauty is like [the goddess Astarte’s], her pupils are lapis lazuli, her eyes are gleaming alabaster … I will rest in the gaze of her eyes. 48

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In this excerpt, the colours blue and white are defined by their similarity to precious stones. Similarly, in Akkadian texts, coloured wool can be named after precious gemstones such as calcite, lapis lazuli, and amethyst, but can also be characterised as dyed (Thavapalan 2018a: 3; 2020: 177). Thavapalan (2018a: 3) suggests that textiles and other materials were dyed in a manner that “evoked the vivid hue and luster of these costly and esteemed minerals.” For instance, purple-​dyed wools could be designated as “red(-​tinged) lapis lazuli wool,” showing that purple wools were thought to have characteristics akin to the vivid hue and brightness of lapis lazuli (Thavapalan 2018a: 8, n. 26). In Ugaritic texts, lapis lazuli has explicit lustrous properties, as seen in the Epic of Baal when describing the god’s palace: “and build the house with silver and gold, the house with lustrous lapis lazuli (stones)” (Smith 1997: 130–​131, with some adaptation by Feder 2014: 91). Even when a colour does not explicitly refer to valuable stones, lustrous or gleaming properties of other types of materials are suggested. For instance, in Ugaritic, the term pḥm can either refer to “black” as charcoal, or to “dark-​red” (as glowing charcoal), with the latter solution being preferable, and maybe referring to a red-​purple (Van Soldt 1990: 342–​ 344; Bordreuil and Caquot 1980: 353). In Egypt, colours refer to precious minerals and metals (Aufrère 1991: 577; Warburton 2008), and therefore they also shared some of their properties. For instance, blue textiles, ḫstb, are named after the Egyptian name for lapis lazuli, ḫsbḏ (Aufrère 1991: 464). Similarly in the Hittite world, colours were perceived in terms of hue, brightness, and saturation (Dardeniz 2019: 100–​101). In the eastern Mediterranean, as in Mesopotamia, colours were thus seen in terms of lustrousness, vividness, and brightness, and these would have translated to specific visual impressions when viewing colourful garments or textiles. Brightness (melammu) was part of the definition of colours in Akkadian (Thavapalan 2018b; see also Chapter 15, this volume), and this concept would also have been true in Ugarit, and certainly in other parts of the Mediterranean. According to Warburton (2019: 10), “colour was nothing ordinary at the dawn of history: brilliant, shining, golden light was divinity itself.” In Mesopotamia, Winter (1994: 129) has shown that radiant light was a visual manifestation of the divine world and we should probably expect a similar concept in the Levant. Ugaritic literary texts attest to this, as for instance the palace of Baal is built with gleaming and lustrous materials,67 and in the myth of Elkunirsa and Ashertu, Baal is described as “radiant (or perfect)” (4Aiii, 1–​6; Hoffner 1998: 92, n. 3). Colourful garments should also be added to the list of materials shared by gods and elites, as textile hues are associated with light-​emitting materials, and therefore, monochrome as well as polychrome textiles would have been treasured for their brightness (see for instance Aufrère 1991: 537; Warburton 2019: 10). Some colours were particularly significant across cultures. For instance, red stood for the finest sort of divine light in Mesopotamia (Thavapalan 2018b: 18), and was a warm colour in Egypt,68 as it was the colour of the sun, and a preferred colour for festive clothing. Blue was an important colour of divine light in Mesopotamia, at least in the first millennium BCE (Thavapalan 2018b: 19), and the material lapis lazuli was also used to characterise the divine world in Egypt (Schenkel 2019: 46). In Ugaritic literature, red-​purple from murex shell (called “sea-​dye”) was similar to lapis lazuli, and was beautifying for goddesses and heroes in the Story of Aqhat: “Pugat washed and put on rouge, she put on rouge of sea-​dye, from a thousand fathoms in the vast expanse of the sea” (3: 4, 40–​43; Coogan and Smith 2012: 54); and in the Epic of Baal: Anat “beautified herself with murex” (3: 3, 1; Coogan and Smith 2012: 118). Therefore, in Ugarit and perhaps the Levant, this colour might also have been assimilated to the world of the gods. In Egypt, yellow was like gold, the flesh of gods, and white was positive, shiny, pure, radiant, bright, and a sign of social stature (as in white linen) (Blom-​Böer and Warburton 2019: 234; Morgan 2011: 4; Schenkel 2019: 38–​40; Vogelsang-​Eastwood 2000: 280), and was similar to 49

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silver (Warburton 2008). In Ugaritic texts, white is compared to gleaming alabaster69 and therefore also was considered as a bright and radiant colour. The Hittites also characterised white as “bright,” while silver is a white and pure metal (Dardeniz 2019: 100–​101). In biblical Hebrew, Akkadian, Hittite, Sumerian, and Ugaritic texts, the primary terms for purity are related to radiance, thus connecting white’s radiance with purity (Feder 2014: 90). Both white and coloured wools and garments were valued at Ugarit and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean as they often appear in lists of tribute, or royal gifts of the second millennium and first millennium BCE courts.70 In particular, textiles dyed red and blue seem to have been favoured in the Hittite world (Dardeniz 2019: 102) and in the Levant,71 while purple garments were some of the most precious commodities.72 For instance, a material called takiltu-​ wool (blue wool dyed with shellfish) (Quillien 2015: 107; Thavapalan 2018a: 3–​4) was an expensive commodity in Ugarit, and was used by wealthy elite and royalty. In one Ugaritic text from the palace at Ras Shamra (RS 12.33), the queen is presented with a gift of 100 shekels’ worth of wool, while in another text (RS 17.354), the gift is worth 300 shekels (Thavapalan 2018a: 11, n. 37). In the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean regions, shellfish-​dyed textiles have been excavated from elite archaeological contexts such as the royal tomb at Qatna (James et al. 2009; Baccelli 2012) and the tombs at Stamna in Greece (ninth to eighth century BCE ; Kolonas et al. 2017). It thus seems that purple-​dyed textiles were connected to royalty and divinity. Similarly in the Aegean, purple-​dyed textiles are mentioned in the Linear B archives of Knossos, suggesting not only an interest in these textiles, but also that at least some purple textile production was royal (Burke 2010: 79; Marín-​Aguilera et al. 2018: 140).73 A similar conclusion might be reached in Ugarit if one follows Pardee’s proposal to see Minet el-​Beida, the harbour of the city where murex-​dye installations were identified, as a royal possession.74 The prime importance and elite status of shellfish purple-​dye might have been due to its rarity and to the number of molluscs required to dye fibres, but it would also certainly have been connected to the colourfast properties of the dye, as shellfish-​dyed threads would have remained bright, and would not have faded with time.75 Not only were colours important visually, but the dyes used to achieve specific colours were also essential when contemplating the value of a garment. Many colourful elite materials such as lapis lazuli or carnelian were imitated through the production of man-​made materials in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean regions. Being able to differentiate originals from imitations would have been of prime importance to some individuals.76 In terms of textile consumption, similar concerns would have arisen as colours produced by the use of true murex dye (blue-​purple and red-​purple) could also have been achieved with plant-​based dyes (for instance a mix of madder and woad/​indigo).77 Although a rich range of colours and textile terminology is attested at Ugarit, many economic texts quote relatively low prices for purple-​dyed wools suggesting that some of them might have been dyed with vegetal dyes (Thavapalan 2018a).78 As observed by Thavapalan (2018a: 24), it seems that the names of the coloured fabrics do not distinguish between genuine (mollusc-​based) and fake purple dyes, and that only the context could reveal a reference to molluscan purple wool.79 It may not have been easy to distinguish real shellfish-​purple from imitation products, as for instance in Strozzacapponi (Italy) one of the richest tombs of the Hellenistic era (323–​31 BCE ) contained a textile dyed with non-​shellfish purple, while the finest shellfish-​purple-​dyed cloth was found in a humble coarse-​ware ossuary (Gleba et al. 2017; Marín-​Aguilera et al. 2018: 146). But in this case, the consumers might have lacked some connoisseurial knowledge, or even positive sensory associations, which would have allowed them to establish a distinction between several types of purple-​dyed textiles. 50

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In the Levant, however, even if textual sources do not allow us to easily identify specific dyes, direct and indirect textile consumers might have been able to do so. Of course, some hues could have been different, and plant-​based dyes would have faded with time. But certainly, the smell of the fabric/​wool/​threads dyed with murex shells would also have allowed people to (easily?) recognise purple dyes.80 The smell of molluscan purple dye would have been part of the Ugaritic and larger coastal Levantine sensescape, and the positive connotations of the smell were mentioned in the Story of Aqhat: “[Pugat] beautified herself with murex” (3: 4, 40–​43; Coogan and Smith 2012: 54) and in the Epic of Baal: “[Anat] beautified herself with murex” (3: 3, 1; Coogan and Smith 2012: 118). These pleasant or at least distinctive odours would have reminded the ancient inhabitants of these regions of “home.” In comparison, modern inhabitants of Oaxaca in Mexico taste purple-​dyed fabrics to verify if molluscan dye had been used, as genuine shellfish purple apparently tastes like garlic (Saltzman 1992: 479; Balfour-​Paul 2011: 14, n. 10). We could thus argue that the smell (and maybe taste?) of molluscan purple garments would have been culturally meaningful (Howes and Classen 2014: 3–​4). Moreover, odour associations might have helped to create and differentiate various social groups (Howes and Classen 2014: 68–​69). Sensory differences related to cultural distinctions and personal memories would thus have formed social exclusions based on a connoisseurial-​like knowledge of real versus imitation materials.81 As demonstrated by Winter, there was an active response to seeing. Seeing an object could provide joy, and there was a true aspiration to have works, goods, and buildings viewed and admired.82 Gods and kings could experience joy and delight when viewing works made for them, while the more passive audience (people) responded with “admiration” and awe (see also Chapters 10, 15, and 25, this volume).83 The preparation of the visual experience is extremely important and corresponds to an exhortation to feel/​produce a specific reaction based on the social level of the participants (Pinnock 2020: 5). In some cases, people could have experienced what Winter calls the “WOW-​ effect,” when something was perceived as impressive or overwhelming (Winter 2000: 34–​35; Pinnock 2020). Pinnock notes that the emphasis on textiles in textual sources as well as on their colours, along with standards pointing to the ranks and function of their owners would have made ceremonies a complex multisensorial experience, similar to Winter’s “WOW-​effect” (Pinnock 2020: 8; 2018: 73–​77; see also Chapter 14, this volume). Textiles and clothing would thus have transmitted impressions, or even feelings not only to the producers of the garments, but also to their wearers and receiving audience, and would have contributed to the creation of specific atmospheres and multisensory experiences. Clothes and garments would also have been used to express feelings. As Wagner-​Durand (2020: 221) has argued, sensory perception and emotions are linked since emotions are based on the sensory perception of the world. But more subtle clues were certainly deciphered by ancient Near Eastern people as well. With our modern state of mind, we expect to use our visual sense to understand the emotional state of others, and we mostly look for clues in facial expressions. In ancient Near Eastern art, faces can sometimes seem to lack emotion, and we might therefore fail to recognise emotional display,84 especially if it was made through specific visual clues such as garments. The wearer’s relationship to clothing and the emotions provoked is strongest in literary descriptions of mourning. In the Ugaritic Epic of Baal, the gods El and Anat covered their loins with sackcloth to mourn Baal.85 And in the Tale of Aqhat, Pugat tore off the clothes of Danel following the death of Aqhat: “She tore the clothes of Danel, the man of Rapau, the garment of the Hero, the man of the Harnamite” (3: 1, 36–​37; Coogan and Smith 2012: 47). Colours on garments would also have been used to display or encode emotions.86 As discussed preliminarily above, brightness was connected to positive emotions, while dark colours were linked with 51

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illness and bad fortune (Wagner-​Durand 2020: 234; Thavapalan 2018b). Red was also a festive clothing colour in Egypt, connected to joy, while white was considered to invoke overall positive emotions (Blom-​Böer and Warburton 2019: 234; Schenkel 2019: 38–​40). Clothes also had agency to manipulate identity and therefore magical powers, and this is a well-​known fact for Mesopotamian deities.87 In Ugarit, the agency resides in the ability to provide an identity. For instance, in the Story of Aqhat, Pugat “put[s]‌on a hero’s clothes, she placed a knife in her sheath, she placed a sword in her scabbard; and on top she put on women’s clothes” (3: 4, 43–​46; Coogan and Smith 2012: 54). Finally, garments, especially their hems or borders could be used to express a relationship of vassal or domination as well as family relations, especially marital relations. For instance, in the Epic of Baal, Anat “seized Death by the edge of his clothes, she grabbed him by the hem of his garment” (6: 2, 10–​11; Coogan and Smith 2012: 147). Her attitude can easily be paralleled with a vassal/​lord or vanquished/​vanquisher relationship as described by Podany (2010). Garments served to convey and represent personal identity. For instance, a widow at the Hurrian site of Nuzi could cut the hem of her garment if she wished to remarry, and the hem could also be cut in the case of an adoption (Podany 2010: 50–​52). In these cases, information was encoded in the visual appearance of the garment’s hem. But it seems that a symbiotic relationship existed between people and their garments, probably due to the limited wardrobe of most people. For instance, the sisskitum (or hem) of a garment (or cord for a seal) could symbolically stand for a person during an extispicy, or serve as the pledge for a loan.88 The hem of a garment could also be impressed onto legal documents (instead of a cylinder seal) as proof of authentication and obligation, and could symbolise an obligation to another party (Podany 2010: 53). Visual and tactile senses would have been involved in the wearing of clothing. Borders or hems in particular were often decorated with geometric motifs, or with more elaborated iconographic representations, and these long narrow stripes edging textiles or garments certainly have striking visual (and maybe even tactile when embroidered) similarities to cylinder-​seal impressions. It is quite certain, that when signing with the hem/​border of an elaborate garment edge, the visual and tactile aspects of the fabric were transferred and recorded onto the clay, where they were then experienced in a multisensorial manner (see also Chapter 8, this volume).

Conclusion Textile production was an ever-​present multisensorial activity in which textile workers were active participants. The melody of weavers possibly singing while working to help remember the desired patterns and the rhythmic sounds of roof-​top looms and of looms set up in courtyards would have been an integral and tangible part of the soundscape of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cities. Dyes and dye baths created a powerful and memorable olfactory presence, recognisable to most people, elite or common. Inside wealthy dwellings or specialised institutional workshops, radiant, bright, and fine garments embellished with colours and metallic/​glass beads and appliqués might have been exclusively manufactured with equally bright, smooth, appealing, and valuable tools. These tools might have been tactile and visual reminders of elaborate borders most likely found on fine fabrics. This elite conspicuous production akin to a form of aesthetic labour as defined by Wengrow required provisions and preparations and resulted in exceptional and enchanting textiles (Wengrow 2001; Gell 1999). The added value of gold, precious beads, vibrant colours, or delicately weaved textiles made products stand out from a mass of otherwise similar fabrics and would have produced awe and admiration in their viewers. Because form was invested with meaning, brightness and technical prowess were certainly meant to highlight 52

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the power of the king and the elite consumers who controlled the specialised producers. It also conferred on them qualities akin to the worn materials such as brilliance and radiance. Finally, along with power over production, consumption of such fabrics or garments allowed for class differentiation, based not only on their visual aspects, but also on their multisensory effects on the wearers and their audience.

Notes 1. See for instance Sauvage 2012a: 192, fig. 11.2, for the spindle-​whorl production at Ugarit and see the unfinished whorl no. 81, AO 918 in the Museé du Louvre. 2. See for instance Frieman and Gillings 2007. 3. Sauvage 2012a: 190–​196, esp. fig. 11.7. Similar weight groups existed at Enkomi, and therefore have to be considered quite common in the Late Bronze Age Levant and eastern Mediterranean. 4. See Gachet-​Bizollon 2007; and Sauvage 2012a: 202–​203, n. 43 for all of the objects published by Gachet-​Bizollon. 5. In Ugaritic texts, some textiles are defined as mlk “royal” (of superior quality); see Vita 2010: 325, n. 11. For the different terms used in Egypt, see Herslund 2010: 72–​73. 6. And consisted of a spoke meant to hold the thread or several threads for plying them together, see for instance heavy whorls (AO 11658, AO 84 428, and MAN 76 780.03 from Ugarit; Sauvage 2012a: 197–​ 198, fig. 11.10; Sauvage and Hawley 2013) and whorls 1506 and 1507 from Enkomi (Dikaios 1969–​ 1971: pl. 178). 7. Despite being of clear Egyptian inspiration, the king has attributes deriving from Western Asia as well: his beard, hairstyle, kilt and shoulder belt; see Gachet-​Bizollon 2007: 140. 8. See for instance Vogelsang-​Eastwood 2016. 9. Smith argues for a similar argument but for cylinder-​like objects in the eastern Mediterranean (personal communication 2019). 10. For instance at Kition and Enkomi (Sauvage and Smith 2016). 11. See for instance the short documentary Footage Farm (2016); in particular, the beating of the weft on a horizontal loom and ground loom at 2:20–2:40. 12. Nosch (2014: 92) also argues that in the Iliad and Odyssey textiles and weaving played a vital role both in society and epic narrative. Furthermore, Akkadian may also connect weaving and the action of harrowing a field by their similar zigzag movement back and forth, and thus might connect weaving and poetry/​literary composition; see Nosch 2014: 94 for references. 13. For a modern example of traditional pattern singing in Iran, see the 2019 documentary by Jazi. 14. See for instance Tuck 2006; Nosch 2014. 15. For instance, warp-​weighted looms are attested in courtyards at Enkomi and Kition, and one might have been on the roof at Tell Tweini; see Sauvage and Smith 2016; Sauvage and Jans 2019. 16. Egyptian textiles were for instance weaved this way; see the 11th Dynasty example from Deir el-​ Bahari, Egypt; Barber 1991: pl. 5.3. 17. See for instance Vogelsang-​Eastwood 2016; Thavapalan 2020: 188–​189. For painted Egyptian textiles, see Vogelsang-​Eastwood 2000: 281. 18. Carter 2014 [1923]: 153, 156, 247. See also the rare documentary footage from Footage Farm (2016); and Barber 1991: figs. 5.10 and 5.11;Vogelsang-​Eastwood 1999. 19. Victoria and Albert Museum, London (VAT 729-​ 1907); see Vogelsang-​Eastwood 1994: 31 and 2000: 280. A nineteenth-​century BCE textile found at Acemhöyük in Anatolia was also decorated with faience beads sewn with gold thread; see Thavapalan 2020: 191 for references. 20. Some of the beads found loose might have been originally sewn onto textiles, but there is no evidence for it (Pulak 2008: 296–​297). 21. “X hundred (shekels of) takiltu-​wool, 200 (shekels of) ḫašmānu wool, 2 linen clothes, 80 (shekels of glass).” 22. Matoïan and Vita 2009: 497, PRU 3.187; Van Soldt 1990: 329. 23. This was the same in the first millennium BCE , see Gaspa 2014: 239. 24. Thomason 2016: 251. Bodily discomfort is also possible, for example (Thomason 2019). 25. See Hamilakis 2013: 76–​77 for a similar interpretation of glass mosaics and relief metal icons. 26. For instance, tassels could have been closed by small gold clasps, at least in first millennium BCE Assyria; Gaspa 2014: 232. The Iliad (2.530) also mentions golden tassels on Athena’s aegis. 53

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27. A tunic from the tomb of King Tutankhamun had a fringe made up of disc and pendant beads (Vogelsang-​Eastwood 1999: 57). 28. For instance, on the ivory bed from Ugarit, the king has a group of five long strings terminated by tassels coming either from the fastening of the shoulder belt or the kilt’s belt, hanging in between the king’s legs, and reaching his mid-​calves. Other strings with fan-​like extremities are represented on either side of his kilt (Figure 2.8). These long dangling elements attested in several cylinder seals from Ugarit would certainly have been in constant motion (see Amiet 1992: nos. 98, 106, 161, 173, 291, 340). 29. See for example the inlay of a woman wearing a cylinder seal from the Early Dynastic III period, National Museum Damascus, Syria 1271: 1272, n. 104a; Aruz 2003: 161. 30. See for instance the numerous gold dress-​pins found at Enkomi. 31. See for instance, the blue kerchief (MMA 09.184.217) of King Tutankhamun, and his embroidered tunic (Pfister 1937: pl. LII; Barber 1991: figs. 5.10, 5.11). This embroidered tunic might have been of Syrian (Mitannian) origin; see Vogelsang-​Eastwood 1999: 55. See also the garments of the Asiatic leaders found in the mortuary temple of Ramses III Medinet Habu (Aruz et al. 2008: no. 168a–​d, 267–​ 269); and the garments described in Hittite treaties and tributes (for instance Beckman 1996: no. 22B and 28B). 32. Van Soldt 1990: 339. Examples of multicoloured garments included in Ugarit texts are: the white, carnelian-​red and violet-​purple costume all (RS 15.115:4–​6; KTU 4.182); the violet and reddish purple hpn garment (RS 15.082:1; KTU 4.168; Vita 2010: 325, n. 12); and a multicoloured “waist-​ cloth” mentioned (RS 17.148; Van Soldt 1990: 336). 33. In Ugarit, puwatu is often listed with alum, and was used for linen (Van Soldt 1990: 347–​348). Textiles from the tomb of King Tutankhamun were also dyed with madder (Pfister 1937: 209; Germer 1992: 68–​70). 34. A blue kerchief from the embalming cache of King Tutankhamun’s tomb (MMA 09.184.217); yellow mummy wrapping from the 12th Dynasty Tomb of the Two Brothers (Barber 1991: 227). 35. See for instance Quillien 2019: 206, with references; Thavapalan 2020: 178–​179. 36. Quillien 2019: 206, with references to booty of red wool from the Ararat Valley in Lebanon taken by the Assyrian kings. 37. Barber 1991: 231: ûqnu stone mined in Armenia and Persia. This is a soft, red compound of arsenic which would have been toxic if garments dyed with this substance were continuously worn (Barber 1991: 231, n. 9). 38. See Barber 1991: 232; Loret 1930: 23–​28; Forbes 1956: 103, 108–​109 (although it might have been used more for the body than for textiles); Pfister 1937: 210. 39. Lichen was used in an Assyrian red-​dye recipe, see Barber 1991: 232 for references. 40. Forbes 1956: 123; Thavapalan 2020: 180: pomegranate and madder are mentioned together for the production of half a mina (250 grams) of wool in the Mari text ARM 21 316 (see Parrot et al. 1982). 41. For uses of woad and indigo, see Barber 1991: 234–​235 and Balfour-​Paul 2011: 13–​17. For early indigo trade with Punt and southern Arabia (but without references), see Wulff 1966: 192; Balfour-​ Paul 2011: 13. Woad and not indigo was most likely used in ancient Egypt (Germer 1992: 65–​66; Vogelsang-​Eastwood 2000: 52). There are several other plants with high content of indigoids Polygonum tinctorium, Marsdenia tinctoria, Strobilanthes flaccidifolius. According to Lentini (2009: 169), several species of Indigofera (I. tinctoria, I. argentea, I. intricata, I. spinosa, and I. semitrijuga) were found in Egypt, Sudan, and the Near East. See also Soriga 2017: 84, n. 41. 42. See Barber 1991: 228–​229. Different species of murex snails would have produced different hues of purple: Hexaplex trunculus mainly contains blue-​purple colourants (and could have been used for the takiltu-​coloured wool) while both Bolinus brandaris and Stramonita Haemastoma contained red-​ purple colourants and could have been used to obtain argamannu-​coloured wools (Thavalapan 2018a: 5, 9). But vegetable dyes might also have been used to produce hues of purple in ancient Mesopotamia. 43. For instance, a possible workshop for dyeing was excavated at Mari, but no fire installation was recorded (Breniquet 2014: 69). Similarly, textile workshops might have been identified at Ugarit (Maison B, îlot VI tranchée Ville Sud, locus 17; Maison F in Centre de la Ville, locus 1222), and at Minet el-​Beida, and they also lack fire installations. Callot (1994: 190) and Matoïan and Vita (2009: 488) refute these identifications because of the lack of hearth/​fire installation, and they question the possibility to have “polluting activities” within the city. 44. RS 94.2562, l. 23–​27; Lackenbascher and Malbrant-​Labat 2016: 76–​77; Matoïan and Vita 2009: 486. Similar attestations of piece dyeing come from Mari (Joannès 1984: 153). Piece dyeing is a difficult 54

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process because of the compact overlapping threads within the cloth and there is little attestation before the Roman period (Marín-​Aguilera et al. 2018: 135). 45. See for instance blog by Vic 2018. 46. Personal communication from Theresa Wollenstein, owner of Griffin Dyeworks & Fiber Arts. 47. See Murphy 2015. 48. See Indigo Dye and Shibori n.d. 49. See Buccellati 2020 for smells associated with workshops, kitchens, and toilets. 50. See for instance the well-​known piles of murex shells deposited along the Levantine coast and dating to the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (Barber 1991: 229). For references to Hazor, Akko, and Keisan, see Soriga 2017: 89. 51. The clear mucus extracted from the shells turns purple upon exposure to sunlight. For an argument for roofed structures, see Marín-​Aguilera et al. 2018: 132. 52. Murex as well as a large vat stained with purple were reported by Schaeffer 1951: 188. 53. “And although the great number of dye-​works makes the city unpleasant to live in, yet it makes the city rich through the superior skill of its inhabitants” (Geography XVI: 2, 23). 54. “Clothes smelling strong of purple dye” (Epigrams I.50); and “ strong smelling purple of Sidon” (II.16). 55. See Howes and Classen 2014: 88 for similar examples. 56. Epic of Baal 3: 2, 1–​2: “Henna enough for seven girls, scented with coriander and murex.” 57. Story of Aqhat 3: 4, 40–​43; Coogan and Smith 2012: 54. Anat in the Epic of Baal “beautified herself with murex” (3: 3, 1; Coogan and Smith, 2012: 118). 58. See for instance Sauvage and Smith 2016 on Enkomi and Kition. See also Dagan and Cassuto 2016. 59. For instance,Vita 2010. 60. Linen and wool are of course the most common, but fur could also have been integrated into textiles, or used for garment elaboration. Schaeffer (1951) mentioned seeing fur in court III of the royal palace at Ugarit. Leather or animal skins were also used and could have been embellished with bracteates as in the case of one of the leopard tunics from King Tutankhamun (Carter 44q; JE 62629–​30) (Vogelsang-​ Eastwood 2016: 52, 56–​57). Byssus or sea-​silk might have been exploited in the second millennium BC, see Soriga and Carannante 2017. 61. See for instance the Ugaritic tribute to Hatti (Beckman 1996: 153–​154), or the letter from Queen Naptera of Egypt to Puduhepa of Hatti (Beckman 1996: 153–​154). 62. See Pinnock 2020: 1; and Nelson writes: “Seeing was doing” (2000: 4). 63. See also Di Paolo 2020: 169 for a similar statement. 64. See Soriga and Carannante 2017: 34, 37–​38 for possible attestations in Hittite texts and a possible representation of a Pinna shell at Mycenae. 65. On the natural hues of wool (light-​coloured and dark-​coloured), see Thavapalan et al. 2016: 200. 66. See for instance Winter 1994; 2000. 67. As noted above, the palace is built with silver, gold and lustrous lapis lazuli. Although in this context, silver and gold are not defined as having light-​reflective properties, they are in other places, such as in: “But then Asherah saw the gleam of the silver, the gleam of the silver and the shine of the gold” (tablet 4, col 2, 27–​28); and gold as well as alabaster are also defined similarly in the Epic of Kirta: “gleaming gold”, “gleaming alabaster” (1: 3, 44) (both from Coogan and Smith 2012: 73, 77). 68. It could also be associated with blood, aggression and war; see Aufrère 1991: 276, nn. 8–​9, 556. 69. Epic of Kirta (1: 2, 1 and 1: 3, 41–​45; after Coogan and Smith 2012: 77). 70. Ugarit, for instance, sent annual tribute to the Hittites that included blue-​purple wool and 500 shekels of red-​purple wool (Beckman 1996: 153–​154). A later inscription of Shalmaneser III of Assyria states that Tyre and Sidon, two coastal cities, sent blue and red woollen textiles to the Assyrian king (Tadmor 1994: 69–​70; Soriga 2017: 80). For other discussions of tribute and trade of purple wool in first millennium BCE texts, see Quillien 2015: 110–​113. 71. Intermingling blue and red threads on textiles might also have created the visual illusion of purplish colours. Such a strategy is seen in the Assyrian palace at Til-​Barsip, which suggests that “the Assyrians were conscious that distance and the angle of light can cause two or more colours placed near each other to create the illusion of an altogether new colour” (Thavapalan 2018b: 30). 72. See Dardeniz 2019: 102, n. 20 for references concerning the Hittite world. 73. Ventris and Chadwick 1973: 321, no. 224; Reese 1987: 204; compare tablet L 474. 74. Pardee 2002; forthcoming; Sauvage 2012b: 155. 75. On the colourfast properties of murex dye see Marín-​Aguilera et al. 2018: 145. According to Marzano (2013: 157–​158), 100 to 160 murex brandaris shells produce 590 millilitres of dye, enough to dye a piece 55

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of textile measuring 20 by 15 centimetres. See also Burke 2010: 36 for a discussion of the number of murex shells needed. 76. For instance, lapis lazuli from the kiln is a clear reference to blue glass, of a lesser value than the original stone. See for instance Thavapalan 2019; Dardeniz 2019 (for glass in the Hittite world). 77. A combination of red dye from the roots of the Rubiaceae family and blue dye derived from the woad plant (Isatis tinctoria) can be considered (Balfour-​Paul 2011: 14). Lichens such as Roccella tinctoria could also have produced purples (Cardon 2003: 109, 378, 323; Marín-​Aguilera et al. 2018: 146). 78. On the other hand, Quillien (2015: 116; 2019: 208) has also observed that in first millennium Mesopotamia, purple wool was common on the local market, but was very expensive and therefore was probably genuine. 79. But several scholars suggested that the Ugaritic tabarru “carnelian red/​red-​brown purple” (Matoïan and Vita 2014: 139) might have been obtained by mixing genuine purple with madder, or other vegetable dyestuff; see for instance Barber 1991: 230. However, Soriga (2017: 84–​91) and Quillien (2015: 107) argue that the Akkadian terms tabarru, takiltu, and argmanannu may also refer to the dyeing process. 80. As in Martial’s Epigrams (1.1, 4.4; 2.16). 81. See Buccellati 2020: 201 and Quillien 2019 for these suggestions. Purple-​dyed wool seems to have been exclusively used by palatial elites of first millennium BCE Mesopotamia (Quillien 2015: 214–​215). 82. See in general Winter 2000: 22–​28, who quotes an early second millennium BCE fragment from the Epic of Gilgamesh: “I saw it and I felt (such) joy” (24). 83. Winter (2000: 30, 34) states that “admiration stands for ‘augmented viewing leading to positive response.’ ” 84. See for instance Wagner-​Durand 2020: 232. 85. Epic of Baal (for the goddess Anat: 5:6, for the god El: 1:2, 17; Coogan and Smith 2012: 143). 86. See Wagner-​Durand 2020: 233–​234, with a reference to the facial colour of the Marduk’s cult statue where only brightness and possibly red are connected to joy and happiness. 87. See for instance in the Mesopotamia tale, Ishtar’s Descent to the Netherworld. 88. In some of the prophecy letters from Mari, the prophet provided the king with a lock of hair and a sissiktum (garment hem), which would be used as the prophet’s substitute during the extispicy (Podany 2010: 52).

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3 New sensory experiences through technological innovation The use and production of transparent drinking bowls in the Neo-​Assyrian palace Katharina Schmidt

Introduction In our world today we are surrounded by a plethora of transparent objects that are part of our everyday sensorial experience. Whether in car windows, binoculars, or architecture, glass and various forms of plastics are the most widely spread transparent and solid materials. By comparison to the ubiquity of these artificial materials, transparency is a property reserved for only few substances in nature. Among such transparent natural solids are minerals like diamond, rock crystal, and pure quartz or selenite. For Mesopotamians of the early first millennium BCE , being confronted with transparency was not part of the daily experience, in particular when it comes to solid materials. Rock crystal is virtually the only natural transparent material known from the archaeological record of those periods which was, however, only rarely used. It is within this setting that the first appearance of transparent glass has to be evaluated. Its first material representatives were certainly perceived as outstanding, as it was a man-​made material through which one could actually see. Unlike, for example, water, which though transparent as well, glass was different because it was solid. And most importantly, one could shape glass, for instance into hemispherical bowls, and thus determine its use. The first deliberate production of glass occurred in the sixteenth century BCE . The conventional assumption is that glass technology was first developed in Mesopotamia (Barag 1970: 131–​ 134; Shortland et al. 2017). Chief glass production sites—​that is to say, raw glass production sites—​are, however, rarely found in the archaeological contexts of the Bronze and the Iron Age.1 In both the Bronze and Iron Ages glass was made from quartz pebbles and a flux consisting of the ashes obtained from desert or coastal plants which, blended with colouring agents, were heated to a melting point above 1000°C (see below; Turner 1956). In this early stage of history, glass was predominantly opaque. The essential features of opaque glass were primarily the material’s impermeability to light, and secondly, the brightly coloured, shiny surfaces, achieved by the addition of mineral colourants to obtain mostly turquoise, white, yellow, or red. Opaque glass objects were produced in the so-​called core-​forming technique, resulting in polychromatic 62

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-4

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vessels with characteristic decorations, among which the most prominent one is the so-​called feather pattern.2 Ancient opaque glass thus very much resembles modern colourful lollipops or sweets. At first glance the material is often quite deceptive, as one would generally expect it to transfer light, and therefore to have a certain degree of translucency. Often glass researchers emphasise the visual proximity of opaque glass to coloured semi-​precious and precious stones.3 In the tenth century BCE glass was virtually reinvented. By then, the production included monochrome, translucent glass often appearing in dark blue hues, and shortly thereafter, probably already in the early ninth century BCE , transparent colourless glass (Schmidt 2019: 112–​114). The transparent hemispherical bowls found at the Assyrian cities of Nimrud and Khorsabad discussed in this chapter represent an innovation not only regarding their material qualities, but also their manufacturing technique.

Methodological background By looking at the bowls from a sensorial perspective, a new aspect detaches itself from the otherwise technical ones, as it focuses more on the human senses experienced in connection with them. In this regard, I draw on Yannis Hamilakis’ Archaeology and the Senses (2013) and his discussion of “commensality” and “memory.” In addition to the usage of the bowls, the primary production of the transparent glass and the secondary production of the hemispherical bowls themselves will be discussed, focusing on the sensory experiences of the glassmakers in the production process of this material. In recent years, the field of sensorial studies in archaeology has received growing attention.4 For Hamilakis (2013: 4) archaeology relies on material things, and the physical qualities of things are precisely those with which humans interact in a sensorial way.5 Therefore, a sensual approach with regard to the transparent drinking bowl enables a new perspective in understanding the material glass and how humans have been engaged with it. With regard to the usage of transparent hemispherical bows, “commensality” is one of the central aspects in this chapter, entailing the aspect of “memory” (Hamilakis 2013: 167–​174). Remembering is an important cognitive process that is connected with sensory experiences: humans are affected by sensory experiences which are brought on by triggers in the present and thus set off processes of remembering. Triggers can be material such as objects and places, or immaterial such as taste, smell, and so forth. Senses and memory are therefore inevitably connected and thus mutually condition each other. In order to be able to view the transparent hemispherical glass bowls against the background of a sensorial approach, the archaeological objects themselves and their find contexts will be presented. Also glass as a material and the physical aspect of transparency will be discussed. Assuming that senses are culturally determined, “thick description” (Geertz 1973) in relation to sensual cultural studies not only involves describing how sensory resources were used by different people, but also approaching the meaning they had for them. This also includes the question of how and why the senses were cultural constructs, that is to say, taught and even controlled, and how the sensual order of a society is related to its wider environment.

Glass and its transparency In order to draw on the sensual meaning and effect of the objects, it is necessary to elaborate on the production processes of glass, and in particular of transparent glass. The production of glass required technological expertise on the basic constituents and their properties, about quantity ratios, temperature, and kiln atmospheres. Only by matching all components and parameters could the material be manufactured successfully. 63

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In general, glass was made from silica, flux, and a stabilizer. Silica is the main chemical component of glass (45–​70 per cent) and occurs as the mineral quartz widely present in quartz pebbles or sand throughout the Near East (Freestone 1991: 39; Wedepohl 2003: 5). Since the melting point of pure silica at around 1700°C was impossible to achieve in ancient kilns and furnaces, flux was added to the batch in order to lower the melting temperature to around 1000°C (Henderson 2013: 56; Pollard and Heron 1996: 156). The most common flux used in the late second and early first millennium BCE was potash gained from plant ash, which was widely available throughout the Near East. Beginning in the tenth century BCE , mineral natron was used as well. The earliest natron-​based glass comes from the tomb of Nesiohns in Thebes, Egypt, and dates to 974 BCE (Schlick-​Nolte and Werthmann 2003) but this material also occurs at Pella, Jordan (Reade et al 2009), Hasanlu, Iran (Brill and Stapleton 2012: 2017), and Nimrud (Reade et al. 2005: 26). Stabilisers were essential for the durability of glass as they stopped the material from dissolving in water. They were usually present in ancient glass in the form of lime and magnesia; it is not clear whether stabilisers were added deliberately to the batch or if they came into the batch with the plant ash (Fletcher et al. 2008: 47). An important characteristic of glass is its behaviour under light, which defines whether a glass is opaque, translucent, or transparent. The amount of light traversing the glass could be influenced by small inclusions, the so-​called “opacifiers.” The presence of opacifiers obstructs light from travelling through glass and thus creates a milky or opaque appearance (Pollard and Heron 1996: 163; Shortland 2002: 518; Turner and Rooksby 1959). Translucent glass, on the other hand, allows the light to pass through it. Translucent glass is free from opacifiers, and may occur in different colours, such as dark blue or purple. Transparent, colourless glass is also translucent and therefore free of any opacifiers (Figure 3.1). This may be due to natural circumstances, unless a so-​called decolouriser (antimony oxide) is added (Shortland 2002: 517–​518). The extent to which transparent glass was intentionally produced, that is to say, through the addition of antimony oxide to the batch, remains uncertain (see above). Among the oldest

Figure 3.1  Hemispherical, transparent drinking bowl with the typical modern white corrosion layer. British Museum (BM 91534). Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum. 64

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transparent colourless glass objects known are the hemispherical glass bowls from the Neo-​ Assyrian capital city of Nimrud, which are the focus of this study.

Archaeological contexts of transparent hemispherical glass bowls Transparent hemispherical glass bowls found at Nimrud in Mesopotamia are completely transparent and therefore are comparable to modern non-​tinted drinking glasses. The bowls were found in a fairly good state of preservation and are part of the British Museum’s collection, as that institution partly sponsored A. H. Layard’s excavations at Nimrud beginning in 1847. Further bowls and bowl fragments were uncovered between 1987 and 1989 by Paolo Fiorina and his team of the Centro Scavi di Torino per il Medio Oriente e l’Asia in the Southwest Quadrant of Fort Shalmaneser (Cellerino 2015: 114). The fragments, which were stored in the house of the Italian expedition, have been destroyed as a result of the 1990–​1991 war (Cellerino 2015: 118). Nimrud, ancient Kalḫu, was the capital of the Neo-​Assyrian Empire from 883 to 706 BCE . Almost all of the transparent glass bowls exhibit a whitish corrosion layer, as well as traces of pitting and iridescence, the typical marks of glass corrosion caused by deposition in the soil. This thick layer of corrosion covers the entire surface of the bowl and makes it non-​transparent in modern times. In some places the layer has flaked off and the transparent glass is visible. The transparent hemispherical bowls range between 7.3 and 14.7 centimetres in diameter and between 5.5 centimetres and 9.7 centimetres in height. The thickness of the vessel wall is about 0.2–​0.3 centimetres; the relatively thin walls certainly contributed to the maximum transparency of the material. The bowls were made through the slumping technique, during which a hot and thus malleable glass disc was slumped over a dome-​shaped form (Schmidt 2019: 47–​48) (Figure 3.2). These bowls represent the earliest prototypes for this particular manufacturing technique.6 The hemispherical bowls were probably held between the fingertips, as depicted on a carved ivory also from Nimrud showing Ashurnasirpal II in a ceremonial dress holding a hemispherical bowl in the right hand on top of his fingers (Figure 3.3). Other depictions are also known, for example, from a relief from the Northwest Palace at Nimrud showing the seated king holding a shallow bowl between his fingertips (Oates and Oates 2001: 54, fig. 28) or on a relief from the North Palace at Nineveh showing Ashurbanipal feasting with his queen, the latter holding a petalled bowl between the ends of her fingers (Thomason 2010: 207, figs. 8.8, 8.9).

Figure 3.2  The principle of slumping a transparent glass blank over a dome-​shaped mould (slumping technique). Source: Schmidt 2019: 48, fig. 4.12; redrawn after Grose 1989: 33, fig. 9. 65

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Figure 3.3  Carved ivory depicting Ashurnasirpal II holding a hemispherical bowl between his fingertips, Nimrud (height: 27 centimetres) (ND1082). Source: Mallowan 1966: fig. 21.

The context in which the transparent hemispherical bowls were found indicates the group of people that used and produced them. All bowls were found in palatial contexts in the Neo-​ Assyrian capitals in Mesopotamia. Five intact and two nearly intact vessels are known from Nimrud.7 The vessels were recovered from several elite structures at Nimrud, including the Northwest Palace (room AA) and the so-​called Burnt Palace, and from Fort Shalmaneser (rooms SW37 and A12), a military and administrative storehouse (ekal māšarti, or “review palace”) (Barag 1985: 62–​63, nos. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32; Cellerino 2015: 115; Schmidt 2019: 194, nos. Nim7–​ Nim12). Over 250 bowl fragments were uncovered in the Burnt Palace making the number of bowls that existed in Nimrud much larger (Barag 1985: 64, no. 35). A bowl fragment was uncovered from the royal residence K (room 52) at Khorsabad, ancient Dur-​Sharrukin, the capital of Assyria under Sargon II, from 721 to 705 BCE (DS 1180; OIM A17439; Barag 1985: 66, n. 111; Schmidt 2019: 192, no. Khor 1). And finally, one fragment comes from Nineveh, which was the capital of the Neo-​Assyrian Empire under several kings from 706–​612 BCE (Barag 66

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Figure 3.4  Fragment of a rock crystal bowl with engraved design from the Burnt Palace, Nimrud (diameter: 7.8 centimetres) (ND 1663). Source: Mallowan 1966: fig. 143.

1985: 66, no. 41). The number of transparent colourless glass bowls found outside of Assyria is extremely low; specimens have been reported from Fortetsa, Crete (Brock 1957: 1), Praeneste, Italy (Canciani and Hase 1979: 77–​87), and Gordion (Jones 2009: 106–​107). Since they are of later dates, they have not been included in the present discussion. Looking at the specific find contexts, room AA in the Northwest Palace had probably served as a magazine inside the palace’s private domestic quarters (bītānu). With regard to Fort Shalmaneser, most of the transparent hemispherical vessels were found in room SW37, part of a large storage area, along with pieces of ivory furniture and their (glass) inlays, and other objects (Fiorina 2009: 36–​38; Mallowan 1966: plan VIII). The fragment from Khorsabad was found in room 52 which was identified as part of a service area around the court (Loud and Altman 1938: 68, pl. 71). An important and related part of this object corpus is the fragment of a hemispherical bowl made of rock crystal (Figure 3.4); this piece was also discovered in the throne room of the Burnt Palace. Both the rock crystal bowl and the transparent glass bowl had the same material properties and therefore the same effect on the group of people who used them (Larson 2019). The coinciding in situ contexts show that both materials were only used in the palace. This restriction of glass bowls (and one single bowl of rock crystal) to purely palatial contexts is all but accidental: not a single transparent piece of glass was found in the many dwelling houses excavated at Assur where all findings were meticulously recorded (Miglus 1996). A complete lack of transparent glass objects has also been observed in more recent excavations, such as in the provincial Neo-​Assyrian cities of Tell Halaf (ancient Guzana), Zincirli (ancient Sam’al), and Ziyaret Tepe (ancient Tušhan), which had close relations with the Neo-​Assyrian Empire being part of the vassal and province system.8 This distribution of findspots shows that transparent glass objects were exclusively used at Neo-​Assyrian royal palaces, and hence also produced exclusively for use there. The find circumstances thus define the functional context for the transparent hemispherical glass bowls. Evidently the bowls had been used exclusively at the Neo-​Assyrian royal court, and thus they were also produced specifically for the same client. Together with their sizes of no more than 10 by 15 centimetres (height 5.5–​9.7 centimetres diameter), the rounded shapes and the thin rims, the bowls point to a function as drinking vessels perfectly adapted to be held between the fingertips of an individual person (Figure 3.3). In addition, the glass material itself was particularly suited for holding liquids, as the vitrified surface did not absorb them. Similar 67

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vessel sizes and wall thicknesses are known from metal bowls (Oates and Oates 2001: 275–​276) and also ceramic representatives of the so-​called “palace-​ware” that were used as drinking vessels at banquets held throughout the Neo-​Assyrian Empire. Palace-​ware vessels are characterised by very fine wares with varying shapes and sizes, including hand-​held bowls (Hunt 2015: 48–​49, 183–​187). Since the objects were found in magazines and service rooms of the elite buildings and in association with other valuable objects and furniture parts, it is likely that they were stored there—​together with the glass bowls—​to be retrieved when needed for royal banquets held in the royal palaces. The massive scale, and high visibility of the Neo-​Assyrian royal monumental buildings symbolised and materialised power in every respect. “The city [Khorsabad]9 defined and reified political structures within the empire; the buildings’ role as ‘social capital’ that expressed the wealth and high status of their occupants is also clear” (McMahon 2013: 164). The Neo-​Assyrian elite consciously used every possible means of communication and reinterpretation; the palaces were also meant as physical reminders of singular events whilst they served as links, not only between people, but also between the past, present, and future (Ermidoro 2015: 238).

Use Hamilakis (2013: 167–​174) describes the “palatial phenomenon,” meaning that palaces were places for an explosion of sensuality, with the “materialisation, glorification, and celebration of ancestral time, of long-​term, sensorial, and mnemonic history” (Hamilakis 2013: 168). One central aspect is the specific “place” because memory is irrevocably linked to emplacement (Hamilakis 2013: 168–​170). The driving force of the particular palatial experience is the aspect of collectivity of the participants, since they carry their experiences with them outside the palace. Communal ceremonies held in palaces, which commemorate and celebrate the act of gathering, are thus decisive for their history (“embodied commensality”) (Hamilakis 2013: 170–​ 171). The atmosphere of the palatial court, the taste and smell of foods and drink altogether form a sensory explosion that creates links between people, and thus builds up mnemonic histories.10 Thomason (2016: 246) describes Neo-​Assyrian palaces as “multi sensorial envelopes” that were experienced visually, acoustically, and cognitively as the visitors moved through them (kinaesthesia). Attendants at the royal banquet were inexorably unshielded as they faced this multisensory explosion.11 The transparent hemispherical glass bowls are an important artefact group that have to be interpreted in the context of the royal banquet where they contributed in a heightened manner to the sensorial explosion. As indicated by their find-​contexts, the transparent hemispherical glass bowls were used at the royal banquets inside the palaces of the Neo-​Assyrian capitals. Feasts by the king were usually held in the empire’s capital cities, where inhabitants from all over Assyria gathered.12 During the banquet the Assyrian king was present, but owing to the scarcity of other public events during which he appeared, his presence at royal banquets was certainly considered as extraordinary.13 The banquet was held in large rooms (Ermidoro 2015: 95), the participants sat on chairs (with footstools) at tables.14 The servants brought movable and lavishly decorated braziers with firelight into the reception rooms on two parallel rows made of stone blocks, referred to as “tram lines” (SAA 20: 33, ii, 6–​15). Apart from their comforting heating function, the braziers were also adapted to the room’s overall decoration (Bertazzoli and Bertolotto 1998; Kertai 2015: 186). An exceptional atmosphere was created by burning incense and other aromatics during the meal (SAA 20: 33, ii, 3–​5, r. 41–​44). The ensuing blend of fragrances provoked an intense olfactory experience. There are long lists of the foodstuffs and dishes reported to have been consumed at the royal banquets.15 The dishes were extraordinary and diametrically different from the guests’ 68

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usual food intake. This generated distinctive associations that, due to their singularity, linked up with particular memories about the event. Before the meal, the guest’s comfort was taken care of in a ceremonial hand-​washing (SAA 20: 33, ii, 16–​19). In addition to this tactile experience, the festive atmosphere was heightened by appropriately chosen garments that indicated individual ranks and functions, and corresponding to the event’s felt importance (Thomason 2010). Finally, the multisensorial experience would have been topped by musicians of string, wind and percussion instruments, accompanying the gathering during the banquet (Ermidoro 2015: 232, with further literature). The transparent hemispherical glass bowls played a decisive role in this environment as the central activity of the banquet participants during the feast was drinking. This links up with iconographic representations in reliefs, glazed pottery vessels, or ivories which show that the typical gesture of the banquet attendees was not eating, but that of drinking. Kings, ladies, and courtiers are exclusively represented in attitudes raising their hands while holding shallow bowls between their fingertips (see Figure 3.4). The lifting of the drinking bowls, as for example depicted on a relief from Nimrud, Room G (king) (Oates and Oates 2001: 54, fig. 28) or on a carved ivory panel (king and other participants) (Oates and Oates 2001: 58, fig. 31), can therefore be interpreted as raising a toast. There are no known similar scenes in which someone eats or handles food that could be due to an ideological decision (Ermidoro 2015: 231). With regard to the written evidence, a toast given by Sennacherib is testified in his annals: “at the dedication of the palace, I drenched the foreheads of the people of my land with wine, with mead I sprinkled their hearts” (RINAP 3/​1: Sennacherib 17, viii, 75–​76). The usual beverages available at a banquet were wine, beer, and an alcoholic drink translated here as “mead.”Wine was considered the most prestigious and exclusive drink, and with regard to important events such as the royal banquet, it was poured at the request of the guests (Ermidoro 2015: 189, 207). Drinking played a crucial role during the royal banquet. The taste and the odour of wine was of paramount importance, its communal consumption invoked a sense of cohesion and intimacy, not least because of its alcohol contents (Fales 1994; Kinnier Wilson 1972; Stronach 1985). The transparent hemispherical glass bowls enhanced this extraordinary moment. The glass bowls were transparent, made artificially in a rare material. The mere appearance of these bowls must have been considered as exceptional, and the opportunity to hold one of them in the hand must have been beyond any stretch of imagination for many. The same material properties also apply to the rock crystal bowls, also found exclusively in Neo-​Assyrian palaces, which were certainly valued as highly as the transparent glass bowls (Figure 3.4). The fact that rock crystal is a natural material and glass is artificially produced (as, for example, metals are as well) is irrelevant in this context.16 By its size and shape, the bowl could be held perfectly between the fingers. Its smooth surface had an incomparable feel that until then had been without equal from ceramic or metal vessels. Lifting the glass bowls to a toast exalted the community to an almost magical moment, when the visible red liquid of prestigious wine was held shimmering in the light, as if suspended in the air. The liquid floated in the room. After the toast, the bowl was brought to the mouth, the smooth and delicate surface of its slender edge gently touched the lips. Moreover, the liquids consumed in odourless glass were immaculate from parasite smells like the ones emanating from metal bowls. This again contrasted to the experiences of daily life in which one was left to drink from the less smooth and thick-​ walled pottery, or from metal vessels (more likely of bronze and not gold) which might have emitted a metallic smell or aftertaste. Together with the setting of the banquet with all its fragrances, tastes, and sounds, the sensory diversity and triggers inside the palace and with the presence of the king himself, these unique and transparent drinking bowls must have culminated in a sensory explosion that created an unforgettable moment for every banquet attendant. 69

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This shared experience was meant to be unequivocally associated with the royal banquet (see also Chapter 14, this volume). The event represented a clear disruption from normal temporality and created a distinctive moment in time that the attendants took back to their homes in deep-​rooted memories.

Production There is hardly any evidence in the archaeological record for the primary production of glass and the processing of glass objects (secondary production) and none for the production of transparent glass in the early first millennium BCE . Neither workshops nor raw glass ingots have been found in situ in the capital cities of Assyria. Nevertheless, conclusions about the circumstances of production and processing can be drawn from the findspots and the use of transparent bowls discussed in the preceding paragraphs. In order to discuss the invention and production of transparent glass, it is essential to understand its chemical components. Transparent glass was made by adding the decolouriser antimony oxide in a quantity of one to two per cent to the batch, which was melted in the furnace under suitable firing conditions (Brill 1970: 116). The antimony oxide decolourised the normal greenish colour of most glasses which was caused by impurities in the raw quartz materials. Elevated levels of antimony oxide in the batch could therefore indicate a deliberate use of the decolourisers by the glassmakers to achieve colourless glass. And indeed, elevated levels of this oxide are attested in samples taken from colourless glass from Nimrud, which identifies these pieces as the earliest decolourised transparent glass objects known.17 The stages leading to the production of transparent glass have not yet been researched in detail. Nevertheless, there are some indications that the transparent glasses from Nimrud were deliberately made. First, the large number of transparent glass vessels and fragments found in the Northwest Palace, Burnt Palace, and Fort Shalmaneser at Nimrud basically exclude an accidental production of colourless glass. Second, Reade et al. (2005: 5) could identify three different composition groups of colourless glass at Nimrud which implies the existence of a dynamic production of colourless glass at the site. No other Mesopotamian site of the first millennium BCE provided such dense evidence for the production and processing of transparent glass as the Neo-​Assyrian palaces in Nimrud. This presupposes that the glassmakers working for the royal court at Nimrud knew exactly which raw material(s), in which quantities, and under which conditions led to the decolouration of glass. They worked, of course, without the modern knowledge of the chemical properties of the elements and its reactions. One way to approach the production process of glass is to consult cuneiform texts, the so-​called “glassmaking texts” or “Nineveh glass recipes,” which give us an insight into the production of coloured glass; the production of transparent glass is not attested in these texts (Oppenheim 1970; Schmidt 2019: 118–​133).18 The detailed instructions of the texts indicate that the production of coloured glass was a difficult undertaking that could lead to defective products showing unintentional discolouration or even to waste material if even only minor mistakes were made. In view of the high costs associated with the procurement of firing and the effort involved in the actual melting process, adherence to the chaîne opératoire, that is to say, the sequence of certain production steps, was of the utmost importance. This will be illustrated in the following using the example of the production of zagindurû-​glass, a blue translucent glass: in order to be able to produce the end product zagindurû-​glass, it was first necessary to produce the intermediate glass products zukû and tersītu. Each step that led to the intermediate products is characterised by different operations such as repeated heating, crushing of sintered products, melting and annealing. All of these steps were necessary to release impurities from the batch 70

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that had entered it through the different base materials as silica and thus made the product more reactive and better predictable for the melting process. The intended purification of the basic substances becomes clear in the etymological origin of the intermediate zukû, which means “the pure one, purity” (AHw: 1536, from zakû, “pure”), and which can be identified as an intermediate glass product (Schmidt 2019: 129). Without these repeated purifications the final melting process could fail. The complex and sophisticated sequence of production steps shows how carefully the glass processing was carried out and how precisely the glassmakers knew the various production steps. The manufacturing process of a previously unknown material, which possessed the outstanding material property of transparency, must have been both an extraordinary success and a constant challenge for the glassmakers. Only rock crystal possessed the property of transparency at that time, a material also strictly reserved for use in the palace. However, while rock crystal is a natural material, transparent glass was man-​made. Glass was not valued beyond rock crystal because of its artificial production, but it must have had significance for the glassmakers who were privileged to imitate nature; from the furnace they picked out and removed the transparent glass after having meticulously followed the manufacturing steps. Undoubtedly, for the glassmakers the moment after melting was associated with a feeling of excitement and hope for success—​because once the base materials were in the furnace, the composition could no longer be manipulated during the melting process. In this regard, the glassmakers surely also trusted in divine assistance, which was already important when building the glass furnace. According to the recipes, a “favourable month” and “a propitious day” had to arrive in order to build a kiln (Schmidt 2019: 125).19 Furthermore, for the protection of the kiln, images of the kūbu demons, personifications of embryos insinuating the creation of a new material, were buried in front of it. Then, before the first melting, a sacrifice was performed, juniper was burned, and sacrifices of honey and ghee were made in front of the kiln and the kūbu-​images. The ritual could only be carried out by ritually clean participants, and no “unclean” person was allowed to approach the kiln, which also applied to the glassworkers. The ritual purification is considered the ideal state, which represents the perfect order and the absence of all evils (Sallaberger 2007). The ideal condition was considered decisive for a successful glass production, which comes as no surprise in view of the technological complexity of glass production. The detailed instruction of the ritual shows that, together with the meticulous observance of the chaîne opératoire, it was considered crucial in glass production. The glassmakers thus belonged to a strictly limited group of people who could get near the glass furnace at all and, moreover, were directly involved in the production of this unique material, since only they possessed the respective knowledge (see also Chapter 30, this volume). The strict assignment of transparent glass to the royal court and the exclusive use of the material at the royal banquet must have added to the importance and status of the glassmakers. The transformation of transparent glass into hemispherical bowls during secondary production was the next significant step. It was only at this stage that the transparency and purity of the glass could be properly assessed, as the walls of the bowls became thin enough to actually see through. The smooth surface of the bowls was achieved by a final polishing with minimally abrasive materials, so the craftsmen involved in this process were the ones who first lifted the pieces—​without wine and without toast—​to appreciate visually the effect of transparency and to feel the smooth surface.

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Conclusion The transparent hemispherical glass bowls represent a remarkable innovation, both in terms of material and manufacturing technique that occurred not later than the ninth century BCE . In the Neo-​Assyrian period, the transparency of the material was unequalled by (almost) any other material. The earliest bowls were found exclusively in the royal palace, where they had functioned as drinking vessels during royal banquets. They were part of the sensory landscapes of Neo-​Assyrian royal banquets and their use represented an absolutely extraordinary experience for every participant of the banquet community, creating a distinctive and unforgettable moment and thus laying the base for future memories. The glassmakers were the ones who preserved the knowledge about the production of this special material; they were fully aware of the sequence of production steps, but they asked for the help of the gods for a good result. The successful outcome of the production was uncertain until the end of the process and thus always accompanied by a feeling of uncertainty. On the other hand, the ability to produce a transparent material artificially, a quality previously completely unknown and probably even unthinkable, may have led to a feeling of superiority and pride in the circles of the craftsmen. The Neo-​Assyrian palace offered the only environment in which this material could be produced and used.

Notes 1. In the middle of the fourteenth century BCE two Egyptian production centres (Amarna and Malkata) (Nicholson 2007; Pusch and Rehren 2007) are known, whereas in Mesopotamia production centres yet await proper documentation, although it is generally assumed that glass was produced here in several different workshops (Shortland 2012; Shortland et al. 2017; Walton et al. 2012). 2. For the variety of the patterns on core-​formed vessels, see Schmidt 2019: 94. 3. The extent to which an imitation of stones was intended is not the subject of this chapter; see in this regard Shortland 2012: 75–​78; Amrhein 2019; Schmidt 2019: 78–​82. 4. For the first theoretical approaches to sensorial archaeology see Tarlow (2000a; 2000b; 2012), and Meskell (1999; 2002); particularly the works by Skeates (2010) and Hamilakis (2013) have been influential, in which the calls for a “sensorial turn” in archaeology have been voiced. 5. In his monograph Archaeology and the Senses, Hamilakis (2013: 16–​65) goes into detail about the sensory regime of the modern Western world and shows the roots of modern developments. By doing so, it becomes clear that the modern Western sensorium is a cultural construct and therefore embedded within the colonial and national nexus of power. These explanations represent a comprehensible example of the cultural construct of senses in relation to the Western world. 6. The process nonetheless evokes the manufacturing technique of the so-​called mosaic glass vessels that date back to the Late Bronze Age (1600–​1200 BCE ) (Schmidt 2019: 38–​39). The slumping method applied with the transparent hemispherical bowls may hence be understood as technically inspired by earlier techniques, which is a feature recurrently observed in “innovations” (Burmeister and Bernbeck 2017: 8). An innovation, in contrast to invention, is described as a social process in which a group of people gradually or suddenly undertakes something “new” and integrates it into everyday life, see Hansen et al. 2021: https://​atlas-​innovations.de/​en/​p/​ What-​Are-​Innovations-​uvmYLhKc38htMugBrsUKkB. 7. Next to the intact bowls, there are over 250 fragments of translucent violet, turquoise, and dark blue hemispherical bowls—​which were also made by the slumping technique—​among the finds from Fort Shalmaneser and the Burnt Palace, the latter being another royal residence at Nimrud which was in use from 710–​612 BCE (Barag 1985: 63–​64, nos. 33, 35, 36). It cannot be ruled out that there are also transparent shards among these pieces, which were never fully described. 8. This conclusion is based on the insight into the excavation databases of the excavation missions; I thank for Tell Halaf, Lutz Martin; for Zincirli, David Schloen and Vincent van Exel; for Ziyaret Tepe, Tim Matney and Dirk Wicke. 9. This applies not only to Khorsabad but to all Neo-​Assyrian capitals.

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10. An abundance of social aspects around commensality have been extensively studied in the social sciences; for example, psychosocial studies show how sharing food creates a semi-​conscious sense of intimacy (Fahlander 2010: 37). 11. Numerous authors have described these aspects in relation to the Neo-​Assyrian palace focusing on different elements such as, for example, the architecture and control of movement (Kertai 2012); the effects of light and shadow (McMahon 2013); polychromatic wall reliefs, glazed bricks, and ṣiqqatu (Neumann 2015; 2018; 2019); drapery (Reade 1979); floors and inlaid furniture (Dalley 2013: 128); for a detailed overview and summary on the palace from a sensual point of view, see Portuese 2019; Thomason 2016: 245–​248, for the banquet, see 248–​253. 12. Neo-​Assyrian capitals were considered the centres of the world, and the centres of these capitals were in turn the royal palaces. Certain Neo-​Assyrian kings moved the capital from one city to another, establishing a new and unique seat of power. In contrast to Bronze Age centres, which Hamilakis (2013: 190) discusses for Crete, the Assyrian locales that transformed into palatial centres did not always have a long history of (monumental) occupation and use, but were staged as such. 13. Private meetings with the ruler were extremely hard to arrange, even for his closest friends and followers. This is exemplified by a written correspondence complaining about the difficulty to meet the king face to face (e.g., Ermidoro 2015: 90). 14. Depictions of which are well known from palace reliefs and on glazed vessels found at Nimrud (Oates and Oates 2001: 232, fig. 144). 15. Many of the ingredients and flavours would have been imported from regions outside of the Assyrian heartland. The dishes too were highly complex and indeed released unfamiliar aromas and subsequently tastes as they were being served in elaborately arranged presentations; for an extensive overview of banquets and the foods served at them, see Ermidoro 2015: 191–​200. 16. On this topic see, e.g., Amrhein 2019; Schmidt 2019: 78–​82. 17. Brill (1970: 116) was sceptical about the conscious use of a decolouriser in glass from Nimrud. He explains that antimony is almost ubiquitous in every glass sample of the first millennium BCE in the entire Mediterranean and from Mesopotamia with a proportion of about one to two per cent. However, the effect of colouration could also be due to the furnace atmosphere or the use of pure sands, see therefore Bimson and Freestone 1985; Shortland and Eremin 2006: 584, 591. 18. The texts comprise a group of cuneiform tablets found in the library of Ashurbanipal (668–​631 BCE ) in Nineveh. There are 38 fragments that can be joined to five clay tablets which are all kept in the British Museum. Apart from this group, three other isolated cuneiform texts from the mid to late second millennium BCE are known that deal with the production of raw glass, one Middle Babylonian text with unknown provenance (BM 120960) (dated to the last third of the second millennium) and one from Hattuša (BM 108561), both in the British Museum, and one from Babylon (VAT 16453) now in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. 19. The ritual referred to comprises the introduction of the Nineveh glass recipe, and is part of manuscript A and B (Schmidt 2019: 122–​123; Oppenheim 1970: figs. 2.3, 4.5). It is important to stress here, that accompanying rituals for the construction of a glassmaking kiln were “in no way atypical or extraordinary” (Oppenheim 1970: 33), but an important element of any kind of building work in Mesopotamia (Ambos 2004: 3).

Bibliography Ambos, C. 2004. Mesopotamische Baurituale aus dem 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Dresden: Islet. Amrhein, A. 2019. “The Power of Stones: Natural, Artificial, and in Between,” in A. Amrhein, C. Fitzgerald, and E. Knott, eds., A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate. New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and Princeton University, 91–​103. Barag, D. 1970. “Mesopotamian Core-​Formed Glass Vessels (1500–​500 B.C.),” in A. L. Oppenheim, ed., Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Edition of the Cuneiform Texts which Contain Instructions for Glassmakers with a Catalogue of Surviving Objects. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass, 131–​199. Barag, D. 1985. Catalogue of Western Asiatic Glass in the British Museum. London: British Museum Publications. Bertazzoli, E., and G. Bertolotto. 1998. “Un braciere da Forte Salmanassar, Nimrud.” Mesopotamia 33: 167–​188.

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Bimson, M., and I. C. Freestone. 1985. “Scientific Examination of Opaque Red Glass of the Second and First Millennia BC,” in D. Barag, ed., Catalogue of Western Asiatic Glass in the British Museum. London: British Museum Publications, 119–​122. Brill, R. H. 1970. “The Chemical Interpretation of the Texts,” in A. L. Oppenheim, ed., Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Edition of the Cuneiform Texts which Contain Instructions for Glassmakers with a Catalogue of Surviving Objects. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass, 105–​128. Brill, R. H., and C. P. Stapleton. 2012. Chemical Analyses of Early Glasses, Volume 3: The Years 2000–​2011, Reports, and Essays. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass. Brock, J. K. 1957. Fortetsa: Early Greek Tombs near Knossos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burmeister, S., and R. Bernbeck, eds. 2017. The Interplay of People and Technologies: Archaeological Case Studies on Innovations. Berlin: Edition Topoi. Canciani, F., and F.-​W. Hase. 1979. La tomba Bernardini di Palestrina. Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Cellerino, A. 2015. “Glass from the Italian Excavation in Fort Shalmaneser.” Mesopotamia: Revista di Archeologia, Epigrafia e Storia Orientale Antica 50: 113–​144. Dalley, S. 2013. The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ermidoro, S. 2015. Commensality and Ceremonial Meals in the Neo-​Assyrian Period. Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Fahlander, F. 2010. “The Nose, the Eye, Mouth and the Gut: Social Dimensions of Food-​Cravings and Commensality,” in F. Fahlander and A. Kjellström, eds., Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 35–​50. Fales, M. 1994. “A Fresh Look at the Nimrud Wine Lists,” in L. Milano, ed., Drinking in Ancient Societies: History and Culture of Drinks in the Ancient Near East. Papers of a Symposium Held in Rome, May 17–​19, 1990. Padova: Sargon, 361–​380. Fiorina, P. 2009. “Nimroud, Fort Salmanasar: entrepôts et ateliers de la zone SW,” in S. M. Cecchini, S. Mazzoni, and E. Scigliuzzo, eds., Syrian and Phoenician Ivories of the Early First Millennium BCE: Chronology, Regional Styles and Iconographic Repertories, Patterns of Inter-​regional Distribution. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 27–​46. Fletcher, P. J., I. C. Freestone, and R. Geschke. 2008. “Analysis and Conservation of a Weeping Glass Scarab.” Technical Research Bulletin, British Museum 2: 45–​48. Freestone, I. C. 1991. “Looking into Glass,” in S. Bowman, ed., Science and the Past. London: British Museum Press, 37–​56. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. London: Hutchinson. Grose, D. 1989. The Toledo Museum of Art: Early Ancient Glass. New York: Hudson Hill Press. Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses. Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hansen, S., J. Renn, F. Klimscha, and J. Büttner. 2021. “What Are Innovations?” Digital Atlas of Innovations. https://​atlas-​innovations.de/​en/​p/​What-​Are-​Innovations-​uvmYLhKc38htMugBrsUKkB. Henderson, J. 2013. Ancient Glass: An Interdisciplinary Exploration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunt, A. M. W. 2015. Palace Ware Across the Neo-​Assyrian Imperial Landscape: Social Value and Semiotic Meaning. CHANE 78. Leiden: Brill. Jones, J. D. 2009. “Did the Phrygians Make Glass? Sources of Moulded Glass in Iron Age and Hellenistic Gordion,” in K. Janssens, P. Degryse, P. Cosyns, J. Caen, and L. Van’t dack, eds., Annales du 17e Congrès de l’Association internationale pour l’histoire du verre. Antwerp: Antwerp University Press, 21–​26. Kertai, D. 2012. “Organising the Interaction Between People: A New Look at the Elite Houses of Nuzi,” in G. Wilhelm, ed., Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Würzburg, 20–​25 July 2008. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 519–​530. Kertai, D. 2015. The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kinnier Wilson, J. V. 1972. The Nimrud Wine Lists: A Study of Men and Administration at the Assyrian Capital in the Eighth Century B.C. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Larson, K. 2019. “Vitreous Materials in the Ancient Near East,” in A. Amrhein, C. Fitzgerald, and E. Knott, eds., A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate. New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and Princeton University, 113–​118. Loud, G., and C. B. Altman. 1938. Khorsabad II: The Citadel and the Town. OIP 40. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 74

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Mallowan, M. E. L. 1966. Nimrud and Its Remains. 2 Volumes. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. McMahon, A. 2013. “Space, Sound, and Light: Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monumental Architecture.” AJA 117: 163–​179. Meskell, L. 1999. Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class, et cetera in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Blackwell. Meskell, L. 2002. Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Miglus, P. A. 1996. Das Wohngebiet von Assur. Stratigraphie und Architektur. Berlin: Mann. Neumann, K. 2015. “In the Eyes of the Other: Mythological Wall Reliefs in the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh,” in M. Dalton, G. Peters, and A. Tavares, eds., Seen and Unseen Spaces: Archaeological Review from Cambridge 30 (1): 85–​93. Neumann, K. 2018. “Reading the Temple of Nabu as a Coded Sensory Experience.” Iraq 80: 181–​211. Neumann, K. 2019. “Sensing the Sacred in the Neo-​Assyrian Temple: The Presentation of Offerings to the Gods,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 23–​62. Nicholson, P. T., ed. 2007. Brilliant Things for Akhenaten: The Production of Glass, Vitreous Materials and Pottery at Amarna Site O45.1. London and Oakville, CT: Egypt Exploration Society and David Brown Book Company. Oates, J., and D. Oates. 2001. Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Oppenheim, A. L. 1970. “The Cuneiform Tablets with Instructions for Glassmakers,” in A. L. Oppenheim, ed., Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Edition of the Cuneiform Texts which Contain Instructions for Glassmakers with a Catalogue of Surviving Objects. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass, 22–​101. Pollard, A. M., and C. Heron. 1996. Archaeological Chemistry. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry. Portuese, L. 2019. “The Throne Room of Aššurnaṣirpal II: A Multisensory Experience,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 63–​92. Pusch, E., and T. Rehren. 2007. “Glas für den Pharao –​Glasherstellung in der Spätbronzezeit des Nahen Ostens,” in G. A. Wagner, ed., Einführung in die Archäometrie. Berlin: Springer, 215–​235. Reade, J. 1979. “Assyrian Palatial Decoration I: Techniques and Subject Matter.” Baghdader Mitteilungen (10). Reade, W., I. C. Freestone, and S. Bourke. 2009. “Innovation and Continuity in Bronze Age and Iron Age Glass from Pella in Jordan,” in Annales du 17e Congrès de l’Association Internationale pour l’Histoire du Verre, Anvers, 2006. Antwerp: Antwerp University Press, 47–​54. Reade, W., I. C. Freestone, and St. J. Simpson. 2005. “Innovation or Continuity? Early First Millennium BCE Glass in the Near East: The Cobalt Blue Glasses from Assyrian Nimrud,” in Annales du 16e Congrès de l’Association Internationale pour l’Histoire du Verre, London, 2003. Nottingham: AIHV, 23–​27. Sallaberger, W. 2007. “Reinheit. A. Mesopotamien.” RIA 11: 295–​299. Schlick-​Nolte, B., and R. Werthmann. 2003. “Glass Vessels from the Burial of Nesikhons.” Journal of Glass Studies 25 (45): 11–​34. Schmidt, K. 2019. Glass and Glass Production in the Near East During the Iron Age Period: Evidence from Objects, Texts and Chemical Analysis. Oxford: Archaeopress. Shortland, A. 2002. “The Use and Origin of Antimonate Colourants in Early Egyptian Glass.” Archaeometry 44: 517–​530. Shortland, A. J. 2012. Lapis Lazuli from the Kiln: Glass and Glassmaking in the Late Bronze Age. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Shortland, A. J., and K. Eremin. 2006. “The Analysis of Second Millennium BC Glass from Egypt and Mesopotamia, Part 1: New WDS Analyses.” Archaeometry 48: 581–​605. Shortland, A., S. Kirk, K. Eremin, P. Degryse, and M. Walton. 2017. “The Analysis of Late Bronze Age Glass from Nuzi and the Question of the Origin of the Glass-​Making.” Archaeometry 60: 1–​20. Skeates, R. 2010. An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta. New York: Oxford University Press. Stronach, D. 1985. “The Imagery of the Wine Bowl: Wine in Assyria in the Early First Millennium BC,” in P. E. MacGovern, S. J. Fleming, and S. Katz, eds., The Origins and Ancient History of Wine. New York: Gordon and Breach, 175–​195. Tarlow, S. 2000a. “Emotion in Archaeology.” Current Anthropology 41: 713–​746. Tarlow, S. 2000b. “Landscapes of Memory: The Nineteenth-​Century Garden Cemetery.” European Journal of Archaeology 3: 217–​239. Tarlow, S. 2012. “The Archaeology of Emotion and Affect.” ARA 41: 169–​185. 75

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Thomason, A. K. 2010. “Banquets, Baubles, and Bronzes: Material Comforts in the Neo-​ Assyrian Palaces,” in A. Cohen and S. E. Kangas, eds., Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography. Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College and University Press of New England, 198–​214. Thomason, A. K. 2016. “The Sense-​scapes of Neo-​Assyrian Capital Cities: Royal Authority and Bodily Experience.” CAJ 26: 243–​264. Turner, W. E. S. 1956. “Studies of Ancient Glasses and Glassmaking Processes, Part II: The Composition, Weathering Characteristics and Historical Significance of Some Assyrian Glasses of the Eighth to Sixth Centuries B.C. from Nimrud.” Journal of the Society of Glass Technology 38: 445–​456. Turner, W. E. S., and H. P. Rooksby. 1959. “A Study of the Opalising Agents in Ancient Opal Glasses Throughout Three Thousand Four Hundred Years.” Glastechnische Berichte 8: 17–​29. Walton, M. S., K. Eremin, A. J. Shortland, and P. Degryse. 2012. “Analysis of Late Bronze Age Glass Axes from Nippur: A New Cobalt Colourant.” Archaeometry 54: 835–​852. Wedepohl, K. H. 2003. Glas in Antike und Mittelalter. Geschichte eines Werkstoffs mit 29 Tabellen. Stuttgart: Schweizerbart.

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4 To touch upon A tactile exploration of the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis Kiersten Neumann

Introduction Touch animates social life; it is a form of communication that creates bonds between people and the material world. Whether holding an object, embracing a person, or experiencing a tactile fantasy, as humans we are surrounded by instances and opportunities to engage with our surroundings through touch. Utilitarian, pleasurable, and imaginative tactile encounters serve one of our most basic needs. One millimetre below the skin’s surface, the epidermis, is a collection of Meissner’s corpuscles—​oval clusters of cells, or pressure-​sensitive sensory end organs, enriched particularly in the fingerprint skin of human hands and the soles of our feet; these touch receptors are connected to nerves that transmit signals to the brain (Abraira and Ginty 2013). As tactile sensations reach the brain, they become associated with visual sensations, the two working in unison—​touch enables us to attribute tactile values to retinal impressions. This touch–​vision relationship emerges in the art world through an emphasis on faithful representation of shapes, structures, and materials. The tactile sensibility of the Gothic reality captured in Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait of 1434 and the realistic depiction of pain and suffering of Spanish Baroque as seen in statues of the Crying Virgin Mary—​with immaculately rendered tears running down her cheeks (Figure 4.1)—​stand as example of the power and emotional effect of the materialisation of tactile sensations on viewers (Svankmajer 2014). Taking things one step further, Salvador Dalí’s “le cinema tactile,” discussed in connection with his 1930 film project L’Âge d’or, envisions a synaesthetic cinema that would create a mixed tactile-​auditory-​visual experience; the former sense was to be realised by way of objects and materials that would roll out on a table in front of each audience member in sync with what was being presented on the screen (King 2007: 30). Notwithstanding the impact and richness of tactile sensations on the human experience, it is the visual sphere that has traditionally been prioritised in Western art historical scholarship, as has sight in the field of anthropology of the senses up until recently (Howes 2005; Bezera 2015). The same can be said of contemporary society. While touch is a sense that affords a concrete sensational experience as related to mental processes, we cannot see our thoughts. In The Book of Touch, Classen (2005: 2) reflects on our present lived experience when it comes to the touch–​ vision relationship:

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-5

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Figure 4.1  Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Lady of Sorrow), statue by Juan Prieto, Cordoba, Spain, 1719. Source: Wikimedia Commons: JCabreraJ.

We live in a society of the image, a markedly visual culture, in which, while there may be many representations of touch, there is nothing actually there to feel. The attractions of advertising, television, or the Internet, are designed to be consumed by the eyes and the ears … The inability to touch the subject matter of the images that surround us, even though these have a tremendous impact on our lives, produces a sense of alienation, the feeling of being out of touch with one’s society, one’s environment and one’s cosmos. A sense of alienation is also brought about in our contemporary world in times of social unrest and widescale pandemics, when individuals endure lengthy intervals of sheltering at home and practising social distancing, depriving people of physical connections and touch.1 Being out of touch with one’s society and environment leads to the development of a condition called touch starvation or skin hunger. That we have tactile interactions—​whether with other people specifically or the material world around us more generally—​is not only fundamental to our mental health and human psyche, but the types of touch we make possible and are afforded and experience are telling of the cultures and the world in which we live, a sign of the times (Gopnik 2016): One strange thing about the unsung sense [touch] is that it has no songs. Every other sense has an art to go with it: the eyes have art, the ears have music, even the nose and the tongue have perfume and gastronomy. But we don’t train our hands to touch as we train our eyes to look or our ears to listen. In considering ancient material worlds, it is thus worth stepping away from our contemporary customs and contexts and delving deeper than the visual surface to consider modes and affordances for tactile communication, the ways in which both boundaries and unions were formed through this most powerful and immediate sense. 78

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A multilevel tactile exploration of the relief sculpture of the Apadana, the great audience hall atop the terrace platform (Takht-​e-​Jamshid, “Throne of Jamshid”) of the Achaemenid site of Persepolis in southwestern Iran, brings to light less-​discussed traces of sensory traditions of the past. In this chapter I consider the touch of the craftsmen in creating the reliefs; the ways in which they captured and produced representations of touch in the imagery itself; and the affect and agency of these traces of touch and touch-​imagery on people moving through this space—​in other words, how these forms of touch encapsulated in the reliefs may have produced a sensory experience beyond the visual, that is to say, a tactile interaction. These aspects of touch of the Apadana reliefs not only embody codes of the Achaemenid royal court, they also complicate conceptions and/​or the reception of this form of architectural decoration in contemporary discourse, suggesting a re-​evaluation of how interaction with these works of art has traditionally been discussed and reimagined, and the intents and strategies that guided their creation from the outset. The tactile features of the carved stones simultaneously reinforce and break the illusion of the activity that is represented and suggest additional agencies of the reliefs that can be overlooked when the focus is placed solely on what is represented rather than how it is created and represented.

The Apadana of Persepolis The architecture and art preserved at Persepolis reveals the beauty and rich history of this great dynastic centre of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–​330 BCE ), the largest political entity predating Rome. Containing within its boundaries a diversity of peoples and cultures, at its peak the empire extended from North Africa to the Indus Valley and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf. Material culture from the site of Persepolis attests to its role in important political, administrative, and ceremonial activities at the centre of the Fars province, including in particular sealings and tablets excavated in the northeastern Fortification (Persepolis Fortification archive [PFA]) and the Treasury2 (Persepolis Treasury archive [PTA]) by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute (OI) Persian Expedition in Iran and which date to the reigns of Darius I (regnal dates 522–​486 BCE ), Xerxes I (486–​465 BCE ), and Artaxerxes I (465–​424/​3 BCE ) (Briant et al. 2008; Henkelman 2013; Azzoni et al. 2017). Founded by Darius shortly after taking the throne, work on the city’s great terrace and its palace complex continued under Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and Artaxerxes III (359–​338 BCE ), all of whom continued the distinct sculptural style developed under Darius that would come to define the building programmes of the Achaemenid period (Roaf 1983: 150–​159). Yet after only two centuries, Persepolis along with the empire fell to Alexander of Macedon, his armies sacking and burning the city in 330 BCE . Though the mudbrick superstructures were destroyed, left behind were such majestic stone architectural features as the colossal columns of great audience halls, grand relief-​decorated staircases, and monumental doorways and gateways—​all finely carved from a distinct grey limestone by the craftsmen of the Achaemenid royal court. The Apadana was among the first buildings constructed on the terrace of Persepolis, its initial phase dating to the reign of Darius with its expansion and completion carried out under Xerxes (Roaf 1983: 157, figs. 152–​3; Kleiss 2000: 359–​361, figs. 4, 7; Morgan 2017). Archaeological evidence along with modern reconstructions of the Apadana’s grand superstructure stand as testament to the power of the Achaemenid kings in attaining the raw materials and the host of skilled craftsmen and artisans necessary for realising such a vast building enterprise (Schmidt 1953: 70–​106; Mousavi 2012: pls. 15–​18). Located in the northeastern quadrant of the terrace, this large columned hall stands atop its own 2.5-​metre square platform and runs 60 metres on each side (Figure 4.2). The exterior and interior of the building were equally visually dynamic; 79

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Figure 4.2  Plan of Persepolis. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

for example, the roof of the inner hall was held aloft by 20-​metre high gilded polychromatic columns topped with bull protomes (or front part of a bull) and equally impressive columns, topped by bulls and lions, that marked grand porticoes on the north, east, and west exteriors of the building; a single row of columns spanned a section of the closed south side (Morgan 2017). This inner space served as an audience hall, catering to the royal reception of visitors. Grand staircases embellished with relief sculpture, mirror images of which mark the north and east sides of the building, created an appropriately magnificent means of entering this inner royal sanctum. Sections of the Apadana sculptural programme along with other relief sculpture across the terrace had been exposed since antiquity and were therefore well known to locals as well as early explorers to the region (Mousavi 2012). However, it was not until 1932–​1933 that the most well-​preserved reliefs on the audience hall’s eastern façade were uncovered (Figure 4.3), by the Oriental Institute expedition. First under the direction of Ernst Herzfeld and then Erich 80

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Figure 4.3  Eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (D. 13326).

Schmidt, the archaeological expedition’s work at Persepolis culminated in three remarkable volumes, the findings of the Apadana appearing in the first of the series (Schmidt 1953; 1957; 1970). Later publications by Ann Britt Tilia (1972; 1978) resulting from the work of her and her husband, Giuseppe Tilia, at Persepolis from 1965–​1979, carried out as part of the Italian Institute of the Middle and Far East, make a similarly noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the monuments and in particular the reliefs, including details of craftsmanship and construction. These exceptional artistic feats—​specifically the reliefs of the eastern staircase—​are the focus of this chapter.

Touch of the craftsmen The use of stone for fashioning architectural elements at the imperial capitals of Pasargadae and Susa is important for understanding the development and prevalence of this skillset in the Achaemenid period. The preserved stone columns and carved reliefs at these sites, for example, stand as testament to an exceptional technological ability to work hard stone in order to produce polished and detailed forms before the founding of Persepolis by Darius. The use of stone as a construction material for monumental building programmes, however, was not prevalent in the region prior to the reign of Cyrus II (559–​529 BCE ). During their respective travels, Cyrus and Darius would have come into contact with the craftsmen who built large monumental structures in different traditions and regions, including: the great Ionic temples of stone with columned porticoes in the Greek world, for example the temple of Artemis at Ephesus; the monumental rock reliefs and sculptured panels of gateways, processional ways, and palatial walls of Hittite and Assyrian rulers; and the great stone architecture of Egypt (Curtis and Reade 1995: 39–​91; Blanchard 2019).3 When Cyrus founded his new capital city at Pasargadae, he had the opportunity to include these varied construction techniques in the realisation of his new city and imperial ideology. After ascending the throne in 522 BCE , Darius continued to expand and refine Persian stone construction through his work at Pasargadae and Susa, before turning to his newly minted city of Persepolis. The craftsmen at Pasargadae and Susa during the reigns of these two kings included foreign labourers from throughout the empire who brought with them the knowledge and skills for executing unprecedented stone architectural feats, in particular columned halls and reliefs as noted above (Nylander 1970; Stronach 1978; Root 1979). For the latter, they replicated not only the art form but also some of the subject matter, as demonstrated by the mythological and divine figures—​a bull-​man, fish-​cloaked human figure, an ugallu (lion-​headed creature), and Lulal (anthropomorphic divine figure)—​in the door jams of Palace S, which mirror Assyrian reliefs from the temple of Ninurta at Kalḫu (Nimrud) and Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh (the modern mound of Kuyunjik); unfortunately, only the lower portion of the Pasargadae reliefs 81

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were preserved (Stronach 1978: 68–​69, figs. 34–​35, pls. 58–​60; Neumann 2015: 190, figs. 18, 145 (BM 124573); Neumann 2014). The foundation charter of Darius’ palace at Susa—​a trilingual text, with Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian versions inscribed on baked-​clay and marble plaques—​details the origins of some of the exotic building materials—​including cedar, gold, and precious stones—​that he used in these building programmes and of the craftsmen—​for example, Ionian and Sardian stone-​carvers—​whom he employed (DSf; Stolper 1992: 270–​271, no. 190; Curtis and Razmjou 2005: 56): (35–​40) The gold was brought from Sardis and from Bactria, which here was wrought. The precious stone lapis lazuli and carnelian which was wrought here, this was brought from Sogdiana. The precious stone turquois, this was brought from Chorasmia, which was wrought here. (40–​45) The silver and the ebony were brought from Egypt. The ornamentation with which the wall was adorned, that from Ionia was brought. The ivory which was wrought here, was brought from Ethiopia and from Sind and from Arachosia. (45–​49) The stone columns which were here wrought, a village named Abiradu, in Elam—​ from there were brought. The stone-​cutters who wrought the stone, those were Ionians and Sardians. (49–​55) The goldsmiths who wrought the gold, those were Medes and Egyptians. The men who wrought the wood, those were Sardians and Egyptians. The men who wrought the baked brick, those were Babylonians. The men who adorned the wall, those were Medes and Egyptians. (55–​58) Darius the King says: At Susa a very excellent (work) was ordered, a very excellent (work) was (brought to completion). Me may Ahuramazda protect, and Hystaspes my father, and my country. Inscribed Elamite tablets among the Persepolis administrative archives (PFA and PTA) also document the employment of foreign workers and record artisans and craftsmen (for example, marrip) among those who received provisions—​silver and foodstuffs—​according to their qualifications, from the Achaemenid administration in the region of Persepolis, including individuals who would have been involved in construction and building programmes (Hallock 1969; Uchitel 1991; Henkelman and Kleber 2007; Henkelman 2013). Such textual sources along with the preserved buildings themselves and close examination of the construction techniques, including the cutting, setting, and clamping of the building stones, point towards a diverse group of workmen whose tactile knowledge executed these monumental endeavours and contributed to the development of an imperial style and programme that would persist until the end of the empire (Nylander 1970; Roaf 1980; 1983). Yet the full expression of this style, what is now referred to by scholars as the Achaemenid court style, was not fully realised until Persepolis, Darius’ newly minted city. As argued by Margaret Cool Root (1979: 13–​14), however, the essence of this Persepolitan style lay not with the workmen “who set chisel to stone” and their cultural origins, but rather with the king and court: A good artist can, once he has mastered the specific technical difficulties involved, work in a variety of styles, successfully suppressing his own personal and cultural idiosyncrasies and assuming the vocabulary of a different style as occasion demands.

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In his seminal study of the sculptures and sculptors of Persepolis, Michael Roaf (1983) similarly argues for the detachment of the sculptors and their cultural origins from the designs of the reliefs; rather, per Roaf (1983: 46, 96), it was the multicultural artistic traditions of the designers, following the instructions of the king, that are expressed in the overall composition: Investigations into the origins of the motifs at Persepolis have shown borrowings from many artistic traditions, most importantly from earlier Achaemenid reliefs at Susa, Pasargadae, and Bisutun, but equally important was influence from Mesopotamia, both Babylonia and Assyrian. It also appears that Egyptian, Greek, Phoenician, Elamite, Median, Urartian and Scythian art, directly or indirectly, influenced the creation of the Persepolitan style. However, royal inscriptions related to the construction of Persepolis and its monuments ascribe to the long-​standing trope of the king as builder and craftsman, with no accompanying acknowledgement of the ingenuity and contribution of such designers to the stylistic programme, or of the hands-​on work of the sculptors that executed the overall endeavour. For example, the Elamite foundation inscription of Darius at Persepolis, located on the southern façade of the terrace, declares the king’s intimate involvement not only in the construction but also the beautification of Persepolis, thus seeming to assert his command over the sculptural programme as well (DPf; Schmidt 1953: 63): And Darius king says: As for the fact that upon this place this fortress was built, formerly here a fortress had not been built. By the grace of Ahuramazda I built this fortress … And (so) I built it. And I built it secure and beautiful and adequate, just as I was intending to. Xerxes’ Babylonian inscription on the stairway of the Apadana makes a similarly holistic claim; also noteworthy is that it lacks an acknowledgement of Darius as founder of the building (XPb; Schmidt 1953: 82):4 Says Xerxes the great king: By the grace of Ahuramazda have I built this house. May Ahuramazda protect me with the gods, my kingdom and what I have built. Such declarations align with Mary Helms’ (1993) arguments regarding the significance of royal engagement in skilled craftsmanship and building programmes and the role this specialised production—​ involving materials acquired through long-​ distance trade, but one might also include the ingenuity and skillsets of foreign craftsmen—​plays in legitimating imperial ideologies and ambitions; worth highlighting is the import this would have had for Darius in particular, having claimed a throne that was not his by way of royal family lineage nor was he named as a rightful heir by a predecessor. To summarise, what is unmistakable is a diversity of cultural origins and a variability of professional and craftsmanship roles among the individuals involved in the creation and production of the Apadana reliefs, groupings that I have here only touched on briefly. Acknowledging the import of those responsible for the design and programme, I will proceed next to the contributions of the sculptors, as the individuals who interacted intimately with the stone, by virtue of the sensorial and specifically touch-​oriented interest of this chapter. A focused examination of the Apadana reliefs in situ at Persepolis reveals material traces of the hands of sculptors at work and of the tools with which they manipulated the stone.5 Iron tools, including picks and hammers, and points and chisels were employed at different stages of the process, from the shaping of a panel and outlining figures to executing the details—​by way 83

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of raised edges, smooth surfaces, and incision—​of such elements as garments, jewellery, beards, eyes, and ears, each requiring varied levels of precision and care: “the most interesting parts of the figures are the heads, and it was on the heads that the sculptors carried out their most skillful work” (Roaf 1983: 5). When the carving was complete, artisans would have applied paint to the stone surface, although to what extent we do not know for certain, and additional decorative elements such as stone and metal inlays and gold leaf or gold sheet were added.6 A close-​up of the head of a tribute bearer from the southern end of the staircase reliefs on the east side of the Apadana beautifully encapsulates the subtle yet impactful traces of the intimate tactile engagement between the hands of the sculptors manipulating the tools and the stone: the figure’s curls of hair stand out in stark contrast to the polished surface of the cheek, forehead, and headdress, while incisions articulate individual strands of hair, artfully evoking its texture and plurality (Figure 4.4). Also preserved in the dark grey limestone surface are traces of the tools used to create the smooth surfaces of the headdress and the background surface from which the figure emerges. The face of a camel from the same section of reliefs preserves similar tool marks on the smooth, plain surfaces; this stands out in stark contrast, and thus accentuates the skilfully executed eye and mouth of the animal (Figure 4.5); similarly, the head of a ram—​the articulated eye and nose, the heavily textured tuffs of fur on its neck, and tool marks on the cheeks (Figure 4.6). Such minor yet magnificently rendered features as metal garment pins, ties on footwear, and tree trunks and leaves similarly highlight the sculptors’ mastery of their tools when put to stone (Figure 4.7). From the largest to the smallest element, the Persepolis sculptors manipulated the limestone in order to achieve the desired form and perfect finish. In this process their own sense organs would have become entangled in a techni-​symbolic network, their direct bodily engagement with the stone-​turned-​image activating their own tactile memory of past experiences and material encounters, all the while realising the masterfully designed programme of the king and royal court (Bezera 2015). Thus, while not playing a determining role in the overall design and

Figure 4.4  Close-​up of a tribute bearer from the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (D. 13304). 84

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Figure 4.5  Close-​up of a camel from the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Photo by author.

Figure 4.6  Close-​up of a ram from the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Photo by author.

Figure 4.7  Details from the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Photos by author. 85

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style of the sculptural programme due to the oversight of the king and court, the individuality of the sculptors’ hands upon the stone is noticeable in some of these more minute attributes of the reliefs, for example the method by which a sculptor produced a lock of hair, nose, petals of a flower, or the laces of a shoe. These features, which Roaf (1983) has observed and catalogued in detail using mathematical cluster analysis—​drawing on the work of Giovanni Morelli—​and stylistic analysis, aligns with art historical discussions of habitus and practice—​subconscious attributes that are the result of each individual sculptor’s learned carving abilities. For this reason, Roaf was able to identify the work of different sculptors’ hands across the Apadana reliefs. In addition to some of these arguably unintentional traces of their work in progress, the sculptors also intentionally left their mark on the Apadana reliefs in the form of sculptors’ marks, or makers’ marks, of various shapes and designs—​attributes that further contributed to Roaf ’s study. These symbols, several hundred of which are preserved on the visible, flat surfaces of the reliefs across the terrace at Persepolis, represent different sculptors active at the site at the time of construction (Figure 4.8). Similarities between marks at Persepolis and Susa suggest the movement of stone sculptors, while comparable examples from further afield, such as Ionia, likely suggest the much fuller extent of their movement (Perrot 2013: 190).7 Combining his findings from the mathematical cluster analysis, stylistic analysis, and sculptors’ marks, Roaf determined that a number of sculptors worked as a team on the same section of reliefs from start to finish under the guidance of a master craftsman, who himself was responsible for some of the more skilled work, such as figures’ heads, and that the marks were used as a way for a master and his team to distinguish their work, either by marking individual figures or the limits of their section, from that of others working on the terrace (Roaf 1983: 26, 90–​96, 160–​164). Of note is the imperfect, “hand-​written” style of the sculptors’ marks, which contrasts with the very formal and repetitive style of the relief carving, the latter being predetermined by the artistic guides used by the sculptors and created with mathematical precision and perfection

Figure 4.8  Sculptors’ mark on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Photo by author. 86

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based on the overall programme and design. Adding another layer of contrast between these features is the fact that the sculptors’ marks were carved into the flat stone surface or background plane while the figures and associated elements emerge from the background in relief. What is more, this background may have been left unpainted, the dark limestone surface with the sculptors’ marks remaining bare alongside the polychromatic human and animal figures, trees, and sculpted borders of rosettes.8 The only other feature to be carved similarly into the flat background surface were the cuneiform inscriptions on either end of the staircase; however, these were set apart from the neighbouring scenes carved in relief by a raised border with rosettes and an incised rectangular frame (Figure 4.3; Schmidt 1953: pl. 21). These conspicuous and intentional marks of the sculptors on the Apadana reliefs, together with the unintentional traces of their workmanship discussed above, remind observers of the process of creation and of the sculptors as agents who, by way of their learned tactile knowledge and skillsets, touched and manipulated the stone in an age well before artists’ individual signatures were common practice. What is more, they break the illusion of the represented scene—​figures in ceremonial procession that emerge in relief—​as a real (albeit idealised) event. Sculptors’ marks and traces of craftmanship force an observer to acknowledge the materiality of these works of art—​the physicality of the reliefs as three-​dimensional forms that were fashioned from raw material through human touch, which occupy space, and which have hard, textured surfaces with their own dynamic tactile affordances.9 Before taking up the latter, however, I will first turn to an additional tactile layer wonderfully encapsulated in these reliefs owing to their subject matter—​the representation of touch.

Touch carved in stone As excavated in the 1930s, the eastern staircase reliefs of the Apadana show on the left delegates from across the empire bearing gifts for the king, at the centre elite guards in Persian and Median dress,10 and to the right additional guards and courtly attendants. At one level this sequence can be said to be an idealised representation of the ceremonial activity staged within the audience hall in the presence of the king. In the larger context of the Achaemenid imperial machine, the staircase reliefs, as described by Root (2003: 10), are “a metaphor of kingship and harmoniously ordered hegemony” intended to be experienced by the abundance of visitors—​local and foreign—​to the city. Instances of tactile interaction across this majestically sculpted façade offer particularly astute and artful representations of touch—​between human, animal, and material object—​that would have made an impression on the diverse audience moving through this built environment. For the gift-​bearing delegates on the south side of the staircase, the craftsmen—​designer and sculptor alike—​would have called upon their own tactile experiences to inform and perfect their depictions of touch, considering the shape, weight, material, orientation, and perception of each individual object held by these figures. Albeit very similar in form, the difference in representation of the hands that support the two vessels shown in Figure 4.9 accurately accounts for the different size and weight of the two objects; the same is true of shallow bowls represented, their bases gently cupped by the flat hands of delegates. The tight grasp and articulated knuckles of the delegates in Figure 4.10 are similarly convincing representations, of the way in which a person would hold an armband and the skin of an animal as depicted in these two instances. The weight-​bearing rod that rests on the shoulders of the delegate in Figure 4.11 bends as gravity pulls on the suspended baskets to either end, therein communicating to an observer a realistic sense of the pressure and weight felt across the figure’s shoulders as he strains to hold it in place, a visual articulation of proprioception, a person’s sense of the position and movement—​reaction—​ of his or her body in relation to other material and objects. A comparable instance is found on 87

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Figure 4.9  Vessels on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 23162/​N. 12801, P. 29345/​N. 15621).

Figure 4.10  Representations of clasped hands on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 23160/​N. 12799, P. 24944/​N. 15378).

the north side of the staircase where a groom supports the king’s chariot stool on his back by way of shoulder straps in addition to the whip and folded rug that he holds in his hands (Figure 4.12) (on proprioception, see McFerrin 2019 and Chapter 9, this volume). Contact between human and animal was executed in a similarly artful and accurate manner across the staircase, whether the connection is made through a hand resting lightly on an animal’s 88

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Figure 4.11  Delegate on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 22755/​N. 11861).

Figure 4.12  Grooms on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 28976/​N. 15246). 89

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Figure 4.13  Delegates leading animals on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 23157/​N. 12796); photo by author.

Figure 4.14  Lion and bull in combat on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 57540/​N. 37609).

back, through securely held reins, or the clasping of fur (Figure 4.13). Tactile interactions between animals are also noteworthy, the most well-​known example being the motif of a lion biting the backside of a rearing bull (Figure 4.14). This theme of a lion and bull in combat was methodically repeated like clockwork on the triangular sections of all of the main staircases and the ends of sculptured walls at Persepolis. In each of these instances, the sculptor accentuated the points of contact between the lion and bull—​specifically the lion’s claws and mouth—​using the depth of the relief, these features standing out the furthest from the background, and with such 90

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details as the articulated ridges of the lion’s nose and details of its paws and claws. The reversed head of the bull similarly draws the observer’s attention towards this point of contact between the animals; yet at the same time the bull’s rearing forelegs connect firmly with the frame of the scene, breaking the illusion of the event by physically connecting the bull with the material restrictions of the architectural landscape in a somewhat jarring manner, his right leg tightly bent and his left leg rising at an unrealistic angle. Person-​to-​person contact was likewise repetitively represented across the Apadana reliefs. On the south side of the staircase ushers in Persian and Median dress are shown leading the foremost figure of each of gift-​bearing delegations by hand (Figure 4.15). The consistent superimposition of the former’s hand over that of the latter symbolises social hierarchy, the usher exerting control over the delegates much in the same way that the tactile interactions between human and animal above demonstrated the control of the former over the latter. Similarly materialising social hierarchy is a tactile gesture on the original central panels of the north and east staircases which were moved to the Treasury, likely during the reign of Artaxerxes I, and replaced by the current scene of elite guards in alternating Persian and Median dress (Figure 4.3) (Schmidt 1953: 162–​169, pls. 119–​123). The audience scene of the original panels shows the seated king and crown prince receiving a bowing official whose hand is raised to his mouth; this gesture, of touching the lip with the hand or covering the mouth, was an act of social etiquette and reverence, here directed towards the king as superior, and one which the designers of the sculptural programme—​realising the vision of the king—​would have been intimately familiar with themselves (Figure 4.16). The north side of the eastern staircase, in contrast, presents gestures of equality between the figures of dignitaries in Persian and Median dress, including clasped hands between neighbouring figures and the hand of one figure resting gently on the shoulder of the figure in front or on the chest of the figure behind (Figure 4.17). All of these demonstrations of touch, in particular between humans but also those including animals and material objects, produced in stone would have amplified in people observing the reliefs a desire—​concurrently encouraged by the tactile traces of the sculptors and the materiality of the reliefs discussed above—​to engage with these scenes carved in stone in a tactile way, which brings us to the final realm of touch to be considered—​tactile encounters with art.

Figure 4.15  Ushers leading delegates on the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 29001/​N. 15271). 91

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Figure 4.16  Central panel from the eastern façade of the Apadana, excavated in the Treasury, on display at the National Museum of Iran, Tehran. Source: Photo by author.

Figure 4.17  North side of the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 28975/​N. 15245). 92

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Curating and producing interactions with art Many discussions of the Apadana sculptural programme focus primarily on the iconography as if these grand façades were works of art created for and displayed in a museum, a space within which curators create an environment that prioritises the visual experience. Often found alongside such museum displays are stanchions that maintain a “safe distance” between person and object (Figure 4.16), accompanied by bold signage that reprimands visitors from having any thoughts of taking a deeper dive through other forms of engagement, in particular a tactile one. In fact, when one visits the site of Persepolis today, stanchions and foot paths guide and govern visitors’ movements, producing a predominantly visual experience of the preserved stone architecture atop the terrace. The very need for such distancing devices, and similarly signs in museums and at archaeological sites prohibiting touch, confirms that we as humans have an instinct to acquire tactile knowledge of objects within our immediate space, that we have a natural longing to touch. Only a few centuries ago, as private collections transitioned to early museums, the handling of objects was encouraged so that visitors could gain tactile knowledge of exotic artefacts. Museum professionals utilised the multisensory affordances of their collections—​that is to say, not just the visual—​in order to curate and produce a distinct interactive experience. This tradition is perfectly captured in Willem van Haecht’s 1628 The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest (Figure 4.18) (Classen 2007; Howes 2014). The seventeenth-​century empirical philosopher Robert Hooke stated that “ ‘ocular inspection’ must be accompanied by the ‘manual handling … of the very things themselves’ when studying an object” (quoted in Classen 2012: 140–​141). Classen (2005: 279) provides a wonderful simile for this early museum experience: “to be invited to peruse a collection of exotic artefacts or objets d’art and not touch anything would be like being invited to someone’s home for dinner and not touching the food.” Classen (2012: 141) extrapolates further on the rewards of a tactile experience for visitors: Sight requires distance to function properly, detaching the observer from the observed. Touch, by contrast, annihilates distance and physically unites the toucher and the touched. Handling museum artefacts gave visitors the satisfaction of an intimate encounter. The experience created for museum visitors in these instances allowed them the thrill of coming into vicarious contact with the original creators and users of the artefacts, albeit disassociated from their original context—​to hold the spear of a warrior, the blade of a surgeon. Sophie de la Roche, a German visitor to the British Museum in 1786, wrote the following of her experience (quoted in Classen 2007: 902): With what sensations one handles a Carthaginian helmet excavated near Capua, household utensils from Herculaneum … There are mirrors too, belonging to Roman matrons … with one of these mirrors in my hand I looked amongst the urns, thinking meanwhile, ‘Maybe chance has preserved amongst these remains some part of the dust from the fine eyes of a Greek or Roman lady, who so many centuries ago surveyed herself in this mirror.’ Sculpture similarly presents the opportunity to appreciate through touch the skill and ingenuity of the sculptors who fashioned these works of art from rough stone. For the sixteenth-​century Florentine historian Benedetto Varchi, touch “alone could appreciate the artifice involved in a

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Figure 4.18  The Gallery of Cornelis Van der Geest, by Willem van Haecht II, 1628. Rubenshuis, Antwerp (RH.S.171). Source: Photo by Bart Huysmans and Michel Wuyts.

sculpted work, such as the transformation of hard marble into seemingly soft flesh” (Classen 2005: 279). Bringing these considerations back to the ancient world, I turn to the art historian Aloïs Riegl, who, writing in 1901, reflected on ancient Egyptian sculpture when considering the materiality and tactile experience of ancient objects. Such statues, for Riegl (Late Roman Art History, quoted in Lant 1995: 72), had a lifeless flat form when viewed from a distance, yet “from greater proximity, the planes become increasingly lively, until eventually the fine modelling can be felt entirely, when one lets the tip of the fingers glide over them.” He further asserted that with ancient Greek relief carving a true tactile-​optical perception was realised: because of the projection and recession of Greek sculpture, a viewer did not have to touch the sculpture to apprehend its materiality, yet it was not until Roman art that a full optical perception was achieved (see further, Candlin 2010). While Riegl’s assessment of pre-​modern art practices and visual knowledge can be critiqued, his description of the sense of touching sculpture is noteworthy, of gliding one’s fingers over fine modelling. In her characterisation of an observer moving about the terrace of Persepolis, Root (2018: 202) similarly finds herself considering the tactile allure of the sculptured reliefs: “The visitor to Persepolis moves in a built landscape in which images of humans and their things offer fluctuating experiential scales. Furthermore, the exquisite detailing of some of the worn and carried things tantalises the eye and tempts tactility” (see also McFerrin 2019).

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If visitors to Persepolis during the Achaemenid period succumbed to these temptations of tactility exuded by the Apadana reliefs—​temptations that may very well have been intentionally produced by the sculptors and designers when creating these works of art—​their well-​polished planes, which Roaf (1983: 42) describes as resembling black glass, would have caressed a person’s fingertips much in the same way as Riegl describes for ancient Egyptian sculpture. Concurrently jagged textures and deep edges would have obstructed movement. Variable surface temperatures would also have been felt—​warmth in areas that retained heat from the sun and a coolness on surfaces cast in shadow. Painted surfaces and precious metal and stone inlays and attachments, which would have been present in antiquity, may have increased this tactile temptation, the experience being all the more sensual and powerful. Alternately, perhaps an observer would have avoided touching the painted features and instead traced their fingers over the carved out lines of the sculptors’ marks on the unpainted background. Not only the materiality of the reliefs but also aspects of the scenes portrayed would have produced a longing to touch—​specifically, the tactile encounters between human, animal, and object. In seeing these moments of contact between things, between agents, one cannot help but feel a pull to re-​enact, to join in with these most intimate and primal of bodily gestures. In addition to the sensory experience of the material surface, touching the reliefs would have afforded an immediate and intimate connection with the sculptors whose hands fashioned the stone, the designers who envisioned the overall composition, and simultaneously with the people who served as inspiration—​the delegates who travelled to Persepolis with their gifts and the courtly attendants who moved about in proximity to the king. The scale of the various sculptured features, the “fluctuating experiential scales” as defined by Root above, may have played an additional role in determining which tactile temptations were acted upon. The less-​than-​life-​size scale (about 0.9 metre tall; compare the person on the far left to the carved figures in Figure 4.3) of the gift-​bearing delegates on the south side and the guards and courtly attendants of the north side, all of which were arranged in three registers beginning at ground level, may have given observers a sense of supremacy that would have encouraged touch, for those features within reach for an observer. The figures of the central panels—​both the original and the replacement panels—​were slightly larger (the crown prince and seated king were just over 2 metres) but overall human scaled, as described by Root (2018), who concludes of these panels that “a passerby senses membership in the same human family as these figures. He does not sense scalar domination.” These feelings of belonging, of membership, that the reliefs produced in observers may have emboldened their desires to reach out and touch the surface, to connect with the human figures protruding from the stone. Ascending the stairs to enter the Apadana offered a different scaled experience, the guards at the base of the interior faces of the stairs measuring a mere 0.76 metre in height (Figure 4.19); Root (2018) describes this band of figures as “diminutive military figures [that] feel like bodyguards intent on sticking by while also blending in.” Closer to eye-​level is a diagonal band of rosettes topped by cypress trees and stylised palm trees, features that figure prominently throughout the Persepolis sculptural programme and which offer their own dynamic qualities for tactile engagement. Upon reaching the upper level of the staircase, a visitor would next enter the great audience hall—​a dynamic built environment filled with radiant tapestries and embroidered textiles, furniture of exquisite woodwork and metalwork, colossal stone columns painted in radiant colours, and of course, people moving through this space dressed in opulent attire. The reliefs were but one opportunity for connecting with the royal landscape through touch.11 Of course, today’s ropes and tourist paths produce a very different experience, unquestionably discouraging proximity let alone tactile interaction with the stone ruins of Persepolis and restricting visitors to an ocular-​centric connection with the relief sculpture. This would please 95

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Figure 4.19  Western interior face of the central flight of stairs of the eastern façade of the Apadana. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (P. 28980/​N. 15250).

Foucault, who suggested purified visual learning that focused on shape, size, and composition, and absent of other multisensory information which he deemed unreliable, was the path to rational knowledge (Candlin 2010).12 Even if touch were permitted today, the sensory experience would not be analogous to the original context of the Apadana reliefs, since our cultural memory and learned tactility is altogether different than individuals of the sixth to fourth centuries BCE . Yet there is something to be said for the power of touch in connecting us with this past, of confirming for us the very existence of this period in history, of the sculptors, of the raw stone-​turned-​relief, of the audience. Carolyn Korsmeyer (2019: 26), in her book on touch in the past, quotes a passage from Nathanial Hawthorne’s novel The Marvel Faun to demonstrate this enduring power of the material presence of the past: One of the immense gray granite shafts lay in the piazza, on the verge of the area. It was a great, solid fact of the Past, making old Rome actually sensible to the touch and eye; and no study of history, nor force of thought, nor magic of song, could so vitally assure us that Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of what its rulers and people wrought.

Conclusion Margaret Cool Root (2015) wrote of the Apadana that it was “bound up in acts both of place-​/​ space-​making and place-​/​space-​experiencing as reciprocal social performance. It was meant to engage multiple audiences and participants visually, spatially, psychologically and spiritually in a 96

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dialogue about kingship, dynasty and imperial family.” To this list, I would add a sense of touch. The attention given to producing depictions of touch in the Apadana sculptural programme confirms that this mode of interaction was meaningful in Achaemenid society and an integral component of the Apadana reliefs as materialised performative event. What is more, the meticulous details of the textures and forms of these tactile encounters transform the stone-​scape from a static scene into an affective and active entity imbued with its own rich tactile affordances. The sculptors’ marks preserved in the reliefs for perpetuity and the unintentional traces of their learned carving abilities, along with texts that record the men whose hands manipulated and transformed the stone of these grand Achaemenid cities, reaffirm a permeating appreciation of touch—​of direct bodily engagement, tactile knowledge and creation, and of cultural memory. The craftsmen were in touch with their environment, their physical landscape, and in so doing, brought to life the diverse interactive sensory affordances of these majestic built environments. While the question remains, whether the craftsmen intended to create an environment that encouraged a tactile union between visitors and the reliefs, based on a powerful human instinct to touch makes me wager that, whether or not this was the case, such tactile desires were acted upon, intentionally and perhaps unintentionally, the hand being quicker than the mind.

Notes 1. As I finalise this chapter in 2020, I myself am experiencing the impacts of social distancing and isolation associated with the worldwide COVID-​19 pandemic, making this a particularly personal and surreal experience, reflecting on and writing about touch and tactile sensations. 2. Oriental Institute archaeologists identified this structure as a royal storehouse based on the quantity and value of objects excavated within; for a detailed description of these artefacts and the structure’s architectural features, see Schmidt 1953: 156–​200, figs. 74–​81. 3. Darius built the temple of Amun at Hibis in the Kharga Oasis, upon which are inscriptions of the king; the monument was excavated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition, under the direction of Herbert E. Winlock; see Winlock 1941. Of this, Schmidt (1953: 27) wrote: “There is no doubt, finally, that the king’s regard for the architects of Egypt was as high as for its artisans whom he employed at Susa … and at Persepolis.” On the building projects of Achaemenid kings outside of Persepolis, see Schmidt 1953: 19–​39. 4. Darius as founder of the Apadana is acknowledged in Xerxes’ brick inscriptions from the exterior walls of the Apadana (Schmidt 1953: 71). 5. For detailed accounts of the tools and carving techniques used for Achaemenid reliefs, see Tilia 1968; Nylander 1970: 22–​72; and Roaf 1983: 3–​9. 6. While fewer traces remain today on the reliefs compared to when they were uncovered by Herzfeld, the use of such colours as red, green, blue, and possibly yellow can be reconstructed. Embellishments including inlays and gold leaf were not found in place when the reliefs were excavated; however, space for inlays and ornaments to be set in remained, for example for necklaces and bracelets, and drill holes were preserved in reliefs at Persepolis and Pasargadae (Herzfeld 1941: 255; Tilia 1972/​1978: II, 31–​69; Roaf 1983: 8). On polychrome and paint at Persepolis, see further Nagel forthcoming. 7. Although some of the marks are parallel to signs from contemporary alphabets, Roaf (1983: 92–​93) cautions against using them as a basis for drawing conclusions regarding the ethnicity of the craftsmen, noting that the parallels are “not surprising, as there are a limited number of signs available for distinguishable devices which are easily carved on stone.” 8. As discussed in Feldman (2021), no traces of paint have been found on the background of Neo-​ Assyrian reliefs, suggesting that these areas were also likely left unpainted (Reade 1979: 19; Sou 2015). 9. Feldman (2021) makes an argument for the importance of considering the carved stone orthostats of Neo-​Assyrian palaces as material entities in their own right, arguing that the primacy of the stone surface, the representation of dramatic voids, and the material solidity of the palace walls contributed to the emotive effects that shaped the experience of these artworks. 10. The Medes were a political and cultural group that inhabited Media, a region of northwestern Iran, which included the city of Ecbatana; they were most powerful in the first half of the first millennium BCE , yet were conquered by Cyrus II around 550 BCE . 97

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11. See further McFerrin, Chapter 9 in this volume, on the tactile affordances of reliefs and their impact on the immersive experience of visitors to the site of Persepolis. 12. Descartes, in Meditations on First Philosophy, similarly expressed a scepticism of sense perception as reliable in its own right, asserting that it is through thinking and our minds that we understand the nature of things and the physical world around us.

Bibliography Abraira, V. E., and D. D. Ginty. 2013. “The Sensory Neurons of Touch.” Neuro 79 (4): 618–​639. Azzoni, A., E. R. M. Dusinberre, M. B. Garrison, W. F. M. Henkelman, C. E. Jones, and M. W. Stolper. 2017. “Persepolis Administrative Archives.” Encyclopedia Iranica. www.iranicaonline.org/​articles/​persepolis-​admin-​archive. Bezera, M. 2015. “Touching the Past: The Senses of Things for Local Communities in Amazonia, Brazil,” in J. R. Pellini, A. Zarankin, and M. A. Salerno, eds., Coming to Senses: Topics in Sensory Archaeology. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 105–​118. Blanchard, V., ed. 2019. Royaumes oubliés de l’empire Hittite aux Araméens. Paris: Musée du Louvre. Briant, P., W. F. M. Henkelman, and M. W. Stolper, eds. 2008. L’archive des fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches. Paris: De Bocchard. Candlin, F. 2010. Art, Museums and Touch. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Classen, C., ed. 2005. The Book of Touch. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Classen, C. 2007. “Museum Manners: The Sensory Life of the Early Museum.” Journal of Social History 40 (4): 895–​914. Classen, C. 2012. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Curtis, J., and S. Razmjou. 2005. “The Palace,” in B. André-​Salvini, ed., Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 50–​103. Curtis, J., and J. Reade. 1995. Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum. London: British Museum Press. Feldman, M. H. 2021. “Assyrian Spaces: Surface and Wall as Constitutive Features in Neo-​Assyrian Narrative Reliefs,” in K. Sonik, ed., Art/​ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gopnik, A. 2016. “Feel Me: What the New Science of Touch Says about Ourselves.” The New Yorker (May 16, 2016). Hallock, R. T. 1969. Persepolis Fortification Tablets. OIP 92. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Helms, M. W. 1993. Craft and the Kingly Ideal: Art, Trade, and Power. Austin: University of Texas Press. Henkelman, W. F. M. 2013. “Administrative Realities: The Persepolis Archives and the Archaeology of the Achaemenid Heartland,” in D. T. Potts, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Iranian Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 528–​546. Henkelman, W. F. M., and K. Kleber. 2007. “Babylonian Workers in the Persian Heartland: Palace Building at Matannan during the Reign of Cambyses,” in C. Tuplin, ed., Persian Responses: Political and Cultural Interaction with(in) the Achaemenid Empire. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 163–​176. Herzfeld, E. 1941. Iran in the Ancient East. London: Oxford University Press. Howes, D. 2005. Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Howes, D. 2014. “The Secret of Aesthetics Lies in the Conjugation of the Senses,” in N. Levent and A. Pascual-​Leone, eds., The Multisensory Museum: Cross-​Disciplinary Perspective on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 285–​300. King, E. 2007. Dalí, Surrealism, and Cinema. Harpenden, UK: Kamera Books. Kleiss, W. 2000. “Zur Planung von Persepolis,” in P. Calmeyer and R. Dittmann, eds., Variatio Delectat: Iran und der Western: Gedenkschrift für Peter Calmeyer. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag, 355–​368. Korsmeyer, C. 2019. Things: In Touch with the Past. New York: Oxford University Press. Lant, A. 1995. “Haptical Cinema.” October 74: 45–​73. McFerrin, N. 2019. “The Tangible Self: Embodiment, Agency, and the Functions of Adornment in Achaemenid Persia,” in M. Cifarelli, ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 233–​248. Morgan, J. 2017. “Who Has the Biggest Bulls? Royal Power and the Persepolis Apadāna.” Iranian Studies 50 (6): 787–​817. Mousavi, A. 2012. Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder. Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter.

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Nagel, A. Forthcoming. Pigments and Power: Approaching the Polychromies of Achaemenid Persia, c. 550–​330 BCE. Paris: De Boccard. Neumann, K. 2014. “Resurrected and Reevaluated: The Neo-​Assyrian Temple as a Ritualized and Ritualizing Built Environment.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Neumann, K. 2015. “In the Eyes of the Other: Mythological Wall Reliefs in the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh,” in M. Dalton, G. Peters, and A. Tavares, eds., Seen and Unseen Spaces: Archaeological Review from Cambridge 30 (1): 85–​93. Nylander, C. 1970. Ionians in Pasargadae: Studies in Old Persian Architecture. Boreas: Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 1. Uppsala: Universitetsbibliotek. Perrot, J., ed. 2013. Palace of Darius at Susa: The Great Royal Residence of Achaemenid Persia. London: I.B. Tauris. Reade, J. E. 1979. “Assyrian Architectural Decoration: Techniques and Subject-​ Matter.” Baghdader Mitteilungen 10: 17–​49. Roaf, M. 1980. “Texts about the Sculptures and Sculptors at Persepolis.” Iran 18: 65–​74. Roaf, M. 1983. “Sculptures and Sculptors at Persepolis.” Iran 21: 1–​164. Root, M. C. 1979. The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art. Leiden: Brill. Root, M. C. 2003. “The Lioness of Elam: Politics and Dynastic Fecundity at Persepolis,” in W. F. Henkelman and A. Kuhrt, eds., A Persian Perspective: Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-​Weerdenburg. Achaemenid History. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 9–​32. Root, M. C. 2015. “Achaemenid Imperial Architecture: Performative Porticoes of Persepolis,” in S. Babaie and T. Grigor, eds., Persian Architecture and Kingship: Displays of Power and Politics in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. London: I.B. Tauris, 1–​63. Root, M. C. 2018. “A Response: Scaling the Walls of Persepolis Toward an Imaginal Social/​Material Landscape,” in S. R. Martin and S. M. Langin-​Hooper, eds., The Tiny and the Fragmented: Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 188–​216. Schmidt, E. F. 1953. Persepolis I: Structures, Reliefs, Inscriptions. OIP 68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schmidt, E. F. 1957. Persepolis II: Contents of the Treasury and Other Discoveries. OIP 69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schmidt, E. F. 1970. Persepolis III: The Royal Tombs and Other Monuments. OIP 70. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sou, L. 2015. “Digital Recolourisation and the Effects of Light on Neo-​Assyrian Reliefs.” Antiquity 89: 348. Stolper, M. W. 1992. “The Written Record,” in P. O. Harper, J. Aruz, and F. Tallon, eds., The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 253–​278. Stronach, D. 1978. Pasargadae: A Report on the Excavations Conducted by the British Institute of Persian Studies from 1961 to 1963. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Svankmajer, J. 2014. Touching and Imagining: An Introduction to Tactile Art. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Tilia, A. B. 1968. “A Study of the Methods of Working the Parts Left Unfinished in Achaemenian Architecture and Sculpture.” East and West 18: 67–​95. Tilia, A. B. 1972/​1978. Studies and Restorations at Persepolis and Other Sites of Fars. 2 Volumes. Rome: IsMEO. Uchitel, A. 1991. “Foreign Workers in the Fortification Archive,” in L. de Meyer, ed., Mésopotamie et Élam (Actes de la XXXV Rencontre assyriologique internationale). Ghent: University of Ghent, 127–​135. Winlock, H. E. 1941. The Temple of Hibis in el Khargeh Oasis. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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5 Soundscapes and taskscapes in the ancient Near East Interactions and perceptions Agnès Garcia-​Ventura and Mireia López-​Bertran1

Introduction Work and music are two topics of research that have only very rarely been explored together in the framework of ancient Near Eastern studies.2 In this chapter, paying special attention to gender, we want to analyse the important role of music and sounds in the creation of an aural and acoustic atmosphere accompanying the kinetic and tactile rhythms of workers. To do so we take as our primary sources a sample of four texts classified as work songs or as lullabies and written in Sumerian and in Akkadian, the two main languages registered in cuneiform writing,3 in an attempt to go beyond the standard economic and social perspectives applied to the study of work and workers.4 This chapter comprises four main sections including several subsections. The first two sections offer an overview of previous studies as well as reflections on the challenges and definitions of work and music when considered together.5 The third section presents a selection of primary sources analysed, as case studies, from the perspective of sensory studies. Finally, we present some brief concluding remarks. Work and music are the two main terms we consider here to define our topic of study and choice of sources, the work songs and lullabies, as well as to frame our theoretical approach. In what follows we present some insights and working hypotheses regarding these terms.6

Work and taskscapes The first definition in the entry for the word “work” in the Harper-​Collins Dictionary refers to it as the “physical or mental effort directed towards doing or making something.”7 This maximalist definition has the virtue of being inclusive and applicable to a great variety of geographies and chronologies. However, from our point of view, its maximalism might also be perceived as a weakness: applying this definition, it is almost impossible to differentiate work activities from other kinds, such as leisure activities which might not be considered properly as work in a given cultural environment.

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Equally, from a gender studies perspective, a maximalist definition does not help to underline the difficulties we still face in current archaeological and historical studies in our attempts to approach women’s work. In fact, activities carried out by women are often naturalised and thus deprived of any “physical or mental effort” (to use the terms that appear in the above definition).8 As a consequence of this naturalisation, then, too often maintenance activities9 carried out exclusively or mainly by women in most cultures, such as child rearing, are not considered work. To overcome some of these difficulties here we define work following two proposals taken from the legal history of labour and from gender archaeology respectively. On the one hand, the legal historian Robert Carvais10 states that what differentiates work from non-​work activities is that the former are mandatory while the latter are not. At the core of the definition of work there is an obligation, be it voluntarily subscribed or legally imposed. From this perspective, maintenance activities such as cooking, cleaning, or child rearing are clearly work activities as they all are mandatory and necessary for the survival and management of the human group. We also argue for a reconceptualisation of work aimed at overcoming the customary binary production (mainly associated with men) versus reproduction (mainly associated with women).11 In this context we consider useful proposals such as the one coined by the archaeologist Encarna Sanahuja (2002: 179), which we cite here as an example.12 Sanahuja defines the work of women as potentially conforming to three elements: the production of bodies (usually termed reproduction), the production of objects (production in its more classic sense), and the maintenance of both bodies and objects. Taking into account this multi-​layered definition of the work of women and also Carvais’ remark on its obligatory nature, in our contribution we consider as work songs those traditionally labelled as such, for instance songs linked to farming activities such as grinding grain or ploughing, but also those traditionally defined as lullabies, thus placing at the same conceptual level opening up the furrows of a field and soothing a crying child. Delimiting the definition of work as proposed above allows us to analyse some tasks mainly or exclusively carried out by women in ancient Mesopotamia under a new light: for instance, grinding grain and child rearing. However, we are aware of a possible pitfall of this application of the term “work” to these activities: an anachronistic and ethnocentric classification of certain activities which might hide some of their features. For this reason, if for the choice of the sources we defend the usefulness of this definition, for its scrutiny we take into account the concept of taskscape. Taskscape (Ingold 1993) is defined as a socially constructed space of human activity which is always in process, and recognises that all tasks are interlocking. This word was conceived to confront the Western practice of classifying activities into groups such as ritual, technological, or subsistence, and is normally studied by looking at topics such as mobility, nature, public spaces, economy, or habitat. In the following sections, we aim to highlight how sensescapes are also constituent parts of taskscapes; and we do it through the study of work songs where aural, kinetic, or tactile features of working practices can be recognised thanks to the application of a sensorial approach to the analysis of the lyrics.

Music and soundscapes The second main term that articulates our contribution is music. Undoubtedly, as we have seen with “work,” “music” is a cultural phenomenon that is shaped by each particular society.13 When we think about ancient music, we apply our own biases and thus tend to focus only on the remains of musical instruments or the representations of musicians, both of which are often defined quite restrictively, in much the same way as we define them in our present-​day Western societies. Here, following on from the proposals of archaeomusicological studies in recent decades, we advocate a broader definition of music and musical instruments.14 In this respect, on the 101

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one hand we should bear in mind that musical events involve far more than just instruments and musicians; if we restrict our analysis to instruments and the musicians who play them we risk forgetting that music exists because there is an audience listening to it. And on the other hand, we defend that we need to consider musical instruments in a broad sense including “any agency that can emit sound, from the use of raw materials such as wood, bone or stone, to the human body itself ” (Watson and Keating 1999: 325). Using this definition, we can identify certain materials in the archaeological record which have never previously been considered as related to musical phenomena. This is particularly the case when dealing with the taskscapes in some of the working environments we consider below. Furthermore, “music” is traditionally defined as opposed to “sound” and to “noise.” In this direction, the definition coined by the ethnomusicologist and anthropologist John Blacking proposes that music is constituted by “humanly organized sounds” (Blacking 1973: 3–​31). Sound, for its part, might be considered as being produced without human intervention, and thus being of natural origin, and not perceived as unpleasant. Finally, “noise” may be of natural or of human origin and is often perceived as unpleasant, or at least not consciously perceived as pleasant. We see then that where the three phenomena differ is in their origin (that is, whether or not humans intervene) and in the ways in which they are perceived. While the origin may remain the same over the ages, perceptions depend on geographies and chronologies: when we think about sound, music, and noise, the distinctions we make will probably be different from the ones our ancestors would have made. Thus, our preconceptions about music are likely to be different as well; what people from the ancient Near East in diverse chronologies experienced and understood as musical phenomena may well seem alien to us. For this reason, in our analyses of work songs we include some insights into how the distinctions between noise and music, between sounds perceived as pleasant and as unpleasant, were shaped in the ancient Near East. This is indeed fundamental to a better understanding of the use and function of work songs in the ancient Near Eastern context. However, despite how our perceptions of pleasant and unpleasant sounds might differ over geographies and chronologies, in this chapter we follow the expert on psychoacoustics, James Beament (2001: xiv), who stated, not without controversy, that “the mainspring of music has been the production of pleasurable sound sensations.” Keeping this common goal in mind would help us to better understand work songs, as these “pleasurable sensations” would both accompany and facilitate the execution of a given task. Moreover, facilitating the execution of a task is also linked to the combination of two elements also analysed in studies on the perceptions of sounds: pitch and time patterns. Despite both are almost always intertwined, analysing the preponderance of one element or the other might also help to better understand work songs. In this direction, while choices on pitch would be preponderant for lullabies, choices on time patterns would be preponderant for work songs related to grinding or to ploughing.15 Finally, another interesting concept is “silence”: the absence of sound or noise. At first sight silence appears to be the negation of music, but it can also be understood as a part of the sound system. In ancient Greece, and in Medieval times as well, there were two kinds of music: the music of the spheres (inaudible to human ear) and music as a human creation (audible to humans). These two kinds of music included silence, since one of them was not audible. These ideas were recovered by the modern avant garde, which considered silence, non-​audible music, as the most sublime objective—​indeed, an unattainable objective. Seen from this perspective, a piece by John Cage consisting of different movements for players made up only of silence is particularly significant: taking silence to be the main part of music is like using white as the main colour in the most radical twentieth-​century paintings.16

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For the case studies we consider below, particularly those linked to songs to soothe a child’s crying, silence is also a fundamental piece of the puzzle. In that case, as we will see, what is perceived as pleasant music (the work song or lullaby) is used to counteract a sound or noise perceived as unpleasant (the child’s crying). The final goal when singing in this case is to attain silence: none of the previous sounds, then, will prevail or remain if the song serves its function. So, to better grasp the complexity of situations like the one sketched roughly here in this chapter we also take into account the concept of soundscape. A term coined by Raymond Murray Schafer in 1977 to describe the sonic environment of sentient beings, a “soundscape” is the amalgam of different sound sources: it is not a result, a closed object, but a dynamic process between people and their environment (Rodaway 1994: 85–​86).

Approaching and delimiting work songs As noted by Andromache Karanika in the introduction to her monograph Voices at Work:Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece (2014), work songs have only rarely been considered as themes for research because “they are seen as lacking variety and are associated with patterns of work that have not changed dramatically over time. As such, they have been little more than a footnote in most scholarly works.”17 However, as we argue in this chapter, they have a great deal to offer to researchers interested in myriad approaches. So far, work songs have been studied mainly in two geographical and chronological contexts, to an extent due to the richness of the sources available, but also due to other contingent reasons. On the one hand, work songs in contemporary United States history have been a path followed to approach the history of the African American community and also the roots of musical genres such as jazz.18 On the other hand, work songs in the Aegean have been approached in ethnological analyses dealing with twentieth-​century CE evidence, in studies in Classics dealing with ancient Greek sources, and even in analyses comparing both ancient and modern Aegean work songs linked mainly to agricultural activities.19 Despite the differences in these geographies (the United States and the Aegean) and chronologies (covering a range of more than two thousand years between the oldest and the newest sources) and although they are far removed from our ancient Near Eastern sources, we believe that using them as inspiration and, occasionally, for comparison with our sources, might be productive. We do this at some points below; and when we do so, certain common concerns appear. In this respect, a first basic concern that is common in all these studies is precisely the distinction of what are and what are not work songs, and how we can study music at work if it is not through the identification of texts which might fit in what we define as this literary genre. To overcome some of the possible problems arising from these concerns, studies dealing with contemporary history propose a move from considering work songs to a focus on singing at work (Korczynski et al. 2013: 19–​20). Despite acknowledging the relevance and usefulness of this epistemological change, we do not think it is fully applicable to the scrutiny of the past due to the limitations we have in accessing our sources, which come down to us only in their written rather than oral form. However, even if we concentrate only on what we identify as work songs, the classification of ancient Near Eastern texts in literary genres is not unproblematic—​as several scholars have discussed at length.20 Moreover, discussing the written or the oral origin of some of these texts complicates the debates further.21 Indeed, when discussing texts customarily labelled as “work songs” and as “lullabies” these two debates intertwine.22 Consequently both the identification of ancient texts as pertaining to these genres and even the suitability of the use of these labels as categories of analysis need to be

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discussed rather than taken for granted. In this connection, following the remarks on the definition of work presented above, we question the standard division between work songs and lullabies as it perpetuates binaries such as public/​private or productive/​reproductive work which, as pointed out above, have been amply contested from a gender studies perspective. For this reason, conceptually we consider all the texts we analyse below as work songs although we will use both labels in certain cases for the sake of clarity, particularly when referring to previous research. Also, along these lines, it is interesting to notice, as further support for our conceptual choice, that the consideration of lullabies as work songs is by no means new. In book 14 of The Deipnosophists (14.618e) the Greek rhetorician and grammarian Athenaeus of Naucratis (second and third centuries CE ) includes at least one specific type of lullaby, the katabaukalêseis sung by wet-​nurses, in a broader compilation of work songs of various kinds.23 Karanika (2014: 160–​181) also includes lullabies in her study of work songs. These two examples, ancient and modern, related to Aegean sources, consider at least some lullabies as work songs; and so perhaps it is anachronistic to consider work songs and lullabies as completely different texts and to ignore the contact points among them. As an example of these points of contact, we refer to connections in the context of performance between ancient Near Eastern texts so far labelled as work songs and as lullabies. To show this through the texts we select for our analyses (see below for more details on these texts and for the texts themselves) while two of the four compositions can be labelled as maintenance songs related to everyday tasks (Song of the Millstone and Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi), the other two are ritualised ones as they were intended to be performed in enactments (Song of the Plowing Oxen and To Calm a Baby). We see then that moving the focus from a divide into two literary genres towards shared contexts of performance of the texts might offer new insights, related to the multisensory experiences of the singers and their audience, as we will develop in the following sections.

Sensing the past: an overview In this chapter, we analyse the sources selected and presented below from the perspective of sensory studies. Our aim thus is to identify the elements that comprise the so-​called sensescape at work, emphasising the interaction between soundscapes and taskscapes in these sources. To contextualise the analysis that follows, here we offer some insights into the “sensorial turn” in studies on the ancient world in general and on the ancient Near East in particular. In recent decades, the “sensorial turn” has been influential for scholars dealing with the study of past societies.24 It is generally agreed that the senses are socially constructed and context-​ specific, even though they are neurophysiological processes and, thus, universal and cross-​cultural (Howes 2005; Classen 1993: 2). A common point in this research is to acknowledge that these approaches have privileged the Western Aristotelian and Cartesian division of the five senses25 and, more specifically, the sense of sight, because it is considered the most human (in contrast, for example, to touch, which is related to animals) (Stewart 2005). Aware of this bias, archaeologists and ancient historians have been trying to challenge this cultural division by offering fresh approaches based on ethnographic case studies that have demonstrated other sensoria like proxemics, the study of how space is used in human interactions, or the interoceptive senses, those received within the body rather than through external organs (Day 2013: 4). In addition, synaesthetic processes or intersensoriality, when the stimulation of one sense triggers involuntary experiences in another (Skeates 2010: 21), have also been analysed. As many of these case studies have shown, intersensoriality occurs especially in ritual contexts with the achievement of altered states of consciousness. From a methodological point of view, Hamilakis (2013: 12) 104

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recently proposed the concept of “sensorial field” to reject the idea that senses are structured by individuated external stimuli. This is a useful concept because it avoids the classification of the senses and offers an inclusive, comprehensive framework that comprises sensory perception, experience, materials, sentient beings (human or not), the environment, time, and social memory. All these elements are related and interact in different ways, such as in the case of the circulation of substances or movements. Archaeologists, ancient historians, and philologists alike are able to recover the role of the senses in given societies because the material culture (ranging from pots to buildings and to texts) has material features that can be analysed through sensorial lenses; for instance, the eye-​catching colours and the smooth or shiny surfaces with which certain objects were crafted reflect the significance of sight and haptic experiences.26 Equally, architecture has also been a privileged arena for focusing on the interplay of acoustics, visibility, and movement. The study of buildings has helped us to go beyond the five-​sense division because it allows an exploration of the kinaesthetic experiences of being sentient and moving through a built environment (Inomata 2020). The materiality of taste and smell has also left behind a large quantity of material traces, especially through the study of the containers used to hold foodstuffs and oils, resins or perfumes for burning. This topic has been studied particularly with regard to conspicuous consumption in rituals of commensality or banquets where synaesthetic experiences are fundamental (Skeates 2010: 16–​17; Day 2013: 13–​15). Moving on to our sense-​study, hearing or audition is based on vibrations that are detected by the ears and transformed into nerve impulses perceived as sounds by the brain (Skeates 2010: 13). As Skeates has noted, humans can distinguish different sounds over time and space, like propriocentric hearing (involuntary sounds produced by our own bodies); culturally patterned sounds for communication using the vocal apparatus, parts of our bodies and a diversity of sonorous artefacts; and soundscapes, already mentioned above. From an archaeological point of view, the field that deals with the search for culturally specific soundscapes is archaeoacoustics. This research highlights how acoustics can be a key element in deciding the location of artworks. Some case studies have demonstrated that places with exceptional acoustics would have been selected and/​or created to undertake and to perform not only artistic creations but also ritual activities (López-​Bertran 2019b with references to case studies; see also Chapter 17, this volume). Finally, it is worth highlighting the attention that research on sounds and soundscapes received in the framework of this “sensorial turn,” as demonstrated by the publication of the edited volume Sound and the Ancient Senses (Butler and Nooter 2019) in the series The Senses in Antiquity. Studies on the ancient Near East have also played their part in the “sensorial turn.” As noted by Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel (2019: 8), there are some precedents from the 1960s; an example is the research by Elena Cassin, with an approach clearly influenced by her training in anthropology.27 However, research on the senses flourished especially in the new century and is currently in good health, as witnessed for instance by several edited volumes on the topic: Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East (Schellenberg and Krüger 2019), Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East (Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019), and Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Near Eastern Contexts (Nadali and Pinnock 2020), as well as the chapter on Mesopotamia (McMahon 2020) in the Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. With regard to the most often discussed topics and contexts, the combination of architectural features, especially elite spaces, imagery, and texts has been an excellent avenue of research for analysing the interplay of movement, visual, and auditory experiences in Neo-​Assyrian palaces (McMahon 2013; Thomason 2016; 2019). Moreover, the multisensorial or synaesthetic approach has also been applied in relation to the achievement of sensory alterations through the Akkadian literature on death and banqueting (Rendu Loisel 2019). Another example of the combination 105

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of senses is the melammu (“splendour, light, radiance” in Akkadian)28 that refers to the emission of light by inanimate objects (Thomason 2016: 246; Thavapalan 2018). Finally, with regard to soundscapes, the works of Anne-​Caroline Rendu Loisel are essential in ancient Near Eastern studies. An example is her seminal monograph Les chants du monde: le paysage sonore de l’ancienne Mésopotamie (2016a).29 Among other things, Rendu Loisel stressed the importance of sounds in public and private spaces through the analysis of the Šumma ālu, a series of omens written in Akkadian where noises and sounds are well attested, especially those made by animals (Rendu Loisel 2016b). Lorenzo Verderame (2020a) also explicitly applied the framework of soundscapes to the study of spaces in Sumerian literature.30

Ancient Near Eastern work songs as indicators of multisensoriality In this section, our aim is to identify the elements that make up the so-​called sensorial fields, emphasising the interaction between soundscape and taskscape starting from the study of a selection of four work songs, a kind of text which the Sumerologist Miguel Civil explored at several points during his life. The first two texts we select were written in Sumerian and are among the ones discussed and translated by Civil in 1976 and in 2006.31 Here we reproduce his translations and refer to his studies for a detailed analysis of copies, context, and translation of some of the terms.32 The other two selected texts have been labelled as lullabies. One was originally written in Sumerian, the other in Akkadian. In this case we include translations issued in modern anthologies including Sumerian and Akkadian literature to help the interested reader compare these texts with others related in some way, either with regard to the chronology or to the topics discussed.33 We stress that we refer to all the four texts with the titles used in the modern editions. These are also the titles used for some of the following sections. In the analyses of the different work songs we refer to the characters allegedly singing the songs as explained in the lyrics and we also consider contexts of performance. However, we do not present hypotheses on the authorship of these texts for two main reasons. First, the use of “authorship” as an analytical tool is very contested in ancient Near Eastern studies. This debate is out of the scope of our chapter. Second, with ancient Near Eastern texts we deal with oral and aural traditions reshaped constantly, thus even if we agree on a certain utilitarian definition of authorship in this context, it might not shed light on the topics here discussed.34

The Song of the Millstone In this composition, a miller woman urges the millstone to work fast and to keep on moving so that she can finish her work. As stated above, the text is written in Sumerian, but in a variant known as emesal. Several proposals have been put forward to define emesal. Despite their discrepancies they all share one common feature: a basis which, in some way, links language and gender pointing to a predominant use of this variant by women in literary texts.35 Since flour milling was typically performed by women, as attested in a wide range of ancient Near Eastern written sources from diverse chronologies, the choice of this linguistic variant is significant.36 Oh, my small stones, rare necklaces beads … Work with the sieve! Oh my larger stones, stones for a neck ornament … Work with the grits sieve! Standing close to the fire, in the shadows, By itself, you, sharpening stone, are not working. My mouth is working on, 106

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My … is working on. My Millstone, I want to sing your song, who can sing something about you? The Millstone says to the Sharpening stone: My mother gave you birth, my god fashioned you. If we are siblings, if we have been nursed (together) in abundance why do you change my face? why do you change my nose? My millstone, go, go! Run, run! Bite, bite!37 An analysis of some aspects of this Song of the Millstone highlights a number of interesting topics. First, from a gender perspective, we note that the performers are female; indeed, as pointed out above, it is likely that both young and adult women were responsible for grinding not only in domestic contexts, but also in institutionalised spheres, as is recorded by the administrative texts and archaeological materials alike.38 A good example of this is the paradigmatic case study of Ebla, with the discovery of grinding rooms from the end of the third millennium BCE in the palace together with the finding of administrative texts recording the existence of a workforce devoted to milling.39 In this regard, it is also interesting to note that grinding is also a female task in the Aegean tradition, both ancient and modern. It is no coincidence that in the framework of the Aegean work songs there is a long, well-​attested tradition of grinding songs presenting recurrent patterns. The striking similarity between modern Greek grinding work songs and an excerpt from a work song quoted by the Greek writer Plutarch (first–​second centuries CE) in his Moralia (157e) has often been noted. In this passage Plutarch includes a quote from a woman who addresses the hand-​mill and says “grind, mill, grind.”40 In addition, modern Greek work songs are attested that include this sentence, also uttered by the woman using the mill: “Grind, my mill, grind.”41 Needless to say, both are also comparable to the last sentence of the grinding work song in Sumerian quoted above, where in the last line we find this same exhortation: “My millstone, go, go! Run, run! Bite, bite!” It has been pointed out that the similarity of all these exhortations might reflect the fatigue and apathy of these female workers engaging in this and other maintenance activities. In all cases they delegate the task to the hand-​mill and urge it to complete the task rapidly.42 Second, this song offers us an excellent way to highlight the multisensorial approach as it makes it possible to analyse the tactile-​kinaesthetic-​aural sense in relation to the use of saddle querns. The tactile dimension is clearly attested through the activity itself and the lyrics of the song: on the one hand, when grinding the grain, touching with the hands would have been essential at several stages: when pouring the grain on the mill and when collecting the flour after its crushing, which are clear transformative features of the task. In addition, the haptic dimension is clearly seen in the tool itself, especially the hand-​held upper stone, also known as the hammer, which is rubbed back and forth across the flat stone. This is an essential tool required for the task, and its contact with the hands of the women and the noise of crushing the cereals would have participated intensely in the creation of the soundscape. Here it is noticeable that this task is not only associated with obvious haptic sensations like the surface, form, pain, texture, or temperature of the grinder and the hammer alike, but also with non-​traditional or normative senses like the full-​body sensations of balance and the sense of kinaesthesia with the back-​and-​forth movement of the body, especially the torso, arms and head, along with the hammer. Thus, this task is a perfect example of the tactile-​kinaesthetic sense described by Ingold (2000) or Merleau-​ Ponty (2003).

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Looking closely at the aural aspect, the lyrics of the song reinforce the important role of touch between the mill and the women because the small stones, probably referring to hammers, are defined as necklace beads. The idea, real or not, of turning the tools into ornamental objects is significant because they become intimate objects in direct contact with the skin. In addition, the definition of hammers as body objects may be no coincidence because it reinforces the entanglement of personal identity, material culture, and technology: through the definition of hammers as rare necklace beads, women reinforce their skills as grinders and define their social role with this taskscape. However, we bear in mind that the jewels are much more than mere decorative objects; they are imbued with magical features and are also creators of self-​identity in relation to age, gender, genealogy, status, and so on, and, in this case, in connection with the skill of transforming grain into flour. Moreover, the use of necklaces as a metaphor of partnership is frequent in other Sumerian literary texts, particularly in love songs.43 It is also worth noting that the song itself makes it clear that it was used as tool to accompany the haptic and kinetic features of grinding. In fact, as pointed out above, work songs are a well-​ known category in history across time and space, and recent anthropological studies have stressed the importance of this artistic creation in several physical activities in order to measure time, increase efficiency, maintain concentration, or relieve boredom (Gioia 2006). The same might be true for ancient work songs, including the ones attested in the cuneiform record discussed here, as most of them are related to agricultural tasks (Civil 2017 [2006]).44 These work songs call themselves elilu, illalu (in Sumerian), elilu, elēlu (in Akkadian), and similar variants. All these Sumerian and Akkadian terms with a recurrent pattern of alternating vowels and liquid consonants (a pattern furthermore attested in many languages to express strong feelings)45 may also allude to the repetitive movements due to their onomatopoeic character. Moreover, the interconnection between the movement of crushing and the sound that was produced is already attested in the name of the millstone, known as na4kinkin, another onomatopoeic word that includes the repetitive action of the instrument, the hammer. This relation might be associated not just with coordinating timing among different women when grinding, but also to distract them from this physically hard and perhaps boring activity, a possibility also noted above when discussing the millers’ exhortations to their hand-​mills in these songs. The use of song as a tool to lessen the strain or to accompany the grinding can also be inferred from the sentence “my mouth is working on,” understanding the mouth as the organ through which the music (and by extension sound) flows, as an active participant in the process of milling. These songs, thus, focus on the tactile-​kinetic and aural properties of the items used to carry out the tasks and not on the end results; note that there is no mention at all of flour. This feature is remarkable because it gives us the idea that the performers of the whole taskscape (grinding and singing) are interested in signalling the enskillment of women. We borrow the concept from Ingold (2000). It is defined by the development of a crafter’s sense of self by showing the process of becoming skilled in the use of tools and the manipulation of materials; so we can consider it as an empowerment of female agency in grinding tasks. Also in this connection Karanika (2014: 158–​159) notes that the performance of work songs itself is a means of empowerment for women, as in doing so they also become ritual actors. In Karanika’s (2014: 159) words, “agents of work songs ritualize their own act by claiming through their agency more than their immediate task. They claim a voice that embues them with power.” Finally, as observed above, the use of the imperative is present here as well, in this case reinforcing this empowerment by transmitting an image of control and authority over the task described. In all, the agency of women as millers is achieved by the enskillment, which is mainly a sensorial experience based on touch, movement, and hearing.

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Also worth considering is how the lyrics reinforce non-​human agency. As Civil (2017 [2006]: 654) noted,“the speaker is a miller girl who reports a dialogue between the personifications of the millstone and the mill-​sharpening stone.” Indeed, the tools not only have the potential for agency, understood as the ability to act, but also animacy, which means that they have personhood or life force that is capable of producing changes in the world (Harrison-​Buck and Hendon 2018: 4–​9; see also Karanika 2014: 148–​149). The song shows how the tools have the ability to create a genealogical46 link in a dialogue between the sharpening stone and the millstone, as they are defined as siblings. But in fact, there is even more to this relationship: an emotional link is also recorded because a certain attitude of reproach is attested between the two objects. Certainly, Civil (2017 [2006]: 654) highlighted that this topic, the hostility between the two items, was a popular theme in other texts. As other archaeological studies have shown (Hendon 2018: 155–​159), implements can be defined as persons and agents because they are not made but born and described with bodily features, with faces and noses, and are agents capable of causing things to happen to other beings, in this case the miller. Indeed, as Civil (2017 [2006]: 654) wrote “the girl had a vested interest in keeping the millstone sharp, enabling her to fulfill her work quota.” To conclude our analysis of this song, we stress that it exemplifies clearly the interconnection of the senses in the creation of a particular taskscape, and also, from a phenomenological point of view, the song shows how tools possess sensorial and emotional features that break down the traditional subject–​object divide.

The Song of the Plowing Oxen If the previous composition was uttered by a woman, it seems that this one was uttered by a man who is summoning the oxen to plough a field. In this case the text is much longer and even though from the point of view of its form it is a work song, it was uttered in an agricultural ritual, probably by the king, in a re-​enactment of the ploughing oxen.47 (1–​6) [Ellu m]allu! Go, oxen, go, put the neck [under the yoke], [Go, royal oxen, go], put the neck under [the yoke!] I am [the faithful Farmer] of the land, I am […, the son] of Enlil, I am [the king] of the country. (101–​118) Ellu mallu! The harrow, the comb of my field, Has to be fitted with large teeth to harrow the holy field. The hoe must dig the edges—​remove the stumps! The hoe must dig the edges. Once you have taken down your sacred plow, which was hanging from a beam, Your master carpenter must tighten (its) bonds. Its side-​boards […]

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(139–​142) […] the sounds […] (S)he has to [hold] in his/​her right hand the measuring reed. Enkindu, the man of dikes and canals […], Should […] for you in […]. (143–​149) [Ellu] mallu! go, oxen, go [put the neck under the yoke], Go, [royal oxen], go, [put] your neck under the yoke! Step [on the furrows of] the fertile [field, walk] the sides [straight]. In the alehouse, the joy of drinking […], Inanna […] a place of relaxation. [Her heart(?)] is happy again. It is an [ululu]mama song for Ninurta This song revolves around some of the same ideas as the Song of the Millstone discussed above. As noted by Civil (2017 [1976]), this song is related to agricultural activities where the main protagonists are the oxen, and the Farmer,48 understood as the king. Although the lyrics are poorly preserved, the song tells that the Farmer has a dream in which he speaks with the oxen in order to choose one of these animals for the plough and an unidentified speaker encourages him to prepare the tools. Finally, the song describes a convivial drinking session after ploughing. The genre is clearly a work song as each stanza starts with the onomatopoeic sound to exhort the oxen to work. First of all, the context of the performance has to be taken into consideration. This is not a commoner’s song, but one that was sung during agricultural festivals in which the king performed tasks related to the oxen, using agricultural tools like the plough, the hoe, and the harrow to open the first furrows. Of course, agricultural festivals were significant events since farming was a fundamental activity in ancient Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to obtain a detailed idea of how some of the abovementioned farming duties were carried out or how the tools were used. An exceptional example of research that covers this gap is another study by Civil, his edition of the text known as The Farmer’s Instructions (1994). Among other things, this text mentions the ploughing with oxen and the opening of the furrows, the main topics in the Song of the Plowing Oxen under analysis here.49 With regard to the context of performance, as has been convincingly demonstrated by other contexts and chronologies, festivals and rites at Mesopotamian royal courts were highly sensorial experiences with the presence of music, convivial feasting, the consumption of luxury materials, and the exploitation of visual resources.50 Although our case study is slightly different, we can also assume that the agricultural rituals would also have been multisensorial. The importance of rhythm and music to facilitate the task of ploughing is highlighted by the onomatopoeic expression of “ellu mallu” at the beginning of each stanza; accordingly, movement is desired by the protagonists as the Farmer urges the oxen to move and work (“Go, oxen, go, put the neck under the yoke”). The rhythmic repetition of sets of movements and activities that is central in the conception of taskscape is seen in three moments of the song. Firstly, lines 16–​19 and 24–​25 emphasise the need for supplies in order to be able to bear the long day of ploughing; specifically, the song mentions bringing water and bread. This is highly significant as the Farmer receives the instructions from the “dream inducer,” the god Nanše. Secondly, although the text is poorly preserved, according to Civil’s translation (2017 [1976]: 401), in lines 43–​44, the song mentions 110

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two other movements and tasks necessary before ploughing can begin: picking up the clods before making the furrows and “chasing the birds away” before the harvest. In the same vein, in line 127 the removal of stumps is also mentioned, which is connected to the third task, described in lines 139–​142; here it is explained how the edges were delimited by a “measuring reed” which is mentioned in the work song, although in isolation. Thirdly and finally, the song ends with a clear sensorial reference: in line 146 an alehouse and the joys of drinking are mentioned. As in lines 16–​19, the sense of taste is the most obvious association, but we can also assume a more synaesthetic experience attached to the joys of drinking: the soundscape of the tavern with or without music, or the sensorial alteration of drunkenness.51 Thus, this song makes clear that the ploughing, either real or performed by the king, contains the essence of what we consider a taskscape: an embodied multisensorial experience with the rhythmic repetition of movements and activities that is enhanced by the music and soundscape, as the lyrics underline. The complexity of the soundscape is also attested by the animals and the tools because, as we have seen in the previous song, they possess animacy and agency: they have the ability to speak and to transform reality. During the dream, the Farmer has a conversation with a young ox (note the important role of voice, both animal and human, to create an emotional link between them). In addition, the youth of the ox is also very sensorial; the animal is described as lacking hair on its muzzle and having a clean skin because it has not worked yet. Interestingly, the text suggests a strong connection between the oxen and the equipment, as their relation is based, as in the previous case, on genealogical links. Moreover, Civil (2017 [1976]: 407, lines 59–​60) comments that “the ‘fathers and mothers’ are the plowman and his helpers.”This is an excellent example of what is called “enactive knowledge” because, to quote Civil (2017 [1976]: 407), “the young oxen, in a team with several pairs, were yoked in front to train them progressively to the task of carrying the yoke and pulling the plow.” This sentence puts the emphasis on learning in a socialised context, not in isolation; in addition, the acquisition of the task is based on bodily sensorimotor responses rather than on mental processes. Both features are fundamental to enact knowledge during task-​ learning processes (Tringham 2013: 188). Interestingly, this process has always been studied in regard to humans, especially children; but here, the protagonists of this sensorial learning process are the animals, which makes it clear how oxen also possess personhood and agency. In addition, it might be noted that the active bodily engagement of certain tasks (here, ploughing) is closely associated with the environment. A reference to this point is seen when the lyrics mention the sun, which Civil interprets as the use of the length and position of the shadow of the yoke to guide the ploughing straight (2017 [1976]: 407, line 61). Beyond movement and sound, the sense of sight also participates in the process of sensorial and kinetic learning. If the song here analysed was sung while ploughing, the music itself would take on importance. Lastly, this song also refers to a sense that is usually not taken into account as such: the sense of time. As Neumann has convincingly argued for the Neo-​Assyrian period (2019a: 255), the sense of time or time perception does not have a unique sense organ, but is relational and interplays with visual, auditory, and emotional states. It seems that our song refers to a festival and to astronomical aspects. More specifically, it includes three references to the sense of time: a ritualised one in relation to the festival, an astronomical one connected to the earth, and, finally, a reference to days of labour. With regard to the first, Civil (2017 [1976]: 397) argues that the festival most probably took place during the month of gud-si-su, recalling the connection between the name of the song and the name of the month, GUD being the Sumerian term for “ox.” Moreover, this festival was devoted to the god Ninurta or Ningirsu, a deity linked to agriculture, the other main topic present in the song.52 With regard to the second theme, the song makes reference to the passing of time because it mentions the stars, the bedding, referring to the night-​time and the dream, and it is assumed that the dream ends with sunrise. In addition, there is a comparison 111

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between the constellations and well-​organised rows of furrows, thus connecting the earth with the sky. Thirdly and finally, the song may also report a working day because the action finishes in a tavern or a similar establishment drinking and relaxing.

Two songs to soothe a child’s crying Our final examples are two work songs, traditionally labelled as baby-​incantations and lullabies,53 which may have been sung by mothers, wet-​nurses, or experts on incantations and divination. As can be seen, there are several possibilities here; compared with our two previous case studies, it is more difficult to determine who sang these songs. Indeed, determining this issue is closely bound to a debate on the origin and classification of these texts viewed either as lullabies, and thus coming from an oral tradition, or as incantations more linked to a written tradition.54 Consequently, in what follows we choose from among several possibilities to build our interpretations even though, given these circumstances, our proposals are necessarily speculative. The first of these two last texts is often named the Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi because King Šulgi (c. 2100–​2050 BCE ) is mentioned in the text and because it is assumed to have been commissioned by one of his wives. However, as noted by Halton and Svärd (2018: 103) in the introduction to the text in their anthology, “this assumption perhaps tells us more about the perspective of modern scholars than it does about the composition itself.”55 In any case what is clear is that the composition is sung by someone, most probably a woman, trying to soothe a baby that cannot sleep.56 (1–​5) Ua-​aua At my lament, may he grow. At my lament, may he get big. May he grow roots, like a tree may his branches spread. (12–​18) Sleep, come. Sleep, come. Sleep, come here to my son. Sleep, hurry here to my son. Make his open eyes go to sleep. Place your hands on his glinting eyes. And his active tongue, let its activity not destroy his sleep. (19–​23) May he fill your lap with emmer while I sweeten cheese curds for you –​ this cheese is a physician for humankind, a physician for humankind and of the lord’s son, the son of lord Šulgi. (24–​30) In my garden are lettuces that I have watered. I have chopped the hearts of lettuce. 112

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The lettuces, let my lord eat. At my lament, let me give him a wife. Let me give him a wife; let me give him a son. May a good-​hearted nurse talk with him; May a good-​hearted nurse suckle him. (39–​48) You are troubled, I am tired, I am speechless (?), looking at the stars the half-​moon illuminates my face. Your bones might hang from the wall. The man on the wall might weep for you. The mongoose might play an instrument for you. The gecko might scratch its cheek for you. The fly might trouble its lips for you. The lizard might stick out its lips for you. (49–​56) May this song make him bloom. May this song make him blossom. When you bloom, when you blossom, when you … shake the churn, sleep … bedroom … A soothing sound … Brings joy … The second and last text we analyse was titled To Calm a Baby in Benjamin Foster’s (2005) anthology of Akkadian literature. Below we reproduce his translation into English:57 Little one who dwelt in the dark chamber, You really did come out here, you have seen the [sunlig]ht. Why are you crying? Why are you [fretting]? Why did you not cry in there? You have disturbed the household god, the bison(-​monster) is astir, (saying), ‘Who disturbed me? Who startled me?’ The little one disturbed you, the little one startled you. Like wine tipplers, like a barmaid’s child, Let sleep fall upon him! (Incantation to calm a little one) The songs here analysed are very different from the previous ones because the Song of the Millstone and the Song of the Plowing Oxen are intended to accompany the soundscape created by specific taskscapes, whereas the lullabies or baby-​incantations are performed to stop a sound described as distressing, that is, a baby’s crying, through a sound perceived as pleasant, that is, the song and its lyrics. The final goal is, in any case, to obtain silence. At this point it is interesting to note that the 113

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perception of sounds or even of what might be described as noise in ancient Mesopotamia has a strong and ambivalent significance. If in certain contexts noise is perceived as positive, as a sign of civilisation and of flourishing human activity, in others the same noise is described as negative and as something that must stop.58 With regard to its negative perception, as is the case in the two texts under analysis here, it is worth recalling the plot of the well-​known story of the Atra-​hasīs, a mythological story about the creation of the world, which relates human noise with the disturbance of the gods’ rest and their punishment of humankind in the form of a great flood.59 There is thus a connection between this myth and the baby-​incantations and lullabies designed to calm agitated infants, as in both contexts the sounds of humanity and of babies crying are perceived as annoying. Thus, some baby-​incantations can be considered as abbreviated texts revolving around the same ideas of the myth, which basically recall the sequence of noise, the interruption of sleep, and divine anger (Heffron 2014). The Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi begins with a soothing onomatopoeic expression “ua-​aua,” which is also used to name these compositions. As in the example of the Song of the Millstone discussed above this onomatopoeia works also through reduplication and in addition, in this case, includes the alternance of the vowels u-​a, which is quite commonly identified in other onomatopoeic forms in Sumerian.60 In this song, besides the desire to have the baby fall asleep, the singer is concerned about the child’s health and future. On the one hand the mother expresses her intention to feed the baby with healing food like cheese and lettuce (Kramer 1971: 193). It is worth noting that cheese and other dairy products were not consumed every day, not even in the highest echelons of society.61 On the other hand, she also hopes for a successful and healthy future for her son, imagining his forthcoming wife and offspring (see lines 19–​30, above, and also 31–​38 for a reiteration of the wife motif). One of the recurrent features of this text is the personification of Sleep.62 Sleep has agency and animacy, like the materials analysed in the previous songs. It is described according to sensorial features: it moves in different intensities and degrees (enter, come, and hurry) and its touch is perceived as powerful because it can close the baby’s eyes and quieten his tongue (lines 16–​18: “Place your hand on his glinting eyes. And his active tongue, let its activity not destroy his sleep”). Another relevant topic is how the lyrics emphasise the tiredness of the mother in relation to the sense of sound because in line 49 the performer describes herself as speechless. Thus, the feeling of being tired is embodied through the lack of voice. In addition, lines 43 to 48 are highly significant in terms of the connectivity of beings and senses. It is likely that the song evokes how other beings, mostly animals, participate in the process of calming the baby through sensorial activities related again to sound and touch: the “man of the wall”63 cries for him, the mongoose plays music, the sound of the gecko touching its cheek seems to help calm the baby, and the fly and the lizard also take part in the calming process by transferring the sound of the human lament to their animal sound that emanates from their lips. Furthermore, the kinetic aspect is also worth noting as the mother’s bouncing or back and forth movement would have also been essential actions in calming the baby as much as warmth and caresses. Thus, beside the song itself, the sensescape, especially related to sounds, of the environment also participates actively in the process of soothing the child. Therefore, it is understandable that the lyrics refer not to the sound of the song, considered as music, but to the soothing sound that brings joy (lines 55–​56), which means that the lament ends and the normal sounds of houses return. In fact, silence is not a desirable feature for houses; as it is related to death, houses are expected to produce different noises like the ones made by animals, wooden objects, or the wind (Rendu Loisel 2019: 280). The presence of animal sounds as agents reiterates the Šumma ālu since most of the entries in this compendium deal with animal sounds (Rendu Loisel 2019: 296). 114

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Comparing the two lullabies, the sense of time is clearly referenced in both; they both refer to night-​time, the moment of the day when this sound is most bothersome. In the Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi the mother positions herself looking at the stars in the light of the half-​moon (lines 41–​ 42), whereas in the incantation To Calm a Baby it is likely that the place for the baby to rest is in a dark chamber and not in the sunlight. The last song, To Calm a Baby, also attests to how acoustic signs in houses are perceived as negative because they are understood as intrusions of negative forces (Rendu Loisel 2019); in this case it is possible that the crying disturbs the household god (cf. Scurlock 2003: 99, nn. 1, 2). The baby is likened to a drunken adult. The comparison may not be just a matter of chance, because it gives the impression that both the drunk and the crying baby are in altered states of consciousness and, as a consequence, they embody synaesthetic experiences64 which are not allowed in the domestic contexts of rest during the night; the baby’s crying might disturb the human and extra-​human inhabitants of the house and have unintended consequences (Verderame 2020b). The two lullabies make it clear how the senses are connected to emotional responses. In the first example, the mother-​singer expresses her concern about her child’s illness, and, thus, we can argue that the baby’s crying is the physical sound of the emotion of worry or sadness. In the second example, the noise provokes an emotional response related to anger. Thus, we conclude that the study of soundscapes sheds light on one of the multiple approaches to sensory studies which has recently been termed sensory-​emotive archaeology. Here again, the soundscape is connected to emotional responses, which is one of the approaches to sensory studies (Nugent 2020: 109).

Conclusion: singing at work in the ancient Near East Some common assumptions can be traced regarding the four songs that we have just analysed. First, it is clear that sound in a broad sense is central in the complex sensescape of the ancient Near East. Second, all songs recall the performative power of words and, in this case, of lyrics. Work songs are not just complementary of tasks; for this reason, as we have seen, establishing the boundaries between customary genres such as incantations, spells, lullabies, or work songs is not a straightforward task. In this chapter we have opted for a use of work song in a broad sense encompassing other possible genres for our analytical purposes, but needless to say this is not a closed option and debates need to remain fluid and open to other approaches. Third, singing was essential in daily tasks such as grinding, ploughing, and soothing babies. Indeed, we have seen that in all these daily tasks there is always a set of sounds which cannot be fully controlled, for example the sounds of the tools in the farming activities, or the crying of the child in the lullabies. The songs, in contrast, are created with an express purpose and for this reason they might be understood as an expression of a desire to control these sounds. In this connection, the use of the imperative is seen to enhance their efficacy. As pointed out by Karanika (2014: 163), “the imperative empowers the performer, giving the illusion of control over the situation.” We see then that singing in working contexts might empower the singers by creating a certain feeling of “domestication” of the uncontrolled sounds. This is an important point to highlight because, as we have already shown, sensory studies, especially in relation to sounds, have focused on ceremonial or ritualised activities rather than on daily tasks such as the ones considered here. Fourth, although we consider highly significant the desire of control as exposed above, it has to be noticed that the setting of pitch and time patterns is bidirectional. Indeed, the decisions taken with regard to pitch and time patterns in work songs shape some features of the task developed. At the same time, these decisions are conditioned by the pitch and time patterns of the 115

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tasks themselves. As an example, grinding and ploughing have clear time patterns influencing those chosen for the work songs, while time patterns of the work songs might help to set and maintain the pace of work as well as to get through the drudgery of the work. Sounds and tasks, soundscapes and taskscapes are mutually intertwined also at this level. Fifth, analysing the lyrics we can see how sounds interact with other senses to become important examples of multisensoriality where sounds, music, silence, and rumours interact clearly with touch and movement, but also, though to a lesser extent, with smell and taste. In the same vein, the songs are clear examples of what are called sensorial fields as they put together the ways in which humans, other-​than-​human beings, and artefacts present sensorial features that participate actively in the perception of the environment: the use of the land (in the Song of the Plowing Oxen), time (Song of the Plowing Oxen, Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi, To Calm a Baby), and social memory through genealogical links (expressed in the Song of the Millstone and in the Song of the Plowing Oxen).

Notes 1. Miquel Civil Desveus left us in January 2019. Both authors were lucky enough to attend his scholarly lectures and courses in Barcelona during our predoctoral training. We have fond memories of those sessions. When we received the invitation from Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason to contribute to this volume, we decided to choose a topic of study related in one way or another to Civil’s work. This is why our chapter deals with work songs. We include here translations of two work songs by Civil and we also quote several of his contributions to cuneiform studies. We dedicate the results of this research to his memory. We also thank the editors of the volume for inviting us to contribute, and Lorenzo Verderame for his kindness in sharing with us several of his recent publications on topics closely related to our theme. 2. Exceptions are recent studies by De Zorzi (2011: 11–​16) and Verderame (2020a: 89–​90), both devoted to the analysis of soundscapes of ancient Near Eastern cities, including soundscapes related to work activities. 3. Cuneiform writing, mainly on clay tablets, was in use from the end of the fourth millennium BCE until the first or second century CE . The two main languages attested in this writing were Sumerian, an isolated language, and Akkadian, a Semitic one. Sumerian was native to the area surrounding the Persian Gulf, in current southern Iraq. It was spoken until about the end of the third millennium BCE ; however it was a written language during the whole time span of use of cuneiform writing, thus over three millennia. Akkadian was native to the area surrounding the current city of Baghdad. It was spoken in the whole area of ancient Mesopotamia, that is the one covering the land bathed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, from the beginning of the third millennium until the end of the first millennium BCE . The first written records date from about the mid-​third millennium BCE . For more details about both languages see Michalowski 2020 (for Sumerian) and Hasselbach-​Andee 2020 (for Akkadian). 4. For examples of the research done from this perspective, and for an overview of previous publications on the topic see Steinkeller and Hudson 2015 and Garcia-​Ventura 2018 (particularly the introduction). 5. As stated above, few studies have explored music and work together. For this reason we devote a significant part of this chapter to this combined focus. They are not included as mere introductory remarks, but as topics of study in their own right aiming to foster future research and debate on these issues. 6. Needless to say, given the complexity and range of terms such as “work” and “music” here we do not attempt to present complete or cross-​sectional definitions. For broader approaches to these concepts from the perspectives of anthropology and sociology, particularly discussing their delimitations and definitions, see the two classic references Jacob 1994 (for work) and Blacking 1973 (for music). 7. See www.collinsdictionary.com/​dictionary/​english/​work (accessed October 2020). 8. The same happened with activities carried out by the colonised when described by the colonisers, as noted by Jacob (1994: 103–​108). Moreover, this issue often arises in current studies when struggling to define and delimit the concept of work in antiquity. In this connection, for a gender studies perspective, see Karanika 2014: 10–​15. 9. For a classic reference on the usefulness of “maintenance activities” as a category of analysis for the study of the past see Picazo 1997. See also Montón Subías and Sánchez Romero 2008 for some case studies and previous references. 116

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10. See Carvais 2010: 14, with previous literature on this perspective. 11. For some insights into this customary division and the way it has been problematised by some contemporary feminist artists, see Mayayo 2011. 12. Many scholars, particularly those who apply a Marxist feminist approach, redefine work taking these premises into account. Besides Sanahuja, see Haraway 1991 for a classic and complementary reference work. 13. For some insights, see Blacking 1973: 31–​33, as a classic reference on the topic. 14. For a classic reference on the topic, see Lund 1981. See also Garcia-​Ventura et al. 2018 for some examples of studies in this direction, particularly the contribution of Jiménez et al. 2018: 173–​206, with previous references. 15. On the differences between pitch and time patterns in terms of sensory perception, as well as on their complex interaction, see Beament 2001: 139–​146. 16. With regard to the use of white as signal for a certain philosophical and aesthetical stance, see Joseph 2000, dealing with the series White Paintings by Robert Rauschenberg. For an in-​depth analysis of Cage’s composition 4’33”, the one discussed in our text, as it is only made of silence, in its social and intellectual context; see Gann 2010. 17. See Karanika 2014: 2–​4. Although Karanika concentrates on ancient Greece, her thoughts are also useful to approach other areas such as the ancient Near East. 18. See, for instance, Gioia 2006. For an overview of previous literature and for some reflections about the portability of the customary approach of these studies to other contexts, see Korczynski et al. 2013: 19–​33. 19. See, among others, Beaton 1980 and Karanika 2014, with previous references. 20. For some thoughts about this issue and for previous references on this debate see, among others, Verderame 2016: 5–​8. See also Brisch 2010: 153–​154, n. 4, with previous references. 21. For some insights on this debate, taking Sumerian hymns as a case study, see Brisch 2010: 154–​158, with previous references. 22. In addition to the references in previous notes, for some considerations on the adequacy of considering “lullabies” as a literary genre in the ancient Near Eastern context if compared with other literary traditions, see Farber 1990: 139. For some insights into the use of “songs” and “incantations,” with some parallel elements in the debate, see Worthington 2019. 23. For the whole passage in Athenaeus dealing with work songs, see 14.618d–​14.620a (Athenaeus 2011: 122–​133). See also Karanika 2014: 133–​139 for an overview and analysis of some parts of this passage by Athenaeus. 24. As a guide, see the seminal works of Pluciennik 2002; Hamilakis 2013; Hamilakis et al. 2002; Hawthorn and Rendu-​Loisel 2019; Skeates 2010; Day 2013. 25. For a detailed overview of the launch and transmission of the model of the five senses see, for instance, Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019: 1–​3, with previous references. However, this awareness of the cultural construction of the five senses should not be equated with always discarding the model when dealing with the past. See for instance the remarks on the evidence of five senses in the Sumerian language; see Verderame 2020a: 85, n. 1. 26. For an overview on the topic, focusing on how these approaches redefine how artworks are considered in several academic disciplines such as archaeology and art history, see López-​Bertran 2019a, with previous references. In the milieu of ancient Near Eastern studies, the pioneer work of Irene Winter must be referred to. See for instance Winter 2002, with previous references. More recently and particularly focusing on colour and shine see Thavapalan 2018. 27. Glassner (2010) contains an obituary of Cassin that pays particular attention to this training and highlights the variety and richness. For an overview of the “sensorial turn” in ancient Near Eastern studies starting from Cassin’s research, see Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019: 8–​10. 28. The CAD (M/​2 s.v. 10–​12) defines melammu as “radiance, supernatural awe-​inspiring sheen (inherent in things divine and royal).” 29. For a brief overview of the definition and application of soundscapes to the study of cuneiform sources see particularly Rendu Loisel 2016a: 19–​27. 30. Besides these references, for the explicit application of soundscape as a framework for the study of the past including Assyriology as well as other disciplines and methodological studies, see some examples in Emerit et al. 2015. 31. Besides these two texts, Civil is also related in a way to our third text, the Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi. As acknowledged by Kramer in his editio princeps of this text, Civil made several suggestions regarding this composition—​first and foremost his identification of it as a lullaby (Kramer 1971: 192, n. 3). 117

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32. In this chapter we refer to several publications by Miguel Civil as issued in the year 2017 but include the original publication year in square brackets. The 2017 publication is a selection of papers by Civil which includes, among others, the four we refer to here. To facilitate further checking by the readers, we always provide page numbers from this compilation, accessible online (http://​diposit.ub.edu/​ dspace/​handle/​2445/​129686, accessed February 2020). 33. For overviews of Sumerian and n Akkadian literature, see Rubio 2009 and Foster 2009 respectively. 34. For some features of these debates, with different points of view, see Halton and Svärd 2018: 30–​34 and Helle 2019, with previous references. 35. For an overview of some of these diverse proposals see Garcia-​Ventura 2017. 36. Civil (2017 [2006]: 654) highlights the use of “emesal” as well. For an overview of Sumerian literary genres where the use of the “emesal” linguistic variant is commonly attested, see Rubio 2009: 1369–​1370. 37. Translation into English by Civil 2017 [2006]: 659–​660. 38. Civil (2017 [2006]: 654, 665) also alludes to this issue in his publication of this work song. For an overview of ancient Near Eastern sources, including the case of Ebla, see also Milano 1993–​1997. 39. On this evidence at Ebla see Biga 1991 (for the administrative texts and an overview of female occupations recorded there) and Peyronel et al. 2014 (for the study of archaeobotanical, architectural, and ceramic materials related to grinding rooms, with previous references). 40. For an English translation of the whole excerpt by Plutarch and for a more detailed analysis with further comparisons and references, see Karanika 2014: 144–​153. 41. For examples of modern Greek work songs comparable to Plutarch, including the ones alluded to here, see Beaton 1980: 146–​147; Karanika 2014: 157. 42. Karanika 2014: 158. Cf. Civil 2017 [2006]: 654. See also, Stol 2016: 352–​353 which briefly comments on this issue starting from the Sumerian Song of the Millstone. 43. For an overview of the use of necklaces, linking them to possible wedding rituals, see Stol 2016: 93–​94, with previous references. 44. For examples of ancient Greek work songs linked to agricultural activities such as threshing, harvesting, or making wine, see Karanika 2014, particularly 153–​159, 201–​218. 45. On these terms and this recurrent pattern in Akkadian referring to certain songs in comparison to cases of other modern and ancient languages, with further references, see Rendu Loisel 2016a: 105–​107. For further references on the terms to designate work songs linked to agriculture in the cuneiform record see also De Zorzi 2011: 15, particularly nn. 74 and 75. See also Shehata 2009: 236–​237 for an analysis of the terms and of these onomatopoeic patterns in the framework of the ancient Near Eastern vocal repertoire. 46. We use in this chapter “genealogies” rather than “kinship ties.” Despite the terms having clear connections, we opt for the former keeping in mind its use in gender studies. In this milieu genealogies are often used to pinpoint relationships, which resemble features of kinship ties (such as affection or learning socialisation), but which do not involve biological or blood ties. Moreover, the term “genealogy” is also used in feminisms and gender studies to recover predecessors in activism and in intellectual work respectively. For a reference work on this topic, see De Lauretis 1993. 47. The text is 149 lines long. Here we only include Civil’s translation into English of some excerpts. For the complete text, see Civil 2017 [1976]: 399–​402. For an overview of copies and translations of the text, see Viano 2016: 56. 48. Here we follow Civil (2017 [1976]: 396) and write “Farmer,” with the first letter capitalised, when alluding to the speaker of this work song, and “farmer,” all in lowercase, when alluding to any other farmer. See Civil 2017 [1976]: 396: “The speaker is the Farmer, clearly not an ordinary farmer but either a god or a king” (our emphasis). 49. On these topics in The Farmer’s Instructions, see Civil 1994: 29–​31, 74–​86. For an overview of farming in ancient Mesopotamia to obtain a better context for this text covering several types of sources, see Wiggermann 2011. 50. For a comprehensive view, especially for Neo-​Assyrian monumental architecture, see Thomason 2016 and Portuese 2019 for palaces; and Neumann 2019b for temples. 51. On taverns in Mesopotamia, with allusion to a drinking song (particularly relevant to our case study), see Civil 2017 [1964]. 52. For more details on this festival celebrated in the second month of the Nippur calendar at the end of the third millennium BCE , see Sallaberger 1993: 114–​122. For previous references to this festival in

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53.

54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64.

the cultic calendars, see particularly Sallaberger 1993: 114, n. 514. For the link of this festival with the work song discussed here, see Civil 2017 [1976]: 397. For a more general overview of festivals and rites linked to the agricultural year in ancient Mesopotamia, see Wiggermann 2011: 679–​682. On these texts see the monograph by Farber 1989, including a thorough selection of texts translated into German. For the translation of some of these and similar texts into other languages such as English, Spanish, or French, with a focus on other details, see, for instance, Farber 1990, Couto-​Ferreira 2016, and Murad and Cavigneaux 2018, respectively. For a summary of some arguments in this debate and the adequacy of the use of the label “lullaby” in cuneiform studies, see Farber 1990: 139–​140. Cf. Karanika 2014: 160–​181 for some insights referring to ancient Greek sources. See for instance Stol 2016: 368. The text has 100 legible lines in total plus a broken part at the end. Here we only include the excerpts discussed. For the complete translation into English and references of previous publications see Halton and Svärd 2018: 103–​105. See also Kramer 1971: 194–​198 for the transliteration of the text and for its first translation into English. Foster 2005: 172 = F II.20c. Compare Farber 1989: 34–​35 with other translations of the same text into German and into English (Van der Toorn 1999: 139). On this ambivalence, with diverse thoughts and examples, see, for instance, Foster 2005: 32–​33; De Zorzi 2011; Rendu Loisel 2015;Verderame 2020a. For an emphasis on its negative aspects and the need to stop them, see Van der Toorn 1999: 139–​140; Heffron 2014: 83; and Rendu Loisel 2016a: 167–​169. For a summary of the plot and parts of the text, see Shehata 2001: 4–​22. See also Verderame 2016: 28–​ 30. For an overview of translations and studies on the composition and its different manuscripts, see the references and insights provided in Shehata 2001 and Verderame 2016: 154. On this vocalic alternance with an overview of several examples see Black (2003). See also De Zorzi 2011: 7 for previous references. For other insights on this issue, starting from the case study of a term which meaning is linked to sound and noise, see Civil 2017 [1966]: 1–​5. To compare with the writing of onomatopoeia in Akkadian, see Rendu Loisel 2016a: 36–​37. For a case study developing this argument, see Brunke 2014: 345–​346. This was already pointed out by Thorkild Jacobsen in 1971 in a translation and interpretation of this text published as an appendix to Kramer (1971: 202). In this excerpt, this is the only non-​animal being. For an overview of superhuman beings such as demons in Mesopotamia with some examples also related to their entering the house and their disturbance of sleep, see Verderame 2017, with previous references. In contrast, in other situations in ancient Mesopotamia the achievement of altered states of consciousness is desirable. See Rendu Loisel 2019 for examples of Akkadian texts about banquets or near-​death experiences.

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Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hamilakis, Y., M. Pluciennik, and S. Tarlow. 2002. Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality. New York: Kluwer Academic/​Plenum Publishers. Haraway, D. 1991. “‘Gender’ for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word,” in D. Haraway, ed., Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London and New York: Routledge, 127–​148. Harrison-​Buck, E., and J. A. Hendon. 2018. “Introduction,” in E. Harrison-​Buck and J. A. Hendon, eds., Relational Identities and Other-​Than-​Human Agency in Archaeology. Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 3–​28. Hasselbach-​Andee, R. 2020. “Akkadian,” in R. Hasselbach-​Andee, ed., A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 129–​148. Hawthorn, A., and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds. 2019. Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. Heffron, Y. 2014. “Revisiting ‘Noise’ (rigmu) in Atra-​ḫasīs in Light of Baby Incantations.” JNES 73: 83–​93. Helle, S. 2019. “Enheduana and the Invention of Authorship.” Authorship 8: 1–​20. Hendon, J. A. 2018. “Can Tools Have Souls? Maya Views on the Relations between Human and Other-​ than-​Human Persons,” in E. Harrison-​Buck and J. A. Hendon, eds., Relational Identities and Other-​ Than-​Human Agency in Archaeology. Louisville: University of Colorado Press, 147–​166. Howes, D. 2005. Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Ingold, T. 1993. “The Temporality of the Landscape.” World Archaeology 25 (2): 152–​174. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Inomata, T. 2020. “Ceremonial Architecture and Public Events,” in R. Skeates and J. A. Day, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. New York: Routledge, 248–​266. Jacob, A. 1994. Le travail, reflet des cultures. Du sauvage indolent au travailleur productif. Paris: PUF. Jiménez Pasalodos, R. and P./​P. Holmes. 2018. “The Aulos and the Trumpet: Music, Gender and Elites in Iberian Culture (4th to 1st century BCE),” in A. Garcia-​Ventura, C. Tavolieri, and L. Verderame, eds., The Study of Musical Performance in Antiquity: Archaeology and Written Sources. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 173–​206. Joseph, B. W. 2000. “White on White.” Critical Inquiry 27 (1): 90–​121. Karanika, A. 2014. Voices at Work: Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Korczynski, M., M. Pickering, and E. Robertson. 2013. Rhythms of Labour: Music at Work in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kramer, S. N. 1971. “u5-​a a-​ù-​a: A Sumerian Lullaby (with appendix by Thorkild Jacobsen),” in Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra. Milan: A. Giuffrè, 192–​205. López-​Bertran, M. 2019a. “Types of Art,” in C. Smith, ed., Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Cham: Springer. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​978-​3-​319-​51726-​1. López-​Bertran, M. 2019b. “Ephemeral Art,” in C. Smith, ed., Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Cham: Springer. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​978-​3-​319-​51726-​1. Lund, C. 1981. “The Archaeomusicology of Scandinavia.” World Archaeology 12 (3): 246–​265. Mayayo, P. 2011. Cuerpos sexuados, cuerpos de (re)producción. Colección Textos del Cuerpo. Barcelona: editorial UOC. McMahon, A. 2013. “Space, Sound and Light: Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monumental Architecture.” AJA 117 (2): 163–​179. McMahon, A. 2020. “The Sensory World of Mesopotamia,” in R. Skeates and J. A. Day, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. New York: Routledge, 396–​412. Merleau-​Ponty, M. 2003 [1945]. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. Michalowski, P. 2020. “Sumerian,” in R. Hasselbach-​Andee, ed., A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 85–​106. Milano, L. 1993–​1997. “Mühle (A. I. In Mesopotamien),” in RIA 8. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 393–​400. Montón-​Subías, S., and M. Sánchez Romero. 2008. Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities. Oxford: Archaeopress. Murad, A., and A. Cavigneaux. 2018. “IM 160096: un charme pour calmer un bébé qui pleure.” Altorientalische Forschungen 45: 193–​198. Nadali, D., and F. Pinnock. 2020. Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Near Eastern Contexts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 121

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Part II

Dress and the body

6 Adornment practices in the ancient Near East and the question of embodied boundary maintenance Josephine Verduci

Introduction Evidence derived mainly from mortuary contexts and supplemented by pictorial and iconographic sources indicates that anklets were a common form of adornment during the Bronze and Iron Ages in the southern Levant (Figure 6.1). This evidence stands in contrast to what we know of neighbouring groups, such as Egyptians, Nubians, and Neo-​Assyrians, who in Egyptian iconography were shown without anklets. The practice of wearing multiple bangles suggests the role of adornment in the sensory experience of individuals in the ancient Near East; however, the nature and significance of adornment in multisensorial experience remain frequently unexplored. Studies of anklets have focused on their ethnic significance (Tufnell 1958), their metallurgical properties (Notis et al. 1986), and their role as an expression of gender and age (Green 2007); however, little consideration has been given to how sensory experience and corporeal embodiment can lead to decisions that challenge cultural meanings. Furthermore, recent studies suggest that emotions, as might arise through the sensorium of adornment, are integral to cognition and are an essential aspect of memory formation and retrieval. In exploring how adornment may have been implicated in sensory modalities, such as sight, sound, touch, weight, and movement, we can thereby examine the emotional and memorial aspects of embodied experience in the ancient Near East (Joyce 2005; Hamilakis 2013). Themes introduced by a phenomenological approach refer to the role of external forces, particularly relationships, and the role of emotion and memory to link socio-​cultural and somatic processes in shaping the self. A significant part of the role of others in our sense of self is the importance of memory and the imaginary of shared values. Such imaginings not only shape the agent’s actions but also influence the communities around them, either through positive reception to those memories or due to an oppositional stance. Through a strategy of reaching back into traditional memory and reusing jewellery forms worn by previous generations, some

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-7

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Figure 6.1  Anklets in Egyptian iconography: (1) Painting from Tomb 4 at Gurneh depicting Asiatic chieftain from the reign of Thutmosis III, c. 15th century BCE . (2) Triumphal stela depicting a Mitannian conquered in battle from the reign of Amenhotep III, c. 14th century BCE . (3) Reliefs from Karnak depicting “chiefs of Retenu” being carried away by the pharaoh from the reign of Seti I, c. 14th century BCE . Source: Tufnell 1958: fig. 4; courtesy of the University College of London.

communities may have attempted to re-​establish identities to assure the continued existence of their cultural group. This is notable, as there is potential for ornaments, especially for items made of durable materials, to persist beyond an individual’s lifespan.

The data The grave goods Bracelets, anklets, and armlets form the largest category of metal jewellery in the southern Levant (Verduci 2018). The custom of wearing bangles possibly arrived in the southern Levant from Anatolia, where they appear at Tepe Hissar in the Chalcolithic period (c. 3365–​3030 BCE ) (Voigt and Dyson 1992: 173–​174); thereafter, it is possible to detect a continuing—​albeit limited—​ presence across the region until the bangle becomes increasingly popular in the Late Bronze Age. Typologically, these objects change very little between the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, although Iron Age I styles sometimes have blunt terminals (Verduci 2018: Subtype 3II.a.ii, Subtype 3II.a, Type 3IV), while bangles with overlapping terminals (Verduci 2018: Type 3III) become more common in the Iron Age than bangles with open-​ended terminals (Verduci 2018: Type 3II). The most exceptional bangles are decoratively incised, with examples bearing geometric designs suggestive of a non-​local origin (Verduci 2018: 195). By contrast to the Near East, the wearing of bangles within other areas of the eastern Mediterranean, such as the Aegean and Cyprus, is less common. The customary deposition of these personal objects within mortuary contexts reflects the intimate relationship between the deceased and their possessions while creating what were likely to be emotionally binding social memories for mourners (Verduci 2016) (see also Chapter 19, this volume). Open-​ended plain bangles with a circular section are the most common type found in the Levant throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages; the majority of this type is made of bronze, although many iron and even steel examples are known (Verduci 2018: Subtype 3II.b and 128

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Subtype 3III.b). In fact, some of the earliest steel objects in the southern Levant are not weapons or tools, but carburised steel anklets from the Baq’ah Valley dating to the Iron Age I period (Notis et al. 1986: 262–​267, 272–​278). In order to manufacture these bangles, molten metal was poured into a clay or stone mould, after which the bangle was annealed and hammered; the tapered ends frequently seen on bangles are likely the result of such hammering. Alternatively, bangles could be formed from block-​twisted or strip-​twisted pieces of sheet metal. These objects may have functioned as anklets, armlets, or bracelets; however, in most cases, post-​depositional disturbance and a lack of associated skeletal material mean that the intended placement of the artefacts on the body is unknown. Despite commingling of the skeletal remains and burial goods at numerous sites, excavations in the Levant have exposed in situ bangles at sites such Ashkelon (Figure 6.2a–​b; Master and Aja 2017: fig. 8), Jebel al-​Hawāyah in the Baq‘ah Valley (McGovern 1986: pl. 15d), Lachish (Tufnell 1953: 389), Pella (Green 2007: 290), Tell el-​Mazar (Yassine 1984: fig. 54:124); Tell en-​Nasbeh (Brody and Friedman 2007), Tell es-​ Sa‘idiyeh (Green 2007: 290), and Wadi Fidan (Levy et al. 1999: fig. 7), with many bangles occurring in pairs or multiples. An analysis of anklet use at Tell es-​Sa‘idiyeh in Jordan looked at how social roles were reproduced through symbolic communication and concluded that there were gendered differences in the wearing of anklets in the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age transition (c. 1200 BCE ) (Green 2006; 2007). At that site, high-​status male burials wore single anklets, while women, children, and infants wore anklets in pairs (Figure 6.3) and multiples (Figure 6.4). The anklet’s aperture sizes possibly correlate to the stages of physical growth over an individual’s lifespan. Green (2007: 304) argued that by being restricted to women, anklet pairs were symbolically linked to fertility, femininity, and familial protection. Nevertheless, we should not consider social factors, such as gender and age, in isolation from somatic factors. Although some bangles are flexible enough to have been removable, others are made of thick, inflexible metal and thus would have remained on the body as a permanent or semi-​permanent fixture. That solid bangles from Tell es-​Sa‘idiyeh, and elsewhere across the southern Levant, were not removable without specialist aid due to the thickness of the metal indicates that certain jewellery items marked the individual in ways akin to permanent and semi-​permanent body modifications such as tattooing, piercing, cutting, branding, binding, and constriction (Verduci 2012). Significant factors in the experience of wearing such objects encompass those of sense perception and weight; these factors might be understood with the aid of empirically observable data (e.g., Brody and Friedman 2007). My results from studying 661 metal bangles from across the southern Levant include 48 bangles that can definitively be classified as anklets due to being identified in situ (variously on infants, children, or adults), in addition to 43 bangles that are greater than 80 millimetres in diameter—​assuming we accept the diameter of an adult anklet as 80 millimetres or greater (Verduci 2018: 126, n. 367). When we look specifically at anklets worn by adults, including nine in situ examples and the 43 examples mentioned above, the results indicate that this group encompasses a broad range of weights, but includes, in general, a thickness range of 6–​12 millimetres and a weight range of 50–​247 grams. The experience of wearing such weighty bangles was an everyday reality for many inhabitants of the southern Levant, and accordingly, the sensations associated with wearing these objects would have impacted their perception of being-​in-​the-​world (Csordas 1994), which will be discussed shortly. Below, I continue to focus on adults rather than infants and children, while acknowledging that bangles were similarly, if not equally, commonplace in the adornment traditions for adults and children (Verduci 2018: 249). I am particularly interested in the sensory role adornment may have played in ritual and performative acts from which younger individuals may, perhaps, have been excluded before marking their passage into adulthood. 129

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Figure 6.2a–​b  Burial 246, before (a) and during (b) excavation, looking north. Source: Master and Aja 2017: fig. 8; courtesy of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.

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Figure 6.3  Anklets on skeleton in Tomb 123, Tell es-Sa’idiyeh. Source: Pritchard 1980: fig. 61.1; courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Press.

Figure 6.4  Leg-​bones and feet of burial in Grave 411, Tell es-Sa’idiyeh. Source: Tubb and Dorrel 1994: fig. 29; courtesy of British Museum Tell es-​Sa’idiyeh Excavation Project.

The iconography Moulded female figurines that date from the latter half of the thirteenth century BCE through the Early Iron Age demonstrate the manner in which women wore multiple anklets and bracelets in everyday life; these figurines corroborate the claim that wearing multiple anklets was gender-​specific to females, while single anklets were associated with status when worn by males 131

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Figure 6.5  Figurine, Tel ‘Ira (A.42). Source: Paz 2007: fig. 2.2.10; courtesy of Peeters Publishers.

(Figure 6.5; Green 2007). Female figurines wearing multiple anklets are numerous across the southern Levant (references are exhaustive, but include Beck 1990; Braun 1999; Chambon 1984; Daviau 2002; Finkelstein et al. 2000; Holland 1977; James 1966; Keel and Uehlinger 1998; Kletter 1995; Paz 2007;Yadin et al. 1961), and scholars widely accept that those holding round, disc-​like objects represent drummers (e.g., Tadmor 2006: 325). Still, the provenance of many of these adorned female figurines is unknown, but where that information is available, in most cases, the figurines occur in domestic or sacred contexts, including within buildings interpreted as religious structures, such as one at Tel el-​Farah North (Burgh 2006: 37). Some female figural representations depict frontal nudity, including Near Eastern pendants commonly referred to as “Astarte” pendants (Figure 6.6; McGovern 1985: 30–​32). This reference is to a Canaanite deity associated primarily with sexuality and war (Cornelius 2004: 93–​ 94), although scholars have assigned a fertility function to Astarte as she has become conflated with another Canaanite goddess, Asherah (Selz 2000). These piriform, pear-​shaped, or triangular pendants share similar attributes; that is, they are of decoratively incised sheet metal that consistently depict the pubic area, breasts, face, and jewellery. The prominence of the face and jewellery on the images is not necessarily associated with fertility but linked to sexuality or female eroticism (Benzel 2013). Alternatively, the category of piriform pendants depicting full-​body, frontal female nudity—​so-​called “Qudšu” pendants—​may be Levantine variants of Egyptian Qedešet iconography that reference the powers and attributes of the goddess Hathor (Budin 2016), who was particularly associated with music and dance. A gold example (KW 703) recovered from the Late Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey, which also held numerous sets of weights to fit different weight systems across the eastern Mediterranean, illustrates the movement of this subtype across the region (Figure 6.6; Bass et al. 1989). 132

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Figure 6.6  Gold pear-​shaped pendant from the Uluburun shipwreck. Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology (KW 703). Source: © Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

Discussion The underlying concern of embodiment theories shifts away from Cartesian frameworks of the dualistic notion of mind and body, and emphasises the cognitive perspective of social actors constructing their own reality (Meskell 1996; Rozemond 1998). The alternative phenomenological approach emphasising lived experience argues that the full range of personal and public relations structures a person’s sense of self. The agent is shaped by the multiple contexts and influences in which they are placed—​their engagement in the world shapes their bodily intentionality and implicates them in the bodily intentionality of others (Maclaren 2009: 29–​32). This notion of dual embodiment recognises reciprocal relationships between people and culture at a perceptual level. This perspective provides an account of the body as being in the world (Csordas 1994). Clearly, theories regarding bodily inscription require more intense scrutiny (Meskell 2000). Whether approached from a Foucauldian social constructionist position of the body as a site of display with fixed categories of difference, or a structuralist approach of “the body as artefact,” studies often ignore the issue of lived experience (Meskell 2000: 15–​16). Meskell and Preucel (2004: 123–​124) argue that traditional labels, whether related to gender, sexuality, religion, or rank should be broken down due to their subjective nature, relying as they do on modern taxonomy that might bear little resemblance to lived experience. For example, attempts to examine Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Cypriot figurines for insight into sex and sexuality and social relations aimed to determine the significance of individual characteristics without relying on totalising discourses, such as the generic view of women as “mother goddesses” (Knapp and Meskell 1997: 191). That study considered how figurines often incorporated ambiguous or dual male and female characteristics, the changing nature of pendants and birthing figurines, and how individual personal adornment markings distinguished plank figurines. The results 133

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demonstrate that scholarly bias assigns female gender to figurines and illustrates how assumptions about the characteristics of ancient individuals—​as well as changes in material culture from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age—​should be reconsidered (Knapp and Meskell 1997). Embodiment as a learned and lived experience is closely intertwined with the embodied or social imaginary (Dion et al. 2011). Shared bodily perceptions and understandings define one’s sense of belonging to a group and are vital in maintaining deep-​rooted ethnic affiliations across time and space. Two types of memory frame the concept of the social imaginary: founding memory and counter-​present memory (Assmann 2000: 79). The former type of memory imbues meaning into the present through its relationship to past traditions, while the latter type glorifies the past in contrast to perceived inadequacies of the present day. These memories are associated with fixed points in the past whose significance is recalled “through forms of institutionalised communications using specialised bearers of tradition” (Maran 2011: 170); that is, cultural memory is encoded in material culture, and conversely, material culture is implicated in constructing social memory. This notion brings to mind Paul Connerton’s (1989: 41–​71) influential study of social memory entitled How Societies Remember, which emphasises the need to include bodily practice alongside other accepted modes of transmission (e.g., texts and cognitive processes).1 Social memory can legitimise power and create individual or collective identities manifested in symbolic material culture. The embodiment of memory in objects, particularly those conservative cultural practices reproduced over extended periods, such as the practice of wearing bangles, may have served as mnemonics prompting memories with certain groups over more than one lifetime (Hamilakis 2013: 189; Joyce 2003: 104–​112).2 The value of metal jewellery extends beyond its appearance, durability, and potential currency. Highly resonant materials valued for their musical properties, such as metals, have long been an indispensable part of adornment traditions. The sensory aspect of metal bangles is attested in the biblical record, which refers to the tinkling of Israelite women’s anklets: “Because of the haughtiness of the daughters of Zion, the way they walk with heads held high and enticing eyes, the way they mince along, tinkling the bangles on their feet” (Isa. 3:18). Although the sound made by anklets is of enough significance to be mentioned in the biblical account, until recently the role of jewellery in sensory experience has been discussed for the ancient Near East in only a limited fashion (Brody and Friedman 2007: n. 12; Golani 2013: 87, 151; Thomason 2019).3 Following this line of analysis, terracotta plaque figurines of female drummers provide an expression of women’s lives during the Iron Age. Scholars have variously interpreted the figures as goddesses, priestesses, or worshippers in religious activities, with those possessing hermaphrodite characteristics especially linked to cult (see Figure 6.5; for references, refer to Paz 2007: 74–​ 78). While the figurines may have served as votive offerings (Burgh 2006: 39), they perhaps also represent real musicians. This latter view is supported by the description of female drummer performances in biblical passages that are ascribed to different phases of the Iron Age and are typically set within festivals, celebrations, and cultic contexts (Exod. 15:20–​21; Jdg. 11:34; 1 Sam. 18:6; Ps. 150: 1, 4; Ps. 68:26; Jer 31:3). Looking to Egypt for insight, dancers were often depicted in scenes of funerary or temple ritual, suggesting the highly regarded role of dance in religious contexts (Spencer 2003). Furthermore, there is a connection between female musicians and nudity in Egypt and the Levant that implies a symbolism connected to fertility or sexuality (Riley 2014: 32). That in most cases these women—​whether clothed or naked—​wear jewellery of some kind suggests that adornment served as a music-​related artefact. We might view musical activity as having served a religious function by which the members of a specific group communicated boundaries to distinguish it from others (Stokes 1997: 6), preserving the memory of older polytheistic religious traditions in resistance to the monotheism of the ruling ideology into the Iron Age 134

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(Paz 2007: 120). In these settings, the wearer experienced the adornment on the body through the sensorium, inclusive of visual, aural, and haptic stimuli, which also acted as cues to others, enabling the expression of individual and collective identities, in turn influencing how individuals and those people that viewed them occupied their social and cultural landscapes (Fisher and DiPaolo Loren 2003: 225). In this view, adorning the body developed into embodied practice associated with specific sensorial experiences. Ethnographic studies provide an avenue through which to explore the negotiation and expression of emotional landscapes and the role of jewellery in enhancing sensory experience. The Samburu, Turkana, and Pokot tribes of Kenya all wore iron anklets that “clanked rhythmically” as they walked in ways calculated to attract the attention of warrior-​age males and designed to dramatise their dance (e.g., Cole 1979: 95). Similarly, tribes such as the Toupouri of Cameroon synchronised the rhythm of their dancing to the metallic sounds made by their anklets that, in effect, became instruments of music (Lembezat 1950). What is more, audible jewellery could act as forms of communication and self-​identification; the sounds made by necklaces and pendants worn by the Samburu, for example, could be used to identify an individual girl’s walk in the dark (Cole 1979: 95). Similarly, the counterweight at the back of the Egyptian menyet collar may have made rattling sounds during ceremonies and seems to have some association with the worship of the goddess Hathor (Andrews 1994: 32). Research has shown that a repetitive rhythm, such as the clinking of metal anklets, can alter one’s emotional state, even inducing euphoric or ecstatic experiences that stabilise human bonds (McNeill 1995). On a practical level, the wearing of anklets would no doubt have caused some discomfort when the metal worn on one leg would strike the opposing ankle. In the case of the Igbo tribe from Nigeria and the Wodaabe tribe from Niger, the weight and size of extremely large brass anklets results in a female’s hobbled gait that causes an exaggerated hip movement in what can seem to be a display of sexual enticement, while at the same time restricting the female’s freedom of motion (Mack 1988: 10; Fisher 1984: 158). The use of adornment to alter an individual’s physical mobility, in ways that might exaggerate desirable attributes of the female body, may have been a behaviour encoded with intangible meanings necessary to the stability of the cultural group.4 A focus on sight and sound perhaps signifies a Western sensory bias, when these sensory modes might have been just some of the ways that adornment acted on the senses (Hamilakis 2013: 100). Ancient cultures, or indeed particular groups within a culture, may have privileged other senses over vision or hearing or may have experienced multiple perceptual systems or sensory orders simultaneously (Porath 2008; Howes and Classen 2019: 7). Touch and kinaesthesia, which both feature in the Hebrew Bible, might also have been integrated with the sensory experience of wearing anklets (Avrahami 2012) in ways that intersected with bodily aesthetics and apotropaic powers (DuQuesne 1996). The interplay of sight, sound, touch, weight, and movement, caused by wearing anklets, which in cultic settings may have also been linked to architectural cues and odours, would have increased an individual’s materialisation of their religious beliefs (Laneri 2013). By wearing anklets outside of these settings, the memorialisation of religious traditions would have been enacted in daily life (see also Chapter 7, this volume). Studies rarely consider the fact that jewellery would have also played a sentimental role in the ancient world, but the Westcar Papyrus provides some insight (Lichtheim 1975). From that Egyptian text, thought to have been composed during the Middle Kingdom or the Second Intermediate Period (c. 2200–​1550 BCE ), we learn of the Pharaoh Sneferu taking a boat ride with the most beautiful women in his harem. One of the female rowers loses a fish pendant of turquoise that she wore in her hair, but the pharaoh cannot console her with a replacement. Until the pendant is retrieved, neither she nor the other women will continue to row. At a loss, the pharaoh has his chief priest push through the water to allow the retrieval of the amulet. 135

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This tale suggests that attachments to personal items could be as profound in the ancient world as they are today. Children in Egypt wore fish amulets to protect them against drowning; however, the woman’s attachment to the pendant in this tale seems to go beyond its functionary role as an amulet. We might also compare Egyptian ab pendants (or so-​called heart amulets), symbolic of the owner’s spiritual heart and of thinking and feeling, as the heartbeat quickened with heightened emotions. Western views deem emotion and rationality to be mutually exclusive; this classic Cartesian logic of mind–​body dualism limits the role of emotion in embodiment (Knapp and Meskell 1997: 185). We might look to recent treatment of ancient emotion in Mesopotamia, where it is argued that such rigid dualism does not apply (Sonik 2017); furthermore, such ancient expressions of emotion are accessible to modern audiences despite the broad temporal distance. To flesh out embodiment theory, as it were, a biological emphasis might provide insights into the lived experience of ancient individuals. Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that sensory systems are integral to cognition and memory. African San healers dance to induce specific physical responses in themselves and others, along with the feelings that go with these experiences. The healers’ dance involves a rhythmic shuffle while shaking their torsos, punctuated by short, sharp stamps of the feet that resonate through the body of the dancers; the rhythm of each stamp is exaggerated by the noise of moth cocoon rattles strapped to dancers’ ankles. By warming up the abdomen through dance, the healers’ internal healing potency awakens (Low 2017: 235). Sensations of intense fear stimulated by the shaking give way to feelings of euphoria and empathy, each relating to hyper-​stimulation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, respectively (Low 2017: 236). What also distinguishes San dance is the emphasis placed on smell, which among other features, serves to awaken memories and acts as a diagnostic tool in detecting sickness. San dance highlights the central role of body and emotion in learning and doing and the implications this holds for the dancers’ engagement with their communities and the wider world. Studies of cognitive neurobiology also suggest that emotions and sensory experiences are an essential aspect of memory formation and retrieval (Worthman 1999: 45). In an exploration of regional affiliations in France, the entanglement of cognition and embodied ethnicity was used to explain modes of experiencing ethnicity (Dion et al. 2011). The researchers’ results demonstrated that subjects spontaneously referred to the sensory dimension of their ethnicity: smell, taste, sight, sound, weight, pressure, and movement (Dion et al. 2011: 317). For many of those individuals, identity and ethnicity was primarily a question of bodily perceptions and how sensory experiences affected them physiologically; in this sense, “the phenomenological effects of reality are culturally entangled” (Dion et al. 2011: 318; Geurts 2002). We might link this view to Merleau-​Ponty’s (1962) phenomenology of perception with its relationship of bodily practice to the world around it and Csordas’ (1994) understanding of culture and how the world is experienced through the body. However, while these phenomenological approaches to lived experience elaborate on the notion that people in the past may have interacted with the world around them through diverse bodily senses (e.g., Csordas 1994: 61), they are limited in their treatment of the role of memory in the sensorial (compare Hamilakis 2013: 68).

Conclusion To summarise, then, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing investigation of the sensorial aspects of embodied adornment practices in the ancient world. The theme of material culture as being meaningfully constituted and intimately linked with the senses and memory is a means of understanding personal and cultural significance and explaining lived experience that 136

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allows for an individual’s self-​identification as a member of a larger group (Fisher and DiPaolo Loren 2003: 225). Although I feel strongly that jewellery is an aspect of material culture that is associated with cultural origins and ethnicity, it is possible that material remains in and of themselves do not distinguish cultural groups as effectively as the non-​material and intangible characteristics with which they are associated. By focusing on how individuals created and experienced themselves through their bodies, archaeologists are better able to comprehend them as culturally specific, multi-​constituted social beings. To some extent, the presentation of self can then be used to interpret the social and physical aspects (gender, race, religion, sexuality, age) that are key to the construction of identities in everyday life. The concept of embodiment provides us with ways to interpret the uses of material culture in constructions of identity in that it locates material culture as an extension of the body. Further, the concept of embodiment provides us with ways to understand how bodily identity was constituted in and through the social and physical landscape. This discussion reveals that there are several modes of culturally defined phenomenological experience. I propose that there are multiple modes of experience working in unison, which range from the material to the intangible. The discussion above demonstrates that the use of adornment, and anklets in particular, was linked to status, gender, cultural identity, and ritual use, but further implicated in modes of experience. I suggest that a suite of sensory experiences in the wearing of jewellery was integral to memory formation, boundary maintenance, and a crucial aspect of lived experience. Indeed, some social and collective sensory interactions, at least for adults, appear to have been formalised and performative.

Notes 1. Scholars have also applied this concept to Egypt (Meskell 2003) and for the Classic Maya societies of Mesoamerica (Joyce 2003). 2. This embedding of memory in items of adornment was utilised to considerable effect in Victorian mourning jewellery, such as lockets containing hair from a deceased relative. 3. One might look to the value of sound associated with metal, as has been studied for the bells of ancient Mexico (Hosler 1994; Hosler et al. 1990). 4. A clear analogy would be the Chinese practice of foot-​binding, at its peak in the seventeenth century, at which time it was considered a sign of civility and culture, a marker of ethnic boundaries, as well as a method of physical adornment, rather than a form of mutilation (Verduci 2012: 8–​9).

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7 Dress, sensory assemblages, and identity in the early first millennium BCE at Hasanlu, Iran Megan Cifarelli

Introduction This chapter examines the durable goods relating to dress discovered in the nearly 100 Period IVb burials at Hasanlu, Iran, as aesthetic, sensorial assemblages, and as agential phenomena in an era of crisis at the site. In particular, I focus on a distinctive, elite, suite of dress items found in five wealthy women’s burials excavated at the site. These dress assemblages include up to three long, sharp, heavy copper-​alloy or iron garment pins, ordinary garment pins, metal finger-​(and in two instances, toe-​) rings, beaded jewellery on the head, neck, and shoulders, and noisy, tintinnabular clusters of tubes and beads attached to flat copper-​alloy armour scales worn on the upper chest. While such an ensemble would certainly have provided a visual spectacle, its sensory impact and potential for affectivity is not limited to its visuality. At the nexus of bodies, vibrant materials, environment, and society, this dress suite is constituted through myriad transcorporeal encounters. Not only would these suites of objects have impressed themselves on the senses of observers, but they would have provided dynamic synaesthetic, kinaesthetic, and cognitive feedback to the wearers. Framing dress as sensorial assemblages (Hamilakis 2017) and understanding them through the lens of agential realism (Barad 2007) sheds light on the role of the sensorium in the dynamic, deliberate generation of politically charged identities at Hasanlu.

Hasanlu in Period IVb (1050–​800 BCE ) Located in the Lake Urmia Basin in northwestern Iran, Hasanlu was excavated between 1956 and 1977 by the Joint Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the Archaeological Service of Iran, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Muscarella 2006; Danti 2013b; Cifarelli 2019b).1 This site is perhaps best known for the horrific destruction of its citadel during the early Iron Age in c. 800 BCE . Under attack by a marauding army, hundreds of residents of this town gathered in and around the monumental buildings on the citadel, where they died with their attackers, trapped as burning buildings collapsed and crushed their bodies.

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-8

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Occupation at Hasanlu began in the Neolithic period and continued with breaks through the early Medieval period. The site features a High Mound, or citadel, and the Low Mound, which was the site of burials, industry, and some domestic architecture (Figure 7.1a–​b). From the start of Penn’s excavations through the 1990s, the site was widely regarded as playing a unique and powerful role in regional and interregional power structures, particularly with respect to the historical entities of Mannea and Assyria. At the time of Hasanlu’s excavations in the 1950s through the 1990s, few sites in its immediate region were known through excavation, although the number is now steadily increasing due to the continuous work of the Iranian Archaeological Service (Amelirad et al. 2002; 2017; Amelirad and Azizi 2019). Dozens more are known through survey, including four similarly sized mounds along the Gadar River valley (Danti 2013a). The evidence for Assyrian contact and sway at the site has now been re-​evaluated (Danti and Cifarelli 2016; Cifarelli 2018a), suggesting that Assyria did not loom as large as previously thought, and the proposed identification of Hasanlu with the historical Mannean kingdom is no longer believed to be geographically or chronologically tenable (Cifarelli 2019b), although Mannean cultural links are possible. Hasanlu was in fact one of many sites in the region, all of which were engaged in dynamic interplay with expanding Mesopotamian and south Caucasian polities to the west and north, and neighbours to the south and east. Writing was not used at the site, although a few cuneiform-​inscribed objects seem to have been collected as precious curiosities, and the ancient name and ethno-​linguistic character of its residents are not known.2 In the beginning of the first millennium BCE , Hasanlu’s location in the Gadar River valley was precarious (Figure 7.2). At a crossroads between a region of economic interest to the Assyrian Empire and directly in the path of the growing kingdom of Urartu from the north, the fertile Gadar River valley was an appealing landscape to hungry armies on the march. Fortresses dotted the routes along the river valleys and mountain passes linking Hasanlu to regions east along the shores of the Caspian Sea and north to the new capital of Urartu on the shores of Lake Van in eastern Anatolia. Epigraphic and archaeological evidence indicates Urartian control of fortresses near Hasanlu by around 820 BCE (Salvini 2005; Kroll 2005; 2010; 2013; Cifarelli 2019a). The destruction of Hasanlu, dated archaeologically to c. 800 BCE (Dyson and Muscarella 1989), coincides with Urartian expansion, and Michael Danti (2014) has persuasively argued that the men crushed as they looted Hasanlu’s most famous artefact—​the Gold Bowl—​were Urartian combatants or mercenaries in Urartian employ. Caught between the agendas of Assyria and Urartu, Hasanlu and its neighbours were potential military targets during the latter part of Period IVb. And indeed, there is evidence at Hasanlu for two site-​wide destructions—​a massive fire towards the end of Period IVc (c. 1250–​1050 BCE ) and the catastrophic attack, fire, and collapse that ended occupation at the site in the Iron II period (c. 800 BCE ). These catastrophic events delimit Period IVb (1050–​800 BCE ) at Hasanlu, and the looming risk of destruction had a significant impact on the material development of the built, material, and social environments at the site (Cifarelli 2017a). While hindsight is inherent to archaeological processes, and our awareness of the catastrophic destruction at the end of Period IVb no doubt throws the existential threat which the site was under into sharper relief, the archaeological record is clear regarding the impact of precarity at the site. Fuelled perhaps by recent memories of the heat of the fires burning the citadel, the smell of their aftermath, the heart-​pounding chaos and confusion of rescuing precious objects from temple treasuries and storehouses, and in anticipation of hearing the frightening clamour of enemy forces moving towards the site, with their gleaming armour and belled horses, the residents of Hasanlu altered access to, and the layout of, the citadel. New internal fortified gateways guarded areas of the citadel, and defensive shifts to the monumental buildings placed entrances in a protected courtyard, safeguarding the approach to critical buildings. The introduction of the practice of 142

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Figure 7.1a–​b  Excavation photograph and contour plan (showing excavation areas) of Hasanlu, Iran. Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

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Figure 7.2  Map of the ancient Near East showing location of Hasanlu. Source: Base map, Wikimedia Commons.

sealing, using stamp and cylinder seals for doors and containers, heightened the control of access to goods and areas within monumental buildings (Marcus 1989; 1996). Finally, the contents of the nearly 100 burial assemblages dating to Period IVb evince a clear heightening of social distinctions and intensification of local hierarchies relative to earlier periods (Cifarelli 2016; 2017a; 2017b; 2018c). Comparison of the Period IVb burials on the lower mound at Hasanlu to earlier burials at the site show many common features that demonstrate the site’s cultural continuity over the longue durée. Burials are generally modest, and dress items therein demonstrate the site’s engagement with broad local and regional networks of interaction, from the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia in the west, to southern and western Iran, to goods paralleled closely in burials from the South Caucasus (Danti 2013a; Cifarelli 2013; 2014). Ceramics show a continuous indigenous development, as does the material evidence of elite drinking practices (Danti and Cifarelli 2015). In pre-​Period IVb burials the range of wealth is quite narrow and the only persistent distinction between burials bioarchaeologically identified as male and those identified as female (Selinsky 2009; Monge and McCarthy 2011) is the wearing by women of garments fastened at the shoulder or breast by metal pins. Materials and artefact types appearing for the first time in Period IVb burials manifest intensive social distinctions amongst the burials, separating the burials of men from women, strongly South Caucasian inflected from local, and rich from poor. In contrast to the earlier assemblages in which the only sex-​specific artefact class appears to have been garment pins, several newly introduced dress items show strong correlation to bioarchaeologically determined sex: these include weapons and armoured belts on male-​identified bodies, and armour scales and long pins on female-​identified bodies (Figure 7.3).3 144

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Figure 7.3  Graph showing the relationship between female and male identified burials and classes of artefacts and materials in Period IVb burials at Hasanlu.

While there is no such thing as a “typical” female-​identified burial at Hasanlu, in Period IVb the burials of women are generally better furnished than those of men (Figure 7.4), with a wider variety and larger quantities of grave goods, particularly dress items. More modestly accoutred women were buried with one or two ordinary dress pins, plain copper-​alloy finger-​r ings, and beaded jewellery, usually around the neck (Cifarelli 2017b). A very small number of women, however, are conspicuously, even radiantly well dressed. In fact, three of the four persons buried with jewellery made of gold—​a rarity in burials at Hasanlu—​are identified as women (Cifarelli 2018c), and their elite panoply of dress items is the subject of this chapter. A very small group of highly militarised, male-​identified burials are the wealthiest Period IVb burials at Hasanlu in terms of the sheer quantities of bronze and iron, and significantly, their armour (sheet-​metal belts) and weaponry are strongly linked to South Caucasian material culture (Rubinson 2012a; 2012b; Danti and Cifarelli 2015; Cifarelli 2016). The most lavishly furnished burial of Period IVb is that of SK493a, a young man who was accompanied by pottery, metal drinking vessels, swords, spearheads, a mace head, personal ornaments, and an elegantly decorated copper-​alloy belt (Danti and Cifarelli 2015; Cifarelli et al. 2018) (Figure 7.5). Certainly, this masculine assemblage is sensorially and semantically rich, a topic for another time. Less wealthy, male-​ identified, burials also include weapons (arrowheads) and blades of less ostentatious, probably locally manufactured types. And while a small number of men are distinguished by their wealth and noticeably militarised dress, across the board men are far more likely than women, or even children, to be buried with very few or no grave goods (Figure 7.4). External tensions at Hasanlu, as well as internal strains that may have included migration to the site of warriors from the South Caucasus, perturbed the social fabric, yielding this increased gap between the male-​identified haves and have-​nots, between expressions of local and northern militarisation, and the heightened distinction between masculine and feminine accoutrement, and it is significant that the types of artefacts introduced to men’s and women’s burials during this period relate to military status, physical protection, and group affiliation (Cifarelli 2017a; 2017b; 2018b; 2018c; Cifarelli et al. 2018). The emergent and diverse assemblages in Period IVb burials are not simply displays of status or wealth. In and out of mortuary contexts, dress, defined expansively by Mary Ellen Roach-​ Higgins and Joanne Eicher (1992: 7) as “an assemblage of modifications of the body and/​or 145

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Figure 7.4  Hasanlu Period IVb burials showing distribution by sex/​age categories and relative wealth.

supplements to the body” participates in the construction and negotiation of social categories, or identities (Sørensen 1997; 2007; Entwistle 2000; Joyce 2001; Diaz-​Andreu 2005). It is not always possible to ascertain the extent to which these patterns of mortuary dress align with dress for the living. For many years, the exceptionally long pins found in predominantly adult, female-​identified burials at Hasanlu had been referred to as “shroud pins” based on their size, placement, and on the understanding that excavators only found them in graves and not among the tens of thousands of objects on the citadel (Marcus 1994) (Figure 7.6; Figure 7.7: a, b, d–​m). An examination of excavation records, however, shows that excavators found nearly a dozen of these long pins in the citadel destruction, suggesting that their use was not exclusively funerary.4 While excavation records are incomplete and the placement of individual objects within burials and with respect to bodies is not always documented, photographs and drawings place these pins in the same positions on the body as regular, shorter garment pins: generally near the shoulders. This positioning can be compared to one of the very few images of dressed women in the visual culture of Hasanlu and elsewhere in Iran. As was the case for a figurine from Susa, the evidently female figures on the famous Gold Bowl wear garments fastened with pins crossing the clavicle near each shoulder (Figure 7.8). With allowances for post-​depositional shifting of materials in the processes of decomposition and excavation, it appears that these long pins simply fasten garments at the shoulders. And so, while it is possible to conclude with Marcus that these adult women were buried differently from all other residents of Hasanlu—​wearing a shroud closed by enormous pins—​a simpler explanation for the appearance of these objects in the burials of adolescent to mature women, one supported by the archaeological record, is that they dressed differently, distinctively, and in a fashion with implications for sensory amplification (Cifarelli 2017b; 2018c). 146

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Figure 7.5  Excavator’s drawing of Burial SK493a. Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

Assemblages and phenomena Archaeologists and art historians are inclined to think about the role of assemblages like these suites of dress items by en-​visioning them in ocular terms, as what Martin Wobst (1977) termed “stylistic behavior” that can be read visually for clues about identity. Indeed, the long pins and accompanying items would have contributed to a spectacular display on the bodies of these 147

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Figure 7.6  Excavation photograph of Burial SK448. Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

women, but when considering the human experiences of such objects, visuality is only one of many components of their sensory effects and potential affectivity. Yannis Hamilakis explores the notion of a sensorial assemblage as a means of contemplating embodied human experience in the past and the links between bodies, senses, memories, and materials in the past and present (Hamilakis 2013a: 410). The word assemblage has long been applied to collections of objects recovered from a defined archaeological context (Hamilakis and Jones 2017).5 In the case of a suite of dress items in a burial, we can consider the context an indication of human acts of deposition, and the ensuing assemblage as residue of events or processes at the time of deposition, including human actors placing things in relation to one another. Amongst a group of burials, patterns of deposition may suggest intentionality as well as aesthetic values at work (Joyce and Pollard 2010: 292–​303) (see also Chapters 18 and 19, this volume). Assemblage theory, however, goes beyond the understanding of the context of deposition as the sole framework in which meaning emerges and is codified, to assert that context is one of many active participants in the creation of meanings (Alberti and Jones 2013: 30–​31). Assemblage 148

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Figure 7.7  Examples of the long and ordinary copper-​alloy garment pins from elite women’s burials at Hasanlu (a, b, d–​m). From Burial SK448: a. HAS 64-​351 (UM 63-​31-​125); b. HAS 64-​ 351 (unknown); c. HAS 64-​349 (UM 63-​15-​116). From Burial SK481: d. HAS 64-​195 (unknown); e. HAS 64-​194b (UM 65-​31-​118); f. HAS 64-​194 (UM 65-​31-​118); g. (iron) HAS 64-​199 (UM 65-​ 31-​215); h. HAS 64-​198 (unknown); i. HAS 64-​194a (UM65-​31-​72). From Burial SK503: j. HAS 64-​575 (unknown); k. HAS 64-​573 (UM65-​31-​406). From Burial SK59: l. HAS 59-​097 (Tehran 10967); m. HAS 59-​112 (unknown); n. HAS 59-​102b (UM60-​20-​164). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

and Actor Network theories transcend and build on the traditional conception of contextual assemblages, recognising assemblages as relational and dynamic complexes of diverse components.6 This wide-​ranging body of theoretical literature suggests that contextual assemblages—​like the mortuary dress found in burials at Hasanlu—​are not simply groups of inert objects that featured in or resulted from a past event, waiting in the ground for archaeologists to uncover and employ to decode the “real” practices and/​or beliefs of past peoples. Rather, assemblages are broader and more dynamic, and in the case of mortuary dress include not just the human-​ created objects, materials, and technologies empirically detectable in the grave itself, but the personhood of the deceased, the people who created the grave and dressed the corpse, the plants, animals, ideas, beliefs, and natural processes that participate in creating the assemblage, as well as the archaeologists, archaeological ideas, practices, and publications, and so forth, that attend its discovery and study. These dress assemblages are not fixed in time at the moment of deposition as the community mends or acknowledges the tear in the social fabric caused by death, or at the moment of excavation and recording as the archaeologist “interprets” them, but are continually reconfiguring in relation to their human, material, sensory, temporal, and cognitive components (Robb and Harris 2013; Crellin 2017; Fowler 2017). These dynamic reconfigurations allow for layers of understanding of the burials at Hasanlu. And at a more elementary level, assemblages are open-​ended and ever changing because matter itself is characterised by a quality Jane Bennett (2010) termed “vibrancy” that operates 149

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at every possible scale, from atoms to organisations to nation-​states. Matter is not inert—​it acts and is acted upon. Vibrancy gives matter the ability to change and to enact change (or exert agency) with respect to other things.7 It is the relational force that configures and reconfigures components and assemblages: organic materials decay, dress items shift, metal corrodes, animals burrow, later pits intrude, excavation processes disrupt, recording strategies represent, conservation alters, scientific analysis codifies and categorises materials into typologies. And each component in an assemblage is itself an assemblage that was brought into being through intra-​action of materials, people, ideas, senses, and so on, an infinitely recursive relationality that stretches over time and space. This dynamic reconfiguration of components moves us away from the Cartesian domains of matter/​exterior/​object (an external reality with stable properties that can be observed) and idea/​interior/​subject (human-​generated representations of, or ideation about, that reality) which lie at the heart of attempts by archaeologists to understand what “really” happened in the past, for example to produce a neat “interpretation” of the identity of an individual in an excavated burial. Instead, the “reality” of these assemblages is relational, as “these interconnections are always changing; they are immanent and in a constant process of becoming” (Jones and Alberti 2013: 21–​22). This accords with Karen Barad’s posthumanist formulation of agential realism, which probes the reality and representation of matter. Agential reasoning elaborates upon the work of Niels Bohr (Petersen 1985), Judith Butler (1990a; 1990b; 1993), and Joseph Rouse (1996), among others. Bohr had demonstrated that observation of matter produces, rather than identifies, the properties observed—​for example, that matter has the property of being composed of particles and of waves (but not at the same time), depending on the observational apparatus employed. Barad broadens this by arguing a theory of agential realism according to which there is no observable, stable reality, no subjects and objects, no interior and exterior. Instead there are phenomena which “mark the epistemological inseparability of ‘observer’ and ‘observed’ ” and manifest the “ontological inseparability of agentially intra-​acting ‘components’ ” (Barad 2003: 815). Phenomena are effectively assemblages: they are fluid, ephemeral, immanent, coming into being through the intra-​actions among matter, discourse, and practice (Barad 2003; 2007). When we look at the world, we are not observing stable entities outside of us as they “really” are, but instead are producing phenomena through the act of observing a fleeting tangle of materials, ideas, actions, and beliefs. The agency of agential reasoning is the dynamism that drives these intra-​actions and reconfigurations (Barad 2003: 823), a notion akin to Bennett’s characterisation of restless matter as vibrant. Agential realism thus collapses positivist distinctions between observing self and observed other, interior and exterior, “reality” and our apprehension of it. For this discussion, this suggests that archaeologists do not look at a stable, fixed-​in-​the-​past mortuary assemblage, observe its properties, and deduce meaning with objectivity. We are hopelessly entangled and implicated in our observations and understandings.

Sensorial assemblages and intersubjectivity Hamilakis (2017: 172) productively complicates the notion of an assemblage (or phenomena)—​the “temporary and deliberate heterogenous arrangement of material and immaterial elements,” to include “the affective/​sensorial, mnemonic/​temporal, and the political.” He frames sensoriality as “the transcorporeal mingling of bodies, materials and their environment” (Hamilakis 2013a: 417), an assemblage of dynamic, experiential encounters with materials and moments in time. The output of these sensorial encounters is not simply a relay of information about our environment or objects in the world, but the generation of emotions and relationships: senses activate and “enable affectivity … [and] establish [the] affective connections” by which we encounter, engage, 150

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and experience the world. Just as Barad’s agential realism erases the distinction between interiority and exteriority, minds and bodies, the notion of a transcorporeal encounter emphasises that senses are not confined to individual bodies or objects. Senses operate “in-​between, between bodies, things, substances, elements, the atmosphere” (Hamilakis 2017: 173), and our ability to sense is not confined to our bodies. Lambros Malafouris (2008; 2010) argues that a sword held in a warrior’s hand, like the stick in the hand of a visually impaired person, becomes a sensing organ, providing feedback, expanding the boundaries of a person beyond the skin, and connecting the interior to the exterior. As scholars, a critical component of the investigation of the sensorium in other contexts is awareness of one’s own “sensory and sensuous stratigraphy” (Hamilakis 2013b), acknowledging the Western privileging of vision (e.g., the evidential weight of eyewitness testimony), and the role of senses in class, racial (Geurts 2002), and gender hierarchies (Benay and Rafanelli 2015). Framing the sensorium as the aggregation of transcorporeal encounters is useful in that it firmly moves the discussion away from the Western, Aristotelian, five-​exteroceptive-​sense-​sensorium, and the understanding of human senses as separable, fixed entities with knowable properties, by which our bodies process outside stimuli (e.g., Geurts 2002; Howes 2019). Sensorial experience is far broader than the Western sensorium, it is always and infinitely “mingled and synesthetic” (Hamilakis 2013a: 413). It encompasses movement—​habitual and novel, real and imagined—​and kinaesthesia of our own and others’ bodies (Streeck 2015: 420–​421). I will point out that this differs from a phenomenological approach, which is predicated on notions of embodiment, of interiority and exteriority, of self and the outside world, as a framework for understanding human experience (e.g., Thomason 2019). This is not to negate the utility of a phenomenological approach to the dressed bodies in burials at Hasanlu, but we cannot assume, in the absence of evidence, the existence of archaeological selves who take in the world and make meaning of it through their individual bodies.8 Framing the dressed body as a sensorial assemblage or Baradian phenomenon structures personhood and embodied subjectivity in a way that does not assume “that the body, self, and individual are necessarily coincident,” a useful distinction when dealing with a non-​literate, proto-​historical society like that at Hasanlu (Bulger and Joyce 2013: 72–​73). More broadly, the idea that personhood itself is “not tied to a single human body” and can be relationally constituted (Harrison-​Buck and Hendon 2018: 9) is supported by the work of cognitive neuroscientists studying the role of social, intersubjective, and bodily engagement in the construction of identity (Pina-​Cabral 2016). To a great extent, the ways that humans process sensory inputs to generate perceptions and feelings are culturally determined—​not universal, natural, or pre-​cultural—​and challenging to understand from the outside. While the affective impressions afforded by sensorial assemblages in literate societies can be gauged in part through analysis of texts and language that deal with visuality, aurality, and other aspects of the sensorium (Winter 2007; Thomason 2019; Howes 2019; Rendu Loisel 2019), the impact of sensory experiences in non-​literate, proto-​historic sites like Hasanlu is less accessible. A useful avenue of inquiry into sensory experiences, including aesthetic experiences, is provided by neuroscientific studies that cut across cultural dimensions to illuminate the way the human brain processes sensory stimuli. In the eighteenth century, the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten first used the term “aesthetics” to describe the ways in which sensory stimuli are integrated in the mind to generate perceptions (Seeley 2006: 195) (see also Chapter 25, this volume). Nearly three centuries later, scholars in a wide range of fields investigate the same nexus of sensory and cognitive aspects to our understanding of the impact and integration of sensory information on human experience. According to the philosopher Henri Bergson (1991), perception “is never a mere contact of the mind with the object presented; it is impregnated with memory-​images which 151

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complete it” (quoted in Hamilakis 2013a: 413). Hamilakis emphasises the reciprocal relationship between “sensorial intensity and affective weight” and memory, both individual and collective, suggesting that while memories mediate the experience of sensory inputs, our senses also modulate remembering and forgetting: “every recollection generated through sensorial experience reshapes these memories, casts them anew in a continuous and dynamic process” (Hamilakis 2013a: 413–​414). In our brains, sensory information is linked with other components—​ motor imagery, semantic information—​to generate mental imagery that ultimately plays a role in personhood and identity (Starr 2013). This mental imagery, according to cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, is produced as our brains dynamically process sensory inputs through a network of memories, associations, and emotions (Mark et al. 2010). Counter to a perceptual model that is representational or veridical—​that our perceptions apprehend true properties of objects in the world, Hoffman argues for an “interface theory of perception” by which our perceptions act as a simplifying interface between ourselves and the complexities of the world. Natural selection, he has shown, has favoured perceptual processes that produce useful images, not necessarily accurate ones (Hoffman 2016), and the “reality” that we perceive through our senses is one of our own construction. Functional studies of the brain by Gabrielle Starr show that the processing of the aesthetic and sensory inputs that generate these beneficial mental images of “reality” take place in an integrated brain centre called the “default mode network,” a brain area which has been associated with self-​awareness, identity, theory of mind (the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others), and social awareness (Starr 2013: 35). Neuroscientific research also demonstrates the way kinaesthetic senses connect us intersubjectively to others. The overlap between perceptual systems and motor systems in the brain causes our motor control systems (as well as our emotions) to react when we see others, or even images of others, moving in ways that are familiar to us (Freedberg and Gallese 2007). The so-​ called “mirror neurons” which fire in rhesus monkeys when they either perform an action or watch another perform it are not organs of sense or perception, but indices (memories? images?) of shared experiences (Streeck 2015: 44). Memories, shared experiences, and social awareness all connect to the way our sensory experiences generate images which are “historically and culturally embedded, humanly embodied, imaginatively structured … the meaning of which is always tied to a particular community” (Pongratz-​Leisten and Sonik 2015: 5–​6). Below, I will detail the ways the dress assemblage from Hasanlu might have, by engaging the senses, generated the kinds of meaningful aesthetic experiences that forge collective memories and identities.

Senses and power dynamics Sensorial assemblages, while not necessarily intentional, are deliberate, and their existence manifests the agency of the social entities involved. Because of their affective potential to shape experience and memory, selected components can produce political and social effects, and taken as a whole a sensory assemblage “can enable certain futures to emerge and others to disappear” (Hamilakis 2017: 175). Direction and control of sensory experiences is a form of political power enacted through control and manipulation of natural and built environments, a notion fully exploited by the Assyrian Empire in the construction and decoration of monumental temples and palaces in the heart of its capitals (e.g., Thomason 2016; Neumann 2018; 2019), as well as in the constitution of the Achaemenid king and empire through sensory manipulation and slippage at the Apadana in Persepolis (McFerrin 2017; 2019). In her study of the Peruvian site of Chavín de Huantar, Mary Weismantel shows how this pilgrimage site—​a deliberately unpredictable pathway—​impeded sightlines to sculpted decoration and repeated sculpted forms, resulting 152

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in intentionally “frustrating partial glimpses of complex designs.” Weismantel argues that this theatrical manipulation of the sensory experiences of visitors participated in what she calls the “manufacture of wonder.” Those experiencing the visual interruptions, spatial unpredictability, and repetition would “be left with a lifetime of memories” to process and assemble into a coherent and meaningful whole (Weismantel 2013: 130–​131). The space and its decoration were not designed to be easily parsed but were purposefully made complicated to immerse visitors in a difficult, confusing sensory entanglement that was so striking as to require cognitive effort on the part of visitors to generate indelible memories. In much the same way that elaborated spaces entangle the senses, provide shared aesthetic experiences, and impress themselves on the mental imagery and memories of a community, I will explore the ways that the dress assemblages in the burials in question directed and controlled the sensory experiences at Hasanlu.

Accumulated magnificence To return to the elite dress assemblages in the burials of five women at Hasanlu, like Hamilakis’ (2017: 169) well-​known example of feasting as a politically effective sensorial assemblage, this “temporary and deliberate heterogeneous arrangement of material and immaterial elements” explodes beyond the paradigm of the five Aristotelian senses with infinite, interacting sensorial modalities encompassing vision, smell, aurality, touch, and also movement, comfort, the passage of time, memories, pleasure, proximity to others, bodily awareness, restriction, and pain (Hamilakis 2013a; 2013b; 2017; Thomason 2019). The burials include three young (20–​34 years) adult women and two mature (35–​49) adult women.9 In addition to the long pins and garment pins discussed above, this sensorial dress assemblage features copper-​alloy and iron finger-​and toe-​ rings, beaded jewellery at the head, neck, shoulders, and chest, and a type of “very peculiar ornament” (Stein and Andrews 1940: 398) at the shoulder or chest featuring a triangular, rounded sheet-​metal object to which were attached various items, including beads, pins, rings, and metal tubes (see Marcus 1996: x). These classes of objects will be discussed below as elements in a sensorial assemblage that integrates individual and shared memories about the acquisition of each item (and perhaps their givers or previous owners), the bodies to which they are affixed, and the community within which these women moved and lived and died.

Pins Above, I argued that the long (up to 37 centimetres), heavy, sharp, potentially dangerous, metal pins found near the shoulders in these burials are not exclusively funerary dress, but fastened a garment at the shoulders in exactly the same fashion as the shorter, ordinary garment pins they were found alongside. These pins are made of copper-​alloy and (more rarely) iron. The iron pins are poorly preserved with no discernible decoration. The copper-​alloy examples have decoration of varying complexity. One has a flat head and plain shaft (HAS 64-​195B), another has a flat head and geometric incised decoration on the upper shaft (HAS 64-​194), and the remainder have domed heads and cast bead and reel decoration on their shafts (Figure 7.8). Excavation records indicate these pins are associated with bodies of women of childbearing age (as opposed to children and the elderly), suggesting a connection with that particular stage in the life-​course. These pins may have carried with them and reified the memories of the events and persons that occasioned their acquisition, as well as the transition from one social role to another. There is no question that such pins worn in concert with shorter garment pins would have presented logistical difficulties for the wearer. They are heavy and would have pulled at and weighed down the relatively lightweight fabric that characterises most textile production at 153

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Figure 7.8  Garment fastening using two pins at shoulders. From left, mid-​second-​millennium figurine from Susa (after Amiet 1966: fig. 146), drawings and photo of female figures from the Hasanlu Gold Bowl (beaker), HAS 58-​469 (Tehran 10712). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

Hasanlu (Love 2011), requiring the wearer to constantly adjust and interact with her garments. They are sharp, and unlike a sheathed sword suspended at the waist, could have posed a danger to wearers and anyone who might come into physical contact with them (Cifarelli 2017b). Wearers would have been constantly vigilant about their posture, the closure of their garments, the location of the sharp points relative to self and to others, and their wearing would therefore have entailed considerable discomfort, if not pain (Cifarelli 2018c; Thomason 2019). In order to avoid injury, their movements were likely slow, deliberate, and as conspicuous as the delicate “lotus” gait of the beautiful women with bound feet heralded in Chinese literature (Ko 2005: 200–​203). Wearing these pins, the daily activities of these young and mature women would have been curtailed—​it is difficult to imagine engaging in breastfeeding, childcare, household, industrial, or agricultural activities while wearing these enormous, exposed stiletto-​style pins. Heightening the visibility of the closure and impenetrability of garments, these impediments would have been visible to those nearby, and the careful movements of these women would have been apparent. As their bodies moved, multiple pins might have chimed against each other, helping others locate wearers in space (as would the tintinnabular chime ornaments discussed below), and their slower steps might have been easily recognisable to those listening. The haptic response of the wearer would have been mirrored by those who witnessed it (Freedberg and Gallese 2007; Streeck 2015). Observers might have empathetic responses activated, bodies tensing anxiously in reaction to the deliberate movements, wincing and recoiling at the possibility that the wearer could be pierced by a sharp point at any moment. I have argued elsewhere that this negative sensory effect on the wearers and observers is in fact the point, as it were, of wearing these dangerous pins. These pins can be understood as “costly” or honest signals of the special status of these women, signals which are effective in direct proportion to the extent to which they genuinely inconvenience or handicap the signaller (Cifarelli 2017b).

Finger-​ and toe-​rings The copper-​alloy (and in the case of the Stein burial, iron) finger-​and toe-​rings associated with these burials are of two general types: plain, thick (around 3–​4 millimetres) penannular rings with various degrees of lapping, and what the excavators called “archer’s rings”—​flat, hammered, sheet-​metal bands (lapping) with plain, oval bezels (Figure 7.9).10 Rings were worn 154

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Figure 7.9  Excavation photograph and drawings of finger-​rings. From left, stacked penannular rings (SK59; HAS 59-​100, UM 60-​20-​166) and “archer’s ring” (HAS 59-​103d, Tehran). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

on all fingers without evident preference, including the thumb. These rings were worn singly or stacked, on the first or second joint of the finger, with as many as six on a single finger. While it seems unwieldy, at times these rings were corroded together in such a way that it appears that the bezelled rings were worn on the same fingers as simple coils. One of the women was wearing 25 rings on her hands, her fingers so encrusted that it is hard to imagine these were worn in daily life. However, at least five of the bodies crushed in the wreckage of the citadel were wearing similar stacks of finger-​rings at the time of their death, indicating that this was indeed the practice. While rings are relatively common (50 per cent) on the hands of both men and women in Period IVb burials, toe-​r ings are extremely rare, known from only two instances (SK481, HAS 64-​196, UM 65-​31-​143, and Stein burial). SK481 wore a stack of three plain, rigid, thick (under 5 millimetres), copper-​alloy penannular rings on the big toe of her right foot. Remarkably, the Stein burial featured what appears to be a large iron “archer’s” ring on the toe of one foot (Stein and Andrews 1940: 399). Metal rings, particularly when worn by the dozen, would have provided considerable sensory feedback to the wearer and to the observer. Humans use their hands to facilitate communication; in fact primate studies suggest that hand gestures may have preceded vocalisations in the evolution of human language (Cartmill et al. 2012). The rings, and the hands bearing them, were intended to be noticed, drawing attention to and amplifying the communicative potential of the moving hands. While these rings might not have prevented their wearers from engaging in daily tasks (witness the thousands of videos on YouTube demonstrating the remarkable dexterity of hands with extremely long and delicately manicured fingernails), they were entangled with the senses of their wearers due to the affordances of their materials. The accumulated heft of stacks of metal finger-​rings would have heightened awareness of gestures. Their thermal conductivity would have made them cool to the touch when put on, then warmer as they adjust to the temperature of the skin. Their bulk would force separation of the fingers and contact between rings on adjacent fingers would press the rings into the flesh. Many of the rings are round in section and therefore potentially mobile on the fingers. Manipulating them would provide tactile stimulation (or calming), and even pleasure, like fingering the beads on komboloi (worry beads). A gentle clacking would accompany hands in motion as rings touch each other from side to side and slide up and down the moving fingers. The vibrant and reactive matter of copper and skin subtly alter each other—​oil, salt, and acid from the skin change the colour

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and sheen of the metal surface, as oxidation stains the skin green, brown-​red-​orange, or black where it contacts metal. Hands do not just move and feel, they reach out to the world where they touch and are touched by others. In this reaching out, the armature of rings could serve as a rigid barrier to, and a conduit of, sensory stimuli. Warmed by the wearer, the rings transmit that heat from one body to another without skin ever touching skin. And it is not hard to imagine a small child delighted and mesmerised by sliding the rings on their mother’s fingers like beads on the wire frame of a toy.

Head, neck, and body beads The recording of beaded jewellery by the excavators at Hasanlu is truly lamentable in its lack of precision regarding bead placement and number. Except in exceptionally rare instances (e.g., where photographs document beaded jewellery or the construction is otherwise evident) it is impossible to reconstruct the manner in which beads were worn at the neck, chest, shoulders, or on the head, at Hasanlu. Beads of an enormous range of materials, colours, sizes, and shapes were found on and immediately adjacent to the bodies of many of those buried during Period IVb. These are most often identified as “necklaces” in the excavation records and were restrung accordingly by excavators, but without any explanation for the reconstructed bead arrangement. While some beads may have been worn at the neck, the findspots sometimes indicate that they were incorporated into other forms of dress, including headdresses (Cifarelli 2018b; 2018c: 100–​102). Materials for beads commonly found in these elite Period IVb burials include carnelian (mostly poor quality and poorly cut), black and white stone, composite and vitreous materials including glass and Egyptian blue, bone, rare shells from the Mediterranean (Tritia gibbosula), and more common ones from the Persian Gulf (conus, cowrie, dentalium, and engina). Metal beads include small copper-​alloy barrel shaped beads, short copper-​alloy tubes, and flat, lentil shaped antimony beads (Figure 7.10). Gold beads are present in two shapes in these burials: gold-​foil covered composite spheroid, and three-​channel spreader beads in sheet gold (Figure 7.11). Aside

Figure 7.10  Sample bead types from elite women’s burials. Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum. 156

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Figure 7.11  Gold spreader bead from Burial SK448 (HAS 64-​355, UM 65-​31-​248). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

from these elite women, there is only one other instance of gold jewellery amongst the Hasanlu IVb burials, SK26, see (Cifarelli 2016). These three-​channel spreader beads and spreader beads in other materials elsewhere at the site indicate that beaded jewellery sometimes comprised multiple strands. The sizes, shapes, colours, textures, sheens, and materials of the beads clustered in groups were enormously varied, and arguably that was the aesthetic point of these aggregations, or assemblages within assemblages: to dazzle with variety, novelty, and the quasi-​divine innovation of the creation of a fragile “whole” from so many fragments (Di Paolo 2018; Pinnock 2018; Roßberger 2018). As for the semantic and symbolic potential of these materials and their combinations, accessible elsewhere through analysis of texts and some images (e.g., Baines 1985; Benzel 2013; Colburn 2019), we simply do not have access to thoughts and beliefs about the affectivity of colours, materials, and their juxtapositions at Hasanlu. The case of gold, however, presents an exception, and we can argue that visually the gold in these assemblages had great local resonance. While numerous gold objects, including beads, were found in the storerooms and temple treasuries on the citadel, it is exceptionally rare to find bodies dressed in gold amongst the Hasanlu burials. In Mesopotamia, the association between gold and the divine is well documented (Benzel 2015), but we cannot know the extent to which it played the same aesthetic and ideological role at Hasanlu. We can, however, gauge its value to the local community through its protected storage in temples and elite residences. That the aesthetic effect of gold metal was highly esteemed at Hasanlu is attested by the great lengths that local smiths at Hasanlu went to imitate its colour and sheen through a quasi-​alchemical manipulation of elements added to copper-​alloys (Fleming et al. 2011). The inclusion of even small quantities of gold in the dress ensembles of these women would have distinguished them from others and pulled into their sensory assemblages the knowledge of the seats of power on the citadel and memories of the gold objects stored, and as was likely the case for the famous Hasanlu Gold Bowl, displayed there. In the case of the three younger women (the Stein burial, SK59 and 503), beads found on and behind the heads indicate that they were wearing multi-​component beaded headdresses (Figure 7.12). SK59’s headdress comprised copper-​alloy tubes arranged horizontally in nine groups of six to seven tubes, with frit beads and small copper-​alloy hemispherical studs between. The studs have a shallow shank for attaching to a leather or textile substrate, rather than holes for stringing, suggesting that the beads and studs were attached to a fabric headdress. Similarly, the excavators noted hemispherical studs (since discarded) around the head of SK503, and Stein recorded the presence of shell, glass, frit, and silver beads “below the head” of the burial he excavated (Stein and Andrews 1940: 398). The head and face play significant roles in the performance, regulation, and transformation of identity, from veiling, to wreathing victors, to the donning of shamanic masks (Lee 2015; Stein 2019). Beads around the head are exclusive to young women at Hasanlu, perhaps, as was the case in Assyria, demonstrating the aestheticisation of the youthful female face (Gansell 2014; 2018). 157

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Figure 7.12  Drawing of headdress found under skull of SK59, HAS 59-​111 (UM 60-​20-​183; MMA 60.20.9a-​f). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

These beaded dress items clothe the body in a dynamically shifting, kaleidoscopic array of shapes, textures, and colours. Beaded dress items are inherently precarious, as fragile as the material that strings the beads together, and require sustained physical engagement for their continued utility and existence (Cifarelli 2018b: 52–​54). Like a burial itself, beaded objects gather together the histories and geographies of the elements that compose them, bringing old and new, near and far, private and public, into a new, temporary entity. In motion, beads created a ripple of sound as they shifted on their strings and the strands knocked into each other, and indeed these strings of beads can be classified as a type of rattle (Kolotourou 2007: 80). Parallels across numerous cultures for the social and ritual role of such suspension rattles abound, including necklaces shaken by priestesses of Hathor in Egypt and participants in saffron gathering rituals in the Aegean (Kolotourou 2007; Mikrakis 2011).These visual and aural sensory stimuli would engender an intense sensory experience in observers, linking the wearer to those nearby in a rich transcorporeal encounter. The experience for the wearer would integrate other bodily sensations as well. Beads on the body can be touched and manipulated, their differences in size, shape, and texture explored by the wearer. The weight and contours of beaded items would serve as an unremitting reminder of their presence and interaction with the body. For those wearing headdresses as they moved through their days, constant kinaesthetic focus would have been needed to keep the head erect enough to balance headdress elements.

Armour scale pectorals The most puzzling assemblage-​object within this dress assemblage is the decorated pectoral—​a multi-​component artefact found on the upper chest of all five women. These unique artefacts are crafted out of beads (see above), dense clusters of copper-​alloy tubes ranging in length from 2 to 10 centimetres, copper-​alloy rings, pins, and flat, rounded triangles of sheet copper-​alloy or iron measuring between 7 and 15 centimetres (Figure 7.13). At one time referred to as phallic “plaque pins,” based on the misreading of their central rib and hemispherical, riveted studs as an erect phallus (Marcus 1996), there can be no doubt that they are elements of scale armour.11 It 158

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Figure 7.13  Composite photograph of HAS 64-​193 (UM 65-​31-​113) including armour and some of the associated beads, based on photos of artefacts in situ. Source: Composed by author, courtesy of Penn Museum.

does not appear that scale armour was used at Hasanlu, although it is common throughout the ancient Near East from the Late Bronze Age forward (Hulit 2002). Outside of these women’s burials, most examples of scale armour at Hasanlu are fragmented: individual armour scales were found as votives in a treasury associated with the Temple BBII, and there were a few others scattered throughout the site (Cifarelli et al. 2018). These scales are not locally made or used, instead they are paralleled in Late Bronze and Early Iron Age burials in the Caucasus and along the Caspian coast (Morgan 1896: 47, 103; 1905, 296; Schaeffer 1948: fig. 233.21, 30; Cifarelli 2018b). In these few elite burials, an imported, intentionally fragmented element of male military equipment is transformed into an element of a women’s dress. Perhaps, as Joseph Maran has argued is the case for single armour scales used as votives in the eastern Mediterranean, these scales function synecdochally, “conveying the protective properties of the complete corselet” (Maran 2004: 24–​25). To these armorial objects were attached shell, stone, bone, glass, and metal beads, as well as tiered bundles of copper-​alloy rings and tubes, rendering the scale into a complex, multi-​ component dress item. For the most part these beads are of the same types appearing in the other beaded jewellery discussed, with one notable exception: SK503’s ensemble included a small, flat, bone pendant (HAS 64-​985, UM 65-​31-​213) whose anthropoid shape was described by excavators as a “gingerbread boy.” The added beads served as visual elaborations and perhaps they were chosen to create a meaningful array of colours, sheens, and materials. But we cannot neglect that they served as percussive elements that would have sounded against the metal scale and the attached chimes. Of course, the material stringing these elements together is gone, so a precise reconstruction is not possible. The tubular elements do not appear to have been pierced across one end for suspension (as were tubes incorporated into noisy equestrian dress found in the destruction of the citadel), and so they were likely strung longitudinally in multi-​strand bundles (Figure 7.13).12 As Stein and Andrews (1940: 398) observed, “This assortment of thin 159

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tubes and beads, when hanging over the lady’s breast, must have vibrated and produced a pleasant musical tinkling whenever she moved.” Unlike the rattling strings of beads, the tintinnabular clusters of tubes and rings are musical instruments in their own right (for the distinction see Kolotourou 2007), deliberately attached to dress items to make a musical noise, like the golden bells attached to the hem of the garment worn by the high priest of Israel (Palmer 2019, and Chapter 16, this volume). While it would be difficult to reconstruct the shimmering sounds these body chimes might have emitted, it is easier to imagine their aural effect, the way they would have transformed the sonic environment of their wearers. Whether worn daily or for particular occasions, like bells on cats they would have marked their wearers’ locations in time and space, the sound growing and diminishing as a proxy for the shifting physical and temporal distance between bodies in a complex transcorporeal engagement.

Conclusion Clearly, the exercise of considering each of these dress elements separately is artificial at best, misleading at worst, but it is one way to parse an ensemble that was (intentionally?) overwhelming to contemplate, to experience, or to wear. This panoply of elements transformed these women’s bodies into fantastic beings quite out of the ordinary for the site of Hasanlu. Shoulders bristling with pins, fingers enveloped in rings, bodies, necks, and heads garlanded with beads, an armour scale affixed at the breast, these women were not simply a feast for the eyes and the ears, although they were that. The sensory stimuli involved are as temporary and ephemeral as the sound of a note in the air or a glance at a body in motion, the assemblages constantly reconfiguring through performative, iterative intra-​action amongst vibrant matter, discourse, and practice. The aesthetic experience of this whirl of synaesthetic and kinaesthetic stimuli, semantic information, memory, social-​and self-​awareness forged a momentary, peculiar, particular identity for these women, an identity that is not inherent to them as individuals, but which operates among them and in between them and others. The “elaborate and cumbersome” (Stein and Andrews 1940: 399) sensorial assemblage to which these women and their dress items—​metal dress pins, finger-​and toe-​r ings, beaded body and head jewellery, and decorated, musical armour scales worn as pectorals—​contributed is not limited to objects and bodies, but includes the existential military threat under which this community lived, the evident rise of a masculine military culture, the history of the site, and the valued objects collected and preserved in its monumental buildings. This particular suite of dress items emerges in a time of crisis, and sensorially sets these women apart from all others at the site. The elite identity constructed through this assemblage involves the weaponisation of dress items through the amplification of ordinary dress pins into sharp stilettos. At the same time, we see the “dressification” of military gear through the fragmentation and transformation of actual protective armour into decorated pectoral ornaments, which were then sensorially magnified through the addition of musical elements. The protective nature of this dress ensemble is activated through the sensory and affective impact of fear-​(and empathy-​) inducing sharp pins and the apotropaic character ascribed to symbolic armour, colourful, rattling beads, and chiming bells. Even when death has stilled the living body and it has been interred (as at Hasanlu), when the pins and beads and armour scales cease to clash and the shine of the gold cannot catch the eye, the sensorial affordances of those vibrant objects endure. The intense affectivity of this ensemble, its unrestrained and even uncomfortable sensoriality, ensured its persistence in individual and communal memory at Hasanlu. The absence of the sensory effect of this assemblage

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would be as notable as its presence, for the political or social phenomena forged through the accumulated magnificence of this assemblage cannot be understood solely in terms of the sensory experiences of wearers or the perceptions of observers. The defining, affective, transcorporeal encounters that constitute both sensory experience and identity operate in the spaces between self and others; interior and exterior; past, present, and future. And like the distortions built into the Peruvian pilgrimage site of Chavín de Huantar or the elision between the dress of the king and the fabrication of the walls of the Apadana at Persepolis, the goal of this assemblage is the “manufacture of wonder” by overwhelming the senses, and indelibly searing these women into communal memory at the site.

Notes 1. For a bibliography of earlier excavations at the site see Danti 2013a: 10–​11. 2. Mirjo Salvini (1984) suggested that Hasanlu was the site of Meshta mentioned in Urartian descriptions, an identification that is possible but by no means established. 3. A study of the human remains stored in the Penn Museum was performed by Paige Selinsky in 2009. However, we must acknowledge that the phenomenon of sex determination is itself material-​discursive and is geared towards the reproduction of binary sex. The consequently inherent tautology of scientific sex determination in archaeological and living bodies is well known, see, e.g., Barad 2003, Geller 2009, and Marshall and Alberti 2014, and so I refer to these individuals as “male-​identified.” 4. Marcus (1994: 4) argued that the textile impressions on these pins and the order of placement of objects on the bodies, as determined by study of excavation photographs, indicate that these pins fastened fabric that wrapped the bodies of these women. Many metal objects that were not on the bodies, however, show evidence of textile pseudomorphs, almost as if they were individually “shrouded.” Moreover, the excavations were not conducted and recorded carefully enough to provide evidence for the order in which objects were layered on bodies. Pins found on the citadel include: HAS 58-​0249 (Tehran 10695), HAS 60-​0248 (Tehran), HAS 60-​0500 (UM 61-​5-​274), HAS 60-​0878 (UM 61-​5-​115, MMA 61.100.46), HAS 62-​1002 (MMA 63.109.8), HAS 62-​1003 (UM 63-​5-​243), HAS 62-​1004 (UM 63-​ 5-​244), HAS 70-​0498 (UM 71-​23-​373). 5. Contextual assemblages are distinct from those aggregated according to material, technique, typological, or stylistic qualities, see, e.g., Hamilakis and Jones 2017: 77. 6. The theoretical literature on assemblage and Actor Network Theory is vast and expanding, e.g. Deleuze and Guattari 2005; Crellin 2017; Fowler 2017. There is theoretical overlap between notions of an assemblage as a relational and dynamic complex of diverse components, and networks (DeLanda 2006), meshworks (Ingold 2012), gatherings (Webmoor and Witmore 2008), and entanglements (Hodder 2012; Hodder and Lucas 2017; Lucas 2017). 7. One of the central tenets of posthumanism, New Materialism, and symmetrical archaeology is the critique of human exceptionalism and acknowledgement of non-​human, material agency; for the archaeological implications see the review by Julian Thomas 2015. 8. This is in contrast, for example, to Assyria, where there is ample evidence for the coincidence of “body” and “person,” e.g. Thomason 2016; Verderame 2019. See Thomason 2019 for a lucid and convincing argument for the utility of a Merleau-​Pontian phenomenological approach to the study of dress in such societies. 9. Young women: Stein excavations burial; SK59 (Op. VIa, B10, UM 60-​20-​225); SK503 (Op. VIj, B4, UM 65-​31-​806). Mature adult women: SK448 (Op. VIc, B4, UM 65-​31-​732); SK481 (Op. VIf, B10, UM 65-​31-​733/​65-​31-​801). For sex and age determinations of the skeletons from the Penn excavations, see Selinsky 2009; Monge and McCarthy 2011. 10. While the excavators called these rings “archer’s” rings because of their shape, the actual rings used in archery are much later and are worn exclusively on the thumb to protect it when drawing a bowstring. 11. Careful examination of HAS 64-​193 (UM 65-​31-​113) in the Near Eastern Section of the Penn Museum revealed that there were holes for two additional rivets at the narrow end of triangular plaque; see Figure 7.13. With four rivets, any resemblance to a phallus effectively disappears. 12. Similarly, strung copper tubes are found on corded skirts in Bronze Age burials in Denmark, a form of suspension that would have made the tubes audible through movement, see Kristiansen 2013.

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Cifarelli, M. 2019a. “Hasanlu, the Southern Caucasus and Early Urartu,” in P. S. Avetisyan, R. Dan, and Y. Grekyan, eds., Over the Mountains and Far Away: Studies in Near Eastern History and Archaeology Presented to Mirjo Salvini on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday. Oxford: Archaeopress, 144–​156. Cifarelli, M. 2019b. “The Iron Age at Hasanlu, Iran: New Perspectives,” in Y. Hassanzadeh, A. Vahdati, and Z. Karimi, eds., Proceedings of the International Conference on Iron Age in Western Iran and the Neighboring Regions. 2–​ 3 November 2019, Kurdistan University, Sanandaj, Iran, Vol. 2. Tehran/​ Sanandaj: Iran National Museum, 21–​44. Cifarelli, M., M. Castelluccia, and R. Dan. 2018. “Copper-​Alloy Belts at Hasanlu, Iran: A Case Study in Hybridization and Heteroglossia in Material Culture.” CAJ 28 (4): 539–​563. Colburn, C. 2019. “A Proposal for Interpreting the Role of Colour Symbolism in Prepalatial Cretan Body Adornment,” in M. Cifarelli, ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 75–​88. Crellin, R. J. 2017. “Changing Assemblages: Vibrant Matter in Burial Assemblages.” CAJ 27 (1): 111–​125. Danti, M. 2013a. Hasanlu V: The Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Danti, M. 2013b. “The Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in Northwestern Iran,” in D. T. Potts, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 327–​376. Danti, M. 2014. “The Hasanlu (Iran) Gold Bowl in Context: All That Glitters ….” Antiquity 88 (341): 791–​804. Danti, M., and M. Cifarelli. 2015. “Iron II Warrior Burials at Hasanlu, Iran.” Iranica Antiqua 50: 61–​157. Danti, M., and M. Cifarelli. 2016. “Assyrianizing Contexts at Hasanlu IVb? Materiality and Identity in Iron II Northwest,” in J. MacGinnis, D. Wicke, and T. Greenfield, eds., The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 357–​369. DeLanda, M. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum. Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 2005. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Bloomsbury. Diaz-​Andreu, M. 2005. “Gender Identity,” in M. Diaz-​Andreu, S. Babic, and D. N. Edwards, eds., The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion. London: Routledge, 13–​42. Di Paolo, S. 2018. “From Hidden to Visible: Degrees of Material Construction of an ‘Integrated Whole’ in the Ancient Near East,” in S. Di Paolo, ed., Exhibiting an Imaginative Materiality, Showing a Genealogical Nature: The Composite Artefacts in the Ancient Near East. Oxford: Archaeopress, 7–​20. Dyson, R. H., and O. W. Muscarella. 1989. “Constructing the Chronology and Historical Implications of Hasanlu IV.” Iran 27: 1–​27. Entwistle, J. 2000. The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Social Theory. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Fleming, S. J., S. K. Nash, and C. P. Swann. 2011. “The Archaeometallurgy of Period IVB Bronzes at Hasanlu,” in M. de Schauensee, ed., People and Crafts in Period IVb at Hasanlu, Iran. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 103–​134. Fowler, C. 2017. “Relational Typologies, Assemblage Theory and Early Bronze Age Burials.” CAJ 27 (1): 95–​109. Freedberg, D., and V. Gallese. 2007. “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11 (5): 197–​203. Gansell, A. R. 2014. “Images of Conceptions of Ideal Feminine Beauty in Neo-​Assyrian Royal Contexts, c. 883627 BCE,” in B. Brown and M. Feldman, eds., Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art. Berlin: De Gruyter, 391–​420. Gansell, A. R. 2018. “Dressing the Neo-​Assyrian Queen in Identity and Ideology: Elements and Ensembles from the Royal Tombs at Nimrud.” AJA 122 (1): 65–​100. Geller, P. L. 2009. “Identity and Difference: Complicating Gender in Archaeology.” ARA 38 (1): 65–​81. Geurts, K. L. 2002. Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hamilakis, Y. 2013a. “Afterword: Eleven Theses on the Archaeology of the Senses,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 409–​419. Hamilakis, Y. 2013b. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hamilakis, Y. 2017. “Sensorial Assemblages: Affect, Memory and Temporality in Assemblage Thinking.” CAJ 27 (1): 169–​182. Hamilakis, Y., and A. M. Jones. 2017. “Archaeology and Assemblage.” CAJ 27 (1): 77–​84. 163

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Harrison-​Buck, E., and J. A. Hendon. 2018. “An Introduction to Relational Identities and Other-​than-​ Human Agency in Archaeology,” in E. Harrison-​Buck and J. A. Hendon, eds., Relational Identities and Other-​than-​Human Agency in Archaeology. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1–​28. Hodder, I. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden, MA: Wiley-​Blackwell. Hodder, I., and G. Lucas. 2017. “The Symmetries and Asymmetries of Human-​Thing Relations: A Dialogue.” Archaeological Dialogues 24 (2): 119–​137. Hoffman, D. D. 2016. “The Interface Theory of Perception.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 25 (3): 157–​161. Howes, D. 2019. “Resounding Sensory Profiles: Sensory Studies Methodologies,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press, 43–​54. Hulit, T. 2002. “Late Bronze Age Scale Armour in the Near East: An Experimental Investigation of Materials, Construction, and Effectiveness, with a Consideration of Socio-​Economic Implications.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Durham. Ingold, T. 2012. “Toward an Ecology of Materials.” ARA 41: 427–​442. Jones, A. M., and B. Alberti. 2013. “Beyond Representation,” in B. Alberti, A. M. Jones, and J. Pollard, eds., Archaeology After Interpretation. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 277–​280. Joyce, R. A. 2001. “Social Memory, Identity, and Death: Anthropological Perspectives on Mortuary Ritual.” Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 10: 12–​26. Joyce, R. A., and J. Pollard. 2010. “Archaeological Assemblages and Practices of Deposition,” in D. Hicks and M. Beaudry, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 291–​309. Ko, D. 2005. Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kolotourou, K. 2007. “Rattling Jewellery and the Cypriot Coroplast.” Archaeologia Cypria 5: 79–​99. Kristiansen, K. 2013. “Female Clothing and Jewellery in the Nordic Bronze Age,” in S. Sabatini, ed., Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies in Honour of Professor Kristian Kristiansen. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 755–​769. Kroll, S. 2005. “The Southern Urmia Basin in the Early Iron Age.” Iranica Antiqua 40: 65–​85. Kroll, S. 2010. “Urartu and Hasanlu.” Aramazd Armenian Journal of Near Eastern Studies 5 (2): 21–​35. Kroll, S. 2013. “Hasanlu Period III—​Annotations and Corrections.” Iranica Antiqua 48: 175–​194. Lee, M. 2015. Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press. Love, N. 2011. “The Analysis and Conservation of the Hasanlu Period IVB Textiles,” in M. de Schauensee, ed., People and Crafts in Period IVb at Hasanlu, Iran. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 43–​56. Lucas, G. 2017. “Variations on a Theme: Assemblage Archaeology.” CAJ 27 (1): 187–​190. Malafouris, L. 2008. “Is It ‘Me’ or Is It ‘Mine’? The Mycenaean Sword as a Body-​Part,” in J. Robb and D. Boric, eds., Past Bodies. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 115–​123. Malafouris, L. 2010. “The Brain-​Artefact Interface (BAI): A Challenge for Archaeology and Cultural Neuroscience.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5 (2–​3): 264–​273. Maran, J. 2004. “The Spreading of Objects and Ideas in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean: Two Case Examples from the Argolid of the 13th and 12th Centuries BCE.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 336: 12–​30. Marcus, M. I. 1989. “Emblems of Authority.” Expedition 31 (2): 53–​63. Marcus, M. I. 1994. “Dressed to Kill: Women and Pins in Early Iran.” Oxford Art Journal 17 (2): 3–​15. Marcus, M. I. 1996. Emblems of Identity and Prestige: The Seals and Sealings from Hasanlu, Iran; Commentary and Catalog. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Mark, J. T., B. B. Marion, and D. D. Hoffman. 2010. “Natural Selection and Veridical Perceptions.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 266: 504–​515. Marshall, Y., and B. Alberti. 2014. “A Matter of Difference: Karen Barad, Ontology and Archaeological Bodies.” CAJ 24 (1): 19–​36. McFerrin, N. 2017. “Fabrics of Inclusion: Deep Wearing and the Potentials of Materiality on the Apadana Reliefs,” in M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinski, eds., What Shall I Say of Clothes: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Dress in Antiquity. SPAAA 3. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 143–​159. McFerrin, N. 2019. “The Tangible Self: Embodiment, Agency, and the Functions of Adornment in Achaemenid Persia,” in M. Cifarelli, ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 233–​248.

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Mikrakis, M. 2011. “Technologies of Sound across Aegean Crafts and Mediterranean Cultures,” in A. Brysbaert, ed., Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology: A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean. London: Routledge, 48–​71. Monge, J. M., and C. McCarthy. 2011. “A Life of Violence: When Warfare and Interpersonal Violence Intertwine at Hasanlu, Period IVB,” in M. de Schauensee, ed., The People and Crafts of Period IVb at Hasanlu, Iran. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 183–​193. Morgan, Jacques de. 1896. Mission Scientifique en Perse. Tome Quatrième, Recherches Archéologiques. Première Partie. Paris: Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse. Morgan, Jacques de. 1905. Recherches au Talyche 1901. Paris: Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse. Muscarella, O. W. 2006. “The Excavations of Hasanlu: An Archaeological Evaluation.” BASOR 342: 69–​94. Neumann, K. 2018. “Reading the Temple of Nabu as a Coded Sensory Experience.” Iraq 80: 181–​211. Neumann, K. 2019. “Laying the Foundations for Eternity: Timing Temple Constructions in Assyria,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press, 253–​278. Palmer, C. 2019. “Israelite High Priestly Apparel: Embodying an Identity between Human and Divine,” in M. Cifarelli, ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 117–​127. Petersen, A. 1985. “The Philosophy of Niels Bohr,” in A. P. French and P. J. Kennedy, eds., Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 299–​310. Pina-​Cabral, J. de. 2016. “Brazilian Serialities: Personhood and Radical Embodied Cognition.” Current Anthropology 57 (3): 247–​260. Pinnock, F. 2018. “Polymaterism in Early Syrian Ebla,” in S. Di Paolo, ed., Exhibiting an Imaginative Materiality, Showing a Genealogical Nature: The Composite Artefacts in the Ancient Near East. Oxford: Archaeopress, 73–​84. Pongratz-​Leisten, B., and K. Sonik. 2015. “Between Cognition and Culture: Theorizing Materiality of Divine Agency in Cross-​Cultural Perspective,” in B. Pongratz-​Leisten and K. Sonik, eds., The Materiality of Divine Agency. Berlin: De Gruyter, 3–​69. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2019. “The Doors of Perception: Senses and Their Variations in Akkadian Texts,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press, 279–​292. Roach-​Higgins, M. E., and J. Eicher. 1992. “Dress and Identity.” Clothing and Textile Research Journal 10: 7–​18. Robb, J., and O. J. T. Harris. 2013. Body in History: Europe from the Palaeolithic to the Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roßberger, E. 2018. “Shining, Contrasting, Enchanting: Composite Objects in the Royal Tomb of Qatna,” in S. Di Paolo, ed., Exhibiting an Imaginative Materiality, Showing a Genealogical Nature: The Composite Artefacts in the Ancient Near East. Oxford: Archaeopress, 39–​50. Rouse, J. 1996. Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rubinson, K. S. 2012a. “Some Metal Belts from Hasanlu,” in H. Fahimi and K. Alizadeh, eds., NĀMVARNĀMEH: Papers in Honour of Massoud Azarnoush. Tehran: Iran Negar, 107–​112. Rubinson, K. 2012b. “Urartian (?) Belts and Some Antecedents,” in S. Kroll, C. Gruber, U. Hellwag, M. Roaf, and P. E. Zimansky, eds., Biainili-​Urartu. The Proceedings of the Symposium Held in Munich 12–​14 October 2007. Leuven: Peeters, 391–​396. Salvini, M. 1984. “Storia Della Regione in Epoca Urartea,” in P. A. Pecorrella and M. Salvini, eds., Tra Lo Zagros e L’Urmia. Ricerche Storiche Ed Archeologiche Nell’Azerbaigian Iraniano. Rome: Edizioni Dell’Ateneo, 9–​51. Salvini, M. 2005. “Archaeology and Philology: Reconstructing the History of Northwest Iran in the Urartian Period (9th–​ 7th Centuries B.C.),” in M. Azarnoush, ed., Proceedings of the International Symposium on Iranian Archaeology: Northwestern Region. Tehran: Iranian Center for Archaeological Research, 65–​76. Schaeffer, C. 1948. Stratigraphie Comparée et Chronologie de l’Asie Occidentale. London: Oxford University Press. Seeley, W. P. 2006. “Naturalizing Aesthetics: Art and the Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision.” Journal of Visual Arts Practice 5 (3): 195–​214. Selinsky, P. 2009. “Death a Necessary End.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Sørensen, M.-​L. S. 1997. “Reading Dress: The Construction of Social Categories and Identities in Bronze Age Europe.” Journal of European Archaeology 5 (1): 93–​114.

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Sørensen, M.-​L. S. 2007. “Gender, Things, and Material Culture,” in S. M. Nelson, ed., Women in Antiquity: Theoretical Approaches to Gender and Archaeology. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 75–​107. Starr, G. G. 2013. Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stein, A., and F. Andrews. 1940. Old Routes of Western Iran. London: Macmillan and Co. Stein, D. 2019. “Dressed to Heal, Protect, and Rule: Vestiges of Shamanic Praxis in Ancient Near Eastern Rituals and Beliefs,” in M. Cifarelli, ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 57–​73. Streeck, J. 2015. “Embodiment in Human Communication.” ARA 44: 419–​438. Thomas, J. 2015. “The Future of Archaeological Theory.” Antiquity 89: 1287–​1296. Thomason, A. K. 2016. “The Sense-​scapes of Neo-​Assyrian Capital Cities: Royal Authority and Bodily Experience.” CAJ 26 (2): 243–​264. Thomason, A. K. 2019. “The Phenomenology and Sensory Experience of Dress in Mesopotamia: The Embodiment of Discomfort and Pain through Dress,” in M. Cifarelli, ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 219–​232. Verderame, L. 2019. “Clothing, Body, and Identity in First-​Millennium Rituals,” in S. Gaspa and M. Vigo, eds., Textiles in Ritual and Cultic Practice in the Ancient Near East from the Third to the First Millennium BC. AOAT 431. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag, 177–​188. Webmoor, T., and C. L. Witmore. 2008. “Things Are Us! A Commentary on Human/​Things Relations under the Banner of a ‘Social’ Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 41 (1): 53–​70. Weismantel, M. 2013. “Coming to Our Senses at Chavín de Huantar,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 113–​136. Winter, I. J. 2007. “Agency Marked, Agency Ascribed: The Affective Object in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in R. Osborne and J. Tanner, eds., Art’s Agency and Art History. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 68–​100. Wobst, M. 1977. “Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange,” in C. E Cleland, ed., For the Director: Research Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, 317–​342.

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8 Beyond the flesh Sensing identity through the body and skin in Mesopotamian glyptic contexts Sarah J. Scott

Introduction To engage in haptic sensorial exploration is to actively investigate other objects through touch. Relying on the subject’s movement over or through a surface, haptic perception is the pursuit of sensorial experience with the expectation of intimate knowledge. Such intimate knowledge through meso-​perceptual and inter-​cutaneous exploration leads to a deeper understanding of the self and one’s existence in the world.1 Skin is the bodily organ through which haptic sensing proceeds; as it contributes to one’s somatic experience in the world, we understand it to be the organ most responsible for conveying these active engagements to our conscious and subconscious. Simultaneously, as proprioceptors are engaged through the skin, the conscious and subconscious mind affects and is affected by culturally specific knowledge and memory. In this chapter, my aim is to explore how the act of sealing in Mesopotamia from the fourth to first millennia BCE , as a bodily act, afforded its users a somatic sense of legitimacy as a result of associations with concepts of the body through materials of stone and clay. Cylinder seals were used in the broader ancient Near East (Iraq, Anatolia, Syria, Iran, the Levant) and throughout the Mediterranean as early as the fourth millennium BCE .2 Here, I focus on seal practice in ancient “Mesopotamia”—​the heartland of the ancient Near East along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern Iraq and eastern Syria—from their origin to the last centuries BCE . Seals impressed intaglio imagery into clay: most typically either lumps of clay that secured or locked containers (either portable—​such as jars, or stationary—​such as entire rooms) (Figure 8.1) or clay cuneiform documents (texts) (Figure 8.2a–​b). Seals functioned visually as communicative tools; their impressed imagery was linked to the user’s identity. They often functioned apotropaically and were sometimes used in healing rituals (see, in particular, Bock 2003). While of great value for an exploration of the ancient world, visual and iconographic investigations are outside the scope of this chapter.3 Here, I will focus on their functional role to officiate, even mediate, physical transactions between individuals and groups. Seals were worn on the body either against the skin on a belt or dangling from a string (Figure 8.3). Most importantly they were grasped in the hand and rolled across wet clay; the hand would have sensed the

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-9

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Figure 8.1  Early Dynastic cylinder seal impression in clay from Ur, Iraq. Penn Museum (31.16.607). Source: Photo by author.

movement of the seal’s surface over the skin (hardness, pressure, temperature), and in muscular pressure points, spots called proprioceptors, and thus had a haptic affective nature. My approach to the haptic sense of sealing rests on two fundamental arguments. First, seals were “things”—​ capable of mediating social relationships. Informed by the post-​ processual work of Lefebvre (1991), Gell (1998), Ingold (2008), and Hamilakis (2013), my approach is object-​centric and sensory; the seal operated within a landscape populated with other animated movements, kinaesthetic interactions, and circulating materials. Gell asserts that objects are entangled with our bodies; they are abductors of agency because of non-​aesthetic properties that facilitate their function within an active system of change. Additionally, theories of embodied interaction and body schema offer avenues for considering how human cognition perceives bodily interactions with objects. Body schema, a neurological theory, explains how our bodies perceive objects as extensions of our limbs (Malafouris 2008). Indeed, seals, as they are handled, and sensed, become artefacts that index another presence. Concepts of haptic object-​interaction from cross-​cultural perspectives shed further light on ways we might ask new questions about the link between human–​object entanglement and the senses in ancient Mesopotamia. Theories of Skin Ego, and suture, establish a context where clay’s surface (either a tablet or a sealing on a container or door) functioned as a medium ripe for the receipt of the seal’s impression as an imprint of seal user’s identity (Figure 8.4). Second, Mesopotamian notions of the self and the body suggest the sealing process functioned in part through haptic engagement. While a vast question in and of itself, the essential point is that the body was the whole self—​whether human or divine—​and part of a physical landscape, formed of materials that could affect or be affected by others. Through material engagement and/​or the manipulation of materials, the body could be altered, even made suitable for possession of divine agency. Recent considerations have referred to this phenomenon of physical bodies’ possession of divine energy as “presencing” (Pongratz-​Leisten and Sonik 2015), a term I, too, will use. I attempt to show that the seal could be understood as an index of the body/​self, a secondary and possibly divine agent of the body, but also as an extension of 168

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Figure 8.2  Tablets with seal impressions. (a) Proto-​cuneiform tablet, Jemdet Nasr Period (c. 2900 BCE ). Metropolitan Museum of Art (1988.433.1). (b) Cuneiform extispicy text from Umma (c. 2200 BCE ) (CDLI no. P273414). Archives & Special Collections, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA.

one’s human body through its material qualities. Drawing on aspects of object agency above, the Mesopotamian concept of melammu (visually alluring radiance, awe-​inspiring sheen) was a perceptible embodiment of energy of the divine—​something transmitted to the material world and manifest there as light. It was present in materials and objects (Pongratz-​Leisten 2011; Winter 1994; 2007; Sonik 2015; Bahrani 2003; 2008; Benzel 2015). Clay, too, could be thought of as a body part and we will also see that through culturally specific evidence and recent theoretical application, clay can be understood as a mantic medium—​akin to human skin—​onto which signs and messages were written. It therefore served as an appropriate medium to receive the imprint of a seal. 169

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Figure 8.3  Inlay of a woman wearing a cylinder seal and playing a flute from Nippur, Iraq. Metropolitan Museum of Art (62.70.46).

Figure 8.4  Rolling the cylinder seal: a student gently rolls the cylinder seal in the clay, creating an impression of the detailed design etched on the cylinder. Source: Courtesy of the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign.

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In this volume, as we explore the senses in the ancient Near East, the reader is likely engaging in various scholarly approaches. Prior to these discussions, we find that sight had been prioritised over sound, smell, space, and touch. Our current moment of scholarly inquiry demands critical cognisance of the historicity of our sources, and asks us to use our own sensorial exploration as a useful alternative (Hawthorne and Rendu-​Loisel 2019: 7). Recent scholarship emphasises multisensorial and synaesthetic experiences; for example, the Neo-​Assyrian temple and palace both afford deeper engagement with the divine through sight, taste, smell, sound, and touch (Neumann 2019; Portuese 2019). The sense of touch is perhaps the most essential in religious, magical, and sacred experiences, since through the haptic sense objects, things can serve to transfer agentive qualities across users (Downes et al. 2018: 13; Brown 2001: 7; Woolgar 2006: 29–​32). Further, certain haptic habits are formed, whereby active rubbing, touching, and recursive movements become second nature to an object’s user. In such cases, the cutaneous sensation becomes intrinsically linked to the function of such an object (Lingis 2011: 81). I argue this habit was integral to seal use, serving to bind the user both cognitively and sensuously to that practice (see also Chapter 1, this volume).

Things, cognition, and the haptic sense Seals and their impressions were things: objects acting to mediate social relationships. Drawing on frameworks outlined below, followed by cross-​cultural case studies that seek to offer parallel modes of questioning, the cognitive architecture for an interrogation of the sensorial experiences of sealing is established. We should recall two aspects of Gell’s theory of art and agency. First, he asserts that objects, as physical agents in culturally specific social interactional spheres, can function indexically to mediate agency. The material “index” permits “the abduction of agency” by the observer (Gell 1998: 13). In the case of the seal, an interaction sphere is established between the seal and the user, positioning the seal as an index of the user, allowing for the clay to function as the recipient, or patient of the index. Second, Gell develops his concept of object “enchantment.”Through the manufacture of objects, the “expert artist” (creator agent) composes certain physical attributes in an object capable of beguiling the viewer to believe in something more than the physical, where the creation is rendered animate, thus supporting the object’s affectiveness (Gell 1992: 44).4 Following on Gell’s theory of abduction, Malafouris (2008: 120) draws upon the concept of body schema, whereby an object/​index, as a tool for the body, can change and shape our bodies through transforming and extending the body’s physicality.5 This concept of embodied cognition understands the body not as a passive shell, but as an active partner with the conscience. In Bronze Age Aegean (Mycenaean) contexts, Malafouris (2008: 120–​121) argues that the presence of swords in the toolkit of conflict directly altered the embodied cognition and identity of their users. The sensorial experience of grasping the sword cognitively blurred the boundary between body and matter, transforming the sword into an animate extension of the body, thereby making the Mycenaean who he was. More than simply an agent, the sword became part of the body. Similarly, Anderson (2019) considers the seal within Bronze Age Aegean contexts as a liminal boundary, intimately juxtaposed between the body of the user and the clay, and facilitating a sensory rupture as it is lifted from the clay’s surface. Understanding the possible ability for seals to act as bodily extensions of the self, we can now address how the haptic sense of the seal against the skin, and as it impressed clay, contributed to this effect. Across time and space skin is the conduit through which the whole body (and self) interacts with the world—​a meso-​perceptual organ through which sensation passes. Indeed, it is through our sense of touch on skin that we physically explore and ultimately understand our surroundings; it is how we partake of the world as sentient beings (Merleau-​Ponty 1964: 140–​50). 171

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Touch is pivotal in our current scholarly questions of ancient social engagement and cultural meaning in diverse settings (Hamilakis 2013: 6–​9; Harries 2017). Similar constructs abound in European Medieval contexts; the soul (metaphysical self) is not made real until skin binds the flesh (physical self); flesh is the form, and skin is the container. Although in the Medieval tradition the two (spirit and body) can be separate (Walter 2013: 122–​123), the flesh and skin were understood as part of a homogeneous biological body. Skin was not conceived of as a boundary at all; rather it was perceived as a three-​dimensional space, a porous material, one that allowed for fluxes to move in and out of the body and served as a nexus between the body and world (Benthien 2004: 37, 62). For Hamilakis (2013: 197) as well, skin is also a liminal medium, it acts as a prosthesis to the body, binding the body to the outer world, thereby functioning as an essential tool for practice and social memory construction. Such an understanding of the sense of touch through and with skin is paramount for us here, as it establishes the medium through which scholarship acknowledges the navigation of the entanglement between the self and the world (Ingold 2008; Lefebvre 1991). Gell’s theory of enchantment is fundamental to understanding how material properties of objects may embody the divine, thereby facilitating their agentive role. Following on the heels of this concept, Brown (2001: 7) also asserts that it is the tactile relationship we have with objects that affords the channelling of the divine. Similarly, touch may arguably be the sense that affords the most potent experience of divine transference (Woolgar 2006). We will see below that this concept is particularly culturally bound in Mesopotamia through the concepts of ṣalmu and melammu. A cross-​cultural example is found in Byzantine icons of the Christ figure, where various three-​dimensional techniques of soldering, repoussé, and enamelwork were essential in creating affects for the audience. For example, flickering candlelight created a life-​like effect when moving across the surface of a multi-​surfaced icon, and cast iridescent effects, setting the stage for mimesis of divine flesh.6 This ability of the icon to affect supported the belief that it was a positive physical imprint of the divine shape of Christ’s flesh (Pentcheva 2010: 96–​99).7 In the absence of real flesh, materials provided a radiant and haptic surface as an interaction sphere for the viewer (typically a patient seeking healing) to communicate with the divine. The psychoanalytical concept of the Skin Ego provides a contemporary comparative framework for exploring how skin functions as an abductor of agency (Weismann 2019). According to Anzieu (1989: 1–​9), organic and imaginary skin protects individuality while also allowing for interaction with others; for haptically knowing one’s self (inner psyche) and the world (social identity).8 The way we think about and construct ourselves, from the moment we are born and start interacting with the world through our skin, is as a series of co-​mingling surfaces, layers, and envelopes. An understanding of our cohesive being is mapped out as a result of sensations we feel on our skin. We must become intimately aware of our skin as a haptic sensory organ as we sense pressure, pain, cold, and heat and connect these sensations multisensorially and synaesthetically with other senses such as smell, sight, taste, sound, and bodily awareness of balance and movement (proprioception). While we understand ourselves through a sense of touch and build our identities metaphorically and sensually as we explore our own bodies, we eventually use our skin to explore socially. As infants approach the age of six months, they become aware that they are external to their mothers; they develop their first sensorial mechanisms that signal to their brain through touch as their skin touches that of another, and then by taste (as they seek to explore the world by putting things in their mouths). Returning to the ancient world, this gives rise to the idea that the seal user, by impressing their seal into flesh, would have created a deeper connection between themselves and the process of sealing—​the process of validating one’s identity. As a system of several sense receptors and neural networks, one linked directly to our psychology of the self 172

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from infancy onward, skin is undoubtedly a tool utilised across time and space for capturing and communicating physical messages. Clay and skin both were media ripe for receiving signs, whether impressed or written by the human or the divine within Mesopotamian contexts. Clay provided an opportunity for Mesopotamians to engage with an animate surface akin to their own skin, and intensified the relationship between the seal user, their seal, and the impression. In the Medieval European manuscript tradition, we find a similar phenomenon where the medium ripens or reifies the experience of mark-​making and receiving. Referred to as the “suture,” manuscript readers became more deeply linked to their texts though the materiality of the vellum (skin) pages. Following upon the concept of Skin Ego, Kay (2006: 36) argues that both intellectually and physically the Medieval reader was cognisant of the process of flaying an animal for the page, and that this acknowledgement was part of the experience of reading. Close analysis of varying types of vellum reveals traces of their former existence as animal skin, such as skin pores, follicles, and marks left from cutting and stretching (Figure 8.5).9 Through this form of entanglement the reader of the manuscript draws upon their own cognition of the skin as an outer film,

Figure 8.5  Unicorn and lynx (second family) from a Medieval manuscript. St John’s College (MS 178, fo. 159v). Source: Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, University of Oxford. 173

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which serves as a binding agent for inner contents, and intensifies the story’s content. Similarly, in Mesopotamia, this idea of sensed “suture” would have linked the identity of the seal user, or scribe, more closely to the clay. Seals—as haptically sensed, agentive objects used in recursive practice—mediated social relationships and contributed to individual and social identity and collective memory. They could have been perceived as a physical extension of the biological body; an experience intensified through the haptic and aural sensations of seal/​body impressing the clay surface. The concepts of Skin Ego and “suture” developed in other fields allow us to probe the sensorial experience of impressing seal into clay. We can imagine the pushing of the seal into the clay, imparting warmth and pressure to the matrix, while also causing aural sensations, such as the squishing and suction sounds emitted from the medium as the seal was separated from the clay’s surface. In Mesopotamian contexts, we can therefore understand such a disruption of clay, as it is penetrated by the force of the seal, would be a meaningful act about the disruption or imposition of identity. Following, we will explore how these tenets may be more specifically applied within Mesopotamian epistemologies of the body and materials.

The Mesopotamian body: a sense of the body, the divine, and stone Mesopotamian epistemologies underscore both the physical and meta-​physical body, which may be associated with certain materials such as stone and clay. In particular, stone may possess melammu, a radiant force present within and emanating from divine bodies. In the discussion that follows we will see how skin, as an organ of the body, functioned as a mantic extension of the body, ideally positioned to receive signs (impressed) from a body (seal). Concepts of the body played a major role in the Mesopotamians’ understanding of the physical world, as they understood that the body served as a repository for the mind and a sense of meaning and understanding of self (Asher-​Greve 1997: 432; Pongratz-​Leisten 2015). Indeed, a major tenet of self in Mesopotamian philosophy was that there were multiple and ever-​ regenerating selves. Through the ontologies of language (Sumerian and Babylonian) and the written form (cuneiform) we can understand the nature of Mesopotamian concepts of being whereby the individual could be present in multiple forms and fragments. Polyvalency and the generation of infinite meanings of language were driving components of Mesopotamian thought (Van De Mieroop 2017: 219). This directly informs the concept of the body: there was no dichotomy between the mind and the body—​they were one in and of the self. The Sumerian and Akkadian languages denote this: du (banû) meant form and shape of the body. The person was the body, yet it existed beyond the physical. The gods’ mind was expressed through the physical body. This important concept is explicated by Pongratz-​Leisten (2011: 39) as it applies to Neo-​Assyrian kingship—​she cites Esarhaddon’s (680–​669 BCE ) decree to demonstrate this singularity of mind and body, “I spoke with my heart (I thought it was over), I brought it together in my liver (I pondered over it)” (Borger 1956: 42, i 32). While the mind and the body were one, the entirety of the self was also existentially and fractally present in all parts of world, and was capable of diffusing its agency (Bahrani 2008: 76–​ 80). This philosophy of the body can be understood in part through the very status of the gods themselves; the divine body was transcendent, manifest in the physical world, and of a composite nature.10 For example, the starry sky was the abode of gods; the divine was visibly embodied in a planet or star, and celestial bodies—​viewed as images of gods—​were worldly objects manifesting divine agency (Rochberg 2009: 46–​47; see also Chapter 22, this volume). Omen and divinatory texts suggest gods had the ultimate power to decide, control, and command (Rochberg 2011: 283–​284). While such power and divinity were not for humans to wield, it was theirs 174

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to experience, absorb, and sense; their bodies felt and were affected by the divine. At the same time, the divine was modelled on the human form (Ornan 2009: 93). This fundamental aspect of Mesopotamian theology allowed for material things—​things accessible through touch—​to embody the divine. The physiological body (and stones, as we will see below) were given their identity by the gods. The spirit or ghost of humans comes from the god’s flesh, and intelligence from his blood. The spirit survives postmortem, but remains bound to the bones. The Akkadian words šīru and libbu broadly reference Sumerian su and ša3, with a range in meaning from self or person, to flesh, kin, and body (Asher-​Greve 1997: 447). Body parts of the ruler were associated with specific qualities, as Winter has shown in her analyses of the statues of the Mesopotamian kings Gudea of Lagash (c. 2100 BCE ), and Naram-​Sin of Akkad (2254–​2218 BCE ). Gudea’s sculptures communicate his ability to rule through a network of textual, visual, verbal, ritual, and metaphorical messages intimately bound into the physical sculpture itself—​Gudea’s actual body of flesh (Winter 1989). Naram-​Sin too, is understood as a potent ruler through his physical presence within the constructed monument of his “Victory Stele.” This culturally bound concept, ṣalmu in Akkadian, establishes image-​bearing objects not as representational, but as physical embodiments of particular qualities; the image was the real thing (Bahrani 2003; Sonik 2015). The viewer of such image-​bearing objects receives a series of ideal attributes of the royal body through engagement with the sculpture, for example Naram-​Sin’s “good form or breeding, auspiciousness, vigour/​ vitality, and specifically sexual allure or charm” (Winter 1996: 11). Certain physical aspects needed to be properly arranged in order for a ṣalmu to be present; image was not enough—​the proper materials, location, and context were also necessary (Sonik 2015: 181). While the concept of ṣalmu stipulates the self may be physically present in a material, in Mesopotamia the concept of melammu provides a vehicle through which the divine may be present in physical form. Melammu, a multisensorial radiance emanating from objects, inspired awe, indeed sometimes fear, into its beholders. The Mesopotamian mindset understood that luminosity possessed by certain physical materials was, in fact, the divine having become manifest in the real world (Rochberg 2009: 49; Winter 2002). Melammu was not just a quality, but a physical force-​ field that came from the inside (Winter 1994: 124–​128). Like ṣalmu, melammu articulates the pathway through which Mesopotamians understood the composite nature of the body and self and the ascription of agency (Winter 2007: 42–​53). Physical objects could project this divine energy: King Esarhaddon’s crown was “clothed (wrapped) in melammu, adorned (literally, sprinkled) with vital energy, bearing dazzling awesomeness, bathed in radiance” (Winter 1994: 127). Such an aura must be imagined as we view the seals or monuments where gods are depicted (Figure 8.6). Ordinary humans were not themselves divine, but as images or shadows of the king, they possessed a second-​hand relationship to the gods.11 While humans likely did not emit melammu themselves, they could partake in the corporeal coding of the divine inscribed across a variety of physical bodies, including seals, statues, and cities (Sonik 2015: 147–​150). We know of particular rituals through which objects became deified. “Rites of constitution” were performed in order to make an object functional in multiple ways, creating a cultural understanding of the ability for materials to possess and cast an energy force-​field (Winter 1992: 17). Therefore, to anyone holding and using a seal, the force emanating from the seal and then transferred to the material of clay could not have been far from the sealer’s mind. We can circle back to the work of Hamilakis, Malafouris, and Anderson here, remembering how the seal, as object, merges the body—​haptically and cognitively—​to the objectscape of the world. This zone of mediation, “where bodies meet” (Anderson 2019: 209), was what made the transference of identity possible, 175

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Figure 8.6  Modern impression of a cylinder seal from Iran depicting the goddess Ishtar welcoming a devotee. Walters Art Gallery (42.782).

while through the recursive, corporeal practice of sealing clay objects the community was bound together (Hamilakis et al. 2002: 129). Mesopotamian materials, specifically in their raw state (gold and silver in particular), had affective physical properties that contributed to their defined qualities as assigned by human agents (Benzel 2015: 96). Such properties activated the ritual efficacy of an object, including seals, by making the physical body more affective through constructs such as ṣalmu and melammu. Compounded through both the material of manufacture and the finished object—​as with the finished product of a cylinder seal with a gold cap—​purity and shine emanating from the material would affect other things with which it came into contact. As Jacobsen (1976: 7) writes, “the form given to numinous encounter may adjust to the content revealed in it.” Myriad documentary sources establish the effectiveness of melammu through stone, suggesting the phenomenon was “the combination of light-​plus-​sheen yielding a kind of lustrousness” emanating from the bodies (Winter 1994: 123). While shine was good, intensification of shine could convey power, thus affecting the receiver through the sense of sight and touch. In the Sumerian myth Lugal-​e, Ninurta, the god of spring thundershowers and floods, determines the character and use of various types of stones, including carnelian and lapis, so they can perform the duties ascribed to them (Jacobsen 1987: 261–​262). Ninurta was only able to animate his army because of the properties inherent in the stone. Stone also had cosmic qualities; ritual texts characterise stone amulets as possessors of magical agency. For example, rock crystal signified enlarged profits and a good name, green marble would bring favour, and lapis meant power and divine favour (Goff 1956: 27) (see also Chapters 3 and 15, this volume). Texts also note that for magical purposes seals should be made of precious stones (Reiner 1971: 137). Lapis lazuli, in particular, seems to have been favoured during the Early Dynastic period (c. 2900–​2300 BCE) for the making of seals (Collon 1987: 100); it was during this period, the third millennium BCE, that the social identities of elites were being established, and lapis lazuli was a material featured in much of the art that served this purpose (Figures 8.7a–​b). Known to possess, radiate, and embody divine qualities, it was valued economically and aesthetically (Winter 1999). The blue colour of lapis lazuli, as well as its radiance and sheen (it frequently contained inclusions of gold pyrite) contributed to its status as a favoured material (Thavalapalan 2019). Lapis lazuli frequently took the form of beards on sculpted figures, linking the material to the affective attribute. In her analysis of Naram-​Sin’s “Victory Stele,” Winter (1996: 1) identifies 176

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Figure 8.7a–​b  (a) Cylinder seal from Ur made of lapis lazuli; and (b) modern impression. Penn Museum (B16282). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum (image nos. 296103, 296104).

the positive attribute of vigour/​vitality (baštu) as present in the beard of the king. Additionally, we can imagine the sensorial link one might draw when imagining one’s own beard to be made of the material; the outward growth of the stone from the skin would itself be an emanation of divinity. In a Sumerian love song, the divine Inanna sings to her mortal shepherd Dumuzi, “My (beloved) with a lapis lazuli beard, … My beloved whose beard shines like a lapis lazuli crown … You are my pin, my gold …” (Alster 1985: 129–​135, PBS XII 52, quoting Kramer). Not only do these sources speak to the quality of the material related to identity, but to the multisensorial experience of the material and the effect of it: the stone shines—​it affects us visually; the beard can be caressed—​it affects us haptically. While stone, and lapis lazuli in particular, can be understood as ideal media for the presencing of one’s cosmic body, seals too can be understood as one’s physical body. The body was a multifaceted composition, including the organic parts, one’s name, images of the body, and their seal; 177

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any one of these could operate independently of one’s body (Pongratz-​Leisten 2011: 139). Through this concept of partible personhood, the seal could become the possessor of the individual it represented.12 By the end of the third millennium BCE , the seal as an administrative tool was intimately associated with an individual’s identity. Kanāku in Akkadian is the verb for the making of a seal imprint on clay, or to seal a document, or to place under seal. Excerpts in literature suggest that the process of doing so entrusted or shifted one’s agency to another thing. The seal and/​or sealing was the individual’s representation; and the seal may have been just as good as the body of the person themselves. In addition, examples from Sumerian epistolary texts especially highlight this with expressions such as: “Give his tablet and seal the boxes and entrust them”; “Seal the basket with your cylinder seal and put your clay tags on it”; and “He will store (the barley) in the storage bin, he should seal (it) with the boss’s and his own seal.”13 Thus, the Mesopotamian phenomenon of identity was deeply embedded in the organic body and the inorganic objects that were in contact with the body (Bahrani 2008: 78). This identity could radiate through deified objects and/​or melammu, leaving an imprint on objects around it. Within a highly sensorial environment, where culturally bound understandings of seal function were cognitively embedded, every time a user rolled a seal over a clay sealing or tablet, they would haptically reiterate the performance of identity. Not only might the seal become a fractal of the body, the wearing of the seal would encourage a haptic connection for the user. Stone embellishments on funerary garments and ritual regalia as evidenced in the tomb of Queen Pu-​abi at the site of Ur (Early Dynastic period) may have made affective her status as an abundant being, and perhaps linked her with the Sumerian goddess Inanna, as the latter was bedecked with lapis lazuli as she descended to the underworld in the Sumerian myth Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (Cohen 1973: 128–​135). Similarly, consecrated jewellery made of gold and stone worn by priestesses transferred divinity to their wearer (Benzel 2015: 93). In Neo-​Assyrian contexts, we see the wearing of seals as part of royal regalia that specifically embodied ideologies of feminine identity, mapping the queen’s personage directly onto ontologies of courtly context (Gansell 2018). Evidence exists for the wearing of seals and beads directly against the skin (Hurowitz 2012: 277); the objects spoke to the wearer’s favoured status in the eyes of the divine. Such was the case with an object found that was worn around Naram-​Sin’s neck, inscribed with the ruler’s name and referring to his favoured divine status (Ismail and Tosi 1976). The wearing of cylinder seals is one indication of their role as markers of bodily identity. Seals were additionally sometimes shaped into bodily forms, as in the case of early stamp seals dated to the fourth millennium BCE in the form of squatting human figures, or later seals in the shape of Pazuzu heads. They were worn both as sealing instruments and as part of dress, and thus took part in a visual communication about who one was, and the associations one had with others. In a Sumerian love poem to Šusin, the figure Kubātum, his beloved, is given a golden pin and a lapis lazuli seal as a gift (Alster 1985: 141, SRT 23, quoting Kramer). In these contexts, I argue that the pin and seal are stand-​ins for the body. And yet again, in a hymn dedicated to divine lovers Inanna and Dumuzi the male lover is compared to a pin and lapis lazuli seal: “My pure pin, my pure pin, your appeal is sweet; My brilliant pin onto which a lapis lazuli seal is attached, your appeal is sweet” (Alster 1985: 146, SRT 31).

The mantic body and clay Next, we will explore how skin, as an organ of the body, functioned as a mantic extension of the body. It was a text onto which cosmic signs and omens could be inscribed and made visible,

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literally written on it. Thus, in the following discussion, the material of clay is assessed as an appropriate medium for the abduction of skin’s agency. Mesopotamian visual and literary evidence allows us to understand the skin’s surface as an active medium for carrying and communicating identity.14 The very nature of signs and writing were known to exist within objects (and humans) before they were seen or read. Practices of divination (in particular hepatoscopy and extispicy)15 relied on the belief that the world was laden with signs from the gods and they appeared on the skin, in the flesh, hair, nail clippings, or woven into fabric fragments. “Destiny was inscribed into the world: this should be understood not in a figurative sense of inscription but as a literal translation of the Akkadian word šaṭāru, to inscribe” (Bahrani 2008: 60–​63, 92, 99). The marking of the skin of humans by the gods required its own practice—​physiognomic observation. Here, certain marks on the skin of humans, particularly on the face, were examined as divine signs; for example, if the markings for the Sumerian sign BA were found on a man’s face in some form, he would “face” misfortune (Frahm 2010: 115). While hepatoscopy and extispicy were essential in the communicative exchange between the divine and human realms, physiognomy was more subjective; readings of the bodily forms could change and were unique with respect to the individual person being observed (Bock 2010: 203). Therefore, we see that writing on the surface of one’s skin was particularly linked with the self and identity. In the same way that seals were used as extensions of the user, and intimately connected to them alone, so too were the marks of the gods on individuals’ skins. Perhaps nowhere else do we see the skin as the formative surface for the carrying of identity more clearly than in the practice of tattooing. Texts dating to the fourth millennium BCE from Uruk (stratigraphic levels IV and III) use the word zag16 in reference to persons and animals owned by temple households indicating that they were branded for ownership. Brands and tattoos marked individuals as slaves or prisoners of war, as indicated through use of the Akkadian term šimtum, literally “identifying mark” in administrative and other texts (Ditchey 2016: 2–​5).17 These textual references suggest such body markings robbed individuals of agency over their own bodies, humiliating them through “denial of personhood” (Schildkrout 2004: 322).18 If we recall that, in this context, the body was the self, we can understand how profound this permanent marking of the skin was (Fox 2011). The marking, scarring, or puncturing of the flesh could damage or change the owner’s identity. This is particularly clear in textual slippages where šimtum may be used in reference to sealing as well as branding. A passage from The Sumerian Laws Handbook of Forms, a late Old Babylonian (second millennium BCE ) scholarly compendium reads, “they ordered him to brand a seal onto his forehead” (Roth 1997: 47, FLP 1287 obv. ii. 4–​6) and indicates such a relationship between sealing and skin. Another Sumerian term, tab, is found in association with branding and the validation of documents (Ditchey 2016: 8). These practices would have literally played into concepts of the mantic body already addressed above through the term šaṭāru (“to inscribe”). While skin can manifest signs and communicate forms of identity, it is also the means through which things are sensed. Worn fabric, as it brushes against the skin, mediates experience between the wearer and their surroundings (Neumann 2017). The clothed experience can provide a participatory sense of closeness to the divine, as the wearers such as kings liken their embodied experiences to those of wooden-​core statues overlaid with gold or silver. To a living, clothed human, therefore, the sense of wearing could remind us of our closeness to the divine (Winter 2000: 36). Architecture, too, could embody the divine, and haptically sense such presence through its own skin (see Chapter 9, this volume).19 Through various interactions with divinely radiant materials and practices, melammu activated the human somatic experience. The wearing of seals too, would have created a similar sensorial relationship between the seal and its owner.

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Haptic experience was featured in love poetry. In the Sumerian love poem of Šusin (mentioned earlier), the king’s lover implores him to “Put your hand onto a garment as with an awl, spread the garment with your hand as with a spatula” (Alster 1985: 137–​138; Ni 2461, 28–​29, quoting Kramer). Here we see the erotic play of the lover’s skin over the garment of the narrator, and a metaphor drawn between the hand of the lover as a piercing implement.20 Skin’s mantic status and haptic function can be related to clay. As skin and flesh was a medium for cosmic signs and identity, clay too could serve these purposes. A ubiquitous and easily obtainable material, it gave form to sealings, tablets, foundation cones and prisms, vessels, moulds, plaques, sculptures, and architectural embellishment; it served as a secondary index, in the Gellian sense, permitting the abduction of agency for the user and recipient. Scholars have argued that one of the most important agentive qualities of both baked and unbaked clay figurines is their ability to place their handler in the role of creator-​being. As clay was formed into various types of objects, including vessels of anthropomorphic form, their creators would have been very much aware that they were taking on the role of the first creators (Moorey 2003). In Mesopotamia and surrounding regions, clay bricks, moulds, and kilns were analogous to birthing processes and materials (Graff 2014: 382–​383). Clay vessels were shaped like bodies, and even embellished as if adorned with clothing or jewellery, as in certain African traditions (Sterner et al. 1988).21 Literary tradition suggests clay was understood to be the material of human creation; goddesses are cited frequently in Mesopotamian myth as having used clay to fashion the first humans.22 For example in the Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, humans were created out of clay to ease the workload of the gods. Additionally, clay as a material for creation of flesh is well known to us through the Mesopotamian Atrahasis myth. Humans are again created to lessen the burden of the god; the god Enki directs Nintu to “mix clay with his flesh and his blood then a god and a man will be mixed together in clay” (Dalley 1989: 15). In Mesopotamia, clay was also the matrix for the carrying of cuneiform writing. As we have seen above, Mesopotamian literati believed that language and writing were deeply connected, and that the maintenance of knowledge and wisdom existed within words and signs. Such an inevitability of signage should make clear to us that the marking of a surface, whether it be an organ, the skin, or a clay tablet, can be understood in a broader sense of Mesopotamian epistemology. Here, the signs are an extension of the divine and the cosmos—​an omniscient form of communication that went both ways (Heessel 2010: 163). In the case of the various practices of divination discussed above, it was a secondary medium on which the scribes wrote their omen texts. Perhaps most clearly, however, hepatoscopy and extispicy texts existed as self-​ referential objects for flesh; divinatory readings appear written on clay tablets shaped like the liver (Figure 8.8). Writing, or inscription, of cosmic destiny was present in the flesh as it was also placed within clay matrices; such divinatory science aligns with Rochberg’s (2004; 2011) work on Mesopotamian ontology. Agricultural-​themed creation myths include references to soil and clay as part of the bodily flesh or skin and actions of penetration and puncturing. The tale Enki and Ninmah casts Enki as ˘ the provider of semen for the creation of humans by “digging his phallus into the levee, plunging his phallus into the canebrake” (Jacobsen 1987: 191–​192). Similarly, the Sumerian hymn to the E-​engu (Enki’s temple at Eridu) reads, “When in the year known as ‘Abundance born in heaven …’ The people had broken through the ground like grass …” (Jacobsen 1976: 112). Although humans here are likened to grass, they must penetrate the surface of the earth to come to life. In the tale, The Creation of the Pickax “Enlil, did verily speed to remove heaven from earth; So that the seed from which the nation could sprout up from the field; … So that the ‘flesh producer’ [Uzumua] could grow the vanguard of mankind” (Jacobsen 1976: 113). Enlil creates the pickaxe, and uses it to break open the rough crust of the earth so that the growing humans can break 180

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Figure 8.8  Liver tablet from Sippar. British Museum (BM 92668). Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

forth: [He] drove his pickax into the ‘flesh producer’ … the people of his land were breaking through the ground toward Enlil” (Jacobsen 1976: 114). In all of these cases, we see that through the physical process of the plough penetrating the soil life is created. We can imagine that the breaking through the material of the clay with the seal would recall such myths to one’s memory. As a medium for sealing, clay acted as an intercessor between a seal, the item it secured, and multiple groups or distinct actors involved in the haptic experience of securing a container at its origin and destination. The clay would be touched, balled up, discarded, or perhaps even crushed and recycled back into raw clay. The nature of the material—​its ability to be moulded, manipulated, re-​born, and contribute to the sensory experience of multiple hands—​was in and of itself somatically charged. Agents that sealed or wrote on clay documents would have been highly aware of the haptic qualities of clay against their own skin. Not only would they manipulate the material in their hands, but they sometimes used their own body or dress in lieu of seals for officiating clay documents. Scribes often left fingerprints on clay while manipulating the tablets. Fingernail and garment hem impressions, too, sometimes substituted for seal rolling (Taylor 2011: 13–​15). Tablets bearing impressed cuneiform signs frequently also carry inscribed figural motifs. One common motif found on tablets are stylised entrails (Figure 8.9), suggesting that the substance of clay did command a “suture” effect similar to the Medieval contexts above, deeply connecting the writer/​reader to their topic.

Conclusion In Mesopotamia the mind and body were inextricably linked components of one’s identity. Seals can be understood as a physical extension of the body. For some seal users, an awe-​ inspiring force-​field of identity (known as melammu), through the affective properties of stone, radiated through and out from the cylinder seal. The seal, then, was capable of extending its agency through physical contact onto the clay. This body affected another body of flesh or skin. Through this practice, which at every stage was haptically sensed, a social contract was made concrete. In the mind of the Mesopotamians, the touch of the skin was key in an exploration

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Figure 8.9  Tablet with incised entrails, probably Old Babylonian or Middle Babylonian period (second millennium BCE ). Yale Babylonian Collection (YPM BC 016794). Source: Courtesy of the Yale Babylonian Collection.

of the self and divine. In the story “The Blessing of the Bridegroom,” the narrator speaks of the readying of Inanna’s bridal suite for her marriage to Dumuzi (Jacobsen 1976: 40): The pure (bridal) bed, a very semblance of lapis lazuli, Which Gibil (the firegod) was purifying for you In the Irigal (temple), Has the caretaker –​greatly fit for (ministering to) queenship. Inanna, in time, calls for the bed with much fervour, smooths the bedding out for her beloved, and speaks of how it sweetens the loins. Her hands and increasingly even more of her divine skin rub against sheets of lapis lazuli to make the world fertile. As the divine Inanna participates in a haptic experience where contact between skin and stone allow for creative power, so too could human agents use their seal on clay to bind their identity to a document. Documents were at the same time inherently well-​suited to carrying marks of identity; made of clay, which can be understood as skin, this medium received the mark, reified through the seal/​body’s energy, thereby possessing the identity of the seal user. The identity of the Mesopotamian self can therefore be found in sealed documents, which we can now be understood to have somatic ontological status analogous to Medieval manuscripts and Byzantine icons. In exploring the status of clay in Mesopotamian contexts, we can understand how it acted as a second body—​a body of flesh—​aptly suited to receive the imprint of identity from the seal user. Through concepts such as Skin Ego and body schema, we see the skin as a secondary “index” permitting the abduction of agency for the user and recipient as well as a liminal matrix through which object entanglement was negotiated.

Notes 1. The desire for meso-​perceptual sensing to probe surfaces, in particular skin, and be able to move through surfaces, is in many cases what drives us to handle and interact with objects. Surfaces are

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created and manipulated by artists and craftspeople to encourage such interactions while simultaneously concealing what lies within the surfacescape (Hay 2010: 91). 2. Anderson (2019: 211) offers a most recent case study in Bronze Age Aegean contexts. She identifies the intimacy of the bodily juxtaposition of the seal and physical person as being inherent in the clay impression. The impression possessed the vital energy of the process, akin to that which was in the seal itself: “It is crucial to recognise that this energy did not reside just in the impression—​it was present in the seal, the genetrix, and arose from the flow of interaction through the human, the seal, and the impression.” For Anderson, an essential component of the sealing process was the kinetic rupture that occurs in the process of sealing when the seal leaves the body and impresses the clay. 3. For basic introductory and overview literature on cylinder seals and sealings one might start with Frankfort 1939;Ward 1910; Gibson and Biggs 1977; Porada 1980; Collon 1987; 1990; Hallo and Winter 2001; Taylor 2006; Ameri et al. 2018. 4. See also Castor 2017: 86, who writes that through this aesthetic/​psychic experience objects possess a “halo-​effect.” 5. Neuroscientists have illustrated that the mind subconsciously feels our bodies’ positions and dynamic movements through space. Through the biological process of holding, touching, and using objects, the brain perceives such objects as extensions of ourselves. As Malafouris (2008: 115) states, “the mind does not inhabit the body, it is rather the body that inhabits the mind.” 6. Byzantine writers and philosophers perceived the ideal colour as light; gemstones were described as having “presence” effects such as glitter ebbing colour, spiralling depth, change, and mutability. Additionally, flesh-​coloured enamel possessed a semi-​transparency that functioned to tempted both touch and sight (Pentcheva 2010: 111–​114). 7. In post-​iconoclastic Byzantine philosophy, established “charakter was the ‘snow angel’ imprint of the divine shape (morphe) in matter which in turn was re-​imprinted (as typos) on another material surface, reversing the negative intaglio into a positive bas-​relief, solidifying the shape of absence. Eikon as typos became the isomorphos, positive imprint of the negative intaglion/​charakter” (Pencheva 2010: 96). The radiating affect of the materials and their three-​dimensionality approached a realistic divinity in the absence of the physical divinity. 8. By exploring the biological anatomy of the skin, Anzieu ascertains that one can better approach functioning of the mind. Through advances in neuroscience now understand, for example, the “center” (cortex—​outer grey matter of the brain) sits on top of the periphery (encephalon—​white matter). At the gastrula phase of embryonic development, the embryo goes from the form of a sac, folding in on itself (“invagination”), to ultimately form two layers, the endoderm and ectoderm. Brain and skin are both formed from the ectoderm—​they are both the thickest and hardest parts that face outward and are protective. Both organs serve to process sensations from the outer world through an exchange of information not through core/​periphery relations, but through relations between surfaces (Anzieu 1989: 9–​10). 9. The ideological narratives of flaying found, in some cases, on the bestiaries and the story of St Bartholomew, were made more potent because of their very presence on flayed skin. Kay (2006: 38) concludes that this “suture” between the physical page and the narrative would have acted as a form of communication which subconsciously prompted readers to more deeply consider their own drives towards death and self-​preservation. 10. See Porter 2010 for an overview. She draws upon a vast legacy of scholarship on this topic, including: Bottero 2001; Lambert 1990;Von Soden 1994. 11. See Sonik 2015 for extensive discussion. See also: SAA 10: 166; Stol 2000: 148; Machinist 2006: 173–​ 174; Frahm 2013: 112–​113. 12. And even more so, an imprint of personhood on an object had (possibly) endless bands of agentive action, capable of affecting multiple populations around it. See, for example, Porter’s (2010: 171–​173) discussion of the agency of the stamped building bricks of Naram-​Sin. 13. Translations from CAD K: 136; Musée du Louvre 1910: 4 33: 14; CAD K: 136; Kraus 1939: 1 105:11; and CAD K: 137; Kraus 1939: 1 46:14, respectively. 14. Different from Aristotlean or Saussurean philosophy, the Mesopotamian nature of the thing was inherent in the cuneiform sign, and could only be preserved and known through an understanding and preservation of that sign’s origin (Frahm 2010: 95). 15. The medical practice of examining the livers and entrails of sacrificed animals for divinatory signs. 16. These texts form the earliest evidence we have for writing in Mesopotamia. Likely reflective of the Sumerian language, such texts are considered to be a foundational aspect of culturally bound 183

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philosophy, and used as seminal evidence for how we understand social practice and behaviours. For introductory reading see in particular Englund 1998; for approaches to how these texts are relevant to image-​based communication, see Dittman 1986; Pittman 1991; Ross 2014. 17. There are few semantic differences between Akkadian and Sumerian. In situations in which we can be fairly certain of the method used, either through context or through orthography (as in the use of a particular determinative), branding seems to be more common. zag is associated with livestock in Uruk level IV and III texts, while Babylonian lexical texts equate zag with known Akkadian terms for marking, particularly šimtum, “identifying mark,” and ittum, “mark, sign, feature, or characteristic” (Ditchey 2016: 3–​6). 18. Body marking was always involuntary and associated with ownership by another human or deity (Ditchey 2016: 3). 19. Palaces existed as the body of and the embodiment of the king; stone wall surfaces can be understood as skin (Shafer 2015; Bahrani 2008: 204f.). Literary tropes treat sanctuary walls as shining brilliantly and emanating their divine light, through surface linings of precious metals. Esarhaddon (680–​669 BCE ) overlaid the walls of his cult places with gold and silver to make them shine (Winter 1994: 124). At Persepolis too, we can understand the Apadana’s surface as a metaphor for the dress of the royal cum divine. The king and the crown prince “are surrounded by the fabric that constitutes the depicted whole of the relief ” (McFerrin 2017: 153). 20. The words suppīnum and bu’du are translated as awl and spatula and are associated with the technical term describing the application of the tools to embellish a garment (Alster 1985: 78–​79). 21. Additionally, in formative Mesoamerican contexts hollow clay figurines are shaped in response to and in partnership with practices of modifying the body, body ornaments, and the processing of the body in death (Joyce 2008: 39). Here, in fact, the physical interaction of the crafters’ skin with the clay matrix makes more meaningful the indexical relationship between the living body and deceased body through the figurine’s production and related sensorial experiences. 22. See Jacobsen 1976; 1987; Dalley 1989; Simkins 1994.

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9 A sense of scale Proprioception, embodied subjectivities, and the space of kingship at Persepolis Neville McFerrin

Introduction: touch, sight, and productive entanglements In reliefs throughout Persepolis, senses are on display. Depicted hands reach out to touch fabric and skin; the open mouths of lions suggest the sound of snarls; cedar trees and rams, incense burners and horses evoke a rich scentscape. Such sensorial interplays emphasise connections between perception and experience. This deliberate depiction of polysensorial enmeshment invites the visitor to consciously focus upon sensorial interplays in which multiplicities of experiential modalities intertwine to generate, structure, and enliven interactions between viewers and the environment of the site. While such exchanges can be observed in reliefs, especially those of the Apadana, interchanges between visitor and depiction are especially charged in spaces of kinaesthetic interaction, where participation in the imperial system is underscored through movement. Through connections between bodies, architecture, and reliefs the site insists upon the relational nature of our senses, a notion that is highlighted through the manipulation of scalar references. This deliberately crafted space influences interpretations of sense input, as much as sense input provides the potential to define the environment. At Persepolis, this mutually informing immersive interaction not only presents visitors with a persuasive vision of inclusive imperial rule, it also highlights the utility of a mutually constituting system wherein the senses serve as a double for the relationship between ruler and ruled. Although the empire, and imperial processes, may transcend the experience and perhaps even the comprehension of the individuals who come together to define it, at Persepolis, the body and its sense modalities serve as mediators, enabling visitors to engage with concepts that might otherwise remain elusive. As figures depicted in wall reliefs directly reference familiar sense-​ plays, these interactions themselves intercede in the imposing scale of ceremonial capital and imperial power alike. Questions of inclusive engagement are central to the function of the site as a whole (see also Chapter 4, this volume). Begun by the Achaemenid King Darius I around 515 BCE following his successful campaigns in Egypt, Persepolis is a ceremonial administrative hub, a communicative zone within which Achaemenid imperial ideologies are simultaneously generated and performed (Schmidt 1957: 110; Root 1979: 103). Expressions of inclusivity are emphasised

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-10

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through the nomenclature of Xerxes’ monumental Gate of All Lands (Root 2014: 17), which directs and modulates the movement of visitors as they enter the site. Such notions reach a crescendo in the reliefs of the double staircases that grant access to the Apadana—​the massive 36-​columned audience hall, capable of accommodating some ten thousand people, that is the most elevated structure on the site, sitting atop its own 2.6 metre platform (Root 1979: 86). Two double stairways, on the north and east sides of the structure, give access to the hall. Upon the façades of Wing B of these stairways are depicted 23 groups of delegates from around the empire. The delegations, each led by Persian ushers, carry tribute to the king, who is depicted enthroned, with the crown prince standing at his back in the original central panels of the reliefs. Behind the crown prince, on Wing B, lines of Persian nobles gather (Root 1979: 86). Upon these reliefs, as depicted Persian ushers grasp the hands of meticulously rendered delegates from subject nations, synaesthetic entanglements mirror the interconnections between subject and ruler (Figure 9.1). The anthropologist Eduardo Kohn (2013: 1–​2) suggests that such reciprocity depends upon mutual perception; shared sensorial experiences—​joined gazes, grasping hands—​underscore similarity, crafting the potential for equitable interaction. On the reliefs of the Apadana staircases, the careful grasp of the Persian ushers indicates both the reciprocity of the imperial endeavour and of social actors within it (McFerrin 2019: 243). For these ushers and delegates depicted in reliefs, the medium of shared touch acknowledges that delegates are something more than an

Figure 9.1  Persian usher taking the hand of a member of the Babylonian delegation on the eastern stairway of the Apadana at Persepolis. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

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object—​that they are agents capable of perception on par with their Persian hosts. Such mutually constitutive interactions extend both through the reliefs and beyond it. When groups of visitors traverse the site, they, too, are engaged in acts of simultaneous perception. If the capacity of the Apadana can serve as an indicator of crowd size, visitors would brush against each other as they moved about the site, their own movements generating momentary connections, extending the bonds suggested in the imaginal zone of the reliefs into the space beyond it. Indeed, touch is only one of a suite of senses through which such communicative contact occurs. Although touch, both accidental and deliberate, depends upon and reinforces connection, the depicted touches in the reliefs of the Apadana are brought to the visitor’s attention through recourse to sight, a sense that depends upon separation (McFerrin 2019: 242; Howes and Classen 2014: 8). Even as touch creates connection, the depiction of touch produces disjunctions—​conceptual separations—​by picturing sensations that, while comprehensible visibly, are not perceptible in their own right. These dynamic tensions highlight entanglements, enmeshments that are themselves a key component of the imperial programming. Touch thus illuminates connectivities that transcend the tangible. Imperial power and in-​g roup connection are constantly negotiated and ultimately fleeting, as are gestures that help to reify them. Yet, in the reliefs of the Apadana, such ephemeralities are made material. This juxtaposition, of ephemeral and material, in which touch is made visible, is one of a number of paradoxical interactions depicted. As the lioness who strides together with the Elamite delegation turns to admonish her cubs, she sounds a perpetual roar that is suggested visually by her open mouth, stretched widely enough that her teeth are visible and her muzzle is wrinkled. Yet, this roar cannot be heard (Figure 9.2). The ephemeral sound, which might, in reality, reverberate for a few seconds before fading, is given longevity in its transmutation from audio to visual, but this metamorphosis negates the ability to perceive the sound itself. In the central panel, incense burners flank the seated king, suggesting a shift in scentscapes that would further heighten the experience of his presence, yet visitors standing before this peripheral portion of the staircase are likely too far removed from the living king’s physical presence within the hall to discern such scents first-​hand (Figure 9.3). Even as the reliefs invite mimetic slippage, they preclude the possibility of fully inhabiting the imaginal zone of depiction through persistent reminders of inaccessibility, through the denial of full sensorial engagement. Yet, in foregrounding apparent distinctions—​ between object and agent, observer and observed, sight and touch, or scent, or sound—​the reliefs highlight entanglement. If, as physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad (2007: 206) contends, “reality is an ongoing dynamic of intra-​ activity,” in which observers are a component of a system, rather than independent from it, then the imaginal zone both generated and populated by the reliefs of Persepolis comments upon the experience of the visitor, serving as a sort of representational asymptote that mimics the reality of the visitor without ever fully encapsulating it. Further, the constructed environment of the site, the wider landscape that it mediates, and the humans that interact with them are mutually constitutive (Merleau-​Ponty 2002: 106–​107; Tilley 2004: 16–​18). Such mutually constitutive entanglements are ubiquitous throughout the site. Yet while it is possible to perceive an individuated sense, as when sight is utilised to engage with the idea of sound, as in the case of the silently roaring lioness, experiences are predicated upon interplays of senses and upon the interaction of senses as a combinatory system. It is possible to distinguish between multiple sense modalities, but this distinction does not necessarily predicate disjunction. Our perception of individuated senses may itself be illusory; it may not be possible to fully disentangle our experiences of sensorial input (Tilley 2004: 15–​16). For, as Sally Promey (2014: 23) has cogently argued, sight, taste, scent, and hearing are each predicated upon touch.

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Figure 9.2  The lioness led by the Elamite delegation turns to roar at her cubs on the eastern stairway of the Apadana at Persepolis. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Light touches the retina to produce sight, just as taste-​buds must come into direct contact with a substance to generate an impression of it. This mode of enmeshed perception, in which senses are simultaneously mutually reinforcing and yet individuated (Howes and Classen 2014: 154), is itself a fruitful double for the relationship between a king and his subjects, an empire and its people. Although such interchanges are evident throughout the Apadana reliefs, they become even more apparent in those spaces in which depicted figures and visitors to the site actively engage in mirrored movements. To consider the ways in which multisensorial interactions enliven the immersive experiences of visitors, and the ways in which the persuasive aims of the site are underscored by multiple valences of sensorial entanglements, we turn now to some of the most intensely interactive reliefs at Persepolis.

Performative inclusion: mirroring, reduplication, and mimetic slippage Visitors ascend staircases across Persepolis, staircases that grant access to the Apadana (Schmidt 1953: pls. 23 A, 24 A, 50, 56 A, 56 C) and the Central Building (Schmidt 1953: pls. 66–​74, 82, 85–​86; Root 1979: 95–96; 2018: 201), to the Palace of Darius (Schmidt 1953: 132–​135, 152, 155–​156), and the Palace of Xerxes (Schmidt 1953: pls. 159, 161 B, 163–​165, 169–​172). On the reliefs lining the stairways of the Apadana, diminutive guardsmen stand atop each step. Each man faces forward, his eyes trained upon the back of the preceding fellow. With their upright posture, their hands clasped firmly around their spears, they wait, flanking the visitor in a slow, orderly procession (Figure 9.4). On the staircases of the nearby Central Building, situated between the 192

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Figure 9.3  Two incense burners stand before the enthroned king in a detail of one of the original central panels of the Apadana at Persepolis. Source: Courtesy of SEF/​Art Resource, NY.

Apadana and the Treasury (Figure 9.5), similarly undersized figures undertake a livelier ascent. In this space, well-​coiffed men wearing the round hat, long-​sleeved tunic, and trousers typical of Medes (Roaf 1974: 99), step from stair to stair. They turn back in communication with those who walk behind them. Some figures gesture, as if the visitor has happened upon them mid-​ conversation, although others reach to settle their hands upon the shoulders of those who stride ahead of them. Many of these men carry lotus blossoms; none wear or carry visible weaponry (Figure 9.6). While the reliefs of delegates progressing towards the king that greet visitors as they approach the Apadana emphasise entanglements between king and subject, these small figures who usher visitors into buildings elsewhere on the site affirm that visitors themselves are a part of this process. On the interior face of the stairs of the Central Building, the long strides of the depicted courtiers draw the attention of visitors both to the width of the steps themselves and to their own motions as they join the figures in their climb. It is through this interaction, in which depiction and reality intersect, and through the sight of depicted figures and the coinciding touch of stone under foot, that visitors have the opportunity to comprehend their connection to the reliefs and to the imperial enterprise that these reliefs help to mediate. The sense of paralleled action and shared purpose suggested by the reduplicative movement of depicted and living figures on such stairways generates slippage between visitor and depiction, prompting visitors to elide their experiences with the imaginal space of the depiction (see Chapters 12 and 15, this volume). 193

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Figure 9.4  Two guards stand atop the stairs on the inner face of a stairway leading into the Apadana at Persepolis. Source: Photo by W. Buss; © DeA Picture Library/​Art Resource, NY.

In a discussion of another access point at Persepolis, the double-​reversed stairway leading to Xerxes’ Gate of All Lands, Margaret Cool Root reminds her reader that the surfaces encountered by modern visitors to Persepolis are not those encountered by more ancient visitors to the site. As she argues, the masonry of the Takht would once have been “smooth, polished and mirror-​like,” allowing it to reflect the movement and form of visitors, transfiguring them into “a sharpening shadow on the wall of empire” (Root 2014: 16–​17). While the surfaces that Root describes do not include figural reliefs such as those on the stairways of the Central Building, the reflective interjection that she discusses may still be apparent in such spaces. If these reliefs were painted, as is the case for other reliefs throughout the site (Nagel 2010), then the background could offer the opportunity to similarly generate a reflective surface. In his discussion of an excavated relief at the top of the stairway of the Central Building, Ernst Herzfeld suggests that the brightly coloured reliefs of the site appeared against a polished background (Nagel 2010: 109–​110). Thus, on these stairways as well, the shadowed forms of living visitors could be projected into the space of their depicted counterparts. As such reflections conflate experience and depiction, they highlight a paradoxical duality, one that underscores the potentials of reciprocal perception. For, even as the imaginal zone of 194

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Figure 9.5  Plan of Persepolis. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

the reliefs is cognisant of the space of the viewer, it remains distinct from it. This distinction is constructed through a series of interactions, of embodied experience and depiction, of sight and touch, of tangible and ephemeral. Such mutually informing dualities are made evident through the juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory notions, further stressing the indivisibility of the experience of these concepts. Thus, the components of motion—​the bend of a knee, the press of a foot, the interaction between the surfaces of the body and surfaces beyond it—​are highlighted by curtailing that motion, by immobilising forms, literally objectifying them in reliefs. Similarly, the impermanent presence of a visitor is most firmly marked through collective action, through the repetition of the gestures of many such visitors, impressing signs of wear into stones and brushing oil from fingertips onto surfaces. Much as delegates on the Apadana reliefs, or courtiers on the balustrades of the Central Building are components of a whole, it is iterative acts that leave long-​term traces on these constructions. The contemplation of an individual as an individual happens within a moment, as a shadow moves across a wall, as a reflective surface doubles movement. Thus, motion is highlighted through immobility, by rendering figures in stone, and a tangible individual presence is underscored through the generation of a transient marker. 195

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Figure 9.6  Courtiers traversing the north stairway of the east wing of the inner north balustrade of the Central Building at Persepolis. Source: Courtesy of Margaret Cool Root.

These conflations of individual and collective, living and depicted, attest to the mimetic potentials of the reliefs, of their ability to encapsulate, converse with, and act upon the experience of the visitor. Although the interactions upon these stairways are fleeting, these ephemeral connections have the potential to craft more permanent bonds. From the sociable gestures of the courtiers on the Central Building balustrades, to the grip that joins the delegates on the Apadana to the Persian ushers who direct them, reliefs in Persepolis emphasise connection. As the site presents a novel conceptualisation of imperial rule (Root 1979: 284), it argues that a collective identity, in which all of its subjects participate, is at the heart of this new mode. Such connections, and the understanding of these connections, is both generated and maintained through mirroring. If we are able to understand the physical actions of others, if we can comprehend the capacity to similarly participate in those actions, regardless of whether or not we have yet done so, our capacity for comprehension and for learning is likely rooted in the activities of mirror neurons, neurons which fire not only when we perform actions, but when we observe others doing so (del Giudice et al. 2009: 350; Gallese 2009: 520). Mirror neurons, by creating what Vittorio Gallese (2009: 520)—​one of the team that first identified mirror neurons—​calls “a neurally instantiated we-​centric,” provide us with the capacity to understand that we are capable of performing actions that we observe others undertaking. Watching a person ascend a stairway activates neurons within the brain that would similarly fire if we were to perform the same action (Gallese 2009: 522). Such interconnections extend beyond the observation of other humans. As long as the observed action occurs through an analogous body, one that the observer has the capacity to map onto his or her own form, then mirror neurons are activated, and connections 196

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are made (Brucker et al. 2015: 28; Engel et al. 2008: 2034). The depictions of courtiers on the staircases of the Central Building and the guards on the balustrades of the Apadana correspond clearly to the forms of living humans; indeed, the addition of paint would render them even more comparable to their living counterparts, a notion that is underscored by the careful depiction of their dress. As such, these depictions have the capacity to prompt the excitation of mirror neurons, furthering the slippage between depicted courtier and visitor. If replicated action, through the intervention of mirror neurons, has the capacity to “enable the observer empathically to understand the actions of others while at the same time learning to perform a similar action” (del Giudice et al. 2009: 350), then the act of walking together is not only a gesture of welcome. It is also a learning process in its own right. The depicted figures, the Persian guardsmen on the stairways of the Apadana, the courtiers on the stairways of the Central Building, are all already integrated into the imperial system, and as such, the act of mirroring them helps to instruct visitors on how to become a part of this system themselves. Although the reliefs of the Apadana insist that all subjects are essential and respected components of the empire, not all subjects have equal access to each building on the site. Margaret Cool Root (2014: 22) argues that, when approaching the Apadana from the Gate of All Lands, “insider participants in court ceremonials” would have been directed towards the east side of the stairway, while visitors from farther afield could have made their way to the west side of the stairway, with this division of visitors doubling the reliefs on the stairway itself, where gift-​bearing delegations are depicted on the western side of the stairway, while Persian nobility are depicted on the east. Root’s observations that reliefs and visitor movement may correlate can extend to the reliefs depicted upon the inner faces of stairways as well. On the Apadana, both insider participants and visitors from abroad climb stairways alongside depicted guards; on the stairways of the Central Building, visitors ascend stairways together with genial Persian courtiers. While the guardsmen on the Apadana stairways stand rigid and separate, with each figure situated upon a single stair, facing forward with his legs together, the courtiers of the Central Building are often captured in the act of stepping. Some glance back, even as others reach forward, their gestures and posture more informal than their counterparts on the Apadana. If these reliefs can serve to prompt particular types of action in those who interact with them, then this variable deportment may itself help visitors to understand norms of interaction within these two spaces. Visitors to the Apadana, both insider and newly incorporated, are presented with reliefs that suggest that formal deportment, slow movement, and deliberate gestures are appropriate to the ceremonial space where one might gaze upon the king himself. However, such formality is perhaps unnecessary in the Central Building, with its bench-​lined central hall, which provided invited guests access to the Treasury and to the Hall of One Hundred Columns (Root 2014: 22–​23). By modelling these differing modes of behaviour, the reliefs may enable visitors to perform more effectively within these spaces. Such guidance may have been particularly welcome to those unfamiliar with Achaemenid modes of kingship and empire, for the Achaemenid imperial system offers a “new blueprint” for conceptualising the relationship between a king and his subjects (Wiesehöfer 2001: 25). Through these stairway reliefs, the site not only proposes a new system; it also seeks to help its visitors to participate within it. Much in the way a child learns to walk by observing the motions of his or her guardians, using their actions as a model, figures in the reliefs of Persepolis serve as guides, teaching new modes of interactions to subjects, and in so doing underscoring changes from previous iterations of imperial governance and the norms associated with them, together with reassuring visitors that they are properly adhering to the new system. By giving visitors these depicted models, the architects of the visual programme of Persepolis adhere to the tenets of inclusivity and communality suggested from the moment that visitors enter the site, through the gate that Xerxes 197

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Figure 9.7  Two members of the Assyrian delegation direct rams in procession on the eastern stairway of the Apadana at Persepolis. Source: Werner Forman Archive; courtesy of HIP/​Art Resource, NY.

named the Gate of All Lands (Root 2014: 17). Inclusion is not only nominal; through the mediation of reliefs and the engagement of mirror neurons it is both performed and embodied. This invitation, although insistent, is offered unobtrusively, through a shared undertaking rather than an overt dictate. In this, it doubles the careful interactions of ushers and delegates, delegates and animate gifts, on the Apadana reliefs. On the East Wing of the Eastern Staircase of the Apadana, two rams walk alongside two members of the Assyrian delegation (Figure 9.7). The two men who lead these animals direct their movement; each man rests a hand upon a ram’s neck. Although the positioning of the two rams obscures the form of the delegate in the background, the placement of his arm suggests that both delegates also tangle a hand in the tufts of wool that curl along each animal’s back. Although the touch of the delegates leads the rams along their path, it does not constrain their movements. In this delegation, no visible leads or restraints are used, suggesting that the rams, like their handlers, walk towards the king of their own accord, the touch of the delegate’s hand against the ram’s pelt acting as a double for the grasp of the Persian usher’s hand against that of the lead delegate (see also Chapter 4, this volume). Although not all animals depicted upon the Apadana are equally unrestrained, even those delegations that convey particularly dangerous beasts towards the king do not overtly correct the behaviour of their companions, except perhaps in the case of the two lion cubs carried by members of the Elamite delegation. In this case, while the young age of the cubs renders them incapable of appropriate decorum—​a fact that their mother may take pains to correct—​it is the relationship of the adult lioness to her handler which is of interest. Although the lioness is tethered, her range of motion is not curtailed. Even as she turns, teeth bared towards her cubs, 198

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in a gesture that could be threatening to a human form, her handler’s rod remains aloft and her tether is held loosely enough that she does not appear to strain against it. Her cubs, which, if carried before her, could serve as a lure, instead are carried behind her (Root 2003: 19–​20). She retains her bodily agency, as do the delegates themselves. Persian ushers take the hands of delegates to direct them, to inform them of appropriate order and procedure, an act that is paralleled both in the depicted actions of delegates and their charges, and in the interactions of visitors and reliefs, creating an iteratively reinforced suggestion. Just as the lioness in the Elamite delegation is free to turn at will, just as the ram who walks together with the Assyrian delegation is neither restrained nor tethered, visitors who ascend these stairways are not coerced. The stairway figures serve to reinforce a connection that is enacted through the presence of these visitors on the site, reassuring them that they are, like the depicted delegates of the Apadana, vital components in a collective. They do so in large part through offering the opportunity for active shared participation. While the idea of shared action, of phenomenological reciprocity between courtiers and visitors resonates with the conceptual aims of the site, in actually engaging the sensorimotor functions of visitors, stairway reliefs convert observation into action. Potential that is inherent in the simulations of mirror neurons is made tangible when visitors undertake the action that they view. Such dynamic engagement facilitates comprehension not only of connections between depicted figures and living visitors, but also of the message of the site as a whole, as learning processes are expedited, and abstruse concepts made more readily apprehensible, when the bodies of visitors are engaged (Brucker et al. 2015: 28). As reliefs in Persepolis engage and recall multiple sense modalities and mental processes, some beyond conscious control, the bodies of visitors themselves collude with the architecture of the site to convey and absorb the imperial message.

Persuasive stairways: proprioception and bodily interrogation In these stairways, architecture and depiction join to reinforce the visitor’s inclusion in the imperial process and to invite the visitor’s deliberate participation. On these stairways, such participation both signals and underscores reciprocity, in an interaction that unknowingly doubles the neural activities that underpin social interaction. Yet, even as sight suggests inclusion, to participate in this system requires recourse to alternate sensorial modes. In this as well, interactive stairway balustrades parallel the processes of mirror neurons. For mirror neurons do not only fire after an action is observed, they also engage when action is undertaken, and in so doing correlate one person’s activities with those of another. As Vittorio Gallese (2014: 2) argues, “Through the bodily self ’s resonance, others become second selves.” Although sight may suggest the potential for connection, this potential is realised through bodily engagement (Gallese 2014: 2–​3). Such is the observation of a cognitive neuroscientist, and such is the contention of stairways in Persepolis. These engagements invite metacognitive interrogation through the reconceptualisation of socio-​spatial performances, to the “diffraction rather than reflection” (Barad 2003: 803), of depicted figures and living visitors. These depictions do not only reference the experiences of the visitor, they influence them in a cycle of iterative recombination that is doubled both in the insistent repetition of reliefs across the site of Persepolis and in the kaleidoscopic permutations of sensorial perception. On the stairways of the Central Building, a construction of uncertain function which may serve as a transitional space limiting access to portions of the site, the depicted act of stepping, underscored by the exaggerated extension of the legs of the depicted figures is paralleled when living visitors walk up the stairs alongside their undersized counterparts. As the stairs themselves both direct and enable movement and access, structuring the visitor’s participation in the environment of the site, the reliefs facilitate reflection upon interactivity. While 199

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mirror neurons and senses such as proprioception and kinaesthesia can function without conscious engagement, these depictions invite visitors to consider these invisible interactions. For, as the joining of stairway, depicted figure, and the bodies of visitors suggests, mimesis is as experiential as it is conceptual. Indeed, as Michael Taussig (1993) has posited, the yielding of boundaries that is at the core of the mimetic process is predicated upon bodily copying, for the mind and the body are as enmeshed as are the senses themselves. Perception is shaped by the body. Taussig (1993: 46) states, “just as speech can be understood as thought activating the vocal cords and tongue, so thinking itself involves innervation of all one’s features and sense organs.” The architecture of both the Apadana and the Central Building collaborates with the bodies of visitors to incorporate these individuals into the imperial system, as the reliefs upon these staircases invite the same visitors to reflect upon this cooperative enterprise more overtly. Through the depiction of the act of stepping, through motion that is exaggerated in the lift and extension of undersized legs, the reliefs encourage the visitor to reconsider the movement of his or her body. The placement of foot against stone, the unyielding surface of the step pressing against pliable footwear in an inverse of the press of leather to malleable skin shifting atop rigid bone, provides input that distinguishes internal and external, delineating the edges of the body, even as the upward motion of the leg reinforces both the elevation of the site and the structures upon it. This engagement with elevation itself reiterates and internalises the experience of the metaphoric scale of the power of the king, an exchange that is further reinforced by scalar interplays on the stairways themselves. The courtiers on the interior faces of the stairways that grant access to the Central Building in some cases stretch their legs across the whole of a step, their knees lifted nearly level with their hips despite the shallow rise of the stairways themselves. While such exaggerated movements draw attention to the act of stepping itself, these motions concurrently emphasise the scale of the depicted figures. If a visitor of around 1.7 metres, the average height of an adult Persian man (Root 2018: 191), were to raise his or her foot to a similar height, he or she would stumble, for the stairs themselves do not require such effort to surmount. Although depicted delegate and living visitor share both space and experience, they do not share scale. It is unlikely that the mimetic interchange between depicted courtiers and living visitors would be so compelling as to prompt a visitor to trip. To generate a stairway that problematises, rather than facilitates, action would stand counter to multiple aims, but the appropriate function of these stairways does not depend solely upon sight or touch. Effective motion is performed through the intervention of proprioception. Proprioception is the sense that allows us to identify the position of our own body parts, without the intervention of sight (O’Dea 2011: 308). It is the sense that allows us to touch our thumb to each of our fingers, even when our eyes are closed. On the stairways of Persepolis, it is the sense that allows us to look at reliefs, even as we walk forward, without the need to stare at the surface against which our foot presses. Proprioception provides information regarding the location of sensation (Ritchie and Carruthers 2015: 357), allowing us to realise that it is our arm that itches, rather than our leg. Proprioception provides bodily awareness “from within,” allowing individuals to understand “the boundaries of the body as a whole” (Mandrigin 2021: 1888). As such, if there is a sense that governs agency, then perhaps proprioception is that sense. For, while agency may be the ability to choose between a set of intersecting identities, highlighting efficacious identities at will, it also depends upon the ability to take action (Harris et al. 2015: 7), and in that, on the sense of the body relative to other objects—​on proprioception. On the steps of the Central Building, then, multiple levels of agency are on display. Proprioception, as a sense, recedes unless it is highlighted (O’Shaughnessy 1995: 175). Dancers, athletes, and other professional motion-​makers may monitor proprioceptive input more overtly (Montero 200

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2016: 189), but for many, proprioception “takes a back seat in consciousness” (O’Shaughnessy 1995: 175). Although architects of Persepolis may have had no name for this sensorial mode, but depiction of the exaggerated motions of stepping courtiers draws attention to differing bodily schemas, luring a visitor’s sense of his or her own body in space to their mental foreground, and in so doing, highlighting another aspect of agency. The dress of depicted courtiers on the Central Building, like the groups of delegates depicted upon the Apadana reliefs, suggests participation in a hegemonic system. Alternatively, by drawing attention to differences in bodily scalar referents, the reliefs also highlight the differential experiences of multiple bodies in space, and to these differing modes of action. While, through the intercession of mirror neurons, we are capable of comprehending that we are similar to others, those senses that are only perceivable internally underscore distinction (Dokic 2003: 322). In this, the stairway reliefs of the Central Building again are entangled with the productive tensions of the Apadana reliefs, where iterative repetition and individuated dress join to promise Achaemenid subjects that hegemony and assimilation are not synonymous. Much as the reliefs of the Apadana are redolent with multivalent sensory and cognitive potential, so too does the scale of stairway reliefs on the balustrades of the Central Building and the Apadana also convey multiple simultaneous messages. The interaction between bodies, stair steps, and reliefs underscores the relational nature both of the senses themselves and of the interactions that they enable. If a visitor senses that depicted courtiers or guardsmen are small, they do so based upon their own bodily schema. Large and small are relative terms, and the relative scale to which we internally refer is that of the body itself. As Juhani Pallasmaa (2012: 69) states it, “We behold, touch, listen and measure the world with our entire bodily existence, and the experiential world becomes organised and articulate around the centre of the body.” We are each our own primary frame of reference. Such relational interplays are far from absolute. From moment to moment, as the body moves, proprioceptive perceptions shift, creating what Brian O’Shaughnessy terms “a short-​term body image” (O’Shaughnessy 1995: 183–​188). The capacity to understand relationships between body parts changes over time, as the body itself takes on new forms, as when, after the loss of a limb, an individual retains phantom proprioceptive input (Anderson-​Barnes et al. 2009: 556–​557). Similarly, the environments with which our senses interact have the capacity to influence our interpretations of sensorial input, as much as that sensorial input provides the potential to interpret these environments. When visitors to the Central Building encounter these diminutive courtiers, whose scale and interactive capacities help to externalise the internal process of proprioceptive perception, they do so within a larger relational system, within the constructed environment of Persepolis as a whole. These depicted forms are hardly the first depicted figures that visitors have encountered, nor is this scalar interplay singular. Visitors approaching the Central Building from the Gate of All Lands pass both the north and east stairways of the Apadana, the latter of which is situated adjacent to the Central Building itself (Root 2014: 23). It is here, in the original central panels of both the north and east stairway façades (Tilia 1972: 175–​198), that visitors in transit are confronted with a scene that is again redolent with scalar interchanges (Figure 9.8). The king, seated, with the crown prince at his back, faces an official, who bends at the waist, his hand raised in a gesture of respect, while behind them an entourage approaches. The king and crown prince rise above officials and delegates alike, as they stand atop a depicted dais; the king is elevated still further by the height of his seat. Thus, the ruler and his line are set aloft, elevated above the constituents of their empire. For the visitor, the elevation of the ruler is further underscored by his scale. For even as the depicted architecture within the scene raises the king above the rest of the figures, the oversized scale of his body, relative to crown prince, courtier, delegate, and living visitor alike, highlights his conceptual stature in a well-​attested mode (Root 1979: 296). 201

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Figure 9.8  Original central panel of the Apadana reliefs, excavated from the southern portico of the Treasury at Persepolis, depicting the king enthroned atop a dais, with the crown prince standing at his back. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Visually, this distinction in scale delineates the division between the ruler and his subjects. But as visitors move across the space of the site, interwoven depictions and constructions, entwinements of space and scale, when joined with proprioceptive interpretive capacities generate the potential for a more reciprocal interaction between the bodies of visitors and the outsized body of the king. Upon the stairways of both the Apadana and the Central Building, a similar scalar disjunction plays out around the bodies of visitors themselves. The small figures of guardsmen and courtiers, depicted on the Apadana and Central Building balustrades, measure approximately 75 centimetres tall (Root 2018: 201), almost a metre shorter than the average height of a Persian man in the Achaemenid period (Root 2018: 191). While the king depicted in the original central panels of the Apadana sits, his seated height is analogous with that of the crown prince at his back, around two metres in height. Were he capable of rising, his standing height would be close to three metres tall (Root 2018: 199), some 90 centimetres taller than his presumptive heir and the courtiers depicted alongside him, who stand only slightly shorter than their prince, at close to two metres in height (Root 2018: 198). When visitors to Persepolis walk alongside the depicted figures upon stairway balustrades, the difference in their scales doubles the difference in scale between depictions of the king and of his courtiers; when visitors walk upon these stairways, they experience the scale of their king. As their bodies are made comparable to the depicted body of the king, proprioceptive capacities allow visitors to embody the notion of inclusive cooperation that is central to the message of the site as a whole. Much as the reliefs of the Apadana suggest that the fabric of kingship is both crafted and constituted by the king’s subjects, these multisensorial interplays of scale and space suggest that the hierarchical relationship between ruler and ruled is one that is fluid, negotiable, and mutually reciprocal.

Immanent encounters: scale, mediation, and the body of the king The shallow rise of the Apadana steps, the courtly comportment of the guards who stand upon them, indeed, the procession depicted on the reliefs that adorn the façade of both the north and east stairways, prepare the visitor to experience the grandeur of the columnar hall, and the greatness of the king himself who at times may have been enthroned there (Root 2014: 23). 202

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Figure 9.9  View across the northern stairway of the Apadana at Persepolis onto the columns of the interior. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

As visitors move from the stairway into the columnar hall of the Apadana, they are confronted by yet another mediation of scale, one that may encourage further proprioceptive negotiation. Upon exiting the stairways, visitors would step onto a portico, where soaring columns topped by animal protomes offer another external referent against which visitors may reframe their conceptualisation of the relationship of body and environment (Figure 9.9). These columns, on the porticoes and within the hall, averaging 19.25 metres in height (Schmidt 1953: 80; Root 2018: 197), further underscore the verticality that visitors experience as they ascend the staircases themselves. As the child-​ like dimensions of depicted guardsmen generate an embodied experience of the king’s scale, the porticoes of the Apadana, and its columnar interior, encourage a return to a more bounded bodily perception, one in which the individual’s form is made to feel smaller in the space in which that visitor might encounter the king’s body in actuality, atop his throne on the west portico of the structure (Root 2014: 23). Such a shift might initially seem to reinforce a hierarchy in which architecture joins with the king to re-​emphasise the distinctions between ruler and ruled that were deliberately made 203

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ambiguous in and on the exterior portions of the structure. But such an understanding is complicated in multiple ways within the structure itself. As Hilary Gopnik (2010: 203) has argued, the multiplicity of vertical columns, coupled with the lack of clear central axis within such columnar halls, creates “a many to one—​instead of a focused one on one—​encounter with the central figure.” The reliefs of the Apadana indicate and the guardsmen who accompany visitors up the stairs underscore that subjects of the Achaemenid king do not stand alone; although they maintain many identities, one of these is the collective identity of members of his empire. The repetition of the columns themselves, like the repetition of delegates in the Apadana reliefs, puts the collective on display. Beyond this, the Apadana columned hall highlights scalar similarities between living bodies of all sorts. Even as one body is made small, so too is another—​even if that body belongs to the king. While the height of a throne can highlight the presence of the king within the space, much as the columns of the Apadana confront the visitor with the realisation of his or her scale within the larger imperial endeavour, highlighting the strength of the whole, all figures are writ small beneath columns which rise from lotus bases and are topped by animal protomes. Within this space, in which the floors themselves float atop depicted petals (Root 2014: 25), in which cosmic forces are referenced and momentarily harnessed, the king sits, framed against a panoramic view of the planted parks below the portico (Root 2014: 24) and the horizon beyond. Such multisensorial spatial interplays provide insight into the cosmic scales that are the purview of the king, once more allowing the visitor to engage with perceptions beyond their own norms, while simultaneously uplifting the office of the king, rather than the personage of an individual ruler. This interplay is predicated upon a broader mimetic slippage, wherein space is constructed and mediated to provide the opportunity for the sorts of conceptual body mirroring that are central to interpretation. Through such interactions, king and subject are once more conceptualised as mutually informing entities. Even as the columns of the Apadana frame the king, creating a visual field that sets him against and atop the landscape of the site, the presence of column and throne alike serve to reinforce the human scale of the king’s physical body. The intervention of additional scalar mediators, in the form of the throne which would have been situated on the western portico, provides another relational data point, making the king’s size, relative to the visitor’s easier to ascertain, even as it sets his own vantage point above theirs. Within such a performative zone, the throne of the king, and the dress of the king—​which, as the reliefs upon the Apadana suggest, likely involved metal attachments that would have reflected light as it streamed in across the portico—​constitute his office (McFerrin 2017: 152–​153). His individuality recedes behind his investiture. The throne of the king lifts him, furthering the emphasis on verticality that is underscored through the repeated interior columns (Gopnik 2010: 203), the need for such an intervention is itself a reminder that the king’s body is, in form if not in treatment, but of a type with the bodies of his subjects. Indeed, much as the site manipulates the perception of visitors, introducing depicted and architectural mediators into peripersonal space, it similarly suggests that for the king to have an experience of embodied kingship, he too must make recourse to spatial interventions, mediations which help to bound his body in space. To consider this further, we return now to another set of scalar interactions in a portion of the site that we have previously encountered: the Central Building. Much as visitors to the Apadana experience one set of scalar referents as they ascend the stairways that provide access to the structure and another when they step onto its porticoes and into the hall proper, so also do visitors to the Central Building encounter kingship through multiple scales. The companionable courtiers who clamber up the stairways together with a select group of visitors, like the guardsmen on the Apadana stairways, stand at a height of approximately 204

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75 centimetres, their undersized scale allowing visitors the opportunity to appreciate the king’s superiority. If as Margaret Cool Root (2018: 201) has described, these small forms feel like a “chatty gaggle of children,” this scalar interchange may also serve to reframe the powerful stature of the depicted king. If visitors feel fondly disposed to these small forms, and if the physical form of the visitor is analogous to that of the depicted king, and if such scalar distinctions do reference long-​standing norms of power and display, then perhaps the visitor’s reaction to these undersized courtiers is also experienced by the king, who, as the Apadana reliefs suggest, wishes not to overpower his subjects, but to add his might to theirs. On the north stairway of the Central Building, when visitors complete their ascent, they are met with another scalar mediator, this time, a representation of the king himself. After climbing the northern staircase at the main entrance of the Central Building, visitors move through a stone doorway, into a square hall (Root 1979: 97). As visitors move into this structure, the king is depicted walking out of it (Schmidt 1953: 116; Root 1979: 287) (Figure 9.10). On both doorjambs, the king walks ahead of two attendants. He faces the incoming visitor, his

Figure 9.10  The king stands under a parasol on the western doorjamb of the southern doorway of the Central Building, while a man stands alongside the relief to provide scale. Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 205

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form, presented in profile, stares forward. His carefully coiffed hair and beard, the long folds of his once-​colourful robes (Schmidt 1953: 116), his tall crown and his oversized scale, relative to the two attendants who follow him, all attest to his authority. While Erich Schmidt (1953: 116) simply remarks that the king is “pictured at the exaggerated scale of royalty,” the inclusion of an adult man in his photographs of the northern doorway suggests that the king is just under twice the height of this individual (Schmidt 1953: pl. 75). Thus, in the Central Building as well as in the Apadana, visitors exiting stairways are met with additional scalar mediators that re-​ emphasise the scale of kingship. Yet, on the doorjambs of the northern doorway of the Central Building, the king, too, requires spatial mediation. As the depicted king moves from interior to exterior, one of his attendants holds a parasol above his head. Such dress accessories serve multiple functions. Parasols shield those beneath them from the sun, thus simultaneously signalling their user’s status as one who need not perform manual labour (Miller 1992: 95). Such a mode of conspicuous leisure, in which abstention from work serves as a mark of social standing is underscored in the doorjamb reliefs of the Central Building by the presence of attendants, whose own labour itself intersects with Thorstein Veblen’s (1899: 21–​31) conceptualisation of conspicuous consumption. The parasol also bounds the space that the king inhabits; as it arches above his head, it impedes his vertical line of sight, limiting his scalar world view to his eye level. By limiting his experiential field, the parasol prevents the king from interacting with scalar mediators that might encourage him to reconsider his own verticality. Such depicted interventions are most probably doubles of items utilised in actuality (Root 1979: 278). Parasols, like the baldacchino under which the king sits in the original central panel of the Apadana, generate a personal, portable ceiling, a conceptual opposite of the high ceiling and soaring columns in the interior of the Apadana, where these vertical forms reinforced the relatively small size of the bodies of visitors within the space. Enclosed spaces, by contrast, “can open and expand the physical sense of one’s self, not rebuff it” (McGilchrest 2015: 116). The generation of enclosures around the king provides him with the relational mediators necessary to maintain the use of his own bodily scale, even amidst architectural articulations that might seek to alter it. By measuring himself against the low ceilings made of fabric that are held and placed above him, the living king has the potential to experience a version of the outsized scale he enjoys in depiction, the sort of hieratic scale that visitors encounter in the liminal space of stairways. Thus, king and subject alike require intervention to encourage the bodily perception of conceptual rulership. As reliefs encourage visitors to understand the king as an individual who operates using the same modes of perception as his subjects, they also provide the opportunity to share in his oversized embodiment. In suggesting that both ruler and ruled are agents, reliefs such as the doorjamb reliefs of the northern doorway of the Central Building underscore the notion that, as a social actor, the king is not only an object to be viewed, but a subject in his own right, and as such, has his own embodied experiences.

Conclusions: the space of kingship The interactive zones of threshold and stairway serve as loci for the negotiation of larger constructs, with reliefs enabling visitors to draw connections between experience and depiction, and to better understand modes of participation in the Achaemenid imperial system. Reliefs, across the site of Persepolis constitute an enmeshed system, bilaterally informing and reciprocally engaged, mirroring Achaemenid conceptualisations of empire. As the double staircases of the Apadana provide parallel pathways for entrance, as depicted figures mirror the motions of their living counterparts, so are senses also inextricably intertwined. Although the architects 206

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of the visuospatial programme of the site were unaware of mirror neurons and gave no name to proprioception, the sensorial interplays that they acknowledge and consider in reliefs and in spatial mediations alike suggest that they were fully informed of the persuasive potentials of the multisensorial engagement. In many ways, the entanglements with which the site connects, of ruler and ruled, depicted and experienced, are themselves productive doubles for multimodal interactions. At Persepolis, interventions and entanglements between bodies and architecture extend beyond stairways and reliefs. In many ways, the site itself is conceptualised in bodily terms. Crenellations atop constructions across the site reimagine the structures of Persepolis as a crown (Root 2014: 10), a visual marker of the power, perhaps not of any individual, but of the institution of Achaemenid kingship. If these crenellations are the crown of this outsized body, then the figures depicted in reliefs across the site serve as doubles, not only for visitors, but also for embroidered bands of decoration, such as those which appear on the dress of these depicted figures themselves (McFerrin 2019: 237–​238; Tilia 1978: fig. 6). Such correlations are not only applicable to visitors; the king is both part of and informed by these connections. In depiction, he, too, acts as another adornment, as a component in the fabric of the imperial system. He is as physically small beneath the crenellations of his capital as visitors are beneath the forest of columns in the site’s hypostyle halls. These spaces of kingship incorporate king and subject alike, and in that incorporation, conceptualise hierarchies as variations on a theme, rather than as impositions of control. The king’s subjects experience diminished scale when confronted with the king; the king experiences diminished scale when confronted with his office. The senses constitute a mutually informing, intimately enmeshed system of experience, as do the components of the Achaemenid imperial system, with king and subject interwoven in a fabric of reciprocal experience and reciprocal generation. On the stairways of the Central Building and the Apadana alike, proprioception, the awareness of the body in space and of the body as space, perpetuates the inclusive vision of empire that is declared from the moment the visitor enters the site through the Gate of All Lands. The mutual constitution that is central to this message is insisted upon visually; in reliefs that eschew scalar differentiation between Persian ushers and the delegates they lead towards the king, imperial subjects are rendered compositionally equal. However, even as sight enables this communication, the reliefs of the Apadana suggest the enmeshment of the senses, depicting sight, touch, scent, and sound as an intertwined system. In the midst of this synaesthetic interplay, sense individuation is itself complicated as the senses themselves are conceptualised in reinforcing terms that parallel the links between king and subject. Yet, for all that the reliefs of the façade of the Apadana are persuasive, sight-​based interaction can itself be limiting. Visitors might glance at the reliefs, focusing their attention on those around them, or upon their destination. They might focus on one portion of the depictions, neglecting others. Sight can be consciously directed; one can choose how to look. Thus, at Persepolis, reliefs collaborate with the architecture of the site, entwining sensorial interactions. As visitors ascend the stairways of the Central Building, their bodies themselves become united with the imperial project, as proprioceptive engagements enable individuals to experience the outsized perspective of the depicted king. The shallow stairs of the Central Building could encourage visitors to slow their pace, as do the stairs leading to the Gate of All Lands (Root 2014: 17), recruiting proprioception—​a sense engagement that often occurs at an unconscious level—​to enjoin the visitor to adopt the norms of comportment of the site. The employment of sense modalities that recede behind the haptics of bodily interaction is itself persuasive; in some ways, the body of the visitor is enjoined to consider the message of the site 207

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before the visitor’s mind. Even here, however, slippages between living and depicted, message and medium, and the senses themselves are key. For as the stairways craft an unconscious interaction, the reliefs upon them, by generating a spatial disconnect, invite the visitor to consider the movement of the body itself. As visitors focus upon the act of stepping, their agency within the system is emphasised. While proprioception may rely upon input from muscle spindles which are not deliberately activated, it is “used for guiding intentional action; indeed, this seems to be its primary function” (Ritchie and Carruthers 2015: 365). At Persepolis, its primary function appears to be no different. Upon the façade of the stairways of the Apadana, ushers take delegates by the hand, leading them in procession through connection rather than coercion. On the interior balustrades of the nearby Central Building, this method is reinforced, with the connections between the senses themselves serving as potent doubles for the connection between king and subject.

Bibliography Anderson-​Barnes, V. C., C. McAuliffe, K. M. Swanberg, and J. W. Tsao. 2009. “Phantom Limb Pain: A Phenomenon of Proprioceptive Memory?” Medical Hypotheses 73: 555–​558. Barad, K. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3): 801–​831. Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Brucker, B., A.-​C. Ehlis, F. B. Häußinger, A. J. Fallgatter, and P. Gerjets. 2015. “Watching Corresponding Gestures Facilitates Learning with Animations by Activating Human Mirror-​Neurons: An fNIRS Study.” Learning and Instruction 36: 27–​37. Del Giudice, M., V. Manera, and C. Keysers. 2009. “Programmed to Learn? The Ontogeny of Mirror Neurons.” Developmental Science 12 (2): 350–​363. Dokic, J. 2003. “The Sense of Ownership: An Analogy between Sensation and Action,” in J. Roessler and N. Eilan, eds., Agency and Self-​Awareness: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 321–​344. Engel, A., M. Burke, K. Fiehler, S. Bien, and F. Rösler. 2008. “What Activates the Human Mirror Neuron System During Observation of Artificial Movements: Bottom-​up Visual Features or Top-​ down intentions?” Neuropsychologia 46: 2033–​2042. Gallese, V. 2009. “Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulation, and the Neural Basis of Social Identification.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues 19: 519–​536. Gallese, V. 2014. “Bodily Selves in Relation: Embodied Simulation as Second-​Person Perspective on Intersubjectivity.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 369: 1–​10. Gopnik, H. 2010. “Why Columned Halls?,” in J. Curtis and S. Simpson, eds., The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East. London: I.B. Tauris, 195–​206. Harris, L. R., M. J. Carnevale, S. D’Amour, L. E. Fraser, V. Harrar, A. E. N. Hoover, C. Mander, and L. M. Pritchett. 2015. “How Our Body Influences our Perception of the World.” Frontiers in Psychology: Cognition 6 (819): 1–​10. Howes, D., and C. Classen. 2014. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London: Routledge. Kohn, E. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mandrigin, A. 2021. “The Where of Bodily Awareness.” Synthese 198: 1887–​1903. McFerrin, N. 2017. “Fabrics of Inclusion: Deep Wearing and the Potentials of Materiality on the Apadana Reliefs,” in M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinski, eds., What Shall I Say of Clothes? Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity. SPAAA 3. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 143–​159. McFerrin, N. 2019. “The Tangible Self: Embodiment, Agency, and the Functions of Adornment in Achaemenid Persia,” in M. Cifarelli, ed., Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 233–​248. McGilchrest, I. 2015. “Tending to the World,” in S. Robinson and J. Pallasmaa, eds., Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 99–​122. 208

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Merleau-​Ponty, M. 2002. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. London: Routledge. Miller, M. C. 1992. “The Parasol: An Oriental Status-​Symbol in Late Archaic and Classical Athens.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 112: 91–​105. Montero, B. G. 2016. Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nagel, A. 2010. “Colours, Gilding and Painted Motifs in Persepolis: Approaching the Polychromy of Achaemenid Persian Architectural Sculpture, c. 520–​330 BCE.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Art History, University of Michigan. O’Dea, J. 2011. “A Proprioceptive Account of the Sense Modalities,” in F. Macpherson, ed., The Senses: Classical and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 297–​310. O’Shaughnessy, B. 1995. “Proprioception and the Body Image,” in J. L. Bermúdez, A. Marcel, and N. Eilan, eds., The Body and the Self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 175–​204. Pallasmaa, J. 2012. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley. Promey, S. 2014. “Religion, Sensation, and Materiality: An Introduction,” in S. Promey, ed., Sensational Religion: Sensory Culture in Material Practice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1–​24. Ritchie, J. B., and P. Carruthers. 2015. “The Bodily Senses,” in M. Matthen, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 353–​370. Roaf, M. 1974. “The Subject Peoples on the Base of the Statue of Darius.” Cahiers de la Délégation archéologique française en Iran 4: 73–​159. Root, M. C. 1979. The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire. Acta Iranica 19. Leiden: Brill. Root, M. C. 2003. “The Lioness of Elam: Politics and Dynastic Fecundity at Persepolis,” in W. Henkelman and A. Khurt, eds., A Persian Perspective: Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-​Weerdenburg. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut Voor Het Nabije Oosten, 9–​32. Root, M. C. 2014. “Achaemenid Imperial Architecture: The Performative Porticoes of Persepolis,” in S. Babaie and T. Gigor, eds., Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. London: I.B. Tauris, 1–​64. Root, M. C. 2018. “Scaling the Walls of Persepolis: Toward an Imaginal/​Social Material Landscape,” in S. R. Martin and S. M. Langin-​Hooper, eds., The Tiny and the Fragmented: Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 188–​217. Schmidt, E. F. 1953. Persepolis I: Structures, Reliefs, Inscriptions. OIP 67. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schmidt, E. F. 1957. Persepolis II: Contents of the Treasury and Other Discoveries. OIP 69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Taussig, M. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. London: Routledge. Tilia, A. B. 1972. Studies and Restorations at Persepolis and Other Sites of Fārs I. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Tilia, A. B. 1978. Studies and Restorations at Persepolis and Other Sites of Fārs II. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Tilley, C. 2004. The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg. Veblen, T. 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. London: Macmillan. Wiesehöfer, J. 2001. Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD. Trans. Azizeh Azodi. London: I.B. Tauris.

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Part III

Ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces

10 Temple ritual as Gesamtkunstwerk Stimulation of the senses and aesthetic experience in a religious context Irene J. Winter

Introduction The field of material culture and cultic practices within ancient West Asian studies (amongst several other fields) has been characterised over the past few decades by a series of shifts from object history through art history to social history. Art historians and archaeologists have gone beyond catalogues of (excavated) objects with attention to classification and dating to issues of style, iconography, and meaning, and through these to use and function within specific cultural contexts. These moves have been aided by far greater availability of textual data, thereby permitting us to see material culture and practice through an ancient lens. The sum of all of the above has made it possible to explore not only the physical works but also to speculate upon the then-​contemporary experience thereof.1 Clearly, the literal equivalent of Gesamtkunstwerk as used in the present title does not appear in any known Sumerian or Akkadian lexicon. Signifying “total” or “combined” artwork, that is, making use of multiple art forms in a single work, the word was first coined in 1827 of our era by K. F. E. Trahndorff, in his article “Aesthetics, or (the) Theory of Philosophy of Art.”2 The term is perhaps best known in the context of the works of Richard Wagner, who actually used it in 1849 to signify the unification of multiple art forms known to the nineteenth-​century West—​music, dance, theatre, set painting, and sculpture—​within his own operas.3 But one could argue that the trend was already there earlier, as witnessed in the historical operas of Giuseppe Verdi—​particularly his first real success, Nabucco (i.e., the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar)—​ premiered in 1846 and set in Babylon at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.4 What I shall argue here is that within the context of the term’s early usage, Gesamtkunstwerk also had and continues to have ramifications for studies of affective sensory experience, hence “aesthetics” (see also Chapter 25, this volume). I therefore extend the term to signify the awakening of multiple senses in a single context, and so, applicable not only to operatic theatre but also to (descriptions of) ancient ritual practice and experience (see Bell 1997). In the study that follows, I shall confine my inquiry to the five principal senses identified in the West since Aristotle—​vision, sound, taste, smell, and touch—​arguing that they are congruent with the senses

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-11

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Figure 10.1  Spouted vessel, Tomb PG 800, Ur, Early Dynastic IIIA period. Penn Museum (U. 10861). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum.

Figure 10.2  Display case with Early Dynastic period spouted vessels. Oriental Institute Museum (A12439, A31584). Source: Photo by Kiersten Neumann.

articulated in ancient Mesopotamia (while at the same time, acknowledging that other traditions have identified additional sensory responses, on which, see below, n. 16, for recent work on this). But first, let us begin with a silver spouted vessel from Tomb PG 800 of the Early Dynastic period, excavated at Ur in southern Mesopotamia. The vessel has been selected as a work of material culture exemplifying potential for sensory engagement in ritual, although many other works could easily have been chosen. The vessel type in question (Figure 10.1) can stand as an archaeological artefact, extracted from its original depositional context for purposes of study. It is also familiar as an object of display (e.g., in the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago; Figure 10.2). 214

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Figure 10.3  Plaque showing spouted vessel in use, libation before the goddess Ninhursag (?), Tello (ancient Girsu), Early Dynastic IIIa (c. 2500 BCE ). Musée du Louvre (AO 276). Source: © RMN-​Grand Palais /​Art Resource, NY.

The characteristic spout, clearly intended for purposes of pouring the liquid contents of the vessel, is long and narrow in proportion to the body, springing upward from the shoulder of the body. As such, it is distinguished from many similar but not identical vessels of the period executed in clay, where the spouts tend to be shorter and more bulbous. This latter type is found in contemporary burials and domestic contexts.5 By contrast, the multiplicity of finds of the metal vessel type with its elegant elongated spout are attested from a variety of Early Dynastic sites such as Khafaje (ancient Tutub) and Kish and can be seen in use in several depictions on plaques from Tello (ancient Girsu) and Ur of the same period (Figure 10.3; published in Aruz 2003: catalogue no. 34; and see Müller-​Karpe 1993, as well as the textual evidence in Heimpel 1987). The gestures of pouring in proximity to sacred objects on the plaques suggest it was utilised as a ritual vessel deployed in ceremonial contexts (on which, see Braun-​Holzinger 1989; Selz 1996; Winter 1999; 2000a).6 To my knowledge, no such vessel has actually been found preserved in a temple sanctuary where it would have been used for libation as depicted, although it is found deposited in graves (e.g., at Ur). Nevertheless, while temple findspots would have been most fortuitous, in their absence the work of historian/​philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1984) enters into our discussion through his advocacy of the analogical as a historical tool, thereby laying the ground for the legitimacy of cross-​cultural comparison at times when the historical record under study is itself incomplete. Such analogy requires neither cultural contact nor ethno-​socio-​cultural-​linguistic identity, but must meet the requirements of rigorous and systematic cross-​cultural comparison.7 215

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Figure 10.4  Spouted vessel in use at ritual bathing (abhisheka) of Krishna, Rādharamāna temple, Vrindavan. Source: Photo by author, May 1991.

For our spouted vessel, an analogue of the Early Dynastic libation images may be seen performed by a Hindu priest in a temple of the Vaishnavite tradition in India devoted to the god Krishna (Figure 10.4). The temple is known by one of the epithets of Krishna: Rādharamāna, the “bearer (or carrier-​off) of Radha.”8 Mentally juxtaposing our Early Dynastic period vase with a spouted vessel in use in the Rādharamāna Temple, one has the opportunity to see in living context the performances of libation before the resident deity or symbol, as well as the ritual cleansing or hand-​washing for which we also have ample textual evidence in Mesopotamia (and for India, see Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts 1993). It has been argued elsewhere that the images depicting worship and the texts describing worship in Mesopotamian contexts may be fruitfully compared with formal representations of deities in worship in India in modern Hindu temples (Winter 1999; 2000a). The Mesopotamian sculptural forms of gods and rulers as well would have been installed within a chapel or temple context, as we know for statues of Gudea, ruler of Lagash, towards the end of the third millennium BCE , with the seated position taking precedence over standing figures and the resident deity surrounded by paraphernalia appropriate to his or her identity and devotion.

Sight In terms of the sensory affect of any such ritual activities, I would note (Winter 2000b; as has Neumann 2019) that the primary sense engaged within the temple setting was that of sight—​ first and foremost, the reciprocal visual encounter between the devotee and the object of devotion. The characteristic inlaid and enlarged eyes of Mesopotamian sculptures (Figure 10.5) stress stylistically the focused attention that would be operative in both directions (as depicted in the seal impression published in Klengel-​Brandt 1997: fig. 79; our Figure 10.6). 216

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Figure 10.5  Votive sculptures from the Square Temple, Tell Asmar, Early Dynastic Period (c. 2750–​2500 BCE ). Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Figure 10.6  Modern impression of a marble seal, likely showing the god dNanna/​Su’en seated before a shrine, Early Dynastic IIIb (c. 2350–​ 2250 BCE ), provenience unknown. Staatliche Museen, Berlin (VA 3878). Source: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin –​Vorderasiatisches Museum; photo Olaf M. Teßmer. 217

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That both Sumerian and Akkadian images of gods and (some) rulers were subject to rituals of enlivening, temple installation, and ongoing service no longer needs to be argued.9 What is striking is that we can assume from archaeological contexts such as the Early Dynastic temple hoard found at Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna) that images (whether of deities or attendant devotees) could also be de-​commissioned, removed from worship, and buried in the sanctuary (on which, see Evans 2013). The original placement of the 12 members of this cache remains unknown; yet we may still suggest that the standing figures were once properly installed in a sanctuary, whether severally or individually, with permanent focus upon a higher-​ranking (and presumably seated) figure of god or ruler.10 Analogues for Mesopotamian praxis could be cited for a number of other times and places, including the clothed and ornamented cult images in India and in pre-​Reformation Christian churches, despite theological distance from the idolatrous. Such figures are generally clad in rich garments and heavily adorned. Related practices can usefully serve as analogues for ancient Mesopotamian practices, but only when cultural criteria for both meaning and practice are demonstrable (Winter 2000a). In the built environment of the temple/​shrine, and in the course of ritual performance therein, the primacy of sight or vision would be paramount: the attentive vision of devotees in the place of worship when open to them; the intensely focused vision of the resident priesthood upon the deity served; and the reciprocal vision of the deity, believed to be conscious of and responsive to devotion. The precious materials on display—​exotic and costly—​would provide a sensory hook for this intense visual attention (see discussion in Suter 2015: 515 and passim). Furthermore, in the general absence of archaeologically preserved textiles and other costly materials from Mesopotamian sites, Hindu or Medieval European analogues flesh out the more-​abstracted and less-​detailed ancient representations. Dedicatory texts and inventories both describe rich votive gifts and materials attested in temple settings, as well as in funerary contexts (on which, see Leemans 1952; Steinkeller 1980; Evans forthcoming). Some early Sumerian illustrations depict the cult image in a shrine. One such example may be seen carved on the Early Dynastic period cylinder seal of unknown provenience presently in Berlin, clearly showing a seated deity in profile (Figure 10.6). The deity depicted is most likely the moon god Nanna/​Su’en, enthroned with various cultic accoutrements—​including the god’s bull calf attribute-​animal as part of the throne base and a likely offering table. Indeed, this imagery too may be closely compared with the ritual presentation of the installation of the enthroned god Krishna accompanied by his associated cows and votive delicacies observed in worship in Vrindavan (illustrated in Winter 2000a). Insistence upon Ricoeur’s analogical principle thus allows one to suggest, based upon the context of the Rādharamāna Temple in Vrindavan, what would have been a scintillating visual experience, attested in Mesopotamian texts and implied in some images. With the eye as principal sensory organ, what is evident is a particular kind of visual experience induced by the radiance of precious metals and the stimulus of light and colour upon the retina (see on the property of radiance, Winter 1994; 2012). The analogy would further enlarge the possibilities for adding interior light to the experience through the use of candles, clerestory architectural elements, or windows in the sanctuary when so few archaeologically known buildings retain their complete original structures (Ambos 2004; 2010). And finally, due to the rarity of associated pigments in both textiles and wall painting given the infrequency of their archaeological preservation, one can enlarge upon this sensory experience as well through cross-​cultural analogy (compare, e.g., Thavapalan 2020; also Pollock

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Figure 10.7  Plaque from Ishchali, adorned female (likely deity) from the Ishtar kititum temple, Old Babylonian Period. Oriental Institute Museum (A21203). Source: Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

2016: 51–​52; Stager 2016; and more broadly, see DeSalle and Bachor 2020 for colour in culture writ large). Colour was certainly noted and stressed in both Sumerian and Akkadian, as presented in the path-​breaking article of Benno Landsberger (1967). More recently, as Hartmut Waetzoldt (1980–​ 1983) and others have shown, the colour red was apparently reserved for deities, kings, and high priests in Mesopotamia, just as purple was in Medieval Europe. By its chromatic density red would certainly have instantiated a powerful visual response. In addition, Old Babylonian temple inventory texts seem to corroborate Old Babylonian period images such as that illustrated on a clay plaque from Ishchali (ancient Neribtum) (Figure 10.7), showing what would have been a heavily adorned goddess whose necklace chains cover much of her chest.11 This Mesopotamian temple treatment overlaps nicely with ornaments used on divine images manifest in Hindu temples, making it clear that jewels and garments provided elaborate sensory amplification of the physical form of the devotional image. And finally, as noted above, the power of the visual is stressed stylistically by the enlarged and inlaid eyes of early Mesopotamian statuary. It is also attested in the negative by targeted and destructive interventions, that is, acts of iconoclasm that damage eyes specifically, shown to have existed from antiquity through the European Middle Ages to the present.12 The stress on sight is not without reason. Of all the senses, it is probably the most complex. It is certainly the most relied upon for normative activity, and it is the most multivalent when augmented in contexts of desired emphasis. This augmentation, I would suggest, is achieved through the careful management of materials, light, shine, colour, form, and exemplary craft in order to convey the intensity required under special circumstances such as in the course of temple ritual.

Sound The second sense prominently attested in Mesopotamian cultic practice is that of sound. A rare study of the training associated with musical expertise has recently been presented by Piotr Michalowski (2010), suggesting that individuals from a wide range of social classes, from elites

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to captives, were subject to instruction. Many works from ancient Mesopotamia show scenes of music being played/​performed on important occasions, including the well-​known Assurbanipal Garden Scene wall relief of the seventh century BCE , with multiple drums, flutes, and lyres depicted (BM 124920). An earlier but comparable scene is preserved on the “Banquet” side of the so-​called “Standard of Ur,” from the Royal Cemetery, dated to the Early Dynastic IIIA period, c. 2600 BCE (Figure 10.8).13 This is also suggested for the early second millennium BCE , where a stele of the Old Syrian Period found at Ebla shows two musicians on either side of a large drum playing before seated banqueting figures (Matthaie 2008).14 Although the Ur “Standard” with its musical imagery was included in a tomb, a temple role for musicians and chanters is well-​attested across several periods. In the late third millennium such musical events are recorded in text and depicted on several stela fragments of Gudea from ancient Girsu (e.g., Figure 10.9, and see Suter 2000: appendix B; 2015) as well as on the reverse of the Stela of Ur-​Namma of Ur. Many of these fragments suggest contexts of cultic performance, attested in text as praise songs or hymns for both Gudea and the rulers of the Ur III Dynasty.15 The relationship between architectural space, light, and sound has been discussed by Augusta McMahon (2013). Indeed, it is difficult to think of a cultic tradition that is not in some way(s) or at some point(s) accompanied by devotional music (on which, see Butler and Nooter 2018). What is more, and important for our purposes, is that musicologist/​conductor Christopher Hogwood, in an article dealing with the eighteenth century ce (2008), refers to music as the “audible translation of Affekt.”This is a word I would associate with the experience I am attempting

Figure 10.8  Detail, “Banquet” side of the so-​called “Standard of Ur,” Royal Cemetery, Early Dynastic IIIA Period (c. 2600 BCE ). British Museum (BM 121201). Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum. 220

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Figure 10.9  Gudea stele fragment, large drum played in a ritual context, Tello (ancient Girsu), Neo-​Sumerian Period (c. 2100 BCE ). Musée du Louvre (AO 4578). Source: Photo by Kiersten Neumann.

to describe: works and events capable of exercising a powerful impact upon a viewer, as well as the consequences for individuals able to respond powerfully to said works or events.16 Apparently, the association was first attested in 1785, where Hogwood’s source noted that “musical affect is achieved not only by the notes written by the composer, but also by the realization of that music by … performers.” This is to say that the facts of performance and surround contribute to the experience of affect on the part of both performers and auditors. In our case, it can be argued that not only the priestly, royal, or lay constituents attendant upon ritual would have responded to the music; the enshrined deity in a given temple would also have been considered to constitute part of the (if not the) principal audience for aural stimulus. I find this congruent with the notion that the multisensory experience deriving from ritual performance can be directly relevant not only for the enactors and observers, but also for the object (subject?) of devotion. I shall return to this below as part of a discussion of heightened sensory affect as it activated aesthetic experience.

Taste When we shift to the sense of taste, the evidence appears mainly in texts. Archaeologically, vessels likely to have contained foodstuffs as well as spices and herbs, are found not infrequently (as, e.g., the recent discovery of vanilla in Middle Bronze Age tombs at Megiddo; see Cradic and Linares 2020). However, the systematic post-​excavation testing of contents of those vessels and surrounding soils are rarer than one would like; the sample insufficient for any generalisations regarding foodstuffs offered. Many studies of taste sensations have been written as explorations of specific cuisines and occasionally in philosophical perspective (see Korsmeyer 1999; Stoller 1989). However, for our purposes, in the special cases of both Mesopotamia and India it is important to recall the broader context of ritual practice in the temple. There, the resident devotional image is not only created as a representation of the divine. Rather, once enlivened through ritual action, the image is believed to take on living status in the temple—​that is, as a manifestation of the referent. 221

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Figure 10.10  Back of Gudea Statue B, with inscription, Tello (ancient Girsu), Neo-​Sumerian Period (third millennium BCE ). Musée du Louvre (AO 2). Source: © RMN-​Grand Palais /​Art Resource, NY.

It will come as no surprise, then, that the image must be treated as a living being in the temple, needing to be clothed, fed, and cared for (see on this the seminal paper of Oppenheim 1964: 190–​ 193). And indeed, on the reverse of perhaps the most well-​known of the Gudea images found at Girsu, the seated “Gudea B,” is a band of inscription on the upper part of the back in which a list is provided of the daily foodstuffs to be offered to the image (Figure 10.10)17—​just as meals are regularly provided for the deity in a Hindu temple. In fact, food offerings to the temple’s resident deity seem to be standard right through the Mesopotamian sequence, as Neumann has discussed in her paper (2019) and as referenced in Neo-​Assyrian ritual correspondence. What is more, in traditions in which cuisine is an important aspect of cultural investment, the foodstuffs presented to the deity often represent delicacies at the high end of the scale as a measure of devotional piety—​especially on feast days in the shrine 222

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Figure 10.11  Devotees receiving nectar from the bathing ritual of the deity Krishna, Rādharamāna temple, Vrindavan. Source: Photo by author, May 1991.

and in-​home worship (see, e.g., Ghosh 1995). In Indian temples at least, some of the food offerings are then re-​distributed to priests and congregants, where it is understood as highly auspicious, if not curative (Figure 10.11). And so, taste becomes part of the experience for the whole assemblage: deity, servitors, and devotees.

Smell and touch I have less to say about the senses of smell and touch, although both may be inferred from materials mentioned in text and from extrapolation to have played a role in ritual performance in the early Mesopotamian temple. For smell, aromatics are frequently mentioned, disseminated through blossoms, from censors, or from fragrant woods (e.g., Figure 10.12a–​b). This would include scented incense (e.g., cedar in the Levant, sandalwood in India), comparable to the Christian use of frankincense and myrrh or the spices included as olfactory stimuli at the end of the Hebrew Sabbath (see Zwickel 1990). More work has been done on the “smellscapes” of ancient Egypt where scents/​fragrances in use are better recorded and recipes preserved for perfumes (see on this the recent work of Goldsmith 2019; also Green 2011; Kapiec 2018). The presence of incense burners in some temple contexts in the ancient Near East—​for example, in the Ishtar temple level G at Assur (published in Harper et al. 1995: fig. 6) and temples at Nimrud and Nineveh (Neumann forthcoming)—​certainly suggests aromatics, as do the first-​millennium BCE cedar fragments found at Khorsabad and Nimrud (Figure 10.12a), but little in the way of hard evidence has been presented.18 Archaeologists may just have to do a better job in future of gathering soil residues from 223

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Figure 10.12a–​b  (a) Fragment of cedar wood, Southwest Palace, Nimrud (BM 122117). (b) Devotional flowers for worship in India. Source: (a) © The Trustees of the British Museum; (b) photo by author, May 1991.

containers to document this for Mesopotamia, since Neo-​Assyrian texts make direct reference to perfumes or scents in the temple (Escobar 2017: 49–​56; Neumann 2019; forthcoming). But a relationship to the olfactory sense in Mesopotamia is clearly marked in a late bilingual (Sumerian and Akkadian) text in which it is noted that the temple image for which the “mouth-​opening” (e.g., enlivening) ritual has not been performed “cannot smell the [offered] incense.”19 That is, the sense of smell, hence the nose was understood to be actively engaged by the enlivened image, not merely the eyes, ears, and taste-​buds, and would account for the purposeful defacement of noses as well as eyes on various ancient images (on which see Nylander 1980 and more recently Simpson 2020 for later periods). It should also be noted that studies of the olfactory tend to focus upon the positive aspects of experience, particularly with respect to ritual: florals, aromatics, and spices. It would be interesting to also approach this class of sensory experience in the future from what has been 224

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called a “posthumanist” perspective, in terms of sacrificed animals for example. Such a study would include smells that clearly identify the animal as putrefied, blood smeared on door sills or left as offerings, or the presence of plants that do not smell wonderful (on which see Thomason 2016; also Wolfe 2010).20 For touch, the early distinction by Alois Riegl (1897–​1898) between the visual (optisch) and the tactile (haptisch) with respect to the experience of (art) works remains the source for understanding objects that make or call out for physical contact (see also Chapter 4, this volume). A recent paper delivered by Elisabeth Wagner-​Durand (“Images that you Feel: Haptic Aspects of Visual Culture in Mesopotamia,” 2019), brings this phenomenon into play. Furthermore, many such examples could be cited from instances of ritual performance, including an amazing moment in the temple in Vrindavan, as devotees holding containers reach towards priests dispensing ceremonial nectar, the result of auspicious liquids poured over the image of the deity in the preceding bathing ritual (e.g., Figure 10.11). For each individual in the throng, the very act of holding a receptacle and reaching towards the flow of nectar engages them in a direct relationship with the ceremony just witnessed—​a powerful instance of Riegl’s haptisch as distinct from the merely optisch. The combined experience would then address both touch and taste, once the auspicious nectar is imbibed. In addition, as Adrian Randolph (2014) has shown with respect to fifteenth-​century Italian painting, much of the tactile experience depicted in art is represented as hands making contact with body parts or objects, not unlike when the ruler Ur-​Namma of Ur pours a libation before the seated god Nanna Su’en on the stela carved in his name (illustrated in Winter 2008; here, Figure 10.13). The tactile is expressed every time a figure is shown holding something, from drinking vessels in banquet scenes to ceremonial lustration containers held by semi-​divine creatures on Assyrian reliefs, and has recently been discussed by Wagner-​Durand (2020). That same tactility is no less evident on the part of devotees (a) when auspicious products of ritual in progress are distributed,

Figure 10.13  Ur-​Namma stele fragment, detail of obverse, second register right, showing Ur-​ Namma pouring a libation before a seated deity presumably dUtu. Penn Museum (B16676.1A). Source: Courtesy of the Penn Museum. 225

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as in India (above), and (b) when the image of a deity is brought out of the shrine in procession. Those permitted to be the bearers of the image are considered especially blessed to be able to actually touch the (physical image of the) divinity, while pious observers along the route reach out to touch the passing image, bringing them, too, in direct contact with the divine. I would suggest that this auspicious tactility is no less evident when Christian images are processed at saints’ festivals, or when Torah scrolls are moved among the congregants at the Jewish High Holidays and worshippers reach out with the binding of their prayer books or the fringe of a prayer shawl to touch the scroll.

Kinetics This leads me to what I think may be a relatively under-​examined aspect of sensory experience with respect to worship, and of ritual engagement in general, and that is the kinetics (and kinaesthesia?) of bodily movement in space. This topic is often addressed by contemporary architects aware of movement and dealing with “the effects of superimposing (their work upon) a spatial organization based on logics of urban mobility” (Farjadi 2008: 148; see also Alexander 2017, on bodily sensation and movement, including processions and choreographed court entries). I will not dwell on this at present, but just wish to point out the degree to which processional approach and recession, ecstatic trance, dance, or physical circumambulation—​that is, movements which engage the whole body—​are also inscribed in ritual activity, and should be considered as part of the overall sensory experience (on this, see recent studies related to proprioception; also Suter 2015: especially 508–​509, 512; Thomason 2016; Wagner-​Durand 2020). And with this in mind, recent experimental studies of the brain’s response to gravity as a somatosensory force (on which, Tsubouchi et al. 2017) and mobility (Arber and Costa 2018; Tiriac and Feller 2019), plus recent scientific work related to tactility and neuro-​motor systems) may in future prove relevant to sensory studies in general, ritual studies in particular. What I would argue in closing this section is how sterile, how anaesthetic, so many archaeological reconstruction drawings seem in the face of a living tradition. It is almost as if sensory experience has been expunged from the ancient world. This is particularly true in reconstructions of architecture, both exterior and interior—​the drawings all too frequently conveying a geometric austerity (see, e.g., Figure 10.14, which represents the Nanna ziggurat complex at Ur, begun by Ur-​Namma in the late-​third millennium BCE , as an exterior view [Woolley 1939: frontispiece]; interior views of shrines with walls and doorways but no furnishings could also be cited). At least nowadays, thanks largely to landscape studies in archaeology, we are not unaware of the likely urban and/​or natural/​environmental surround for temples and the ritual practices that went on in relation to them. And it is here, too, that by analogy one can reference the incorporation of landscape/​environment and ritual practice in other comparable traditions as part of an attempt to reconstruct ancient Mesopotamian experience.

Gesamtkunstwerk In general, then, it is important to note that virtually every religious experience (Rappaport 1999), even the most austere, includes at least some sensory stimulus in devotional practice. Ancient Mesopotamia was no exception. Evidence for Mesopotamian ritual practice occurs across the full range of the archaeological, artefactual, and textual record, from the third millennium BCE as discussed here through the first (see on this Hamilakis 2013; Harvey and Hughes 2018; Hawthorne and Rendu-​Loisel 2019). From these data one can demonstrate that there was a rich tradition of visual, auditory, and olfactory experience in the course of most ritual praxes. 226

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Figure 10.14  Reconstruction drawing, Ziggurat and precinct of dNanna at Ur. Source: Woolley 1939: frontispiece; courtesy of the Penn Museum.

Touch and taste may further be adduced by inference, using textual data and comparative evidence from other traditions. Furthermore, when the sensorium of the resident deity or deities in a given temple is activated through ritual processes and that same sensorium is also stimulated for devotees and the local priesthood in the course of ritual performance, the extent and intensity of the experience is enhanced and concentrated for all parties. As such, the temple/​ritual experience can indeed be analogous to that proposed for the Gesamtkunstwerk in Western operatic tradition. The latter makes use of multiple art forms in a theatrical setting, while the former is organised to activate multiple senses as part of the religious ritual’s overall affect. I have taken the liberty of using the German term with respect to ritual performance first of all as I would count a choreographed ritual performance as no less a “work” than theatre, and second because both make conscious use of the hyper-​stimulation of the human sensorium as triggers for an intended experience, whether of the human or of the divine. What I would argue is that the multisensory experience of temple ritual may have been deemed appropriate (and may still be understood) in terms of a charged impact or marking a phenomenon of the extra-​normal. As Ellen Dissayanake (1988: 74–​105, especially 95) noted with respect to “art,” well before or beyond early modern Western aesthetics and recent brain science had pursued the phenomenon, the notion of making special was keyed to the multisensory, signalling in ritual time/​space a confrontation with the divine. I would take this one step further, however: that by including multiple senses along with several known art forms in a single “work” of ritual performance, the multisensory stimuli lead directly to “aesthetic experience,” which in turn becomes a significant component of religious experience!21 For the archaeological record, incomplete and partial by definition, the comparative premise articulated above underscores the utility of analogy for a non-​living and/​or incompletely preserved tradition. The informed scholar/​historian, conscious of both similarity and 227

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difference, can then find rigorous application of comparison useful in reconstructing potential experience in an ancient or distant culture.22 What is more, through a study of the senses we may establish a direct link to notions of aesthetic experience, hence “aesthetic theory.” This was clearly acknowledged with the initial coinage of the seemingly Greek-​based term in its original eighteenth-​century European context to indicate the study of knowledge derived from the senses (on which, see Barnouw 1993: 52–​53, 92–​93, with respect to the work of Baumgarten 1735/​1750 and before him, Leibniz 1689 on the nature of sensation).23 A scholarly exploration of the senses associated with ancient Mesopotamian experience, therefore, particularly in a ritual context, affords a direct pathway to being able to describe, hence understand, Mesopotamian aesthetics (see also Chapter 25, this volume). As aesthetic theory developed in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of our era into a response to that elusive property identified as “beauty,” this primary association with the senses and sensory perception began to dissipate; but it was clearly understood by Pierre Bourdieu (1968) to be fundamental to an understanding of art perception. The construct can be seen to run in either direction: starting with a lexicon for terms and concepts related to aesthetic experience, which in sum lead one to sensory perception, or starting with evidence for an engagement with sensory stimulation, which in sum leads to the effects thereof as appropriate to aesthetic experience. In either case, one is inexorably led to see the activated senses and aesthetics conjoined. Beauty, then, would function as a summary category—​appropriate in some circumstances, but culture-​specific and so not primary. For our purposes, and with no single lexical equivalent for “beauty” in ancient Mesopotamian languages except by inuendo, ritual activity as a multisensory performance/​Gesamtkunstwerk cannot and should not be disengaged from aesthetic response(s). Under these circumstances, current interest in the property and consequences associated with “affect” regarding both impact of and response to works (e.g., Leys 2011) becomes quite relevant in seeking a sense [sic!] of meaning for ritual performance. This multisensory aspect of affect has been pursued by Wagner-​Durand (2020: 220–​221), citing the importance of the work of Harris and Sørensen (2010: 146), who speak of “affective fields” (and see discussion above, under sound and smell, especially Green 2011, and Goldsmith 2019 for ancient Egypt). The literature is growing; the concept extremely helpful as one that implies the reflexive and intersubjective experience generated by the senses, hence appropriate in a ritual context to priest::temple praxis, or devotee::deity (see, e.g., Richard and Rudnyckyj 2009). Throughout, I have implied that the balance between the biological/​neurological stimulus of the senses and the cultural “field” noted just above is directly brokered by the historical moment under inquiry. It seems essential to address all three—​the neurological, the broad cultural context, and the specific historical moment—​in any attempt to understand the role of the senses, and therefore aesthetics, in any interaction between material culture and cultural performance with respect to ritual. Furthermore, for understanding the role of ritual performance with respect to a non-​living culture, I would argue that the broadest possible perspectives such as cross-​cultural comparison and neurological hard-​wiring are every bit as useful as the specific cultural and historical lexicon in evidence. Together, these strategies may hopefully yield a more nuanced and deeper understanding of ancient experience. In sum, then: attendance at/​performance in ritual would engage the cumulated senses of vision, sound, taste, smell, and touch, along with the kinetics related to that attendance/​performance. The study of ritual from this perspective adds to our understanding of the power of the culturally specific multisensory and affective experience, while simultaneously expanding our ability to unpack the role(s) of culturally constructed aesthetic values in conveying norms and values. Important is that the multisensory experience associated with ritual is not just an aspect of description, it is essential to understanding affect. The effect of the experience of that affect 228

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(noting the distinction between “affect” and “effect”), the somatic response to sensory hyper-​ stimulation, then, becomes a crucial component of the transport deemed appropriate to a confrontation with the divine.

Notes 1. The topics of ritual and ancient experience have occupied me for some time (see, e.g., Winter 1992). In the present case, I would cite my debt to Kiersten Neumann’s “Sensing the Sacred in the Neo-​ Assyrian Temple: The Presentation of Offerings to the Gods” (2019), which, as the result of a recent reading, led me to confine my present examples to the third millennium BCE , rather than also including the later materials. I am also intellectually indebted to historian/​philosopher Paul Ricoeur, whose Aquinas Lecture of 1984, The Reality of the Historical Past, has greatly helped to shape my approach here. (My thanks also go to Elizabeth Carter, Srivatsa Goswamy, Robert Hunt, Ian Hunt-​Isaak, Peter Machinist, Michael Meister, Holly Pittman, and Kapila Vatsyayan for many previous conversations and readings.) 2. Wikipedia, “Gesamtkunstwerk,” retrieved 10/​10/​2019. 3. Wikipedia, “Gesamtkunstwerk,” retrieved 10/​10/​2019. 4. The term has since been applied to architecture, relating to not only the construction, design, and decorative aspects of the exterior of a given building, but also its interior spatial organisation, decoration, and appointments. 5. See, e.g., Abu Salabikh: Martin et al. 1985: graves 1, 26, 28, 61, pls. xx: a, c; xxiii: b, c, etc.; Uruk: Nissen 1970: pl. 107; Pongratz-​Leisten 1988: nos. 9, 10, 286–​288, 290, 337, 400, 402, 410, 416. 6. Elsewhere (Winter 1999), I have suggested that these vessels were not merely luxury accompaniments for the deceased, but reflective of ritual activity at the time of interment. The effect of the combined shine of the metal and the colours of silver and gold are evidenced in the actual finds from funerary contexts, such as, e.g., in the undisturbed Royal Tombs nos. PG 1054 and 755 at Ur. The importance of shine with respect to divine images and their accoutrements goes back to Oppenheim 1964, and has been discussed in Winter 2012. 7. Discussed in Winter 1999. The officiating priest’s shaved head, evident in India, often speaks to prior rites of purification, equally attested in Mesopotamia. 8. This temple, dedicated to the god Krishna in Vrindavan, was a second research home to me for decades. I am most grateful to the Goswamy family of resident priests for that access. See, e.g., Winter 1992; 2000a. 9. See, e.g., Berlejung 1997; Walker and Dick 1998; Winter 1992; 2000a. 10. On this, see Winter 1999, with respect to the relative status of standing and seated images in shrines. Note that Evans (2012) has also suggested that some images could have been placed in courtyards or at shrine entrances. 11. On the Ishchali plaque (Hill and Jacobsen 1990; our Figure 10.7), the multiple strands of beads as necklaces illustrate well the works attested for the cult of Ishtar from an Old Babylonian period text known as “Ishtar of Lagaba and her Dress,” published by W. F. Leemans 1952. 12. This has been noted on the face of the Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal in his well-​known Garden Scene relief (BM 124920), also on the Akkadian copper/​bronze head found at Nineveh (Nylander 1980), and continuing on into more modern times, as on election posters in Jerusalem when B. B. Netanyahu was first running for Prime Minister of Israel, where the eyes were blacked out, not unlike the black X’s that appear on a Medieval East Anglian altarpiece, the defacement probably dating to a considerably later aniconic or anti-​Catholic phase (with thanks to conservator Spike Bucklow, Hamilton Kerr Institute, Fitzwilliam Museum). 13. As Jack Cheng argued in a paper given at Harvard University at the time of the Ur exhibition in 2002 (and later published in 2009), the musician at the upper right of the “Standard” (Figure 10.8) is accompanied by an individual with hands clasped, long hair, slightly raised chin, and apparently open mouth. Cheng concluded that this figure is likely to be a chanter or singer. 14. Note that among the earliest imagery of a group of instruments is that preserved on five small fragments of an Uruk period sealing found at Chogha Mish in Iran, often cited as the “Orchestra Seal.” It shows an ensemble of several musicians playing drum, harp, and possible horn, along with a possible singer, all facing to the right before a seated or squatting female figure (see Delougaz and Kantor 1996: 147, pls. 155, and 45N, likely to have been parts of a door sealing). 229

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15. See, e.g., illustrations and drawings in Suter 2000 and Canby 2001. Also see discussion in Suter 2015: 510, with respect to processional music. 16. This has a vast literature in India, related to the concept of rāsa, literally “juice,” conveying the essence of the material stimulus as it is perceived by the (informed and prepared) viewer/​recipient. See on this, Pollock 2016. Would that we had the sorts of treatises on music preserved in the Indian traditions; articles on but a single text are included in Bhalla 2019, for example. 17. RIME 3/​1: Gudea E3/​1.1.7, StB, 1–​16. Daily offerings include beer, bread, and wheat grains. Meats were presumably also offered on feast days, and fruits in season. 18. I am grateful to Elizabeth Carter for stressing this point in conversation. See also Curtis and Reade 1995: 105, no. 56 for our Figure 10.12a, and for the cedar fragments from the Oriental Institute excavations at Khorsabad, see Neumann forthcoming; and in the Oriental Institute Museum collection, object A11801. For Figure 10.12b, I am grateful to Kapila Vatsyayan. 19. Text cited in CAD Ṣ: 79, ṣalmu, and discussion in Winter 1992. 20. Note that Wagner-​Durand (2020: 217–​218) has also brought negative responses into the category of sensory experience: e.g., vertigo, temperature, or pain. I am most grateful to the author for having made a pre-​print version of the article available. However, I shall not address this issue here, as the negative does not really play a role in Mesopotamian ritual performance, at least in the evidence to date. 21. The important association between “sensory experience” and emotion is currently being explored, having begun with the work of Margaret Jaques in the late 1980s (see Jaques 2006; 2017) with respect to the Sumerian and Akkadian lexicon. See also Cohen 2005 for ritual experience with respect to burials. More recently, this has been taken up by Wagner-​Durand (2020) with reference to the work of Harris and Sørensen (2010), where the links are stressed between the neurological/​physiological stimulation of the senses and cultural/​individual processing. This pathway through the emotions is also not pursued here but should be noted. 22. And parenthetically, capturing that “experience” in an original context is something no modern museum or repository can fully do, precisely because it cannot replicate the multisensory environment of experience. The topic has been discussed in a symposium at the American Council for South Asian Art meetings of October 2017 in Boston, where a paper was given by Risha Lee (2017), at the time a curator at the Rubin Museum, New York. The talk was entitled “Amplifying the Museum,” presented as part of a session on “Histories of the Sensorium in South Asian Art.” Lee noted that “the museum space has been a site of sensory debate for some time now,” and described some of her attempts to go beyond “ocular-​centric” experience to provoke a multisensory engagement with the world and the materials on exhibit in installations. For the ancient Near East, see Evans and Green 2015. 23. See on this, Winter 2002 for a discussion of the “invention” by Baumgarten of the term “aesthetic” as derived from Aristotle’s term for sensory responses, and so distinct from the “anaesthetic” or absence of sensory response.

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11 Pure stale water Experiencing Jewish purification rituals in early Roman Palestine Rick Bonnie

Introduction Water is a necessity of life. It is also a substance of noticeable importance across various religions and part of their ritual practices (e.g., Oestigaard 2005; 2011). But water is not only seen; its continuous movement can also be heard: for example, dropping on roofs, flowing through pipes and channels, and pouring on the ground or into pools and cisterns. It smells and tastes differ according to its source, state, and quality. Water makes you wet. As I will argue, our senses play a large role in how we use and perceive water, yet these same senses are often overlooked when considering past ritual uses and behaviours.1 Water played an important role for the Jewish communities living around the turn of the Common Era in the southern Levant. Its importance also trickled down into religious practices. This is not only suggested by preserved literary sources (e.g., Lawrence 2006). Archaeological excavations have found several hundred stepped, plastered water installations dating to the period of the late-​second century BCE to second century CE that have been interpreted as ritual purification baths. Conventionally, these ritual baths have been primarily viewed by archaeologists and historians as a prop: that is, architectural features that do little more than enable the socio-​r itual process of purification. The questions of how people used and perceived these pools and their water, and of how the various architecture and contexts shaped this use and perception remain largely unexplored. This chapter explores how the different material qualities and contexts of these so-​called “stepped pools” shaped different sensory experiences of their users. It will lay out a framework for adding sense to our study of ancient Jewish ritual baths. Starting from how our conception of Jewish ritual baths today has been formed historiographically, I bring this notion back into the first modern identifications of ancient Jewish ritual baths. The idea of a common ritual bathing practice is embedded in the autonomous gaze of a modernist world, and has shaped past identities along formations structured by that world. As will be shown, this has had ramifications for how ritual bathing practices have shaped modern scholarly ideas of Jewish identities around the turn of the Common Era. From generic descriptions of ancient ritual baths and scholarship about them, I then move on to explore the material variety and its sensorial significance among a 234

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selection of four stepped pools from the sites of Jericho, Masada, Magdala, and Gamla. Ultimately, this chapter engages in a larger discussion on how diverse material contexts have meanings that are different for their users, and that those meanings create different sensory experiences, and shape different identities.

Modern mikva’ot and Western modernity When discussing sensorial experiences and ancient Jewish ritual purification bathing practices, we must begin with the rise of modern thinking about Judaism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mikveh (pl. mikva’ot) literally means “gathering” as in “gathering of water” (mikveh mayim; Lev 11:36). The term is used in Judaism to refer to a body of water used for the purpose of ritual immersion in order to achieve ritual purity. The main necessity for a body of water to be used for this purpose is that it was filled with “living water,” or naturally occurring waters that continually refreshed, such as from rivers, lakes, or springs, as well as from rainwater or groundwater. Mikva’ot can also refer to human-​made bathing structures that through engineering skills are directly fed by water from the sky, the ground, or a spring. It is commonly understood that this ritually pure water could not have been physically drawn by humans to fill the bathing structure (see, e.g., m. Mikv. 2:3–​9). Moreover, contemporaneous and later literary sources tell us that it had to contain a minimum volume of water for immersion. For example, the Damascus Document, an early Jewish text generally attributed to the first century BCE that discusses, among other things, legal aspects, specifies that “No man shall bathe … in an amount too shallow to cover a man” (CD X:10–​13; see also Jos., Ant. 3.263; Mark 7:3; Luke 11:38). Later rabbinic sources establish a minimum of 40 se’ah (m. Mikv. 1:7). However, how to convert a se’ah into litres remains debated, and equivalent measurements for 40 se’ah range from 250 to 1,000 litres (see Miller 2015: 17, n. 3, 85–​91). Today, mikva’ot are found primarily in orthodox Jewish congregations, usually as part of a (nearby) synagogue complex. The design of these modern mikva’ot can be sleek; the space evokes serenity, and the baths demonstrate a sense of purity and hygiene. The design of this “ritual” space did not come about naturally. It was a development of processes starting in Medieval Europe, perhaps even as far back as Classical antiquity. Its most important development in recent times came about with the rise of modernity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the nineteenth century in Europe, mikva’ot were public facilities that were often situated below synagogues in an underground cellar. They were used most frequently by women following childbirth and menstruation (Schlich 1995: 424). However, during the first half of the nineteenth century, this tradition of ritual bathing was criticised on grounds of hygiene. This has been particularly well documented by Thomas Schlich’s historical study (1995) of the medical criticism of Jewish ritual baths and the subsequent sanitary reforms undertaken in Germany. Schlich describes how various leading German physicians, some of whom were Jews, began to critique the older communal mikva’ot in their publications as unhygienic and associated them with various infectious diseases. For example, in 1843, the health officer G. Mezger portrayed the underground spaces in which these ritual baths were situated as “deep, cold, gloomy pits,” and “dirty cellars, shut off from daylight,” or as “damp, mouldy and corrupted.” The mikveh itself was viewed as “a big chamber pot,” “a large cesspit,” and as a “cave of horror” (Mezger 1843: especially 143–​144; as cited in Schlich 1995: 425). The described filthiness of these baths made them, according to these physicians, a primary source of infectious diseases, notably venereal ones.

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Since venereal diseases brought up moral connotations, ultimately these baths were associated with imagined Jewish immorality and irrationality (Schlich 1995: 425–​429; see also Mombert 1830: 286). Their traditional customs, thus, distinguished and separated Jews, notably Jewish women, from other citizens in cultural and social terms. Sanitary reforms for mikva’ot were suggested in order to improve not just their health, but with it their development as individuals (Bildung). In Germany at least, the state intervened and various decrees were put forward across different regions during the first half of the nineteenth century to regulate the daily functioning of these baths (Schlich 1995: 436–​437). This included the temperature of the water and changing the bathing water routinely. The regulations seem to have had a direct effect on the workings of these baths. For example, it led to the development of ’otsar installations, a reservoir with a minimum volume of rainwater adjoining the mikveh in order to regularly change the used water from the mikveh (Adler 2014: 273–​274). The discussions of Jewish ritual bathing and the regulatory changes brought about in mikva’ot in nineteenth-​century Germany were not isolated events, but were associated with wider social and cultural changes in the West at the time. As social historians have pointed out, controlling the senses, notably smell and touch, was an important development during the nineteenth century in the construction of modern Western cities and states and the consolidation of power and control by the middle and upper classes (Stallybrass and White 1986: 125–​148; Urry 2000: 94–​ 103; Hamilakis 2013: 16–​24). Constructing Western modernity in the sense of a colonial, white, male, and Christian culture meant a war on smells, as they represented otherness in class, gender, race, and ethnicity (Bauman 1993: 24; see also McClintock 1995: 207; Hamilakis 2013: 19). The result was an increasing devaluation of smell and touch in favour of sight (for discussion, see Classen 1993: 15–​36). Now not only bad smells, but also poor lighting was considered a serious social health and morality problem (Howes and Lalonde 1991: 132). The nineteenth century also embodies the emergence of autonomous vision, in which vision, through different representational innovations and devices, became disembodied from the other senses. The era produced modern photography, museums, world fairs, and professional archaeology (Crary 1990; Classen and Howes 2006; Candlin 2008; Classen 2012; Hamilakis 2013: 21–​24, 34–​55; Krmpotich 2020: 96). For archaeology and museums this meant that objects were taken out of their sensorial context and became appreciated on their own. “The rich texture of the object world,” as Hamilakis puts it, “was replaced with the smooth but dull homogeneity of the glass case” (2013: 48). Nineteenth-​century concerns about bad smells, poor vision, health, and morality are directly associated with the above-​noted sanitary regulations on mikva’ot in Germany. In his study of the nineteenth-​century reforms of Jewish ritual baths, Schlich (1995: 439) described this development as follows: Those who criticized the mikwe aimed at integrating the Jews into a culture that was universal, enlightened and healthy. … Bourgeois behaviour was healthy behaviour. And the bourgeoisie was the reference group of the ideologues of emancipation, who, intent on joining it, emulated its culture. Discussing the development of modern mikva’ot within the broader context of the construction of Western modernity and anti-​Semitism is important for understanding the birth of the Jewish ritual bath in Classical antiquity, that is, those stepped pools dating from the late second century BCE into the second century CE that have been found in the hundreds during excavations and surveys in the southern Levant (Figure 11.1). The distinctive sensorial regime of the modern mikveh, a particular construct of Western modernity, gives important (but so far undiscussed) 236

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Figure 11.1  Distribution map of stepped pools in the southern Levant; case study sites are marked by black dots. Source: Map by author; data from Adler 2011.

context to the original identification of these stepped pools as ancient Jewish ritual baths. As we will see below, from their first identification, the autonomous modern gaze of archaeologists upon these stepped pools (with the exclusion of other senses) highlighted a historical narrative of ancient Jewish uniformity (see also Chapter 25, this volume). This narrative emphasised a shared observance of purity regulations from the Hebrew Bible and adherence in practice to the standards set by the Jewish upper classes in antiquity (whether Hasmoneans, rabbis, priests, or Pharisees). Perhaps (subconsciously) informed by ideas about modern mikva’ot, the “rich texture” of the individual ancient baths, to quote Hamilakis again, was replaced by archaeologists in their interpretations with a “smooth but dull homogeneity” of common Jewish religious 237

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practice. One could argue that our understanding of ancient Jewish ritual bathing remains essentially a deodorised one.

The archaeology of ancient Jewish ritual baths The generic ancient Jewish ritual bath2 was born on Masada in the summer of 1964. Masada is a rock plateau in the Judean desert on which the fortress-​palace of Herod the Great (reign 37–​4 BCE ) was exposed (for its architecture, see Netzer 1991). After the discovery of a suggested ancient ritual purification bath (labelled Southern Mikveh) dating to the First Jewish Revolt (66–​70/​74 CE ) was announced at a press conference, two distinguished rabbis arrived at the site from Jerusalem to see the stepped, plastered installation for themselves (see Yadin 1966: 164–​ 167). After careful inspection, Rabbi Muntzberg confirmed its identification: “among the finest of the finest, seven times seven” (Yadin 1966: 166). The baths at Masada demonstrated, according to the excavator Yadin (1966: 167), its builders’ “scrupulous conformity with the injunctions of traditional Jewish law.” This was not the first time that such stepped, plastered pools had been found in the region. Similar ones were exposed previously at Khirbet Qumran and Beth She’arim. However, “that moment,” that interpretation on the rock plateau of Masada, captured in an iconic photograph (Figure 11.2), “very much defined how ritual baths would be studied for the next half a century,” as Stuart Miller (2015: 17) recently noted. Today, archaeology has uncovered hundreds of such stepped pools in the region. Due to their strong diversity in shape and size, no consistent appearance of a ritual purification bath exists and, hence, their exact number remains contested among scholars (for discussion, see Bonnie 2019a; Reich 2013 identifies 459 ritual baths, while Adler 2011 identifies 850). The scholarly

Figure 11.2  Rabbi Muntzberg and others inspecting the Southern Mikveh at Masada. Source: Yadin 1966: 167; courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society. 238

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consensus is that these stepped pools were used primarily as Jewish ritual purification baths. This idea is based on the particular geographic distribution of these stepped pools within the southern Levant, their lack of resemblance to other types of water architecture, and the fact that contemporary authors (c. 63 BCE –​100 CE ) indicate that ritual bathing practices among Jews had gained traction. Such baths were used by people for ritual immersion and purification from the state of impurity caused by, for instance, contact with sexual fluids or diseases, but were also used for immersing impure material objects (Balberg 2014; 2015). Some of the pools are found near tombs and agricultural installations, as well as near the Temple of Jerusalem, the primary centre for Jewish worship that was destroyed in 70 CE (see Zissu and Amit 2008: 51–​61). The large majority of them, however, have been found within early Jewish household contexts. The widespread attestation of these stepped pools in the southern Levant during the first century BCE and CE (see Figure 11.1) has especially dominated scholarship over recent decades. It is commonly argued that the growing number of these stepped pools appearing in Jewish households during this period occurred as a result of the territorial expansion of the Hasmonean kingdom during the late-​second to mid-​first century BCE in combination with a heightened concern with ritual purity among the Jewish population (see, most recently, Adler 2018; Steen Fatkin 2019). Put differently, a stepped pool was a common structural feature in a Jewish household primarily because its members observed a shared notion of purity regulations. Subsequently, this material has become a cornerstone for the argument that purity laws, as known from contemporaneous and later textual traditions, were generally observed in everyday Jewish life (e.g., Regev 2000: 184–​185; Zissu and Amit 2008: 48; Adler 2013: 240; Miller 2015: 21).3

Sensing stepped pools What do we know about how individual stepped pools were experienced and used? Were there different ritual traditions among different households? And how did any such difference, if existing, affect the general tradition of ritual purification? The later rabbinic sources, at the least, suggest rather divergent ideas of what ritual baths looked like and how they functioned and were experienced. Miller (2015: 44), based on a careful examination of the rabbinic understanding of the mikveh and beth tevilah (“house of immersion”; e.g., m. Parah 3:7; Yoma’ 3:2–​3), has argued that the mikveh was not “a monolithic institution with a single application, form, or history.” Not only was there no single way of using a mikveh, Miller (2015: 32) also noted that “[w]‌hat the rabbis considered to be a ‘typical’ miqveh would be hard to depict, very likely because they had no … fixed conception of the ritual bath.” This diversity of understandings of the later rabbinic concept of a mikveh stands in stark contrast with the monotony by which ritual bathing practices are interpreted from the earlier-​dated archaeological stepped pools. To the autonomous and visually privileged gaze of the researcher, leaving archaeological and sensorial contexts aside, these archaeological features look quite the same. For example, Morten Jensen (2013: 16) described the ritual bath as a “peculiar stepped pool structure” and Eyal Regev (2000: 184) noted little more than that it was “a plastered immersing pool with a few stairs leading into it.” A lack of deeper engagement with the material evidence itself is often revealing. Only rarely can one find a description detailing and explaining the role of the different features out of which the installation was made (but see Adler 2013: 242–​ 243; Bonnie 2019a). Yet, only describing and analysing the material characteristics of these pools misses the point of how people made sense of these archaeological installations. As Jokiranta et al. (2018: 14) noted, studies have been lacking that examine how the materiality of these pools affected how they were used, how they shaped life around them. Instead, primary focus has been given to their 239

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identification and, to a lesser degree, to explaining their appearance and eventual disappearance from the archaeological record (e.g., Miller 2015; Adler 2017; Bonnie 2019b: 287–​304; Steen Fatkin 2019). It remains undiscussed, to a large extent, whether ordinary users across the region viewed, smelled, touched, and used these stepped pools in similar ways.

Getting wet! Towards a sensorial experience of stepped pools Ways of practising sensory archaeology have received more discussion during the last decade, and most certainly no single answer to this can or should be provided (for discussion, see notably Skeates 2010; Hamilakis 2013; Skeates and Day 2020; note especially the range of approaches in Tringham and Danis 2020). By considering the local archaeological contexts and wider social environments of stepped pools, recent scholarship has shown more interest in the sensorial experiences of ancient ritual bathing practices. For example, Regev (2011: especially 63–​65) studied the accessibility and significance of stepped pools found in the Hasmonean palaces at Jericho. He showed that visual privacy played an important role in the Hasmoneans’ ritual actions. Recently, in a short experimental essay, I have tried to inject other senses, notably smell and touch, into this discussion as well. I did so through a biographical narrative approach of one non-​specific stepped pool. Drawing inspiration from Stewart’s Ordinary Affects (2007), the essay tried to describe a brief moment in the pool’s life with a focus on the contact zone between pool, environment, water, and people (Bonnie 2018). Stewart’s writing tries to captivate the reader in the moment, so to speak, without attempting to explain. Adopting different styles of writing and other forms of communication surely provide a way to elucidate the complex reality that shaped and took place in these archaeological features we are studying (for different communicative styles, see Tringham and Danis 2020: 62–​68). In this chapter, the aim is to explore the contact zone between pool, environment, water, and people further but from a different angle. The pools themselves, the natural and material context in which they were built, and how this particular context shaped water flows and thus altered sensorial experiences need further study. Recently, Miller has started to examine more closely the complex workings of a few individual stepped pools at Sepphoris (see, e.g., Miller 2015: 189–​197; 2018: 455–​458), but did so without yet connecting this to how these pools may have been perceived and used differently. By exploring the contact zone between the materiality of the stepped pools and the touch, smell, sight, and sound they evoke, we get a sense of how different pools shaped different lives around them. Thus, rather than narrating the complexity of a pool’s life by focusing on a single moment, this chapter explores the diversity of experiences across a range of different stepped pools. The differences in the shapes and sizes of the stepped pools found in the region, the different water types the pools made use of, and the different environments in which they occurred all have a significance in shaping the experiences for those using and perceiving these pools. Ultimately, such studies diversify our conception of what being part of a Jewish community meant to the different users of these pools.

Changing settings, changing sensorial experiences To explore how the senses played out upon the functioning of ritual baths, I concentrate on four different case studies from the period under discussion: Jericho, Masada, Magdala, and Gamla (see Figure 11.1). These four sites developed during the late ​second and first centuries BCE and are important for our understanding of Jewish life during this time. In the south, Jericho was an important Hasmonean seat with several palace complexes, while Masada’s palace-​fortress played 240

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an important role during the subsequent Herodian era and the First Jewish Revolt (66–70/74 ce). On the other hand, the towns of Gamla and Magdala developed as administrative centres in the north, showing Hellenistic architectural influences, and reaching regional importance during the first century CE . Yet, each of these four sites developed in close relation to its particular geographical and environmental setting. It will be explored here how this difference affected how its respective Jewish community viewed, smelled, moved, and touched the pools in which they regularly immersed for ritual purification.

Ritual bath AA209 in the Hasmonean Buried Palace, Jericho We start on the fringes of the dry and hot Judean Desert, at Jericho. From the late-​second century BCE up to the first century CE , Jericho was home to several Hasmonean and Herodian palace complexes (Netzer 2001a; 2001b). Apart from this, the excavations also revealed evidence of almost 40 stepped, plastered pools that were identified as Jewish ritual baths (Adler 2011: 328–​329). Here I focus on what has been suggested to be the earliest known ritual bath in the southern Levant. It was found in the remains of the Hasmonean Buried Palace, which was constructed around 125 BCE by the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus I. Like the palace itself, the ritual bath had only a short life and went out of use when the entire palace was eventually buried no later than 85 BCE (on its dating, see Steen Fatkin 2019: 161–​163). The bath has recently stood at centre stage in discussions on the cultural origins of these stepped immersion pools (Adler 2018: 8; Steen Fatkin 2019). I instead wish to explore in more detail the way users experienced it. The ritual bath was part of a complex in the Hasmonean Buried Palace consisting of two adjoining deep pools in a small, roof-​covered rectangular room that, based on access analysis, was rather private and isolated (Figure 11.3) (Netzer 2001b: 38–​43; for the access analysis, see Regev 2011: 51–​52). Both pools were 2.9 metres deep, but the suggested ritual bath was somewhat larger in size than the adjoining pool to its south. Each pool could be accessed individually from an entrance hall on the east. However, while the ritual bath could be entered via a flight of stairs along three sides of the pool, the adjoining pool had no steps by which to access it. Both pools were joined by a narrow lead pipe, located about 30 centimetres below the rim. A plastered in-​ ground channel on top of the stepped pool’s northern rim served as a water outlet. The Buried Palace as a whole, as well as this ritual bathing complex in particular, received water through aqueducts that carried spring water from three springs in Wadi Qelt (Garbrecht and Netzer 1991). This water would first flow into the non-​stepped pool through a large rectangular lead pipe. Once this pool was filled, the connecting pipe would start filling the ritual bath. Eventually water levels would reach so high that any overflow would be poured out through a water outlet in the northern wall. The fact that the ritual bath complex was fed by spring water meant that water could pour in continuously throughout the year from the aqueducts (Netzer 1982: 108; 2001a: 42), and that water levels in both pools would be at their highest levels most of the time. Only if the bottom of both pools were to be cleaned of sedimentation, which doubtless had to happen occasionally, would the aqueducts’ water flow probably be diverted away from the complex. The non-​stepped pool may have served as a settling pool in order for impurities in the water (e.g., calcium, silt) to settle before the water entered the stepped immersion pool.4 This and the fact that water flow was continuous suggest that water in the ritual bath was kept relatively clean. As we will see below, this is not common for most ritual baths in the southern Levant and the clear and continuously refreshing water probably led to quite a different sight, smell, and touch experience for this pool as well as others found in Jericho. Moreover, the cool spring water 241

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Figure 11.3  Jericho, the Hasmonean Buried Palace, ritual bath and settling pool, looking south. Source: Netzer 2001a: ill. 55; courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society.

created a strong contrast to the hot and dry desert climate of Jericho, making immersion a rather pleasant experience. However, the other striking feature of the ritual bath at Jericho is its considerable depth. Its water level would reach up to 2.6 metres from the pool’s bottom. Netzer pointed out in a profile drawing that with such deep water levels, a bather was able to stand only up to the pool’s third-​lowest step (Netzer 1982: 109). This seems to have been imagined from the perspective of a modern male (1.7–​1.8 metres tall). One can only wonder how other age groups, in particular children, perceived this immersion pool. While children, the elderly, or those with physical disabilities may have descended only a few steps in order to bathe, that part of the pool that had no steps still provided a considerable risk of drowning or, at least, near drowning experiences. The pool’s depth is indeed a striking feature that remains ill understood. If the pool adjoining the ritual bath primarily served as a settling pool, then it would not have to be almost 3 metres deep, nor would it have needed a separate entranceway into the room.

The Southern Mikveh, Masada Moving further south, we encounter the large rock plateau of Masada, where Herod the Great built a large fortress-​palace in the late ​first century BCE . This fortress-​palace was reused as a fortification by Jews against the Roman military during the First Jewish Revolt. While several stepped pools have been exposed at Masada, the most iconic one is the Southern Mikveh5—​ the first stepped pool in antiquity to be identified as a Jewish ritual purification bath. It is 242

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Figure 11.4  Masada, Casemate room 1196, the Southern Mikveh complex, looking east. Source: Netzer 1991: ill. 791; courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society.

located in the southeastern section of the casemate wall surrounding the plateau, in a room near the southern gate, and consists of three adjoining plastered pools (Figure 11.4) (Netzer 1991: 507–​510). The largest of the three pools, in the northeastern corner of the room, was accessed in its northwest corner by descending three steps. A smaller pool, with three relatively high steps in its southwest corner (of which the two lowermost are preserved), adjoined this pool to the south. Both pools were 1.2 metres deep and were connected by a small pipe-​hole about 30–​35 centimetres below the rim. A third pool, the smallest in size and only 50 centimetres deep, was built against the latter pool. As shown by the numerous cisterns, reservoirs, and plastered pools found on the plateau, the occupants of Masada relied solely on rain for their water consumption. In the case of the Southern Mikveh, an open channel supplied rainwater from an adjacent room into a small and shallow basin, from which it would flow via a pipe into the larger pool and eventually into the smaller adjacent pool. The third and smallest pool, however, was not directly fed by rainwater, and it remains unknown if and how water was received into this pool (it may have been drawn). Exactly how this pool complex was put to use remains uncertain. Yadin reasoned that the first and largest pool that received water was used solely for storage during the short rain season (much like a modern ’otsar installation) (Yadin 1966: 166–​167; see also Grossberg 2007: 113). The second and smaller pool was, according to him, the actual ritual bath. However, to get to this immersion pool, a person had to cross the third and smallest pool. This pool may have been used for hygienic cleaning purposes before ritually immersing oneself, but, as noted, it is unknown how water in this pool was received. Recently, based on the fact that both the two largest pools 243

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could be accessed via steps in the corner, Adler (2014: 280) has suggested that the complex had not one but, in fact, two separate ritual baths. It is not much elaborated, however, how two adjacent ritual baths would have functioned in practice. Not only do two adjacent immersion pools seem odd in light of the little and irregular rainfall in the area, it is also the particular order of pools (in which the larger immersion pool would have to be filled completely before water would flow into the smaller pool) that makes such a suggestion unlikely. Equally odd remains the location of the steps in both larger pools, as in both cases access to them seems blocked or, at least, hindered by the two smaller and shallower basins directly in front of them. Should these oddities be seen as design failures? Or was this pool complex perhaps used in an entirely different manner? In any case, the Southern Mikveh was experienced in quite different ways from the ritual bath in the Hasmonean Buried Palace at Jericho. The fact that water levels in the larger pools could go up to about 85–​90 centimetres only, means that the act of immersion would have been rather different. Instead of walking down the stairs, as in the case at Jericho, at Masada one had to crouch down in order to fully immerse oneself—​at least, in the case of most adults. Yet, with water levels of 85–​90 centimetres, most people would not have been able to sit down in these pools either. The pool’s water level also would make it more accessible to younger children and the elderly, though the positioning of the steps remains odd and could be seen as a hindrance. A more significant difference was the climatic impact on the functioning of the Southern Mikveh at Masada. While the region during the early Roman period (c. 63 BCE –​100 CE ) was likely less arid than today (Yakir et al. 1994; for discussion, see also Bonnie 2017: 32–​33), the Judean Desert was still a hot and hostile environment with little and irregular rainfall, primarily during the winter season, and a high risk of several years of drought. As the pools were solely dependent upon rainwater and were left open and exposed, it is most likely that the Southern Mikveh may not have functioned—​or at least not functioned properly—​during particular (and for longer) periods of time. Aside from the visual impact of these empty or nearly empty pools, this also obviously affected their tactile and olfactory experiences, and ritual functions. Different again from the spring-​fed pools at Jericho, the water in the rain-​fed Southern Mikveh was ultimately stagnant and may have cultivated a rather different, at times probably unpleasant, experience for its users (for a discussion on the issues of stagnant water, see also Bonnie 2016: 21–​22). While stagnant water, such as that from cisterns, was considered potable and usable in Classical antiquity, it was generally understood to be of lesser quality than spring water.6 Moreover, before the discovery of micro-​organisms and germs during the nineteenth century, people assessed water quality by relying primarily on their senses—​its smell, look, and taste. Different from the continuously flowing spring water in the ritual bath in Jericho’s Hasmonean Buried Palace, the clarity and freshness of the stagnant Southern Mikveh probably varied much over time. Those using these pools had to continuously assess through their sight, smell, touch, and taste whether the pools were safe to use. Moreover, as noted by Klingborg (2017: 86) in the case of Greek cisterns, “The dangers arising from unhealthy water are unevenly spread across the population. Both the elderly and young, as well as people with a compromised immune system, are more susceptible to waterborne diseases than others.”7 Rainwater-​fed stepped pools, therefore, required more regular cleaning, which probably occurred just before the rainy season began, when water levels were at their lowest or the pools may have stood empty. While there is no evidence for regulations on cleaning and maintenance in the case of Jewish ritual baths, such regulations do appear to have existed in the case of cisterns (for discussion, see Klingborg 2017: 91–​92). For example, the second-​century CE Astynomoi inscription from Roman Pergamon in Anatolia, an administrative text referring to legislation 244

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originally passed in the second century BCE , refers to an annual inspection of cisterns to ensure that nothing was thrown in, that is to say their cleanliness (Saba 2009).

Stepped pool “Mkv1,” Magdala Like the Southern Mikveh at Masada, the large majority of stepped pools found in the semiarid-to-arid region of the southern Levant were fed by rainwater, and thus their water quality and usage was affected by seasonal and long-​term periods of drought. However, we now turn to an unusual example of a stepped pool found more recently in the Hasmonean and early Roman town of Magdala (for its archaeology, see De Luca and Lena 2015). Because this town was built on alluvial soil on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, its groundwater level was relatively high. Different from almost all stepped pools in the southern Levant, which were typically plastered, the pools at Magdala were not plastered and were fed by groundwater that seeped through the joints of the pools’ stonework (see Reich and Zapata Meza 2014; 2018). Due to their uniqueness, their identification as ritual baths still remains contested among archaeologists (De Luca and Lena 2015: 307).8 Our example from Magdala (Figure 11.5) was built into a small rectangular room of a still partly exposed house on what may have been the northwestern outskirts of the town (Reich and Zapata Meza 2014: 65–​68; 2018: 113–​116). The roughly square-​shaped pool could be accessed from the southeast through a seven-​stepped descent spanning the pool’s full width. The pool area was 2 metres at its deepest point. The stepped pool was connected to other water installations, including another stepped pool, via two large, rectangular openings in each of its side walls. These openings likely stabilised the water level across different installations. A little

Figure 11.5  Magdala, stepped pool “Mkv3,” a nearby situated stepped pool that is more or less similar in style as example “Mkv1.” Source: Photo by author. 245

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higher, in the corner of the pool’s back wall, there is an overflow channel with a flat-​lying protruding stone, which in the case of a high groundwater table would feed the overflow to an adjacent alley. A little higher still, but just below the room’s floor level, a smaller opening was found on the side of the highest step. Its position suggests that it may have functioned as an additional water inlet (perhaps from a nearby spring source). Because of its rather rare water feeding mechanism, it was the surrounding groundwater level that determined the water level in this stepped pool. This meant that during dry summer months, the pools’ water level would roughly equal that of the adjacent Sea of Galilee. However, the water in these pools probably completely receded in summertime, only to gradually fill up again during the following winter season (Reich and Zapata Meza 2014: 69).9 How then did its users ritually purify themselves during the summer months when these pools lay empty? In Magdala, this problem could easily be solved since the nearby Sea of Galilee, consisting of “living water,” would qualify as a natural source for ritual immersion. But this provides a conundrum. If the nearby Sea of Galilee could be used as such, why put out the resources to build a private ritual bath? The excavators suggested that there may have been a taboo on public visual nudity in this community (Reich and Zapata Meza 2014: 70). But this suggestion cannot hold in the case this private ritual bath would not have functioned properly during summer and its users had to use other sources, such as the nearby Sea of Galilee, for ritual purification. Moreover, without providing clear evidence, the excavators’ interpretation imposes modern Western social attitudes towards nudity upon Magdala’s ancient Jewish community. Another possibility, not suggested by the excavators, is that a private bath was a marker of socio-​economic status among some members of Magdala’s Jewish community, even though it may have stood empty for certain times of the year. Whatever the reasons may have been for building a private ritual bath, this stepped pool exemplifies how, within one Jewish community with access to a lake, different attitudes towards ritual bathing could exist. Moreover, the different construction technique used in this particular stepped pool ultimately shaped different perceptions and reactions. By not lining the walls of the stepped pool with white plaster but instead using dark, smoothly finished basalt stone slabs in its construction, the look and touch of this stepped pool at Magdala contrasted completely with that of most stepped pools in the southern Levant. Stepped pools with plastered surfaces had to be regularly checked by their users for cracks and occasionally required repairs and a new plaster surface. If not done properly, a leak could occur and precious rainwater would seep through the pool and into the porous limestone bedrock. The occupants of the house with the basalt-​slabbed pool at Magdala did not have such worries, as their pool was fed by groundwater and the basalt slabs that they used were very durable. The fact that groundwater would seep through the joints of the pool’s stonework also meant that its waterflow was continuous and, as in the case of the ritual bath in Jericho’s Hasmonean Buried Palace, remained relatively clean. However, basalt slabs, if wet, are known to be slippery and thus users had to tread the pool’s steps slowly and carefully in order to avoid potential injuries from falling.10 In the end, the practical choice for using groundwater in this particular stepped pool at Magdala (instead of the more common rainwater) required the use of different construction materials and methods. As different materials bear different qualities and characteristics, this decision also affected the manners by which potential bathers had to move around the space and how they perceived it, as well as their bathing expectations (e.g., in the case of this particular pool’s water quality). It is certainly a possibility—​even though not often considered by scholars today—​that a user of this basalt-​slabbed pool at Magdala would neither expect nor recognise the white plastered pools in other towns and villages to have had a similar function. 246

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Ritual bath L1060, Gamla Going eastwards, crossing the Sea of Galilee, we turn to the site of Gamla, a town that largely developed under the Hasmoneans from the early first century BCE onward until its destruction by Roman forces during the First Jewish Revolt in 67 CE (Syon 2002). Unlike Magdala, Gamla was a hilltop settlement built on a ridge and protected from intruders along three of its sides by steep ravines. Aside from domestic buildings and an early monumental synagogue (for its architecture, see Syon and Yavor 2010), the excavators also exposed evidence of four stepped, plastered pools identified as Jewish ritual baths. Among this is a larger ritual bath (Figure 11.6) which I consider here because of its apparent public context. Its nearness, orientation, and evidence of water channels suggest that this ritual bath was closely connected to the nearby synagogue (Yavor 2010a: 58–​60). The ritual bath shows evidence of two different phases. During its earliest phase, the bath was at its largest and apparently consisted of only its outer walls. The pool had no stone-​cut steps during this phase, although it is possible that stairs made of perishable material were used. Sometime later, when exactly is unknown, the pool was modified, which shrank the pool by about a third of its size. Directly adjacent to the ritual bath lay a small square, plastered basin. A narrow channel on this basin’s southern rim functioned as an overflow channel into the ritual bath. Though no water inlet for this basin was found, it possibly functioned as a settling pool for impurities before the water poured into the larger ritual bath. The ritual bath appears to have received water through an intricate channelling system fed by the town’s two large cisterns to the northeast (Figure 11.6) (Yavor 2010a: 52–​54).11 While no direct connection has been found, the excavators suggest that one of these cisterns was connected to a stone slab-​covered, plastered channel that passed through Gamla’s defence wall,

Figure 11.6  Gamla, ground plan of ritual bath L1060 and synagogue area. Source: After Yavor 2010a: plan 2.11; courtesy of the Gamla Excavation Project. 247

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through the synagogue’s interior and its western façade, to ultimately empty into the ritual bath, probably via the settling pool. While still being fed by either rain or spring water, this ritual bath’s large size and central public setting next to the town’s synagogue is a clear differentiation from the previously discussed stepped pools. In theory, several adults easily fitted into the ritual bath simultaneously. Yet, with the bath being 3 metres deep and its stone steps built along one side only, much of its potential bathing area was challenging to use when water levels were high. As noted earlier in this chapter, Miller (2015) has pointed out that textual traditions indicate that the water in ritual baths could have had other purposes as well. In the case of Gamla’s public ritual bath, its central location and its large size may indeed speak for its simultaneous functioning as a communal cistern from which town people could draw water for household activities. Such functioning is supported by the fact that the hilltop town of Gamla, despite extensive excavations, shows little evidence for domestic cisterns (Yavor 2010b: 157). Furthermore, since the bath’s users were rather visible to the community due to its centrality, at least upon entering, how the particular bathing ritual was perceived and experienced by these users was very much dictated by the expectations and reactions of potential viewers. Hence, for any users, bathing here required other ways of logistical and mental preparation as well as possible rehearsal of ritual performance, much like a public ceremony. Such preparation and rehearsal were needed to a much lesser extent in the more private setting of domestic stepped pools, where individual bathing performances were not guided by viewer expectations and reactions other than those of family. If we also take into consideration that ritual immersion may have occurred alongside12 town people drawing water for domestic purposes, the entire experience of purification in this specific stepped pool was much different from those previously discussed. The fact that this ritual bath was dependent on water that ran via a complex channelling system through the synagogue is equally noteworthy. The long route between its water collection area outside Gamla’s defence walls and its ultimate terminus provides added (but, for its users, seemingly unnecessary) risks in terms of spillage, repairs, and contaminants in the water. To this should be added that the peculiarity of the water route also made the bath’s functioning dependent on those people within Gamla’s community that had access to the synagogue. Research suggests that the Gamla synagogue may have been a rather closed-​off space to which only the town’s elite probably had access.13 One possibility is that those community members with access to the synagogue were required to immerse into this pool prior to entering. The placement of the pool’s steps away from the synagogue entrance, however, speaks against such an interpretation. Another possibility is that the pool symbolised an act of power by those people inside the synagogue (as having control over the pool’s water flow) to those without access. The latter had to come near to the synagogue for access to (ritually pure) water but were not allowed to access this building. With only a certain group having deciding power on when and how much water was fed into this stepped pool, then for those people without access to the synagogue the act of seeing and hearing the flowing water leaving the synagogue and gushing into the public ritual bath was a personal and emotional event that may have been met with awe and wonder, among other things (see also Chapter 16, this volume). This uncertainty of water access for some groups at Gamla contrasts to the relatively constant spring-​water flow of Jericho’s ritual bath and the quite reliable, even though seasonal, groundwater level at Magdala.

Conclusion I have tried to provide a reconstruction of the archaeologically attested stepped pools as to how they were used and experienced by their respective communities: one that focused on the 248

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particular architectural qualities of the pools themselves within the context of their surroundings. In doing so, I have attempted to move beyond the traditionally smooth and homogeneous explanations of these stepped pools as Jewish ritual baths by reflecting on these installations in terms of their power to shape diverse practices and experiences. While conventionally these pools have been heralded for their commonality in spreading a particular ritual to the so-​called masses (top-​down), this study has highlighted their richness in diverse experiences within and across communities. As I argued in this chapter, ritual purification was deeply communitydependent and a vague resemblance in shapes and materials by no mean signifies a resemblance in experience and meaning. Of particular importance was how these stepped pools shaped the context of water—​not only spatially, but also in terms of its impact upon the senses, creating different soundscapes, smellscapes, and ultimately a distinct sense of place (Strang 2005). These local geographies that were created through this engagement were the building blocks for considerable differences in how purification rituals were perceived by different Jewish communities across the southern Levant.

Notes 1. The research was made possible thanks to various institutions and funders: the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Michigan; the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation; the Centre of Excellence in Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions and the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires; and the University of Helsinki. 2. The naming of these archaeological installations remains ambiguous and problematic. Some scholars have favoured the use of the rabbinic term “mikveh” for these installations (see, e.g., Netzer 1991; 2004; Meyers and Gordon 2018). However, as Katharina Galor and others have pointed out, the use of this later term (first mentioned in the Mishnah, c. 200–​220 CE ) to describe pre-​third century CE archaeological installations is an anachronism and should be avoided (Galor 2007: 201–​202; see also Steen Fatkin 2019: 157–​160). Therefore, I primarily use the terms “stepped pool” and “ritual (purification) bath.” 3. The majority of stepped pools fell out of use as ritual baths in the later first and second centuries CE . The exact reasons for this remain still debated. For an overview of the discussion, see Adler 2017; Bonnie 2019b: 291–​304. 4. Netzer (1982: 107, 109) originally suggested that this pool served as an ‘otsar installation, a water reservoir to regularly change the used water from a ritual bath, but Adler (2014) has shown that such installations were a much later innovation and did not occur in antiquity. 5. The excavator’s naming uses the anachronistic, later rabbinic term mikveh to designate a first-​century Jewish ritual bath. I use the term here solely for naming purposes. 6. On the written source material, see van Tilburg 2013. For discussion of water quality in relation to fountains, see Richard 2012: 176–​182; and in relation to cisterns, see Hellmann 1994 and Klingborg 2017: 83–​86. 7. It is interesting to note that in later rabbinic sources, notably in the Babylonian Talmud, intestinal diseases form a matter of ambivalent discussion, where such diseases are viewed as “both excruciating and humiliating” as well as heralded as “a prerogative reserved for righteous persons” (Balberg 2017: 275–​281, quotation from 278). Balberg (2017: 279–281) believes that this seeming paradox is because such diseases had both a figurative and concrete cleaning purpose. Since the cause of such diseases is very much linked to the use of stale and warm waters, especially when communally shared (see Scobie 1986: especially 407–​422; Mitchel 2017: 54), it remains possible that ritual bathing practices (or traditions related to such practices in late antiquity) may have had something to do with it. 8. It surely remains a possibility that this stepped structure (also) functioned as a water well from which the household could easily draw groundwater for other activities. However, this usage would not necessarily exclude a possible ritual functioning. 9. The stepped pool’s lowest level (–​208.48 metres) is considerably higher than the Sea of Galilee’s lowest lake level during this period, which is based on evidence from Magdala’s harbour that fluctuated between –​208 and –​209.5 metres (De Luca and Lena 2014: 144). 249

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10. While no direct sources are known to me for slippery bathing surfaces, literary sources from antiquity do show awareness of slippery basalt road surfaces in wet conditions. See, e.g., Tacitus, Hist. 3.82; Martial, Epigr. 5.22. For further discussion, see Laurence 2013: 251. 11. Whether these two cisterns were fed by rain or spring water is uncertain. Yavor (2010b: 156) suggests a possible connection with a nearby spring, though later changes have destroyed any evidence of a connecting channel. 12. Here “alongside” can mean either simultaneously or after one another, as we do not know whether and how ritual and secular water activities were regulated for this particular bath, if it indeed had both a ritual and secular purpose. 13. This can be suggested from the synagogue’s relatively low seating capacity, its restricted level of access, and its visual privacy. For further discussion, see Bonnie forthcoming; Spigel 2012: 75–​90.

Bibliography Adler, Y. 2011. “The Archaeology of Purity: Archaeological Evidence for the Observance of Ritual Purity in Ereẓ-​Israel from the Hasmonean Period until the End of the Talmudic Era (164 BCE –​400 CE).” Ph.D. Dissertation, Bar-​Ilan University. Adler, Y. 2013. “Purity in the Roman Period,” in D. M. Master, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press, 240–​248. Adler, Y. 2014. “The Myth of the ’ôsār in Second Temple-​Period Ritual Baths: An Anachronistic Interpretation of a Modern-​Era Innovation.” Journal of Jewish Studies 65: 263–​283. Adler, Y. 2017. “The Decline of Jewish Ritual Purity Observance in Roman Palaestina: An Archaeological Perspective on Chronology and Historical Context,” in O. Tal and Z. Weiss, eds., Expressions of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Greco-​Roman Period: Manifestations in Text and Material Culture. Contextualizing the Sacred 6. Turnhout: Brepols, 269–​284. Adler, Y. 2018. “The Hellenistic Origins of Jewish Ritual Immersion.” Journal of Jewish Studies 69: 1–​21. Balberg, M. 2014. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Balberg, M. 2015. “Artifact,” in C. M. Chin and M. Vidas, eds., Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 17–​35. Balberg, M. 2017. “In and Out of the Body: The Significance of Intestinal Disease in Rabbinic Literature.” Journal of Late Antiquity 8: 273–​287. Bauman, Z. 1993. “The Sweet Scent of Decomposition,” in C. Rojek and B. S. Turner, eds., Forget Baudrillard? London: Routledge, 22–​46. Bonnie, R. 2016. “Studying Stepped Pools and Jewish Water Rituals in Galilee, Northern Israel.” Fossa: Societas Archaeologiae Classicae Fennica 51: 17–​25. Bonnie, R. 2017. “From Stadium to Harbor: Re-​Interpreting the Curved Ashlar Structure in Roman Tiberias.” BASOR 377: 21–​38. Bonnie, R. 2018. “Water,” in R. R. Neis and J. Veidlinger, eds., Frankel Institute Annual 2018: Jews and the Material in Antiquity. Ann Arbor: Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, 30–​32. Bonnie, R. 2019a. “Bath/​Mikveh,” in D. G. Hunter, P. J. J. van Geest, and B. J. Lietaert Peerbolte, eds., Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. Leiden: Brill. Bonnie, R. 2019b. Being Jewish in Galilee, 100–​200 CE: An Archaeological Study. Studies in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology 11. Turnhout: Brepols. Bonnie, R. Forthcoming. “Monumentality and Space: Experiencing Synagogue Buildings in Late Second Temple Palestine,” in R. Hakola, J. Orpana, and P. Huotari, eds., Scriptures in the Making: Texts and Their Transmission in Late Second Temple Judaism. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology. Leuven: Peeters. Candlin, F. 2008. “Touch, and the Limits of the Rational Museum, or Can Matter Think?” The Senses and Society 3: 277–​292. Classen, C. 1993. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures. London: Routledge. Classen, C. 2012. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Classen, C., and D. Howes. 2006. “The Museum as Sensescape: Western Sensibilities and Indigenous Artifacts,” in E. Edwards, C. Gosden, and R. B. Phillips, eds., Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture. Wenner-​Gren International Symposium Series 5. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 199–​222. Crary, J. 1990. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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De Luca, S., and A. Lena. 2014. “The Harbor of the City of Magdala/​Taricheae on the Shores of the Sea of Galilee, from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Times: New Discoveries and Preliminary Results,” in S. Ladstätter, F. Pirson, and T. Schmidts, eds., Harbors and Harbor Cities in the Eastern Mediterranean from Antiquity to the Byzantine Period: Recent Discoveries and Current Approaches. Byzas 19. Istanbul: Yayınları, 113–​163. De Luca, S., and A. Lena. 2015. “Magdala/​Taricheae,” in D. A. Fiensy and J. R. Strange, eds., Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Volume 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 280–​342. Galor, K. 2007. “The Stepped Water Installations of the Sepphoris Acropolis,” in D. R. Edwards and C. T. McCollough, eds., The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and the “Other” in Antiquity. Studies in Honor of Eric M. Meyers. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 60/​61. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 201–​213. Garbrecht, G., and E. Netzer. 1991. Die Wasserversorgung des geschichtlichen Jericho und seiner königlichen Anlagen. Mitteilungen 115. Braunschweig: Leichtweiss-​Institut für Wasserbau. Grossberg, A. 2007. “The Miqva’ot (Ritual Baths) at Masada,” in J. Aviram, G. Foerster, E. Netzer and G. D. Stiebel, eds., Masada VIII: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1935–​1965. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 95–​126. Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hellmann, M.-​C. 1994. “L’eau des citernes et la salubrité: textes et archéologie,” in R. Ginouvès, A.-​M. Guimier-​Sorbets, J. Jouanna, and L. Villard, eds., L’eau, la santé et la maladie dans le monde grec. Actes de colloque organisé à Paris (CNRS et Fondation Singer-​Polignac) du 25 au 27 novembre 1992 par Centre de Recherche “Archéologie et systèmes d’information” et par l’URA 1255 “Médecine grecque.” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, Supplément 28. Boccard: Paris, 273–​282. Howes, D., and M. Lalonde. 1991. “The History of Sensibilities: Of the Standard of Taste in Mid-​ Eighteenth Century England and the Circulation of Smells in Post-​Revolutionary France.” Dialectical Anthropology 16: 125–​135. Jensen, M. H. 2013. “Purity and Politics in Herod Antipas’s Galilee: The Case for Religious Motivation.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 11: 3–​34. Jokiranta, J., K. Antin, R. Bonnie, R. Hakola, H. Tervanotko, E. Uusimäki, and S. Yli-​Karjanmaa. 2018. “Changes in Research on Judaism in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods.” Studia Theologica, Nordic Journal of Theology 72: 3–​29. Klingborg, P. 2017. “Greek Cisterns: Water and Risk in Ancient Greece, 600–​50 BC.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Uppsala University. Krmpotich, C. 2020. “The Senses in Museums: Knowledge Production, Democratization and Indigenization,” in R. Skeates and J. Day, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. London: Routledge, 94–​106. Laurence, R. 2013. “Traffic and Land Transportation in and near Rome” in P. Erdkamp, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 246–​261. Lawrence, J. D. 2006. Washing in Water: Trajectories of Ritual Bathing in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature. Atlanta: SBL Press. McClintock, A. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge. Meyers, E. M., and B. D. Gordon. 2018. “The Ritual Baths: Introduction and Catalog,” in E. M. Meyers, C. L. Meyers, and B. D. Gordon, eds., Sepphoris III: The Architecture, Stratigraphy, and Artifacts of the Western Summit of Sepphoris. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 391–​418. Mezger, G. 1843. “Ueber die religiösen Bäder der israelitischen Frauen.” Annalen der Staats-​Arzneikunde 8: 140–​155. Miller, S. S. 2015. At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity Among the Jews of Roman Galilee. Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplement 16. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Miller, S. S. 2018. “New Directions in the Study of Ritual Purity Practices: Implications of the Sepphoris Finds,” in E. M. Meyers, C. L. Meyers, and B. D. Gordon, eds., Sepphoris III: The Architecture, Stratigraphy, and Artifacts of the Western Summit of Sepphoris. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 445–​475. Mitchell, P. D. 2017. “Human Parasites in the Roman World: Health Consequences of Conquering an Empire.” Parasitology 144: 48–​58. Mombert, M. 1830. “Das gemeinschaftliche Bad der jüdischen Frauen in Kellern, ein Gegenstand für die medicinische Polizei und für practische Aerzte.” Zeitschrift für die Staatsarzneikunde 10: 274–​294. 251

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12 Megaliths and miniatures Scale and the senses in the early Neolithic Sarah Kielt Costello

Introduction In recent decades, excavations have revealed the complex symbolic spaces in which critical transitions in human social and economic worlds took place during the early Neolithic period in the ancient Near East. These so-​called “first temples” at Göbekli Tepe (Schmidt 2008) have ignited our imaginations through their powerful architectural presence and rich visual imagery. While the original excavator, Klaus Schmidt, called them “temples,” the current director refers to them more circumspectly as “special buildings” (Clare 2020: 82). These buildings were distinct from the simple dwellings at the site because of the effort taken to quarry and carve the megalithic stones within them, the images carved on those stones, the non-​domestic function of the buildings, and the arrangement of benches that suggest a place for community gathering (Notroff et al. 2014). Here, I refer to them as “community buildings” to draw attention to the social work done through whatever activities happened there. This chapter will argue that, while the visual power of the megaliths and images is indisputable, the ritualised activities that took place in these spaces were amplified through a more varied set of sensorial experiences than we have previously accounted for. In this chapter, I focus on how plays of scale, experienced through sight, touch, and proprioception, would have intensified the “special” experiences within the community buildings at Göbekli Tepe. We are accustomed, in the art history of the ancient Near East, to understand scale in terms of hierarchy: greater size within an image means greater importance, and can furthermore indicate a step up the cosmological hierarchy. Examples include the fourth-​millennium BCE Uruk Vase, on which the top register, showing the focal female figure, is larger in scale than the register with human figures below, likely signifying both greater importance and a higher cosmological role, if we accept that the figure represents the goddess Inanna (Bahrani 2017: 46–​ 48); various stone reliefs from the fourth–​third millennia in which the king and/​or gods are shown larger than regular people; subtle but measurable hierarchy of scale in Assyrian reliefs; and the more exaggerated use of the effect in Achaemenid stone reliefs (see also Chapters 4 and 9, this volume). The concept of hierarchy of scale is harder to support in those terms when we look back to the Neolithic, however. For example, the late Neolithic stag hunt painting from Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey features an impossibly large animal surrounded by a group of tiny 254

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humans (Hodder and Meskell 2010: 35); the size of the animal may reflect its importance in that particular context, but not in a social, political, or cosmological hierarchy. The norms for the use of scale, and composition more broadly, were arguably not yet established in the Neolithic period. In order to better understand how to read scale in Neolithic images and monuments, we need to think about them from an embodied perspective: how a human body would have sensed the image or monument, and what those sense perceptions would have evoked. The site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, along with related sites in Turkey and Syria, offer an unusual opportunity to examine the sensory worlds of the people of the early Neolithic period. Göbekli provides us with an array of sensory contrasts: towering megaliths carved with diverse visual images as well as small stone objects carved with similar motifs; enclosed dark spaces and the broad open landscape, bright with sun by day and stars by night; and heavy, hard stones quarried and carried to a hilltop where they stood, still and rooted again in the earth. These structures and carvings were constructed in a world in which altered landscapes and permanent structures were new expressions of human thought and will. To fully appreciate their resonance at the time, we need to take account of the range of sensorial effects of those contrasts—​the scalar contrast of large and small, along with the visual disparity of darkness and light, and the proprioceptive extremity of the slow, burdened motion of carrying large stones compared to the easy fit of small stone items in one’s hand.

Context: the early Neolithic period During the early Neolithic period in the tenth to ninth millennia BCE , small, mobile groups of hunter-​gatherers gradually began to establish roots and, in time, developed modes of food production, though foraging remained the principal mode of subsistence throughout the early Neolithic (Akkermans 2004: 281–​285). Those economic changes brought far-​reaching impacts affecting social structures, labour, political systems, and the environment—​effects we still feel today. Subsistence practices, however, were evidently not drivers of change but rather, collateral effects of an intensification of social behaviours that brought people together in ritual spaces (Cauvin 1994; Dietrich et al. 2019; Hodder 1990; 2010). The evidence for communal activity that appears to have been religious in nature is ample from early Neolithic sites in the region. Large, carefully built communal structures with embellishments including benches, standing pillars, wall carvings, wall paintings, and in some cases indications of “ritual” activity in the form of skull placement or burial, have been found at sites in Syria including Mureybet, Jerf el Ahmar, and Tell al ‘Abr (Akkermans 2004; Stordeur 1998; Stordeur et al. 2000). In southeast Turkey, special buildings were found at early Neolithic Çayönü and Göbekli Tepe, while artefacts with images suggestive of shamanism were found at Körtik Tepe and Hasankeyf Höyük (Benz and Bauer 2015). Remains of similar structures and objects have been found at a number of sites in the Şanlıurfa region of Turkey, and Nemrik in northern Iraq extends the region of related sites eastward (Güler et al. 2013; Özdoğan 2015). Akkermans (2004: 289) points to burials within settlements and the special treatment of skulls at various sites as further evidence of ritual; the deposition of human remains also suggests why places may have acquired lasting significance to semi-​nomadic people. Burials as a physical link between people and place, together with the emotional desire to return to a place where loved ones are buried, suggest how certain places could have grown in significance over time in a feedback loop towards a less mobile population and the attendant changes in social structure that sedentism would entail (see also Part IV, this volume). Göbekli Tepe is the most exciting of the early Neolithic sites in the region, due to the remains of numerous megalithic structures found at the site. Located outside the modern city of Şanlıurfa 255

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in southeastern Turkey, between the upper Euphrates and Tigris Rivers in the Germuş mountains, Göbekli Tepe appears to have been a gathering place for early Neolithic hunter-​gatherers in the region. Situated at the highest point for kilometres around, the site both is highly visible to and has visibility of the surrounding plains and hills. The cultural deposition is up to 15 metres deep, suggesting a long period of use (Schmidt 2010: 239). The hilltop of Göbekli Tepe is dotted with large, stone, semi-​subterranean circular enclosures. Eight have been excavated with at least ten more identified through geophysical survey (Notroff et al. 2014). These structures consist of as many as three concentric stone enclosure walls containing stone benches interspersed with large limestone pillars, 4 metres high, in a circle around two taller, central pillars (Figure 12.1; Notroff et al. 2014). The central pillars measure up to 5.5 metres. While excavator Klaus Schmidt referred to the structures as enclosures, leaving open the possibility that they were open air, more recent analysis suggests that they were partially subterranean and roofed, barely visible from the outside (Clare 2020; Özdoğan 2017; Schmidt 2010). In addition to these community buildings, there are also simple structures with hearths dated to the earliest levels at the site and cisterns cut into the bedrock, demonstrating that the site was residential for at least part of the year (Clare 2020). The eight community buildings do not hold typical features of domestic houses, such as hearths, so they have been understood instead as ceremonial places (Nostroff et al. 2014; Schmidt

Figure 12.1  View of Göbekli Tepe, Enclosure D. Source: Photo by Klaus Schmidt; © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Project (Neg. #GT09_​N04-​31). 256

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2008; though see also Bernbeck 2013). Despite their monumental scale, they are comparable in concept to the round, semi-​subterranean buildings with benches at sites like Jerf el-​Ahmar, mentioned above. Thus, while Göbekli Tepe offers the richest, most dramatic evidence for ritual built spaces in the early Neolithic, it fits into a regional set of cultural practices and expressions. We can extrapolate from Göbekli Tepe to better understand related sites, and similarly, we can use evidence from places like Jerf el-​Ahmar, Mureybet, and Körtik Tepe to better understand Göbekli.

Megaliths The structures at Göbekli are evidence of large-​scale, repeated, construction activities. That such architectural labour was carried out at that early date for evidently social purposes, as opposed to basic shelter or protection, makes them all the more extraordinary in terms of how we understand the history of architecture. The megalithic pillars built into the structures at Göbekli are impressive for their scale, but also for the figural carving they bear. The upright, T-​shaped stones around the periphery of the structures feature predators and prey, mammals, reptiles and birds, including aurochs, boars, foxes, ducks, scorpions, and snakes. In each enclosure, a particular animal dominates the imagery, suggesting a structured context for the location of each motif; for example, the boar is the dominant animal in Enclosure C, foxes and snakes in Enclosure D (Dietrich et al. 2012: 679; Notroff et al. 2014). This carving has been understood largely from a visual perspective (see below); here I draw attention to the scale, as well, and the embodied perception that that scale entails. The T-​shaped pillars arranged around the edge of the enclosure encircle even larger T-​shaped pillars that have, in some cases, carved arms, hands, and clothing, including belts and loincloths, which allow us to read them as anthropomorphic (Dietrich et al. 2012: 679; Notroff et al. 2014: 88). The size of the pillars and their central position in the buildings, with benches encircling and facing them, would have meant that they were a visual focal point for people present within this space. Standing 5.5 metres high, these anthropomorphic representations would have presented a powerful scalar contrast to a human being in their presence. A person would have experienced them only at close range, restricted by the confines of the building. The visual sense would have been primary in such an encounter, but proprioception—​the awareness of one’s own body and its interaction with, and position within, the physical world—​would have also been key in experiencing the scale of this built environment. Understanding the powerful sensory presence of these anthropomorphic pillars is helpful in trying to understand their purpose. Given the visual power of the centrally positioned pillars, and their size, it is evident that they commanded a person’s attention. But what did the scale signify? In this case, as anthropomorphic representations at a height of 5.5 metres, far larger than life, it is tempting to interpret them as signifying divinities. Dietrich et al. (2012: 679) argue that they “clearly belong to another, transcendent sphere.” If they are evocations of gods, they transform our understanding of the human conception of divinity in the most ancient Near East, being by far the earliest representations of an anthropomorphic divinity. The continued controversy regarding how we read the late fourth-​millennium BCE Uruk Vase, discussed in a 2014 article by Claudia Suter, underscores how surprising such a representation would be: while Zainab Bahrani (2017: 46–​48) readily accepts the female figure on the Uruk Vase as an image of the goddess Inanna, Suter (2014: 551) observes that both Pierre Amiet and Astrid Nunn argue against the figure as a representation of the goddess, insisting that anthropomorphic images of the divine are not securely attested until the Early Dynastic period in the third millennium BCE . 257

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Something is not attested, however, until it is attested, and Göbekli Tepe has already spectacularly upended our understanding of Mesopotamian prehistory, so we cannot discount the possibility that these megaliths are images of the divine. It is their large scale that made Schmidt (2010) insist upon it; I argue below, however, that their scale is a part of a larger programme of sensory intensification at the site, part of what makes the imagery and monuments resonate with the human actors who experienced them. They are not representations of gods, but rather, representations of human, or perhaps special human power.

Miniatures The intentional use of scale at the site is evident not only through the large carved stones, but also through the presence of miniatures. Scale only has meaning in so far as it relates to something else. Within the frame of a set of images, one image may be larger than another; within the set of a species, one example may be larger or smaller than others. The point of reference for our perception of the largeness of the anthropomorphic pillars at Göbekli is the human body. Their scale is also amplified at the site, however, through the use of miniatures. Miniatures are present at Göbekli and related sites in the form of plaquettes, masks, and what the excavators call “porthole stones” (Dietrich et al. 2012; 2018; Schmidt 2010). Plaquettes have been found at a number of early Neolithic sites including Mureybet, Jerf el Ahmar, Tell el-​Kowm, Abr 3, Sefer Tepe, Tell Qaramel, and Göbekli Tepe (Dietrich et al. 2012: 685; Güler et al. 2013; Schmidt 2008: 208, abb. 96; Stordeur and Jammous 1995). Motifs carved on the plaquettes include those found also on the megaliths: snakes, scorpions, quadrupeds, and birds, as well as abstract motifs. At Göbekli Tepe several such artefacts have been found, including one engraved with an anthropomorphic figure with upraised arms between a snake and a bird (Figures 12.2–​12.5; Dietrich et al. 2012: 685). Some plaquettes have a groove incised on one side; these have been called “shaft straighteners” or grooved stones; I am grouping these together as variants of the same artefact type. They often bear images or abstract markings on one or both sides, and fit into a long glyptic tradition in the

Figure 12.2  Stone plaquette from Göbekli Tepe. Source: Photo by Irmgard Wagner; © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Project (Neg. # GT02_​0001_​00017). 258

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Figure 12.3  Stone plaquette from Göbekli Tepe. Source: Photo by Nico Becker; © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Project (Neg. # GT11_​0176_​7057).

Figure 12.4  Stone plaquette from Göbekli Tepe. Source: Photo by Nico Becker; © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Project (Neg. # GT11_​0180_​7045).

region, dating back to the shaft straighteners excavated at Epipaleolithic Natufian sites (Cauvin 1994; 2000: 48). Those do not bear images, but have a groove carved along the length of one side. Their formal similarity to objects from other traditions used to straighten the shafts of arrows led archaeologists to identify them as tools for that purpose, though Cauvin asserts that they should be seen instead as symbolic objects, representing a vulva and standing for a female divine power. That the early Neolithic examples do not always have the long groove argues against a purely functional interpretation as a shaft straightener, at least in some instances. The incised decoration, their small size, and the material also places them in the later glyptic tradition in the region, of objects we call seals. In later periods, seals were often used for sealing. In the 259

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Figure 12.5  Stone plaquette from Göbekli Tepe. Source: Photo by Nico Becker; © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Project (Neg. # GT11_​0450_​9892).

late Neolithic, however, when seals are first attested, a sealing function is not always evident. At sites from the Halaf period (c. 6500–5500 bce), for example, stone seals are plentiful while seal impressions are exceedingly rare (see Bernbeck and Pollock 2003: 56). Restricting our notion of seals to the functionality of sealing limits our recognition of the significance of their images, portability, wearability, and overall materiality. Placing the early Neolithic plaquettes in the glyptic tradition enriches and expands our understanding of early “seal” use. These iconographically rich artefacts are connected, through motif, to the rest of the visual expression and ceremonial activities attested at these early Neolithic sites. Therefore, by recognising their place in the longer glyptic tradition, we are reminded of the foundational connection between glyptic/​ seals and ritual and religious contexts. As I have argued elsewhere, this is an important correction to the view of seals that sees them primarily in an economic context (Costello 2011). Miniature masks have also been found at Göbekli, including several made of limestone or flint, measuring between 4.5 centimetres and 5.7 centimetres (Figure 12.6; Dietrich et al. 2018). These correspond roughly, in style, to a larger version found at the site: a limestone mask 42 centimetres high. The larger example has an abstracted face, with eyes and a nose roughed out of the stone in a t-​shape that echoes the form of the large pillars (Dietrich et al. 2018: fig. 4). The miniature masks likewise emphasise the form of the nose and the hollows of the eyes. Neither the larger mask nor the miniatures seem designed to be worn, being either too large or too small (Dietrich et al. 2018: 17). The excavators suggest that they are stone versions of masks made of other (perishable) materials, which would have been worn, but leave no archaeological trace. Some of the stone masks were evidently intentionally buried in the structures (Dietrich et al. 2018). The creation and deposition of miniature stone masks that replicate perishable masks extends, in time and memory, the ephemeral event in which the perishable masks were presumably worn, memorialising the event, much like the construction of a stone arch in Roman times would memorialise the ephemeral celebration of a triumph. The other category of miniature artefacts listed in reports from the site is something referred to as a porthole or portal stone. The large versions of these are rectangular, somewhat flat slabs 260

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Figure 12.6  Miniature stone mask from Göbekli Tepe. Source: Photo by Klaus Schmidt; © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Project (Neg. # GT01_​2502_​D12_​6047).

Figure 12.7  Porthole stone, Göbekli Tepe. Source: Photo by Irmgard Wagner; © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Göbekli Tepe Project (Neg. # GT02_​1548).

of stone with a roughly rectangular hole cut into them, “which could have been used to crawl through the stone” (Figure 12.7; Schmidt 2010: 250). Ranging from the “monumental” at 3 metres long to the majority at a “medium” size and last to the miniature, the porthole stone appears to have been a fairly common object type at Göbekli. Originally thought to be pillar bases, none were found supporting pillars. Several feature relief carving of snakes and other 261

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animals (Schmidt 2010: 252). Recent excavations show that portal stones were used to move from one storey of a building to a second storey, at least in the later PPNB (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) buildings (Clare 2020), and, at least in one case, to mark wall niches (Kinzell and Clare 2020: 41–​42). Hopefully further excavation will more clearly reveal the purpose of these objects; that they were made in both miniature and monumental size supports the notion that scale was an intentional part of the sensory experience of the site. I will return to this point below.

A sensory perspective The rich set of representations found carved on the standing stones, plaquettes, and porthole stones indicates that vision was clearly a key part of how the built environment was intended to communicate with people at the site. The site’s builders used visual representations to convey meaning: while we may not be able to fully interpret that meaning, understanding it at some level would enhance our conception of this critical moment in human history. Various scholars have offered suggestions for what the animals depicted might have represented. The excavators of the site have proposed that the different enclosures, with their particular animal imagery, represent competition among groups, a sign of developing social complexity (Notroff et al. 2014: 97). They also argue that the fact that the animals tend to be male, predatory, and “dangerous” indicates that the site is a “boundary zone between this world and the next” and that the animals represent a “symbolism of life and death” (Dietrich and Notroff 2015: 85). Danielle Stordeur (2014: 124), excavator of the related site of Jerf el Ahmar, links attributes to each animal, such as masculine for horned animals, threatening for the panther, and wily for the fox. A growing chorus of voices argues for a shamanic interpretation (Benz and Bauer 2015; Costello 2011; Hodder 2010: 22; Stein 2019: 60). Benz and Bauer (2015: 10) summarise ethnographic and archaeological research on the topic. They pay special note to a suite of images on one of the pillars from Göbekli featuring a vulture, scorpion, snake, waterfowl, quadruped, and human, arguing for a shamanistic reading of these motifs. They suggest that the monumentality of the humanoid imagery at Göbekli indicates a threatened system and the need to assert shamanistic power, while the overall monumentality at the site suggests a need to assert human control (Benz and Bauer 2015: 4). Previously, I had similarly noted the recurrence of these motifs, especially of snakes, quadrupeds, and birds, in the glyptic tradition beginning with the early Neolithic plaquettes. These elements together represent a three-​tiered cosmos, in which a religious specialist (or shaman figure) plays a role. The human figure is frequently portrayed with a distorted head, which might represent a mask, costume, cranial deformation or spiritual transformation, or a combination of those (Costello 2011: 257–​258). In that earlier research, I note that a domesticated quadruped replaces the wild animal imagery later in the Neolithic, and the vegetal filling element appears at that time as well, both perhaps indicative of the growing importance of domesticated food resources (Costello 2011: 258). During the early Neolithic, however, wild animals naturally are the ones depicted at all three levels of the tiered cosmos. The role of the human in the figural cosmos of the early Neolithic is powerfully emphasised at Göbekli through the immense humanoid pillars. Diana Stein (2019: 60) takes up the identification of the depiction, arguing that it represents a shamanic figure based on its adornment with animal motifs, with actual animal skins depicted as clothing, and the deposition of a fox tail and other “ritual paraphernalia” in the enclosure. The masks, too, would fit easily into a shamanic interpretation, as noted by Stein (2019: 61). The megaliths discussed above, with their animal imagery and anthropomorphic form, resonate due to their superhuman scale. The centrality of the human figure in this architecture 262

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is matched by the presence on at least three of the plaquettes of a schematic human form, with motifs on either side that can be read as snakes and birds. Read as such, they are the earliest examples of what is often called a “master of animals” or “mistress of animals” motif—​a three-​part arrangement of figures with a human in the central, dominant position (Arnold and Counts 2010). Following this interpretation of the imagery, I argue that scale was intentionally employed at Göbekli Tepe to represent and emphasise a particular type of human power, that of the ritual specialist or shaman, within the cosmology represented by the imagery overall. The depiction of the cosmos onto the built environment would have created an almost virtual-​reality-​like experience, by taking advantage of a human’s proprioceptive sense of self within the built space and scaled images. Such an experiential encounter would intensify the shared cosmological view of the members of the community. Scale is operating at the site through a dialectic, a back-​and-​forth sensation of size. Similarly, the T-​shaped pillars’ visual presence as human representations is dialectic due to their abstraction; they require a sort of unmasking to be recognised. They suggest humanness, but demand focused visual attention to communicate that meaning, since one must notice and connect the arms, hands, and clothing on the abstract form of the stone. They therefore communicate through a seeing/​not-​seeing duality; one must work to see the humanness, at which point the scale makes the image overwhelming. Such duality might have been enhanced through the manipulation of light and darkness. The roofed buildings would have been dark, a powerful contrast to the harsh sunlight of the limestone hills of southeastern Turkey. Within that darkness, the anthropomorphic qualities of the pillars could have been selectively emphasised through focused lighting and the addition of clothing, as suggested by Stein (2019: 60). Trevor Watkins (2006: 15) describes the community buildings as a “theatre of memory,” a symbolically charged locus for community interaction. The tiny images and objects function in a much more personal way: held, exchanged, cached, stored, or displayed, but however they were “used” or manipulated, they would have served to transfer the ideas contained in the images from mind to hand, hand to hand, moment to later moment. Watkins (2006: 22) argues that PPNA (Pre-​Pottery Neolithic A) architecture functioned as “symbolic storage”; he writes, “the built environment … offered an arena within which abstract ideas about the structure of the community, the relationship of the community with their world, and even the structure of that world could be articulated.” It is no coincidence that at the very moment humans began to express abstract ideas through a powerfully built environment, they also created external symbolic storage in the small scale, in the masks and the motifs on the plaquettes. As a scholar long interested in symbolic storage and in particular, seals, I cannot help looking backwards to see the miniatures, especially the plaquettes, as the beginning of an information-​ storage tradition, but also, and more helpfully, looking forward from this starting point to later seal use. Beginning to imagine the context in which the concept of “seal” began reminds us of the power of the image, carved into stone, held in the hand. A small version of the cosmology-​ writ-​large at Göbekli Tepe, these must have been steeped in ritual and belief. We know from later contexts in the ancient Near East that some images were believed to house actual power: a me, a divine presence, engendered through rituals enacted in the creation of the work (Bahrani 2002; Feldman 2009; Suter 2014) (see also Chapters 10 and 15, this volume). Beyond affect, or agency, images in the ancient Near East could actually hold power, and objects like these might let a person hold that supernatural power in her hand. Seals certainly served, later, as devices to secure or control transactions, but also as physical means to store information, ideas, and divine power; it is that powerful aspect that we can find at this point of origin. 263

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The miniature plaquettes, masks, and portholes, thus, may have stored symbolic information, their images and appearance enhancing the memory of the events in the community building. Beyond their visual appearance, they contributed to the dialectic of scale, as discussed above. They also have other physical qualities that would lend to the sensory experiences at the site. For the masks, the replication of ephemeral objects in stone lends permanence to the items, while also connecting them, materially, to the stone construction of the buildings. The small size of the plaquettes and masks allows them to be held in the hand, adding the sensory quality of touch to the visual and auditory memory of whatever events took place in the buildings. The hand-​held quality of the miniatures also personalises them, as the hand can envelop the object, perceiving it with the same haptic feedback that we experience today when we shop, seeking to touch and feel the items we are browsing. We touch not only to perceive the material quality of a thing, but to sense it in a more fully embodied manner. The megalithic pillars themselves would also have been touched. We cannot know how or by whom they were touched once they were in place in the buildings, but the act of building would have been significant in its labour. The compact limestone was quarried from the ground near the site; it is the ground. People worked to carve it out of the ground, and to create an abstract human form from the hard stone. The stones, weighing up to ten metric tons (Notroff et al. 2014: 87), were carried to the site through the labour of bodies. Perhaps as an incentive for that labour, there were feasts (though Kinzell and Clare 2020 question the evidence for feasting at the site). Dietrich et al. add the (so far inconclusive) evidence for the consumption of alcohol (2012: 687–​690). If there was feasting at the site, crowds of people would have had their senses stimulated through food, drink, music, and dance (Garfinkel 2003), under a canopy of stars, bright against a dark night sky. Such a break from routine, along with the concomitant social bonds established at the event, would have had an impact on their memories. Feasts as an incentive for the work events seems a likely equation. Perhaps feasts were a part of construction, or more likely, construction was part of a cycle of meaningful activities at the site as buildings were built and repaired. Kinzell and Clare (2020: 37) assert that “[w]‌hat all the structures have in common are traces of continuous and diversified renewal, modification and rebuilding processes.” Bernbeck (2013: 43) envisages a similar, non-​static role for the structures, in which the carving of images on stone, erection of subsequent rings of walls, and ultimate destruction of the building were all part of a fluid set of practices in which the building was a changing actor. Critical to our sensory reimagining of the site, Bernbeck (2013: 43) asserts that the ongoing building and rebuilding, carving and recarving, of the structures implies “a constant desire to rework and restructure the material world.” The structures, he argues, were not containers or stages for a performance of ritual, but rather are material records of the meaningful activities themselves. This approach is in keeping with an understanding of Palaeolithic image-​ making that sees the making of the image as part of a ritual activity, or the repeated replastering and painting of houses in Neolithic Çatalhöyük as similarly done not for the final effect, but for the act of doing it (see, for example, Lewis-​Williams 2002). When we look at the images and monuments at Göbekli Tepe, great and small, we see a powerful natural world, and the desire to exert human control within it. The monumental images structure the cosmology, placing human power in the centre of it. These large, abstracted human forms are expressions of human power. The power might be supernatural, magical, or divine, but its human form represents the human ability to channel that power, through ritual and by ritual specialists. We cannot know the sensory order of a past society—​which senses they utilised and how those senses were prioritised; we cannot know how they perceived the world, in other words. But we can be certain that our reliance on visual perception in understanding Göbekli Tepe is inadequate. Visual perception

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would have been an integrated part of the larger sensorium, combined with touch, proprioception, and other phenomena experienced at the site. In the busy hum of our modern world, it is easy to forget the real darkness of a night sky, unpolluted by ambient night, the brightness of the stars in that sky, the quiet of a barren hilltop, even the visual power of an image in a world with very little visual culture, or of a built environment in a world with few buildings. The powerful sensory contrasts created at Göbekli Tepe would have made the transformative events that happened there stay for a long time in the memories of the participants.

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13 Sensing salience in the landscapes of Egyptian royal living-​rock stelae Jen Thum

Introduction We often think of ancient Egypt as a culture of monumental building. The Egyptian landscape was peppered with structures that demonstrated, among other things, the command and successes of the royal establishment. Yet there are some cases where royal monuments were not erected from quarried stone, shaped into the symmetrical and orderly forms typical of Egyptian material culture, but were instead carved directly into otherwise unaltered natural features—​the medium of living rock, or stone that is still in situ. This chapter explores Egyptian encounters with one such type of monument, royal living-​rock stelae, to better understand the circumstances that led to this choice of medium. I argue that the monuments in the two case studies below, at Konosso Island and Nauri, were executed in living rock because their stone supports produced—​or were intended to produce—​a particular sensory experience brought on by their salience in the local landscape as people moved past them.1 The intended “audience” for Egyptian monuments was not always, or not always exclusively, human. However, since the sensory explorations in this volume treat the human lived experience and foreground embodied encounters with the “matter-​reality” of the past (Hamilakis 2011: 208), the case studies in this chapter centre on monuments that appealed, at least in part, to people on the ground. These stelae are located at two sites on expedition routes that people would have passed by regularly. Moreover, their inscriptions belong to three ancient Egyptian text types that were ostensibly directed at a human audience: the royal decree (wd-​nswt) and two genres of military inscription called the ỉw.tw report and victory stela (wd n nḫtw). Both sites present interpretive challenges, as neither has much non-​epigraphic archaeological evidence. However, because the stelae in question are royal monuments, we may deduce that their locations and material characteristics—​which were the result of careful design and a choice from among many alternative places, forms, and media—​reflect plans for an “effective” reception by their intended audience. The stelae themselves offer strong evidence for how people were projected to have encountered them. Elite evidence is thus marshalled in the service of understanding the non-​elite bodily experience.

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-14

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Sensing the stelae Egyptology is only beginning to explore its intersections with sensory studies. Richard Parkinson (2020) recently offered an overview of what might be possible for future work in this vein (see also Chapters 13, 21, 27, and 28, this volume). Judging from the available (elite) evidence, seeing and hearing appear to have been prioritised in the Egyptian experience (Parkinson 2020: 415), although what those actions really signified in the broader context of Egyptian sensoria may be less straightforward than we think. Some texts that one might assume were the object of seeing, hearing, or touching were, in fact, consumed (Ritner 1989). Certain words—​including, for example, the verb dp, “taste,” which has the broader meaning “experience” (Wb. V, 445.7–​ 9)—​suggest further cultural nuances that we cannot fully access. As Egyptologists continue to explore what the Egyptian sensory profile might have been like, a growing number of studies have made efforts to shift our focus away from vision, which has been privileged in research on the human past (Kroeter 2009; Hartley 2012; Frood 2013; Pellini 2015; Price 2018).2 On the contrary, the present chapter centres primarily on aspects of rock monuments that were appreciable by sight, because the stelae in question were undoubtedly meant to be seen—​the salience of their stone supports, I argue, was a major component of their design. However, whenever possible I integrate into my analysis the sounds, textures, and other sensory aspects of the stelae and their landscapes that may also have shaped the Egyptian experience with these monuments. Two main principles guide this exploration of the effects of the stelae at Konosso Island and Nauri on Egyptian bodies and minds. The first is to consider the materiality and context of these monuments as integral to their messages, and to the way they “worked.” Sensory experiences are themselves material, requiring materiality “in order to be activated” (Hamilakis 2011: 209), and recent Egyptological research on the materiality of texts, including rock inscriptions, shows great promise (e.g., Seidlmayer 2013; Brown 2015; Dieleman 2015; Hoogendijk and van Gompel 2018; Dirksen and Krastel 2020). In both of the case studies in this chapter, the stelae’s stone supports have been relatively little considered when compared with their texts—​that is to say, they have not been studied primarily as landscape monuments.3 Monuments are usually designed to be recognised, even when they cannot be fully understood by all members of a society (Moore 1996: 92). Most Egyptians were not literate (Baines 2007: 49), but that need not have prevented them from experiencing or (generally) absorbing the messages of such works. Foregrounding encounters with the whole monument, rather than its text alone, not only reflects what was likely a more realistic scenario for its ancient audience, but also encourages us to consider alternative ways of absorbing its message that may have been perceptible through multisensory means (see also Chapter 15, this volume). The second principle, following environmental historian Linda Nash (2005), is to acknowledge that the material world is not merely a structure for human actions. Human agency is not entirely separate from the non-​human environment, and the non-​human elements of the world we inhabit are not always secondary to our experience. Nash writes that aspects of the landscapes we dwell in can shape our intentions, not only our actions. This idea stems from Tim Ingold’s concept of the “whole-​organism-​in-​its-​environment,” a creature never separate from its surroundings (2000: 19). People do not always “develop their plans” abstractly in their minds (Nash 2005: 68); sometimes, it takes an on-​the-​ground interaction, a surprising sensory experience with one’s environment, to catalyse an idea. Natural features—​in this case, rock outcrops—​ can shape and support human agency, if not possess a form of “agency” themselves. The concept of an active and agentive non-​human world was in fact central to the Egyptian understanding of the universe, where aspects of the earth and cosmos, such as the sky and the Nile inundation,

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were deified and personified. In the words of Jan Assmann, the Egyptian idea of nature “was ‘super-​natural’ in a way that fundamentally prevented a concept of nature” (2001: 63). I contend that the Egyptian experience with certain rock landscapes—​the way features looked, the memories and images they recalled—​served as the impetus for the creation of some living-​rock stelae, including those I treat below.

Egyptian geologics—​and geoaesthetics Prior to an exploration of living-​rock stelae, it is first necessary to understand how rock, and more specifically living rock, was conceptualised in the Egyptian world: their “geologics.”4 For the Egyptians, the world came into being on a lump of rock, the benben-​stone, where the creator god stood amid the primordial waters (Quirke 1992: 27).5 This is according to the Heliopolitan cosmogony, the best-​known and perhaps the most important of several Egyptian creation stories (Lesko 1991: 91; Assmann 2001: 119–​120). The emergence of this primeval mound signified the start of the First Time (zp tpj), when the gods reigned upon the earth—​a state to which the Egyptians continuously endeavoured to return the world (Vernus 1995: 36–​42). Echoes of this myth permeated many areas of Egyptian life, from the design of temples, whose elevated inner sancta recalled the benben-​stone (Assmann 2001: 38), to the ebb of the Nile inundation, which repeated the moment of creation, when fields emerged from the flood with a fresh layer of fertile silt (Quirke 1992: 26)—​a phenomenon that perhaps accounts for the origin of this myth (Leclant 1969: 228). The Egyptians also imagined that the world was surrounded on two sides by walls of living rock, the eastern and western mountains (bᴈẖw and mᴈnw, respectively). These features marked the progress of the sun’s daily journey between the horizons, as is illustrated in the hieroglyph for the word Egyptologists usually translate as “horizon,” ᴈḫt (Wb. I, 17.12–​14), which depicts the sun rising between these mountains in cross-​section (𓈌). It is likely that the presence of cliffs and hills at the edges of the deserts that flank the Nile Valley influenced this line of thought. In its integral connection to the two most important organising elements of Egyptian life—​the flow of the Nile and the passage of the sun from east to west—​living rock was foundational to the very structure of the world. Three key terms help further explain Egyptian conceptions of this material. The first is dw, “mountain” (Wb. V, 541.7–​545.1), which refers to a range of living-​rock features including cliffs and escarpments (such as at Amarna; Murnane and Van Siclen 1993), wadi walls (such as in the Wadi Hammamat, known as dw n bḫn or “Mountain of Bekhen-​stone”; González-​Tablas Nieto 2014), plateaus (such as Gebel Barkal; see below), and other landforms (such as at Abydos and Thebes; see below). A dw was also the place where cut or quarried stone—​ỉnr (Wb. I, 97.12–​ 98.6)—​was obtained. Stone was viewed as a perennial material, linked to the concept of perfective time known as dt (Assmann 2003) and used to enter events, in the form of monuments, into that time (Vernus 2017: 475–​478). But while ỉnr was detached or detachable despite its persistence, dw carried a sense of storeyed mass and immobility, much like the word “mountain” does in English today. Metaphorically, as Hermann Grapow noted in his volume on Egyptian figurative expressions (1924), dw could be used to signify great size. For example, grain heaps were piled up “like mountains,” and monuments were made as big ( ᴈ) as them. Builders bragged that they had created “mountains of stone” (Grapow 1924: 52). The word also connoted permanence and stability: temple walls were equated with dw, because they were imagined to be everlasting, and the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu was meant to persist like the eastern and western mountains mentioned above (Grapow 1924: 52). In the tomb of Ahmose at Amarna, the deceased declared his hope to remain in his place of rest until the mountains get up and move (de Garis Davies 1905: 32)—​that is, never. 269

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The other two terms, dw w  b and dhnt, speak to connections between living rock and the divine.6 In the Egyptian view, natural features—​especially rock features—​could house the divine numen (Aufrère 1993: 11–​12). The term dw w  b (Wb. V, 542.15–​17; Thiem 2000: 23–​34, n. 78), which has been translated as “pure mountain,” “holy mountain,” and “primeval mountain,” carried a sense of the mountain as a “sacred, untouched, virgin” place—​hence the adjective w  b, “pure” (Desroches-​Noblecourt and Kuentz 1968: 203–​205). This term was applied to mountains that served as seats of the gods, chiefly Amun-​Re and the Cataract Triad (Khnum, Satet, and Anuket) (Thiem 2000: 23–​34, n. 78). The designation dw w  b seems to have been given to one or two new locations in each of the reigns during which it is attested; each was politically important for the assertion of Egyptian royal power in Nubia and was connected with oracular or miraculous events (Thiem 2000: 23–​34, n. 78). The word dhnt (Wb. V, 478.6–​13) can refer to a peak, rock projection, or visually prominent rock face, but also to a “cultically active” rock feature on a mountain with primeval associations, as Faried Adrom (2004) has shown. The latter type served as a site of divine appearance and renewal, “a transitory boundary zone between the hidden (primeval) and the visible (earthly) planes” (Adrom 2004: 16, translation by author). It bears mentioning that the features into which Egyptian rock-​cut temples were carved were also understood to be interfaces between this world and the world of the divine; the choice of living rock as a medium for those monuments was not functional, but conceptual (Gundlach 2001).7 It follows that there must have been something conceptually different about living-​rock stelae as well. A number of the features designated as a dw w  b or dhnt were also the locations of rock-​cut temples, chapels, and stelae. Beyond Egyptian geologics, this chapter’s focus on encounters with rock features means that we must also consider what we can deduce about Egyptian geoaesthetics. The origins of this term lie in the “geophilosophy” of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari (1987; 1991). It refers to the aesthetic perception of geological features and phenomena—​in other words, the effects of their physical properties on our senses.8 It is important to note that ancient Egypt was home to many “conceptualised landscapes” whose meanings were invested in natural features (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 11; Richards 1999). Since elements of the earth and cosmos were regarded as active and influential forces on daily life, Egyptian landscape perception lent itself rather easily to the “mythicisation” of natural features and phenomena (Rummel 2016: 43). The question is, what sort of aesthetics might attract this kind of meaning? There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that certain characteristics of geological features in the Egyptian world—​namely, shape, and size—​could make them desirable places for the attachment of social significance. Some such features could function as “material metaphors” of divine action (Rummel 2016: 54). For example, Ute Rummel (2016) has demonstrated that the mythological significance of the Theban landscape was influenced by the geomorphology of its western mountains, which came to be viewed as an incarnation of the embrace of the goddess Hathor-​Imentet. She and other goddesses who were “seen” in the rock face were depicted as emerging from the mountain or seated inside of it (Bruyère 1929; Rummel 2016). The summit of these mountains, which is known today as el Qurn, “the Horn,” for its distinctive shape, was evocative of the primeval mound and referred to as “Mistress of the West” in antiquity. To take another example, Josef Wegner (2007) has argued that the profile of the cliffs at Abydos may once have been seen as an elephant, thus lending the site its name—​ᴈbdw, “Elephant Mountain”—​and later, when it came to be seen as jackal-​shaped, to the local toponym dw ỉnpw, “Mountain of Anubis.” Similarly, the spindly pinnacle of the Gebel Barkal, an immense sandstone plateau near the Fourth Cataract in Sudan (Figure 13.1), was imagined variously as the form of Osiris, the White Crown of Upper Egypt, and the royal uraeus (cobra), underscoring the place of this feature in the mythology of Egyptian kingship (Kendall et al. 2017: 158; Kendall 2008). It  was a dw 270

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Figure 13.1  The pinnacle of the Gebel Barkal, a dw w  b. Source: Photo by author.

Figure 13.2  Relief from the Temple of Mut (left) and a graffito on the exterior of the Gebel Barkal, both depicting the god Amun inside the mountain. In the relief, Mut is seated behind Amun and the pinnacle of the Gebel Barkal is depicted as a uraeus. Source: Photos by author.

w  b—​a designation no doubt supported by its unusual shape—​and Amun was shown inhabiting this sacred feature in both reliefs and graffiti there (Figure 13.2).9 At Abu Simbel, it has been argued that the extraordinary height of the mountains where Ramesses II carved his temples is what made that place a dw w  b: a natural high place, raised up from the human realm of the profane, “inviolable and inviolate” because it was reserved for the gods and their worship (Desroches-​Noblecourt and Kuentz 1968: 203). The sites of visually 271

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prominent landscape features are often centres of human activity and meaning-​making, in the ancient Near East and elsewhere (Tuan 1974; Tilley 1994; Bradley 2000; Bernardini et al. 2013; Harmanşah 2014; Ullmann 2014; Canepa 2014; Da Riva 2015; inter alia), although social significance can certainly become attached to places in other ways (Basso 1996). Conspicuous natural features, while not technically monuments themselves, can act like monuments and subsequently come to attract them over time (Bradley 2000: 35). What we know about Egyptian geoaesthetics from the sacred landscapes mentioned above might help us understand what made other outcrops attractive places to carve, and encounter, royal messages. By nature of their medium, living-​rock stelae were integrally linked to the places where they were carved. The royal establishment’s choice to harness a natural feature to suit its aims, when its message would inherently be constrained by the feature’s form and location, implies that certain characteristics of living rock were eminently desirable and could offer something to the royal patron that cut stone could not. In executing a monument of this type, there must have been something about the outcrop where it was carved that would constitute an essential part of the monument’s message. In the following sections, I argue that the material characteristics of the outcrops at Konosso Island and Nauri presented exceptional opportunities for the attachment of social significance and the broad transmission of royal messages. In both cases I contend that projected encounters with these features were shaped not only by their striking and symbolic forms, but also by the anticipated experience of passers-​by moving towards them, observing the landscape as they entered into view.

Stelae at Konosso Island, gateway to Egypt The First Cataract, a granite barrier in the Nile near modern-​day Aswan, was conceived as the southern boundary of Kmt, the Egyptian homeland (Figure 13.3).10 In fact, all of the boundaries of Kmt were conspicuous natural features: the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the First Cataract to the south, and the deserts to the east and west. These boundaries were considered to be permanent and timeless fixtures of the ordered world. When the margins of Egypt’s political authority changed, as they did periodically from the start of the second millennium BCE , Kmt remained as it was; new territories consolidated under Egyptian influence served as buffer zones to protect it. The First Cataract was strategically positioned not only between Egypt and Nubia, but also at the nexus of routes to the Eastern Desert, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean (Raue et al. 2013: ix). This area is known for its rock inscriptions, which number in the thousands (Petrie 1888: 6–​ 13; de Morgan et al. 1894; Delia 1993; 1999; Gasse and Rondot 2007; Seidlmayer 2013; inter alia). The Cataract’s granite boulders attracted mostly non-​royal messages, often made by stripping away the surface patina of the stone to reveal a lighter colour beneath. Rock inscriptions at the First Cataract were generally designed to be visible, although they do not always appear that way today (Seidlmayer 2013: 208). In studying the royal material at this location, one must therefore ask which places were the most visible, as that was undoubtedly one goal of placing royal monuments in this landscape. One First Cataract site in particular drew much royal attention in the pharaonic period: Konosso Island. It is a place known to many Egyptologists by name only due to a combination of its relative inaccessibility and the discipline’s traditional emphasis, until recently, on the textual content of monuments. This small island, whose ancient name is not known (LÄ III 684), is formed primarily by two tall granite boulders northeast of Bigeh Island, in the reservoir between the Aswan Dams. The boulders interface in such a way that, when viewed from above, they form a “v” shape that “opens” outward to the southeast, with a smaller centre boulder in between 272

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Figure 13.3  Map showing the locations of the First Cataract, where Konosso Island is situated, and Nauri. Source: After Google Earth; Landsat/​Copernicus; Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Naxy, NGA, GEBCO.

(Figure 13.4, inset). The dams have flooded the landscape such that today only the upper portion of Konosso protrudes from the water (Figure 13.5).11 However, little more than a century ago, things looked very different. For much of the nineteenth century Konosso was an intermittent island, separated from the mainland only during periods of high water. The situation might have been similar in antiquity, and the low water level in the pharaonic period must have been no higher than the lowermost rock inscriptions. As is sometimes the case with anomalous natural features, visitors to Konosso have tended to see figural analogies in its form. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the artist Dominique-​Vivant Denon, who joined Napoléon in Egypt as part of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, described Konosso as having the form of an armchair (fauteuil) (Denon 1989: I, 135). The local name for the island in the present day also describes its recognisable shape: Sawabʿa, “Fingers,” because it now looks like an upturned fist when viewed from the north (Figure 13.6). Little archaeological evidence is known from the island apart from its rock inscriptions. Karl Richard Lepsius visited Konosso twice as part of the Prussian Expedition in 1843–​1844 and observed some sherds and a staircase that led up its south side (LD Text IV 128–​129). Although the nature of this evidence is lost to us, it is clear that there was some religious significance to the island. The First Cataract had its own triad of gods, Khnum, Satet, and Anuket, all of whom are invoked in local inscriptions, including those at Konosso (PM V 253–​255). Many of the approximately 65 inscriptions on the island mention Khnum, Lord of Kebhu—​the “cool waters.” These were understood to be the waters of the underworld, which arose at the mythical sources of the Nile. The First Cataract was one such source. Jacques de Morgan (de Morgan et al. 1894: 65) hypothesised that Kebhu was not only a general name for the Cataract but the name of Konosso itself, and suggested that Khnum must have had a small chapel on the island.12 273

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Figure 13.4  Map of the First Cataract area with an inset of Konosso Island as seen from above. Source: After Google Earth; Maxar Technologies.

During the Middle Kingdom, two relief scenes of Mentuhotep II (ruled c. 2051–​2000 BCE ) and two of Neferhotep I (ruled c. 1741–​1730 BCE ) were carved at Konosso, each depicting the king as an ithyphallic god alongside—​in various permutations—​Satet, Khnum, Montu, and Neith (LD Text II 150b–​c, 151f, h).13 These royal scenes were located on the northern and western sides of the island—​the sides that faced “inward” towards Egypt (LD Text IV 129–​130). But in the imperial period known as the New Kingdom (c. 1550–​1070 BCE ), there was a distinct change in the use of this outcrop: three royal stelae at Konosso were carved into the southeastern side of the island, which faced “outward” towards Nubia and the Eastern Desert. The stelae, two of Tuthmosis IV (ruled c. 1399–​1389 BCE ) and one of his son Amenhotep III (ruled c. 1389–​1349 BCE ), are the focus of this inquiry into the Egyptian sensory experience with the island. I will first describe their contents, and then treat the salience of their stone supports and the sensory aspects of their landscapes. All three of the New Kingdom stelae at Konosso relate to their patrons’ military campaigns and contain information that was apparently intended for broad transmission. The first stela of Tuthmosis IV, dated to Year 7, III Peret, day 8, is now entirely submerged, but a record of its scene and some of its remaining text are preserved in Lepsius’ Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (Figure 13.7; see also Urk. IV, 1555–​1556). The scene shows the king smiting enemies before Ha, Lord of the Western Desert, and the Nubian god Dedwen. The inclusion of these deities suggests that the stela’s contents detailed military action to the south and possibly also to the west of Egypt. Behind the king is his queen and consort Iaret. Her name also appears on an 274

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Figure 13.5  Konosso Island, looking northwest. Source: Photo by author.

Figure 13.6  Konosso, or Sawabʿa, viewed from the north. Source: Photo by author. 275

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Figure 13.7  The scene from the Year 7 Stela of Tuthmosis IV. Source: After LD III 69e; from The New York Public Library.

inscription at Serabit el-​Khadim in Sinai from the same year, suggesting that both areas may have been visited on inspection tours in which Iaret participated (Bryan 1991: 198). The stela’s inscription almost certainly belonged to a public-​facing genre of military text known as thei ỉw.tw report (Spalinger 1983).14 This genre hinges on the phrase ỉw.tw r dd n ḥm=f, “one came to say to his majesty”—​a formula that was first introduced in the reign of Tuthmosis II (ruled c. 1492–​ 1479 BCE) in a living-​rock stela on the Aswan–​Philae road (Spalinger 1983: 1–​4), carved into a conspicuous collection of boulders that would have been readily visible to passers-​by and may also have been the site of a small shrine (Borrmann-​Dücker 2013; 2020). The ỉw.tw texts offer a standardised summary of the basic information about a military campaign, with few specific details, apparently meant for broad transmission. In these texts someone notifies the king that his enemies have done something worthy of military action, he reacts, and he then justifiably dispatches his army (usually, it seems, without partaking in the campaign himself). The impetus for this genre was the rise of Egypt as an empire: its format allowed for the transmission of brief narratives summarising and publicising the operations that accompanied imperial endeavours (Spalinger 1983: 47). Tuthmosis’ second stela at Konosso, dated to Year 8, III Peret, day 2, depicts the king offering wine to Amun and Khnum (Figure 13.8; Urk. IV, 1545–​1548). It preserves most of another ỉw.tw report chronicling a patrol on desert routes east of Edfu to protect Egypt’s gold mining operation (Bryan 1991: 333–​336).15 The report states that a group of Nubians was planning a rebellion against Egypt and was on its way from Wawat (Lower Nubia). Tuthmosis then petitioned Amun for an oracle and dispatched his army. The similarity in the dates of these two stelae, as well as another stela of Tuthmosis IV at Elephantine (from III Peret, day 6 of an unknown year), is telling. As Andrea Klug (2002: 354) notes, it is possible that the third month of Peret was the time of a yearly royal progress and festival in the area. This is alluded to in the Year 8 Stela, which reports that the king celebrated the tỉt-​ỉ (“image-​washing”) festival at Edfu 276

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Figure 13.8  The scene from the Year 8 Stela of Tuthmosis IV. Source: de Morgan et al. 1894: 66.

on his way south from Thebes before the enemy was thwarted. Betsy Bryan (1991: 335–​336) has suggested that the whole event may therefore have been staged as part of a pre-​planned royal tour of Upper Egypt. Such an event would surely have been meant to be seen by the broader populace, and it may even have been the case that the oracle itself was petitioned in public (see further Klug 2002: 350–​351). Alternatively, the date of this monument could refer to a celebration at the end of the hostilities that were described in the text (Murnane 1990: 83–​84). Tuthmosis’ monuments were accompanied by inscriptions of officials and members of the royal family, including the future Amenhotep III (de Morgan et al. 1894: 69–​74; Kozloff 2012: 44). This suggests a performance of some kind, perhaps on the occasions of the stelae’s completion. The dates of the stelae would have fallen during the middle of the growing season, when the waters of the inundation had long since receded and sailing through the Cataract would have been comparatively difficult—​but when carving and inaugurating rock monuments would likely have been easier, and there would have been less noise to compete with from the water rushing past (see below). Following in his father’s footsteps, Amenhotep III also commissioned a stela at Konosso (Urk. IV, 1661–​1663).16 It is dated to an unspecified day in Year 5 and also concerns the suppression of a Nubian rebellion. Its scene depicts the king wearing the blue crown, supported by Khnum and facing Amun-​Re, behind whom are the bound personifications of four Nubian groups (Figures 13.9 and 13.10).17 Its text is not an ỉw.tw report, but more likely a wd n nḫtw, or victory stela (Trigger 1976; Spalinger 1978; Klug 2002: 428).18 Such monuments constituted “the bombastic, and often partly poetic, record of a king’s military victory or his mighty acts” (Redford 1986: 128, n. 3) and celebrated so-​called expeditions of nḫt in which he was personally involved.19 Amenhotep’s monument is one of three living-​rock stelae of his at the First Cataract, which contain complementary texts and images and should be regarded as part of the same monumental programme (Klug 2002: 428–​430). The other two—​an ỉw.tw report and a text framed as a speech of Amun-​Re—​are carved into the cluster of conspicuous boulders on the Aswan-​Philae road where the ỉw.tw report of Tuthmosis II was inscribed (Figure 13.4; Borrmann-​Dücker 2013; 2020).20 As all three of the royal stelae on the island and numerous private inscriptions attest, in the New Kingdom Konosso was a gathering point for expeditions leaving and returning to Kmt (Bryan 1991: 198). This was not only due to its location at the interface between Egypt and Nubia: it was also, I argue, because it was a geological landmark with a conspicuous and symbolic 277

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Figure 13.9  The scene from Amenhotep III’s stela at Konosso. Source: After LD III 82a; from The New York Public Library.

Figure 13.10  Amenhotep III’s stela at Konosso. Source: Photo by author.

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Figure 13.11  View of Konosso from the south, as it appears in the Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien. Source: LD I 103; from The New York Public Library.

shape. To my knowledge, the implications of the island’s shape and salience for the creation and perception of these monuments have not been fully considered.21 This is presumably because of the degree of change the First Cataract area has witnessed since the creation of the Aswan Dams. Since the island is now mostly submerged, archival material can help us better understand how it might have looked in antiquity. Illustrations and photographs from the nineteenth century reveal that Konosso once visually dominated the Cataract landscape—​not just in size, but also in shape (Figures 13.11–​13.13). When viewed from the south or southeast, the outcrop takes the form of a pylon: a (temple) gateway, which itself mimics the shape of the horizon (𓈌). This shape is rather appropriate to mark the landscape of the First Cataract, seeing as this area was the southern boundary of Kmt and an interface between Egypt and Nubia. Bigeh Island, immediately southwest of Konosso, was considered to be the northern boundary of Wawat (Zibelius-​ Chen 1972: 102–​104), making the island’s position especially significant. Upon entering Egypt from the south, the twin peaks of Konosso would greet those sailing downstream or approaching on land as an entranceway. Large boats could not navigate through the Cataract, forcing their crews onto land routes in order to bypass it. This is what made the Cataract an excellent natural boundary, and the sense of restriction as one drew nearer to the outcrop in this narrowing space must have served to further focus one’s vision on it. Klug (2002: 476) observed that several of the living-​rock examples in her corpus of early Eighteenth Dynasty stelae were located on “important paths” and suggested that their primary function was to safeguard Egypt’s borders and threaten its enemies. It is clear that the stelae of Tuthmosis IV and Amenhotep III were situated at the interface between Egypt and Nubia because they concern military action against their enemies to the south (Klug 2002: 476). To take this a step further, however, I suggest that Konosso’s symbolic shape—​which, in the Egyptian view, would have been understood as part of the predestined, ordered structure of the world—​was 279

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Figure 13.12  Frank Mason Good, View of Granite Rocks, Island of Philae, c. 1870. Source: Courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

the impetus for the creation and location of these stelae. The island’s position already allowed all three monuments to face outward from Kmt, perhaps even at the road leading south on the east bank of the Nile (Klug 2002: 352)22—​a shift from the position of the (literally and metaphorically) inward-facing Middle Kingdom reliefs on the island. Its conspicuous shape would have allowed this to be achieved through a recognisable and undeniably Egyptian architectural form. As a form used in temples, the area’s long-​standing religious connections would surely have underscored the meaning of this feature. More than perhaps any other location in this rocky landscape, Konosso allowed the stelae’s messages to be recognised, if not read, by both foreigners and Egyptians, including members of the military returning from expeditions abroad (Klug 2002: 476). Beyond the island’s shape, the positions of the stelae on Konosso’s individual boulders must also be meaningful. Each of Tuthmosis’ stelae adorned one of the island’s two peaks, while his son’s monument occupied the smaller centre boulder (Figure 13.14; see also Figures 13.5 and 13.10). Tuthmosis carved his Year 7 Stela on the “western” peak (visible on the left in Figure 13.14).23 This may relate to that monument’s lost text, which—​judging by the inclusion of Ha, Lord of the Western Desert, in the lunette—​might have involved that area. Likewise, when he carved his Year 8 Stela on the “eastern” peak, it may have been because it involved the desert east of Kmt. The island’s peaks likely had more visual appeal than the centre of the outcrop, and this would have contributed to their use. They may have been seen as physical extensions of the stelae, making the monuments seem larger than life and underscoring their connections to the deep, “geological time” of the universe (Harmanşah 2018: 490). It is significant, then, that 280

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Figure 13.13  J. P. Sebah, Konosso. Les Rochers & Cataracte d’Assouan, second half of the 19th century; Konosso is at right towards the middle of the frame. Source: Courtesy of the Blatchford Photograph Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Jafet Library, American University of Beirut (photo no. 1/​497).

Amenhotep III carved his stela into the smaller centre boulder, and I offer two suggestions as to why this is. The first is that the position of this monument on the centre boulder placed it squarely between those of the king’s father, whom he would want to both imitate and surpass. Egypt was “a civilization of stone” that looked to an idealized past as a model for its future, where emulating (but improving on) the deeds of one’s forefathers was one of the only ways to achieve a historical singularity (Leclant 1969: 233; Vernus 1995: 54–​163). We see this in Amenhotep’s broader living-​rock monumental programme at the First Cataract: here the king chose two high-​traffic, highly visible locations that were linked to the temporalities and accomplishments of his predecessors, which he had also visited as a prince with his father. For him, the “mnemonic sensuous field” of this landscape would have been both deep as time itself and highly personal (Hamilakis 2011: 211). The second reason for the location of Amenhotep’s stela is that, if the shape of Konosso was indeed evocative of the horizon, then its inscription on the centre boulder would also place it in the position of the solar disk. This is surely not coincidental, given that all three of the king’s living-​rock stelae at the First Cataract involve the god Amun-​Re. Over the course of his reign, Amenhotep would develop a distinctive solar theology. The Konosso stelae’s deep incisions into the granite cast stark shadows in raking light, outlining the forms of their texts and images and emphasising the embeddedness of their messages in the timeless and permanent bedrock structure of the world. For those who could see but not 281

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Figure 13.14  Late ​19th-​century photograph by W. M. F. Petrie, Konosso, with Tablets, showing some of the inscriptions on the outward-​facing side of the island. The stela farthest to the left is the Year 7 Stela of Tuthmosis IV; the stela higher up on the smaller centre boulder belongs to Amenhotep III; and the stela farthest to the right is the Year 8 Stela of Tuthmosis IV. Source: Petrie photo no. 732; reproduced with permission of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

read them, the pictographic nature of the hieroglyphic script, picked out in this play of sun on stone, may have augmented their understanding of the royal messages. For the broader populace, these messages are also likely to have been heard, at least at the inaugurations of the stelae and perhaps on other special occasions (Klug 2002: 3). Orality was key in this largely non-​literate society, and official communications from the royal establishment may have been read aloud to assembled groups when the circumstances required it (Baines 2007: 73). Writing was composed primarily for speaking and thus for hearing, and “propagandistic” texts were usually inscribed in public places where they could be easily accessed (Bleiberg 1985: 9). The proclamation of the stelae would not have been the only sound at Konosso, however. When the water was high, those approaching Kmt from the south would have heard the Cataract coming, as it were. Especially at the outset of the inundation, the area was famous for its deafening and almost violent rushing of primeval water against primeval rock (Oestigaard 2020: 186–​187). The combination of this sound and the emergence of Konosso’s symbolically shaped peaks into one’s field of view, rising like a benben-​stone out of the water, would have produced quite an effect. The possibility of a yearly royal progress and festival in the area could also have lent a temporal aspect to sensory encounters with the stelae, wherein they were expected to be experienced in a certain way, perhaps with public retellings of their accounts, at a specific time each year. The level of the Nile’s waters would affect the appearance of the Cataract and set the stage in a manner unique to that 282

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point in the calendar. Repeated “public-​facing” experiences with the stelae would create a tradition, engraining memories into this landscape in a way that involved Egyptians on the ground, not just the royal patrons who commissioned their monuments in the landscape where their forefathers did the same. Perceiving the landscape is, after all, an act of remembrance (Ingold 2000: 189). The impact of the monuments of Tuthmosis IV and Amenhotep III on Egyptian bodies and minds was such that, centuries after the New Kingdom ended, the Saite kings Psammetik II (ruled 595–​589 BCE ) and Apries (ruled 589–​570 BCE ) had their own monumental cartouches carved on the outward-​facing side of the island on a massive scale (Figure 13.5, at right; Habachi 1974; Blöbaum 2013). They comprise part of a programme of inscriptions designed specifically for long-​distance perception in the First Cataract area (Blöbaum 2013: 18). In fact, these kings were emulating Tuthmosis IV quite closely: his cartouches are also present on the island, on the same boulder as the Year 8 Stela, facing south towards Nubia. Cartouches had been used since the First Dynasty to “annex” territories to Egypt (Brown 2015: 182–​183), as emblems that marked Egyptian intentions onto the landscape in a highly visible manner. In the landscape of rocks and water at the First Cataract, Konosso offered a conspicuous, outward-​facing stone support that could lend further gravity to the royal monuments sited there. A consideration of the material and sensorial aspects of the island suggests that the patrons of the New Kingdom stelae took advantage of its symbolic shape and prominent position, anticipating that its salience would amplify and extend their messages of military prowess at the gateway between Egypt and Nubia.

Shouting from the hilltops: the Nauri Decree stela The Nauri Decree of Seti I (ruled c. 1301–​1290 BCE ), also known as the Abydos Decree, is inscribed on a living-​rock stela located approximately 35 kilometres north of the Third Cataract in Sudan (Figures 13.3 and 13.15). This legal text dates to Year 4 of the king’s reign and concerns the implications for goods and personnel involved in provisioning the king’s temple for Osiris at Abydos. It was issued in order to protect the king’s economic interests in Nubia as they related to temple property (Gardiner 1952; Lorton 1977: 25–​27; Brand 2000: 294–​295). The decree is stated to have been conceived at the Egyptian capital of Memphis and bestows protected status on temple land, personnel, miners, animals, and boats travelling back to Egypt with goods for Seti’s foundation, outlining harsh punishments for those who would tamper with or steal them. The stela’s lunette contains a scene of Seti I offering mᴈ t to Amun-​Re, Re-​Horakhty, and Ptah (Figure 13.16). Notably, Osiris—​the principal deity of the temple at Abydos—​does not appear in the lunette (Griffith 1927: 195; Davies 1997: 277). Numerous scholars have translated and analysed the decree (KRI I 45–​58; RITA I 38–​50; RITANC I 48–​49; Griffith 1927; Edgerton 1947; Gardiner 1952; Davies 1997: 277–​308; Brand 2000: 294–​295; Maderna-​Sieben 2018: 229–​ 264), but for the purposes of this chapter, we need not be as concerned with the nuances of the stela’s text as with its relationship to the landscape at Nauri. A royal decree—​wd-​nswt, from which the term for “stela,” wd, originated—​was a manifestation of the king’s auctoritas: his applied authority and influence (Vernus 1991). In pronouncing a decree to his subjects, the king was replicating his own receipt of auctoritas from the gods. Since the main responsibility of every Egyptian king was to serve as a mediator between the gods and the people, royal decrees were therefore sanctioned and effectively “put into order” by the gods (Vernus 1991: 246). Despite the gravity of their conception, most decrees were not destined for display on public monuments and would simply be filed away once recorded on papyrus. However, those with implications for the general populace could be monumentalised on stelae as 283

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Figure 13.15  The Nauri Decree Stela of Seti I. Source: Photo by author.

Figure 13.16  Line drawing of the lunette of the Nauri Decree Stela. Source: Griffith 1927: pl. 39; reproduced with permission of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford and in consultation with the Egypt Exploration Society.

a form of “publication” (Hsu 2012: 273–​274). Stone supports would give such decrees “eternal validity” due to the perceived permanence of this medium (LÄ IV 4) and would also make their contents more widely accessible, if not legible. Decrees were therefore projected to have an effective impact on contemporary viewers through other types of visual cue—​or on contemporary listeners, to whom such works could be read aloud.

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Figure 13.17  The two sandstone hills at Nauri. Source: After Google Earth; Maxar Technologies.

The stela at Nauri couches the practical parameters of the decree within an ideological apparatus suitable for its monumentalisation by pairing the text with an offering scene and a royal eulogy detailing the king’s position as the son and rightful successor of Osiris (Vernus 1991: 243). The original document may have been reproduced numerous times, perhaps in stone, although the monument at Nauri is the only extant copy. The stela states that the decree was made known to a host of high officials. Presumably its contents would have been read aloud in the presence of those who needed to know the penalties it laid out, at places where it made sense to do so (Bleiberg 1985: 9–​10). Perhaps these were places in Nubia where temple goods were obtained, and also Nauri itself once the stela was completed. But what did Nauri, of all places, have to offer the king in this regard? Why was this location chosen to broadcast an important message about Abydos, which was crafted at Memphis, and why was that message made in living rock? I suggest that the answers to each of these questions lie in the sensory encounters Seti’s subjects would have had with the stela as they carried out the duties regulated in its text. The landscape at Nauri is dominated by two sandstone hills.24 These are not gently sloping features, but narrow buttes with roughly conical forms—​features of a type that does not exist anywhere else in the area. The hills are located approximately 500 metres apart from each other, on the southern bank of the river, and stand around 70 metres high (Figure 13.17).25 The stela is carved into the hill that is farther downstream, to the east. It sits approximately halfway up the rock face (Figure 13.18). The stela’s existence was first brought to the attention of Egyptologists in the early twentieth century. In 1924, Terence Gray attempted to make the first epigraphic squeeze of it. He brought with him “a moderate supply of squeeze-​paper,” but was daunted by what he found once he climbed up the side of the hill to confront it in person (Griffith 1927: 193). The stela was 2.8 metres high and around 2 metres wide—​much wider than expected, such that he was unable to make a full squeeze of the monument. The stela’s unusual proportions are due to the layout of its text. The lunette and the beginning of the decree follow the standard format of a round-​topped stela, but after line 59 the text continues from the bottom to an addition on its left, which is also rounded at the top, conforming to the curve of the stela’s outline (Figure 13.19). Although Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1927: 194) referred to this addition as the “supplementary 285

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Figure 13.18  Drone photograph looking eastward, showing the location of the stela on the hill. Source: Photo by Katie Simon/​CAST.

inscription” in his publication of the monument, it is actually a continuation of the decree text—​the transition from the bottom of the original stela to the top of the addition occurs, as Griffith himself noted, in the middle of a sentence. It appears that those responsible for executing the stela had not fully drafted the monument’s layout ahead of time and subsequently ran out of room. The stone at the bottom of the stela bears many fractures and must have been undesirable to work with, otherwise they might have continued in the space below (Figure 13.15). Although this was an “ideologised” copy of the original decree, the directive was apparently that its legal clauses should be reproduced faithfully (Vernus 1991: 243), and those responsible for the monument’s execution could not simply stop where the stone became unusable. But in their unconventional solution, we are inadvertently offered a clue to the stela’s purpose at Nauri. It is difficult to view the entire monument up close at once, let alone to read its contents, and straight-​on views are only possible with the aid of a drone or perhaps a ladder. A century ago, after Gray saw it from the bottom of the hill, he found himself unprepared to make a full squeeze because from afar the stela appeared to be of normal proportions (as it does today; Figure 13.20). This, I suggest, explains why the addition on the left side takes the peculiar shape it does. This monument must have been designed specifically to be encountered from far away, where it assumes the shape of an ordinary round-​topped stela. The ancient craftspeople must have known this, realising that it would appear as though nothing were amiss if they executed the rest of the text in this manner. It is possible that the stela would have been painted, but even the bare surface of the monument today makes it readily visible from some distance away. Sunk into the otherwise jagged face of the hill, the inscribed surface appears lighter in colour than the surrounding rock. In this fashion it almost functions like an icon, or hieroglyph, of a stela, indicating that the monument is there but not betraying any specifics.

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Figure 13.19  Line drawing of the layout of the Nauri Decree Stela. Source: Griffith 1927: pl. 38; reproduced with permission of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford and in consultation with the Egypt Exploration Society.

But why Nauri, and why its eastern hill? There are as yet no known pharaonic architectural remains at this site, and no archaeological evidence to suggest an Egyptian foundation or colonial outpost (Osman and Edwards 2011: 73, 350–​353). There is a unique reference in the stela’s text to a “fortress of Seti, beloved of Ptah, which is in Sekhmet” (line 84), the only specific toponym in the decree apart from Memphis and Abydos. Since this place is not mentioned in any other Egyptian text, Kenneth Kitchen felt it was possible that it was located somewhere at or close to Nauri (RITANC I 48–​49; see also Maderna-​Sieben 2018: 250–​251). This is a reasonable conclusion, but it would only make sense if the stela at Nauri were the only monumental copy made of the decree text. Nauri must have been an important location in order to receive such a monument, but in reality, we do not know how many copies of the text were made. Since the decree was conceived at Memphis, the fortress “in Sekhmet” could be anywhere. There are also three private living-​rock stelae on the same hill as the Nauri Decree Stela, although they do not offer further information about it. One, at the bottom of the hill, dates to the reign of Tuthmosis III and depicts a divinised Senwosret III, worshipped as a god of Nubia (Rondot 2008). The other 287

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Figure 13.20  The Nauri Decree Stela as seen from the bottom of the hill. Source: Photo by author.

two are illegible; they are immediately adjacent to the Tuthmosid Stela and the Nauri Decree Stela and probably postdate them. A different explanation for the stela’s presence at Nauri arises from a consideration of the sensory encounter with this monument as one moves through the landscape. Recall Nash’s (2005: 68) argument that people “develop their plans” as a result of practical, on-​the-​g round engagements with the world around them, making decisions when prompted by a barrier or an opportunity. The dearth of archaeological evidence for further Egyptian activity at Nauri suggests that it might have been the physical character of the landscape that prompted Seti to commission his stela there (and perhaps also to construct a fortress there, if it was indeed located at Nauri). In order to understand why that is, we must take a wider view of the site’s topography. There are two context clues in the landscape that make the eastern hill an ideal place for a royal monument meant to be encountered in motion from the Nile. First is the river’s dramatic right-​ hand turn. Approximately 15 kilometres west of Nauri, the Nile suddenly juts east at a near 90-​degree angle (Figure 13.21). It is hard to overstate the importance of the Nile’s south–​north direction in the rhythm of Egyptian daily life. It divided the land of the living in the east from that of the dead in the west, and its origin in the south governed Egyptian spatial orientation, such that the word for “left” (ỉᴈbt) was the same as the word for “east,” and so on. For people who were used to sailing north as they journeyed downstream, a change in the river’s course would surely have caught their attention.

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Figure 13.21  The location of the hills with respect to the course of the Nile. Source: After Google Earth; Landsat/​Copernicus.

Figure 13.22  The Nauri Decree Stela as seen from the river, in a still from a drone video. Source: Photo by Katie Simon/​CAST.

Second, there is the first hill, so very different in shape and size than anything else in the area. As it came into view it would have cued those on the river to look up, and to keep looking in anticipation of the second hill. The stela faces the Nile at approximately 295 degrees west-​northwest, which is in the upstream direction—​the direction facing those who would be returning to Egypt with the tribute of Kush for the king’s temple at Abydos (Figure 13.22). In The Visual and Spatial Structure of Landscapes, Tadahiko Higuchi (1983: 46) explains that because the most stable line of sight when standing is between 10 and 15 degrees below the horizontal, 289

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looking up produces a feeling of imbalance for the viewer that can result in an air of reverence for the object in view. I contend that at Nauri, after a series of dramatic visual cues initiated by downstream travel through the surrounding landscape, the experience of looking up at the contrasting form of the stela against its immense sandstone support would have produced a bodily sense of awe. To some, the two hills at Nauri may have seemed a wondrous formation, the likes of which they had never seen. But even for those who had made this journey before, they would have been an unmistakable landmark. The Nauri Decree was carved into the upstream side of the eastern hill as a material and mnemonic extension of the king’s auctoritas. The performance of this divinely ordained authority would have been especially important for Seti, who at this time was a relatively new king. The presence of three of Egypt’s most important deities in the lunette of his stela and the text’s legitimising rhetoric about his position as the rightful successor of Osiris make this abundantly clear. Mario Liverani (2001: 34) has described royal stelae as “substitutes” for Egyptian kings: since the monument at Nauri represented him, it was as if Seti were there himself looking down at the river. Recall that there is a propensity for human activity at the sites of visually prominent natural features. From the available evidence, we cannot speak of Nauri’s cultural or economic importance for the Ramesside royal establishment beyond the presence of the stela. However, the topography there presented an exceptional opportunity for the transmission of the king’s message, meant to be received from the river as his subjects sailed back to Egypt with the goods regulated in the stela’s text. The stela was an ever-​present mark in the sandstone fabric of the landscape that would look on perpetually, and portentously, as the king’s divinely supported orders were carried out.

The medium is the message In the ancient Near East, rock reliefs were often made at “geologically wondrous” places (Harmanşah 2013: 191). The extraordinary character of an outcrop—​high up, at a sacred location, or otherwise unique—​made the message seem all the more extraordinary. As a group, Egyptian royal living-​rock stelae conform to patterns shared with those of royal rock monuments made by other societies in the ancient Near East,26 including their concentration in liminal landscapes and boundary zones, their existence at sites of sacred significance, and their creation mainly during a period of imperial expansion (Thum 2019). Most notably, stelae of this type were usually inscribed into rock features that represented or were immediately adjacent to salient points in their local landscapes: outcrops that would likely have already seemed monumental to Egyptian sensibilities well before they were carved (Bradley 2000: 35; Thum 2019). The stelae at Konosso Island and Nauri are only a small sample of the monuments that follow this pattern, but they are important to our understanding of the Egyptian sensory experience with rock landscapes because their messages were aimed at the broader public. Their medium and locations were chosen by a royal establishment that had many options for getting those messages across. The choice of living rock for these stelae was deliberate and meaningful, and it reflects broader understandings of what this material symbolised and the ideas that it could generate. The stelae at Konosso Island and Nauri have usually been studied independently from the outcrops where they were carved. In the above exploration, these monuments are more than transcriptions, translations, and isolated images—​they are substantive and physical; they have mass; they evoke the deep time of the universe; and they interact with stone, water, sun, and people. This chapter has treated the outcrops where the stelae were carved as fundamental to their conception and design. Together, their textual genres, their positions on expedition routes, and the alterity of their stone supports suggest that they were meant to be experienced by people 290

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on the ground. We may infer that (for most people) the stelae were meant to be sensed, rather than read, and that their reception was curated by the royal establishment specifically for the landscapes where they were sited, and for the medium of living rock. At Konosso and Nauri, the royal establishment utilised landmark natural features as highly visible canvases for their monuments, anticipating the social significance that is known to have been attached to striking landforms in the Egyptian world. The outcrops where the stelae were carved were intended to be perceived as integral parts of the kings’ messages, the salience of their stone supports no doubt adding to their gravity.

Notes 1. I owe a great deal of thanks to the following people, institutions, and sources of funding for supporting my research: Ahmed Mohamed El-​Hassan and the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), Sudan; the Ministry of State for Antiquities, Egypt; the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE)/​United States Department of State ECA Fellowship and Theodore N. Romanoff Prize; the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC)/​Mellon Mediterranean Regional Research Fellowship; the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) and Katie Simon, who captured drone imagery through the support of the NSF SPARC Program (BCS #1519660); Ashraf Barakat; and Johanna Sigl and Linda Borrmann-​Dücker of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. Immense thanks to Jim Allen, Miriam Müller, Julia Troche, Pinar Durgun, Inês Torres, Lisa Saladino Haney, and Rachel Kalisher for generously offering their comments on various drafts of this chapter. 2. See also contributions by Dorothée Elwart and Sibylle Emerit, Dora Goldsmith, and Meghan Strong in Schellenberg and Krüger 2019. Many thanks to Robyn Price for sharing her bibliography on this topic. 3. However, it is important to mention here the work of Andrea Klug (2002), whose volume on early Eighteenth Dynasty royal stelae—​which includes the stelae at Konosso—​considered the geographical contexts and orientations of these monuments. She also took the important step of distinguishing between freestanding stelae (which make up the bulk of her corpus) and those that were carved into “natural architecture” (see further Gundlach 2001). I build on some of Klug’s ideas about the Konosso stelae below. 4. This term was at the centre of a symposium organised by Jeffrey Moser and Felipe Rojas at Brown University in December 2018, Geologics: Comparative Epistemologies of the Earth, where it was defined as “systems of thought that have accounted for the relation between humans and what modern scientists consider geological features (caves, volcanos) and geomorphological processes (weathering, erosion, deposition)” (see www.brown.edu/​academics/​art-​history/​events/​geologics-​symposium). 5. See the entry for “Urhügel” in the Lexikon der Ägyptologie (LÄ VI 873–​875). The word benben is connected to the verb wbn, “to shine.” Attempts were rarely made to locate the original benben-​stone, but when they were, it was usually at Heliopolis, the centre of the solar cult and the purported origin of this particular creation story (Quirke 2015: 143). For the evolution of representations of the benben-​ stone over time and in various locations, see Kemp 2006: 137–​40, fig. 48. 6. Both of these terms originated in the New Kingdom, which is the era when most of Egypt’s royal living-​rock stelae were made. 7. All were constructed outside of the Nile Valley, despite the fact that “appropriate” cliffs also existed inside the Nile Valley, and the fact that freestanding temples were sometimes erected in rocky landscapes (Gundlach 2001). 8. For this definition of aesthetics generally, see Morphy 1994. For additional studies that engage with this term, see Shapiro 2004, Kim 2015, Elias and Moraru 2015, and Ray 2019. 9. Similar imagery appears at Abu Simbel; see Török 2009: 249. 10. Kmt literally means “Black Land,” the area of cultivable soil in the Nile Valley and Delta. It was conceived in opposition to dšrt (the “Red Land”), the desert that surrounded it on both sides. 11. The Aswan Low Dam was completed in 1902 and the Aswan High Dam in 1970. See Maspero 1906: figs. 452 and 454, for photographs of the changes to the landscape induced by the former. 12. Note that other special features of the Nile were also associated with living-​rock monuments. Egyptian rock-​cut temples were constructed at places that already had some cultic significance, including

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prehistoric cave shrines and bottlenecks of the Nile, which evoked the mythical sources of the river and its inundation (Gundlach 2001; Williams 2006; LÄ II 165). 13. On these unusual representations of the king, see Habachi 1963. 14. This is because its main portion begins with the proclitic ἰst- (“now …”), indicating the beginning of a setting, which is characteristic of this genre (Klug 2002: 355). See Klug 2002: 354 for a translation of the beginning of the stela’s text. 15. For translations of this text, see Bryan 1991: 333–​334 and Klug 2002: 345–​349. For a summary of some of the alternative interpretations of this military action, see Klug 2002: 350. 16. For a translation of this text, see Klug 2002: 425–​427. 17. See O’Connor 2001: 266–​268 for an analysis of the meaning of these personifications. 18. The root of the term is nḫt, “force,” an aspect of the king’s power present in the royal arm (Galán 1995: 69; Wb. II, 317). Donald Redford prefers “triumph inscription” (1986: 128, n. 3), which I find equally appropriate. Christopher Eyre translates the term as “literary stela” because of the contents of these monuments (1990), but I prefer the above translation because the function of such texts appears to have been the demonstration of the king’s victories. 19. Otherwise they would use the term ḫpš, instead of nḫt, to subtly indicate that the king was not present (Galán 1995: 97). 20. Some of the material in the stela of Amenhotep III was influenced by the stela of Tuthmosis II; see Klug 2002: 430. 21. Although the immense size of the island’s boulders has been noted in passing before (see, e.g., de Morgan et al. 1894: 65; Kozloff 2012: 44). Klug discussed the orientations of the Tuthmosid stelae; see n. 22. 22. Klug stated that both stelae of Tuthmosis IV face east and suggested that they overlooked the road on the east bank of the Nile running south, perhaps also facing the direction of the rising sun (Klug 2002: 352). Having visited Konosso in person and checked my observations against satellite imagery, I am confident that the stelae face southeast (to different degrees; the Year 7 Stela, which is entirely underwater, probably has a more southerly orientation based on the shape of the island). I therefore agree that they may have served to face the road, but not the rising sun. 23. Since this stela’s position can no longer be confirmed on site, I have deduced it based on the description given in LD Text IV 127–​128 and the photograph taken by Petrie (Figure 13.14). 24. In the early twentieth century these were referred to as the “Two Virgins,” although not locally (Griffith 1927: 194; Osman and Edwards 2011: 350). Griffith described the location of the stela on the hill but did not otherwise comment on the relationship between the monument and the surrounding landscape. 25. This figure was estimated from a 3D model generated using drone imagery taken by Katie Simon at Nauri. 26. See, e.g., Kreppner 2002; Shafer 2007; Glatz and Plourde 2011; Ullmann 2014; Canepa 2014; and Da Riva 2015.

Bibliography Adrom, F. 2004. “Der Gipfel der Frömmigkeit? Überlegungen zur Semantik und religiösen Symbolik von t3-​dhn.t.” LingAeg 23: 1–​20. Assmann, J. 2001. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Assmann, J. 2003. “La notion d’éternité dans l’Egypte ancienne,” in V. Pirenne-​Delforge and Ö. Tunca, eds., Représentations du temps dans les religions: Actes du colloque organisé par le Centre d’Histoire des Religions de l’Université de Liège. Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège 286. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 111–​122. Aufrère, S. H. 1993. “Le cosmos, le minéral, le végétal, et le divin.” Bulletin du Cercle lyonnais d’égyptologie Victor Loret 7: 7–​24. Baines, J. 2007. Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Basso, K. 1996. “Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape,” in S. Feld and K. Basso, eds., Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 53–​90. Bernardini, W., A. Barnash, M. Kumler, and M. Wong. 2013. “Quantifying Visual Prominence in Social Landscapes.” Journal of Archaeological Science 40: 3946–​3954. Bleiberg, E. 1985. “Historical Texts as Political Propaganda during the New Kingdom.” Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 7: 5–​13.

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Blöbaum, A. I. 2013. “Saite Inscriptions at the First Cataract: Representation and Legitimation of the King,” in D. Raue, S. J. Seidlmayer, and P. Speiser, eds., The First Cataract of the Nile One Region: Diverse Perspectives. SDAIK 36. Berlin: De Gruyter, 15–​20. Borrmann-​Dücker, L. 2013. “Royal Stelae Revisited: New Thoughts on Some ‘Well-​Known’ Texts,” in Epigraphy through Five Millennia: The Area of Aswan. 12–​13 March 2013. Cairo: German Archaeological Institute. Borrmann-​Dücker, L. 2020. “Royal Stelae Revisited: neue Überlegungen zu altbekannten Texten,” in S. C. Dirksen and L. S. Krastel, eds., Epigraphy through Five Millennia: Texts and Images in Context. SDAIK 43. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 33–​60. Bradley, R. 2000. An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge. Brand, P. J. 2000. The Monuments of Seti I: Epigraphic, Historical, and Art Historical Analysis. Probleme der Ägyptologie 16. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Brown, M. W. 2015. “‘Keeping Enemies Closer’: Ascribed Material Agency in Ancient Egyptian Rock Inscriptions and the Projection of Presence and Power in Liminal Regions.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Yale University. Bruyère, B. 1929. Mert Seger à Deir El Médineh. Mémoires de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale (MIFAO) 58. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Bryan, B. M. 1991. The Reign of Thutmose IV. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Canepa, M. P. 2014. “Topographies of Power: Theorizing the Visual, Spatial and Ritual Contexts of Rock Reliefs in Ancient Iran,” in Ö. Harmanşah, ed., Of Rocks and Water: An Archaeology of Place. Joukowsky Institute Publications 5. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 53–​92. Da Riva, R. 2015. “Enduring Images of an Ephemeral Empire: Neo-​ Babylonian Inscriptions and Representations on the Western Periphery,” in R. Rollinger and E. Van Dongen, eds., Mesopotamia in the Ancient World: Impact, Continuities, Parallels: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium of the Melammu Project Held in Obergurgl, Austria, November 4–​8, 2013. Melammu Symposia 7. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag, 603–​629. Davies, B. G. 1997. Egyptian Historical Inscriptions of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Documenta Mundi Aegyptiaca 2. Jonsered: Paul Åströms förlag. de Garis Davies, N. 1905. The Rock Tombs of El Amarna, Part III: The Tombs of Huya and Ahmes. Archaeological Survey of Egypt Memoirs 15. London: Egypt Exploration Fund. Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1991. What Is Philosophy? Trans. H. Tomlinson and G. Burchell III. New York: Columbia University Press. Delia, R. D. 1993. “First Cataract Rock Inscriptions: Some Comments, Maps, and a New Group.” JARCE 30: 71–​91. Delia, R. D. 1999. “Palimpsests, Copyists, Atenists and Others at the First Cataract.” JARCE 36: 103–​112. de Morgan, J. U., M. Bouriant, G. Legrain, G. Jéquier, and A. Barsanti. 1894. Catalogue des Monuments et Inscriptions de l’Égypte Antique. Vol. 1.1. Vienna: Adolphe Holzhausen. Denon, D. V. 1989. Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte. 2 Volumes. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Desroches-​ Noblecourt, C., and C. Kuentz. 1968. Le petit temple d’Abou Simbel: “Nofretari pour qui se lève le Dieu-​Soleil.” Centre de Documentation et d’étude sur l’ancienne Égypte, Mémoires 1–​2. Cairo: Ministère de la Culture. Dieleman, J. 2015. “The Materiality of Textual Amulets in Ancient Egypt,” in D. Boschung and J. N. Bremmer, eds., The Materiality of Magic. Morphomata 20. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 23–​58. Dirksen, S. C., and L. S. Krastel, eds. 2020. Epigraphy through Five Millennia: Texts and Images in Context. SDAIK 43. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Edgerton, W. F. 1947. “The Nauri Decree of Seti I: A Translation and Analysis of the Legal Portion.” JNES 6 (4): 219–​230. Elias, A. J., and C. Moraru, eds. 2015. The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-​First Century. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Eyre, C. J. 1990. “The Semna Stelae: Quotation, Genre, and Functions of Literature,” in S. Israelit-​Groll, ed., Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 134–​165. Frood, E. 2013. “Sensuous Experience, Performance, and Presence in Third Intermediate Period Biography,” in R. Enmarch, V. M. Lepper, and E. Robson, eds., Ancient Egyptian Literature: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 153–​184. 293

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14 In the light and in the dark Exhibiting power, exploiting spaces in Early and Old Syrian Ebla—​an analysis of the five senses in an Early–Old Syrian court Frances Pinnock

Introduction In recent years the analysis of sensorial perceptions in the ancient world received an important boost, thanks to the contribution of neurosciences (Blakolmer et al. 2017: 2). Before the exploration of the possibilities provided by the application of neurosciences to the interpretation of the past, new perspectives had already been provided by cognitive archaeology (Coolidge et al. 2014), and by the introduction of the concept of agency (Gell 1998) with a larger scope (Steadman and Ross 2010). As regards the ancient Near Eastern world, basic steps forward were made through refined analysis of the textual evidence and new approaches to the study of visual evidence (Rendu Loisel 2019; Verderame 2019; Wagner-​Durand 2019), with the interesting application of physiognomics for the interpretation of the manifestation of emotions in ancient works of art (Sonik 2017). However, when dealing with these approaches, a basic difficulty is usually, and rightly, highlighted: the capacity to analyse the perceptions of peoples so distant from us in time and space. It is certainly true that sensations are the product of physical senses, and they are, therefore, somehow an automatic and instinctive response to external stimuli, but it is also true that there is a kind of cultural superimposition, norming the manifestation of sensations and possibly also the perception of perceptions. Perceptions—​and their multisensorial interactions—​are the base of interpersonal relations; this aspect is neglected or represented in a very schematic way when dealing with ancient civilisations, particularly with those—​like the ancient Near Eastern ones—​which have left no record—​or no easily interpreted record—​of their own concepts of perceptions. Besides, the historian’s own perceptions—​namely his/​her historicised senses—​may certainly affect the interpretation of other cultures, either uncritically attributing them one’s own perceptions or taking into account only the eventual differences from one’s own experience (Blakolmer et al. 2017: 2–​3). Additional difficulties hamper the studies of perception in the ancient Near East:

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-15

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1. The thoughts about senses of ancient Near Eastern peoples must be inferred—​with some effort—​from texts that are mainly of a mythical or literary nature, and which may have a normative, rather than a descriptive, value. 2. The written and material evidence may be inconsistent in some measure, because very seldom does one site yield texts, architectural remains, and objects in significant amounts for the same period, forming an organic set. 3. The analysis of the social composition of settlements may also be schematic, relating mostly to the written evidence—​when available—​which leads to an adequate reconstruction of the social structure, but which is wanting for a reconstruction of the ways in which the urban and extra-​urban territory was occupied and used by different segments of society. Thus, the result may be a realistic, yet static and crystallised picture of social relations, where the top-​down and bottom-​up dynamics cannot be fully appreciated, although some interesting and more nuanced interpretations of spaces and their uses has recently been attempted (Kertai 2015: 5–​6, 237–​238; see also Kertai 2014a: 338–​339, 344–​346; 2014b; McMahon 2013). Lastly, analysis of the reaction of building materials to sound and light, as well as the real capacity and reciprocal relations of open and closed spaces, should be taken into account, in order to better evaluate the “contribution” of these spaces to the construction of a sensescape (Buccellati 2019). This type of analysis, which has some speculative aspects, should become part of the many possible ways of evaluating evidence from the past, side by side with reconstructions of occupied spaces—​territorial spaces and urban spaces—​and reconstructions of artefacts and their functions and meaning. Proposed reconstructions of sensescapes, with all of their limits and problems, are an important starting point that leads to a better understanding of the human experience, both at the individual and at the societal level. Here, I would like to present a contribution, based on studies I have already started (Pinnock 2012; 2016a; 2016b) about the site of Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh) in north inner Syria, c. 60 kilometres southwest of Aleppo. Here the Italian Archaeological Expedition of Sapienza University of Rome worked uninterrupted for 47 years, between 1964 and 2010, under the direction of Paolo Matthiae (2010, where detailed descriptions of all the monuments mentioned here can be found). The excavations brought to light an urban centre with three main phases of development: the first Ebla, c. 2400–​2300 BCE , in the mature Early Syrian period (Early Bronze IVA); the second Ebla, c. 2200–​2000 BCE , in the late Early Syrian period (Early Bronze IVB); and the third Ebla, c. 1900–​1600 BCE , in the archaic and mature Old Syrian period (Middle Bronze I–​II). In my analysis I take into account, first, the palatial context of the first Ebla and the ceremonies which, according to our interpretations, took place within that context—​this is an elite context, probably with limited participation and a strongly ritualised progression of events. Second, I look at two peculiar cult contexts of the middle phase of the third Ebla—​these cult contexts are connected with temples but are in the open and probably included a large number of people, possibly belonging to different social classes. In both case studies, I aim to bring to light the complex sensorial experiences that the people taking part in these events would have experienced and how an echo of these sensations could have reached an even larger audience.

In the light: exhibiting power in Early Syrian Ebla The buildings of the first Ebla thus far brought to light are not numerous, but they are important; they include several sectors of the Royal Palace (Area G), with a ceremonial complex that included the Court of Audience and the Administrative Quarter; the Temple of the 298

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Rock in Area HH; the Red Temple on the Acropolis; and a building devoted to crafts and food preparation in Area P. The evidence provided by the first Ebla is also exceptional for the discovery of several groups of cuneiform tablets of the State Archives, with more than 17,000 inventory numbers, including complete and fragmentary tablets. From the first evaluation of the architecture of the Royal Palace it became clear that the Court of Audience—​a large open space at the foot of the Acropolis, onto which the three main entrances to the palace opened—​ notwithstanding its peripheral position, was one of the main locations for the manifestation of Eblaic kingship. In the court, the king would have suddenly appeared and then proceeded to sit on a throne placed on a dais set against the north façade of the Court (Figure 14.1).1 Since its discovery, the Court has been described by Matthiae (1977: 82–​86) as a kind of theatrical background for the events taking place within (see also, recently, Pinnock 2019b: 73–​74, 77). Taking into account the artefacts and architectural decoration uncovered within the Palace, it is evident that the royal image was frequently represented within this space, for example in the inlaid panels that decorated the walls of the Administrative Quarter and which depicted the king receiving processions of high officials; here, the king and queen were represented together, as life-​size figures that emanated the dignity of nobility. Cylinder seals of high officials also included the royal couple—​only one such seal is preserved (Figure 14.2; Pinnock 2013a: 203–​ 204; 2014: 679). However, seal designs from this period are well represented by a large group of sealings—​originally used to seal preservation jars, caskets, and other containers of precious goods, kept in several rooms flanking the Court—​that include representations of the royal couple. A peculiarity of these images is the frontality of the royal figures. In the glyptic repertoire, a few divine figures—​ represented only on cylinder seals—​ are represented front-​ facing, as are two humans—​a male and a female. These human figures have been identified as idealised representations of the king and queen or as depictions of the deified sovereigns (Matthiae 2008: 128–​129; 2010: 176; Archi 2015: 522–​569; Pinnock 2013b: 67; 2016a: 112): the king is identified by a well-​recognisable turban with a side tassel (Matthiae 2010: 165–​166; Pinnock 1992; Biga 1992), whereas the queen is represented with long loose hair and is dressed like the king, wearing only a skirt, leaving her breasts bare. No other human or human-​like figure is represented on the seals, whereas in other formats, like the inlaid wall panels, the king is again depicted front-​facing and here he is accompanied by palace officials who are shown in profile (Figure 14.3). Frontality was not unknown in Syrian and Mesopotamian art, but was quite rare, and was usually employed to represent goddesses—​like Ishtar—​or some being not fully belonging to either the human or divine worlds (Sonik 2013: 285–​286) (see also Chapter 25, this volume). In these representations from Ebla, frontality might have had a subliminal meaning, with the aim of establishing direct eye-​contact with the viewer and, therefore, creating the so-​ called “power of direct gaze” (Sonik 2013: 288–​290). The use of frontality for goddesses (Asher-​ Greve 2003), and, like at Ebla, for queens, contradicts the opinion that it was a male prerogative (see the criticism in Bahrani 2001: 66–​67; Nelson 2000: 8). On the contrary, the representations of the front-​facing king and queen exploited the “power of direct gaze,” whereas the other human figures—​like the officials depicted in the inlaid wall panels—​all faced the king. On the one hand, this reproduced what usually happened in the Court and Administrative Quarter, namely the processions of subjects towards the sovereign; on the other hand, it created a kind of normative pattern for what had to take place in those spaces. Furthermore, the presence of the front-​facing gazing queen in the glyptic imagery and in wall decoration is evidence of the pre-​eminent position of women in the Eblaic court. The strength of the royal gaze was further stressed by the presence of a continuous frieze of stone eyes running along the north and east

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Figure 14.1  General plan of the Royal Palace G (c. 2300 BCE ), Ebla.

walls of the Court of Audience at a height of around 2 metres from the floor (Matthiae 2008: 53; Pinnock 2012: 274–​276). Combining the written and visual evidence, it is possible to infer—​and in some measure to reconstruct—​the type of ceremonies that took place in the Court of Audience. On the one 300

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Figure 14.2  Seal of the high official Ushra-​Samu, representing the goddess Ishkhara, taming two lions, flanked by the king and queen, marble and gold, Ebla, c. 2300 BCE .

Figure 14.3  Proposed reconstruction of an inlaid wall panel, depicting the king front-​facing and a procession of high officials turned towards him, limestone and lapis lazuli, Ebla, c. 2300 BCE .

hand, the Court of Audience was a large space, which—​when it was used for ceremonies—​ might have hosted many members of the ruling family and palace officials, as well as—​at least in some instances—​foreign guests and possibly also representatives of the town population. Besides the attire and attitude of the participants, the Court of Audience probably had a kind of agency of its own. I already mentioned the decoration of inlaid eyes on the north and east walls: whichever interpretation we wish to give to this feature, it seems evident that the long rows of eyes performed an important active/​passive action—​they were likely meant to represent the king’s eyes watching his subjects, but they were also an elegant decoration that was looked at by individuals within the Court. I have tried to reconstruct the possible effects of light and shadow 301

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Figure 14.4  Proposed reconstruction of the northern façade of the Court of Audience, Royal Palace G, Ebla.

created by the Court’s very high walls (c. 13–​15 metres in height) on the people assembled there (Pinnock 2012), as well as the possible effect of the colours on the walls and on the columns (Figure 14.4). The walls were certainly plastered in dazzling white, whereas for the columns several hypotheses are possible, albeit impossible to verify: if colours had also been used, they would probably have been very similar to those of the participants’ clothes—​white, red, and black—​ because during that time period the range of possible colours was technically limited (Moorey 1994: 327–​329). This possible harmonisation of colours would have enhanced the feeling of belonging that the ceremonies carried out within this space were probably meant to achieve in the first place. If, on the other hand, foreigners or lower rank people were also admitted to the Court during ceremonial performances, they would probably have stood out because of their different attire, thus marking the fact that they did not really belong to the elite levels of society. Two long storerooms, stretching behind the north façade of the Court, contained vessels of various types, in addition to preservation jars—​probably wine or oil containers—​that help in reconstructing the sensescape of the performances within the Court of Audience. Among the vessels the most numerous—​totalling 120—​were a well-​known type of goblet of the period, which may suggest the average number of people who gathered in the Court, possibly around 100 persons (Figure 14.5). A kitchen, located to the side of the Ceremonial Staircase leading into the Court, was the space where slightly intoxicating herbal beverages were prepared (Wachter-​ Sarkady 2013). We know for certain that beverages were consumed during public ceremonies and that they might have had inebriating effects on the participants. The consumption of food is less certain: the pots found in the Court and in the rooms alongside it are mostly drinking vessels not suitable for solid food. Lastly, aromatic resins also played a role in creating the ceremonial sensescape: high-​footed bowls with clear traces of burning inside were excavated throughout the 302

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Figure 14.5  Group of drinking vessels from the Court of Audience, Royal Palace G, Ebla, c. 2300 BCE .

Figure 14.6  Group of burners from the Royal Palace G, Ebla, c. 2300 BCE .

Royal Palace (Figure 14.6) (see also Chapters 19 and 20, this volume). These burners used for resins were simple, medium-​sized Kitchen Ware vessels with the stem pierced along its length, which made the vessels easier to handle (Mazzoni 1985: fig. 2, nos. 30 and 32). The analysis of the written evidence revealed another element relevant for our analysis of the performances of the Court: the distribution of clothes, or of specific sets of clothes, and other textiles to members of the royal family and to Eblaic officials of varying status was an important custom (or practice) at Ebla and, what is more, their colours are frequently mentioned. For example, the administrative texts attest that the king frequently and regularly received a new turban, which is probably the headdress that makes him so recognisable in Eblaic art. Generally speaking, the attention given in the texts to the king wearing this type of headdress is standard and common for this period; however, the attention given to the colour and form of the different 303

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types of clothing is less common. This led us to infer that the form and colour of clothing played a meaningful role in the public appearance of the town elite (Pinnock 2018: 73–​74, 76–​ 77, with previous relevant bibliography; see also Chapters 2 and 7, this volume). Furthermore, archaeological evidence attests that the high officials—​the king included—​carried a peculiar object, which we have referred to as a “standard,” several fragments of which were retrieved in Royal Palace G. Each standard would have consisted of a small figure or group of figures (e.g., quadrupeds, human-​headed bulls, and human figures) in the round placed on a horizontal base that was held by an individual by means of a vertical support, a kind of rod, of the type that is represented on Naram-​Sin’s stele; on the latter, the object is shown in the hands of three figures who follow the king in his ascent of the mountain (Moortgat 1967: fig. 155). The Eblaic standards probably indicated the owners’ role by means of the figure represented—​for example, the overseer of agriculture and husbandry would have used the standard with a bull or calf ’s figure, whereas a high-​ranking lady used a standard with the representation of a seated veiled priestess. Accordingly, the high officials and king would have been easy to identify visually within the Court, even in a crowd, through their attire and standards (Matthiae 2013a; Pinnock 2015). It is also possible, albeit tentatively, to reconstruct the way in which the king entered the Court of Audience: he would have descended from an upper floor—​where his private apartments were located—​by way of a staircase inside a tower; once at ground level he would have made his way towards his throne, which was located at the middle of the façade of the Court; here, the queen would have joined him, progressing from a small quarter located behind the same façade and out through a door to the side of the dais where the throne stood (Pinnock 2012). The basic elements of the reconstructed ceremonial context of the Court of Audience may be summed up as follows: 1. The Court of Audience may be defined as a monumental theatrical background for ceremonies related to Early Syrian Eblaic kingship. 2. A large part—​or all—​of the town elite took part in these ceremonies with the king and queen and likely all of the officials residing in Ebla, possibly around 100 persons, based on the quantity of preserved drinking vessels. 3. It is possible that, on some occasions, high ranking foreign guests also took part in the events staged within the Court. 4. The possibility that some chosen members of Ebla’s town population might be present should not be ruled out. 5. Shapes and colours of clothing for Ebla’s elite were not arbitrary, but rather adhered to an established code. 6. During the ceremonies, beverages, intoxicating to various degrees, were consumed and aromatic resins were burned. These elements—​albeit partial—​allow us to reconstruct a complex sensescape, using mainly sight and taste, but also other senses such as smell and movement, all of which the participants would have experienced. Yet while we now have a better understanding of who looked, who was present, who tasted, and who had access to the distribution of beverages, this does not exhaust the potential of the sensescape we have tried to reconstruct. A question that remains is: how did the people look/​watch/​gaze? On the one hand, royal power was displayed in all of its grandeur in order to be looked at, in the most basic sense of “to look”; on the other hand, the subjects also “admired,” in the double sense of the word—​in addition to looking passively (ad+mirare, “to look at”), they also experienced respect and awe through looking (Winter 2000: 30; see also

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Chapters 3 and 10, this volume). Within the space of the Court, there are those who would have looked downwards, and there are those who would have looked upwards: the king and queen were probably the only people to look downward—​they stood or sat on a dais, a position that reflected their hierarchical rank. In contrast, the subject people would have looked upwards at the royal couple—​in awe and respect. Yet at the same time, owing to variations in rank and social position among the subject people, there were likely also parallel and/​or unbalanced glances between members of this group who gathered in the Court. If we look, for instance, at paintings that depict the great European courts, we see how the figures represented do not all look towards the natural focal point of the scene—​namely the king sitting in his throne, passing between two rows of courtiers, or standing in front of an altar; rather several personages look at the other participants. The people who were admitted to these events did not go there only to look at the king, but also to be seen by others. They would have noticed who was there and who was not, which place in the social hierarchy each one occupied, how close to or far away from the king each person was, which clothes and jewels were worn. In essence, taking part in this type of court event allowed a certain number of people to participate in the most elite of a society’s spaces, smells, beverages, and so forth. On the one hand, this was a way to exhibit the rich trappings and insignia of the royal court and, on the other hand, it was a means of consolidating, or perhaps challenging, existing hierarchies. We cannot rule out the possibility that something similar took place in Early Syrian Ebla. In addition to looking from above or from below, the participants in the Eblaic events of the Court of Audience possibly also engaged in horizontal gazes that crossed social classes, that is to say, not a mono-​or bidirectional but rather a multi-​directional gaze. Another possibility is that a kind of storytelling accompanied the ceremonies: in Sumerian texts there are instances of exhortations to “use the eyes,” and consequently many verbs related to the “use of the eyes.” Before the real description of a phenomenon that is perceived as extraordinary, there might have been a kind of preparation for ways of looking and seeing in order to create in onlookers the requested, or preferred, state of mind (Winter 2000: 23–​24, 30, 35). The complex game of power enforcement and community building that was staged in the Court of Audience of the Royal Palace of Early Syrian Ebla was elevated to an even higher level during the celebration of the so-​called Ritual of Kingship. This ritual, which probably developed in the last decades of mature Early Syrian Ebla, is preserved in three tablets dating to the reigns of the last two kings of Ebla—​Irkab-​Damu and Ishar-​Damu; the texts have only minor variations among them (Fronzaroli 1993). For several days, the king and queen—​serving as an ideological parallel of the divine couple, the god Kura and the goddess Barama, heads of the Eblaic pantheon—​performed a kind of pilgrimage. The ritual started outside Ebla: the first part was performed inside the town, then a trip was made outside Ebla to visit villages and temples of the Eblaic territory, until the procession reached the mausolea of the deified kings and queens of the past at the site of Nenash/Binnish, northwest of Ebla, before returning to Ebla. In the texts describing the ritual, the sovereigns’ clothes are frequently mentioned, including the different colours of clothing and articles of clothing of peculiar shapes to be offered to the deities, as is the richly decorated wagon carrying the royal and divine couples from one village to another; of course the royal couple was physically present, whereas the divine couple was probably represented by statues, albeit this is not specified in the texts, which mention only the presence of the two gods. No mention is made of songs or a story to be chanted or spoken during the ritual, but there might have been. It is, however, interesting to imagine this—​thus far unique—​direct contact between the king and queen and their subjects; yet it is difficult to infer how the latter would have reacted to the passage of this magnificent procession.

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In the dark: exploiting spaces in Old Syrian Ebla Concerning the third Ebla (Figure 14.7), several cult structures, besides palaces and private houses, were excavated at the site for this period: Ishtar’s Temple (Area D) on the Acropolis; in the Lower Town, from north to south, Shamash’s Temple (Area N), Ishtar’s Temple (Area P), Rashap’s Temple (Area B1), the Sanctuary of the Deified Royal Ancestors (Area B2); and farther to the east, a sequence of two temples in Area HH, situated over the ruins of the Early Syrian Temple of the Rock. The two temples for Ishtar were certainly the most important temples, because they were dedicated to different aspects of the goddess as patron of the town and as

Figure 14.7  General plan of the site of Ebla, showing the plans of the monuments. 306

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protector of the ruling dynasty. The temples of Area HH were possibly dedicated to Hadad, the Storm-​God of Aleppo (Matthiae 2013b: 212–​213); they were less monumental than Ishtar’s temples, but they were connected with Ebla’s most ancient history and probably with its foundation myth. Ishtar’s Temple on the Acropolis (Area D), the palatine temple, was closely related to the Royal Residence because it was included in the area enclosed by the massive fortification walls of the Acropolis: therefore, it had very limited and select accessibility. The temple in the Lower Town (Area P), which opened into the Cisterns’ Square, would have stood at the centre of large gatherings of people in the square. When standing in this large open space, people could take part in the activities carried out inside the temple and on the Lions’ Terrace (Monument P3), located on the western side of the square. The Lions’Terrace was built in a final phase of the Middle Bronze II period and, with the temple and the square, formed a single complex, which we call Ishtar’s Cult Area, because we believe that the events that took place in these three areas were closely related. Below the Cisterns’ Square—​as indicated by the name—​was a large cistern, or a system of cisterns, so the square was also an important meeting point for the community in everyday life. Of course, we cannot know for certain in what ways people were able to participate in the official events staged in the temple and on the Lions’Terrace in this area of the Lower Town. Yet, for the phases prior to the erection of the terrace, there are hints of an active—​not just passive—​ presence of the Eblaic people in this important cult area. Several votive deposits were identified and excavated: some of them are related to the phases of the erection of the buildings in Ishtar’s Cult Area, while others were associated with cult activities of later periods (Figure 14.8). Two pits—​6 and 8 metres deep, both in the Cisterns’ Square—​were in use between the beginning of the nineteenth century BCE and an initial phase of Middle Bronze II (c. 1770 BCE ; Pinnock 2007: 466). Each pit was the setting for three different stages of activity separated by intervals of time; the second pit entered into use only after the first had been completely filled in. The offerings thrown or placed into the pits included a large number of vessels, some of which had been purposely broken. Among these vessels were burners, which were taller than their Early Syrian equivalents and had cylindrical, hollow stems and bowls decorated with patterns of hatches and incised dots (Marchetti and Nigro 1997: figs. 6, no. 16 [stem]; 7, nos. 33 [stem], 34 [base of bowl], 35–​36 [bowls]; 10, nos. 21–​22 [stems]). The pits also contained clay figurines, predominantly female; ornaments, sometimes made of precious materials like carnelian, lapis lazuli, rock crystal, gold, amethyst, onyx, and bronze pins; and small bronze figurines of snakes, which were probably associated with Ishtar’s chthonic aspects (Figure 14.9). The offerings also included food, in part contained in medium-​size jars and in part represented by animal bones—​ pigeons or doves, and sheep (Marchetti and Nigro 1997: 9–​29). It is likely that the pits—​and the ritual activities they represented—​in the Cisterns’ Square could no longer be used when the Lions’ Terrace was built, at which point the Square became the theatrical backdrop for the activities staged in and around the Terrace. These acts probably included human sacrifice, as may be inferred by some Old Syrian cylinder seals, where monuments like the Lions’ Terrace are depicted: in these glyptic scenes, lions “playing” with human heads and human corpses are shown near the monuments (Matthiae 2013c: pls. 220e–​f). Among the vessels thrown into the pits of Ishtar’s Cult Area were several small clay vases, decorated with applied figurines (Figure 14.10), that had been intentionally broken before being placed into the pits. Their typology is not attested elsewhere at Ebla, although in the following phases of the Middle Bronze Age bigger vases, also with applied figurines but more roughly made, were found in all of the palaces of Ebla. In my interpretation, the more recent vases are certainly a derivation of the older specimens and likely similarly represent some religious belief related to the official cults. The applied figurines take the form of naked females but most often 307

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Figure 14.8  Schematic plan of Ishtar’s Cult Area, Ebla, Middle Bronze I–​II (c. 1800–​1600 BCE ).

birds, either complete or only their heads and necks: the naked females were related to the cult of Ishtar and the birds, identified as doves, were also connected with aspects of the goddess (Pinnock 2000). In my opinion, these vases belong to a personal as opposed to official sphere of religious practice, though it cannot be labelled as popular. The older vases are of a high quality and were probably purposely made for use in the pits, since they are not attested in the palace areas. In contrast, the more recent specimens are quite roughly made and were excavated only in the palaces at Ebla, not in temples or private houses; accordingly, they likely belonged to a lower class of handicraft, yet were used in elite contexts. In my interpretation, these more recent vases were related to aspects of the female sphere, possibly motherhood; were produced in the cult areas, particularly in Ishtar’s Cult Area; and could only be distributed to, or rather requested by, the female occupants of the palaces (Pinnock 2011: 58–​65). When these activities stopped in Ishtar’s Cult Area, similar activities started near the temple in Area HH, where a 7-​metre-​deep pit was excavated dating to the beginning of the Middle 308

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Figure 14.9  Representative group of objects from one of the votive pits in Ishtar’s Cult Area, Ebla, c. 1800 BCE .

Figure 14.10  Three vases with applied figures from one of the votive pits in Ishtar’s Cult Area, Ebla, c. 1800 BCE .

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Figure 14.11  Section of the votive pit in Area HH, Ebla, c. 1750 BCE .

Bronze II period (Figures 14.7 and 14.11). Here, three distinct activities took place over time, with the same types of actions and with similar types of offerings as those in the oldest pits, the archaeological evidence from which introduces additional interesting elements for consideration. Alongside the vases thrown into the pit in Area HH were a number of carinated bowls and bowls with inverted rims (Figure 14.12)—​the two most typical types of the period—​whose 310

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Figure 14.12  Group of bowls from the votive pit in Area HH, Ebla, c. 1750 BCE .

Figure 14.13  Drawings of bowls from the votive pit in Area HH, Ebla, c. 1750 BCE .

quality is on average better than that of similar bowls found elsewhere at the site: the walls are thinner, the clay sieved with greater care, and the firing higher; they also have a rather dark pink/​orange colour that is very different from the whitish/​yellowish colour of the bowls for everyday use. The bowls from the pit, therefore, were probably purposely made for the activities associated with this feature in Area HH, and would have been prepared with great care beforehand (see also Chapter 3, this volume). Yet other similar bowls were found in the same context that were made in a more cursory manner (Figure 14.13): the colour and quality of the clay is the same, but the shapes are irregular and the bases bear traces of having been taken from the working bench with some strength and in a hurry, as if they had to be taken quickly to the kiln. These latter bowls probably represent an attempt to fulfil an unexpected request for this type of vessel, by a group of people larger than anticipated. Lastly, several of these bowls bare traces of a burnt wick, indicating that they had been used as lamps (Figure 14.14). Thus, it is likely that the rituals associated with the pit in Area HH took place during the night, with a large number 311

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Figure 14.14  Three clay bowls with wick marks from the votive pit in Area HH, Ebla, beginning of the Middle Bronze II period (c. 1750 BCE ).

of participants, sometimes a larger number than anticipated. This last consideration, namely that people could arrive unexpectedly, suggests that the organisation of the activities in Area HH did not follow a particularly strict protocol. It is probably bold, but certainly suggestive, to reconstruct this collective moment in the life of the inhabitants of Ebla as one in which, contrary to the activities of the Early Syrian period discussed above, darkness played a role. Additionally, the ritual took place in a part of the town, close to the Steppe Gate, where there were no monumental buildings, apart from the temples, in close proximity to the pit. Moreover, the Old Syrian temples of Area HH concealed the ruins of the Early Syrian Temple of the Rock and the source of sweet water which had probably been a basic resource when Ebla had been founded, and whose memory was likely still alive in the people of the town. The Early Syrian temple was not visible anymore, or perhaps only a small western sector of it was still visible; the temple had been filled with a mixture of earth and limestone crumble, over which the two Middle Bronze temples were built. The attempt to reach the underground water again and the creation of the votive pit are, in my opinion, proof that the memory of those ancient features had not been erased, and that the people of Ebla were trying to “re-​contact” to the source of their community—​the water below the Temple of the Rock—​ rather than to reach the water for practical reasons: sweet water for the population’s everyday needs was provided by both a well that reached the water table in the southern area of the Lower Town and the system of underground cisterns running below a large part of the settlement. As we do not have similar evidence for the use of lamps for Ishtar’s Cult Area during the preceding period, we might infer that the activities of that area, in contrast to those of Area HH, took place during the day. As a matter of speculation, we might also imagine that the quality of sound also differed between the two areas: the daytime activities of Ishtar’s Cult Area likely produced more noise and sound, whereas those staged during the night in Area HH would have been more subdued, thus producing less sound, a variation that might reflect the different aims 312

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Figure 14.15  Unbaked clay female figure from the votive pit in Area HH, Ebla, c. 1750 BCE .

of the two rituals (see also Chapters 16 and 17, this volume). The activities of the first area could have been a request by the women for children, and therefore for the future, a ritual of hope; those staged in the second area could have been a remembrance of a glorious past, lost forever, a ritual of melancholy. We should recall that the activities of these two areas also took place in two different phases of the life of the third Ebla, which was passing from a period of autonomy and development—​at the beginning of the Old Syrian period—​to the submission to Aleppo—​ starting around 1770 BCE —​when the first signs of the crisis that would lead to the crumbling of the Old Syrian settlements system around 1600 BCE were probably evident. The pit of Area HH introduces another aspect worth considering concerning the modes of participation for the activities in this area. Present in all three levels of deposition were peculiar figurines of unbaked clay, extremely rough and nearly shapeless (Figure 14.15). They are remarkably large, ranging between 8 and 20 centimetres high, and their clay is coarser and darker in colour than the clay used for contemporary figurines; in fact, the clay resembles the soil of the site, which had also been used to fill in the pit in Area HH after the deposition of the vessels. The figurines represent mostly female figures (Figure 14.16), but there are also animals, chariot wheels, miniature tables, and female genitalia. Their relative shapelessness suggests that (1) they might have been made in a great hurry and (2) that they had not been made by craftsmen, but rather by common people. Based on this evidence, we should infer that the rituals in Area HH were meant to engage two senses more than the others: sight, with the contrast between the darkness of the night and the flickering light of the lamps, and touch, experienced through the manipulation of clay, or rather of the soil of the town itself. One last consideration: the bowls used as lamps were thrown into the pit, too. This suggests that either the activities lasted the whole night and ended at dawn, or that they ended during the night and the participants returned to their homes in the dark—​or perhaps under the natural light of the moon. In my opinion, the rituals proposed in relation to the votive pits of Ishtar’s Cult Area and Area HH of Old Syrian Ebla represent a completely different type of ceremonial activity from those that took place in the Royal Palace of the mature Early Syrian period. In the two more recent ceremonial contexts from Old Syrian Ebla, in fact, it seems that the participation of a large number of people was anticipated but that this did not represent—​or represented only 313

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Figure 14.16  Unbaked clay female figure from the votive pit in Area HH, Ebla, c. 1750 BCE .

partially—​the town elite. Additionally, for the activities of Old Syrian Ebla, the archaeological evidence seems to reveal a complex multisensory experience that was likely in some respects intentional, since these were activities taking place inside the town, where some degree of hierarchical control was most likely exercised. Sight was certainly the most stimulated sense in these Old Syrian Ebla contexts: the participants were meant to admire—​they had to feel pleasure, but also probably view in awe—​ their surroundings. In Ishtar’s Cult Area they would have faced the monumental façade of the temple of the goddess, where the sovereigns’ life-​size statues—​a standing queen and a seated king—​stood on the porch, while in the Cisterns’ Square at least two larger-​than-​life-​size figures of kings stood on bases decorated with lions’ heads (Pinnock 2020a; 2020b). This area was also enclosed within the imposing fortifications of the Acropolis to the east, and likewise the imposing back wall of the Western Palace—​with its huge lining of orthostats—​to the south; only to the west was the space more open and only partially obstructed by private houses and residences. These spaces, with their openings but also constraints, would have interacted with sounds: certainly, shuffling of steps, probably songs and recitations, and human voices, but also the sound of the offerings breaking at the bottom of the pits, or being broken before being thrown into the pits. Lastly, if food was consumed or placed into the pits, the senses of taste and smell would have also been stimulated during the activities. In contrast, Area HH had no traces of royal statues and the likelihood that the ceremonies took place in the dark suggests that the participants were able to concentrate and act without distraction from the surrounding environment. The creation of the rough clay figurines added to these experiences the sense of touch, in the unregulated manipulation—​that is to say, they did not use pre-​established models for the figurines—​of the soil, which was not sieved as it would be in the usual production of pottery and figurines, but which was instead the same type of soil on which people trampled daily. This bond with the earth is further stressed by the fact that the freshly made figurines were placed on the earth before being thrown into the pit, as is attested by the inclusion of small stones in their bases. Lastly, if many people directly took part in the rituals, it is possible that the noise they 314

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made was carried outside the town, particularly in the case of the events that took place in Area HH, which was close to the city wall. During the Early Syrian period the “town” went outside the walls, moving into the country during the Royal Ritual, but during the Old Syrian period the “town” could only be perceived from the country. That being stated, although there was not a direct connection between the people inside and the people outside the town during the ceremonies in this later period, a sense of community could nevertheless be created through the shared experience of the same sensations.

Who was there? For the ceremonial contexts discussed above, we have stronger evidence for the Early Syrian period, whereas the interpretations concerning the Old Syrian period are more deductive. For the oldest Early Syrian period, we identified two different modes of interaction between participants: the first, situated inside the Court of Audience, was more restricted and was directed at the elite, whereas the second, which took place during the Royal Ritual, was more inclusive and involved these same elite, led by the human and the divine royal couples, moving outside the town in order to interact with the extra-​urban population of Ebla. In the Old Syrian period—​with its unique political and social context, as Ebla was gradually losing autonomy—​contact between Ebla and the territory outside the town was seemingly lost, or at least reduced. The public manifestation of kingship seems to have been restricted at this time within the perimeter of the town walls, as can be inferred by the distribution of royal images within the town, as discussed above, and the ritual activities that took place in relatively large spaces inside the town, allowing for a large number of people of more varied social ranks to take part, and which certainly referenced the official cults and royal ideology. In Ishtar’s Cult Area, the objects—​some of which were valuable—​hint at aspects of the goddess: among them is a cylinder seal of a priestess, who probably attended the rituals (Marchetti and Nigro 1997: 32, fig. 19). In Area HH, the pit is connected by way of proximity to the temple in this area, and the objects it yielded—​in particular some fragments of clay chariots and of figurines of chariot drivers—​seem to refer to the cult of the Storm God Hadad. As discussed above, it is also likely that the location for the pit was chosen in memory of the presence of the Temple of the Rock in that region and of the groundwater. The objects from the pits in both of these areas are of a nature we might define as private, rather than official: the vases of the former with applied figures were probably related to the female sphere and might have been connected with motherhood, and the rough clay figures of the latter were made by common people and their meaning is more elusive.

Conclusion Not attempting to make any statements regarding the efficacy of the ceremonial activities discussed above for these two periods at Ebla, the following conclusions may be proposed: 1. In the Early Syrian period, combining the textual evidence with the archaeological evidence allowed for the reconstruction, with a certain reliability, of the sensescapes that were created in the moment when the community gathered in activities associated with the manifestation of kingship: (a) Sight: the king, high officials, and “people” joined in public events, and people looked in various directions, with all the participants exchanging glances among themselves in addition to looking at the royal couple. 315

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(b) Hearing: for the types of events that took place in the Court of Audience, it is likely that the participants were also given the opportunity to hear a description of the events narrated orally, or even be expected to assist themselves, thus contributing to the multisensory experience. (c) Smell: the preparation of warm or hot beverages would likely have resulted in the dispersal of aromas in the air, possibly enhancing the intoxicating effect of the beverages on the participants; the use of aromatic resins may also be hypothesised. (d) Taste: whereas the consumption of beverages is certain, the consumption of food is not attested. (e) Touch: while this sense would have been at play, for example in the handling of cups containing beverages and so forth, the evidence does not suggest that it was prioritised. 2. In the Old Syrian period, the evidence is more elusive, because we are lacking the written evidence, yet some elements of these sensescapes may be reconstructed, with a varying degree of reliability: (a) Sight: as in the Early Syrian period, the king “looked” at his subjects, but in a more evasive manner than in the previous period: the king—​physically concealed within his residence on the Acropolis, surrounded by a large, intimidating wall—​was present through statues that occupied prominent locations of the town. Thus, every public action staged within the town took place under the king’s stone eyes, including the rituals we have analysed here. It is more difficult to understand whether or not participants engaged with one another in similar ways as those identified for the Early Syrian period, for example by wearing distinctive shapes and colours of clothing. (b) Hearing: hearing is another sense that was probably strongly stimulated, as a result of singing and recitations, but also the sound of the steps of people walking in the town, and the possible presence of storytellers describing what was happening for those who could not see with their own eyes or who had to prepare the participants for what they were going to see, thus creating a shared sensory experience. In the Early Syrian period, there were moments of direct contact between urban elite and extra-​urban populations; in the Old Syrian period it is possible that only the resonant echo of what was taking place inside the town was perceived outside. (c) Smell: this sense is very elusive; it may be somehow commonplace to propose that aromatic resins were used and that also there would have been scents emitted by food that was cooked to be consumed during the activities of the pit of the Cisterns’ Square or to be offered to the deities. The presence of broken burners and of sheep bones may support this hypothesis. (d) Taste: what has been said for smell also applies to taste, with the additional evidence for the consumption of food in the Cisterns’ Square. (e) Touch: the only definitive evidence for touch as being a formative element of a ritual is the contact with and manipulation of the “soil of Ebla” to make simple clay figurines for the votive pits of Old Syrian Ebla. I have limited my analysis here to the five “traditional senses” of Western philosophy, and I have not entered into details of other sensorial perceptions (Blakolmer et al. 2017: 2) or of the possibility of gender directed perceptions, which must have also been at play. What I have attempted to highlight—​albeit in a summary and certainly incomplete way—​is how ceremonial activities in a centre of the ancient Near East were not meant to send a message or image of the ruling elite and kingship merely in a passive way. Rather, complex sensescapes were created with some level of intentionality: they were most probably organised and somehow directed from 316

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above—​top-​down—​but also must have elicited a bottom-​up reaction and perceptions that were shared horizontally among the participants, of different forms and different degrees of intensity. If we do not take into account these varied multisensory experiences created by spontaneous and culturally determined sensory phenomena, we might reconstruct these ceremonial activities as static, strongly codified, and hierarchically organised events. On the contrary, it seems to me that we are dealing with dynamic, partially codified events, where hierarchy certainly played a role, but where participation and multisensory perceptions created a culturally shared sensescape that was a kind of sensorial glue for the whole society of the town of Ebla, and perhaps also of its hinterland.

Note 1. All the figures are © Missione Archeologica Italiana in Siria and I have the rights to publish them, in my capacity as co-​director of the Expedition.

Bibliography Archi, A. 2015. Ebla and Its Archives: Texts, History, and Society. Berlin: De Gruyter. Asher-​Greve, J.-​M. 2003. “The Gaze of the Goddesses: On Divinity, Gender, and Frontality in the Late Early Dynastic, Akkadian, and Neo-​Sumerian Periods.” NINO: Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity 4: 1–​59. Bahrani, Z. 2001. Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia. London and New York: Routledge. Biga, M. G. 1992. “Les vêtements neufs de l’Empereur.” NABU 1992 (19): 16–​17. Blakolmer, F., A. Grande-​Clément, and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel. 2017. “Introduction,” in F. Blakolmer, A. Grande-​Clément, A.-​C. and Rendu Loisel, eds., Les traces du sensible: Pour une histoire des sens dans les sociétés anciennes, Trivium. https://​journals.openedition.org/​trivium.. Buccellati, F. 2019. “Smelling the City,” in D. Nadali and F. Pinnock, eds., Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Contexts. Proceedings of a Conference Held in Rome, June 4th, 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 201–​216. Coolidge, F. L., Th. Wynn, K. A. Overmann, and J. M. Hicks. 2014. “Cognitive Archaeology and the Cognitive Sciences,” in E. Bruner, ed., Human Paleoneurology. Berlin: Springer, 177–​208. Fronzaroli, P. 1993. Archivi Reali di Ebla, Testi XI. Testi rituali della regalità (Archivio L.2769). Rome: Missione Archeologica Italiana in Siria. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kertai, D. 2014a. “The Architecture of Connectivity: Ashurnasirpal II’s Late Assyrian Palace in Kalkhu,” in D. Kurapkat, P. I. Schneider and U. Wulf-​ Rheidt, eds., Die Architektur des Weges. Gestaltete Bewegung im Gebauten Raum. Internationales Kolloquium in Berlin vom 08–​11. Februar 2012 veranstaltet von Architekturreferat des DAI. Diskussionen zur Archäologischen Bauforschung 11. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 337–​347. Kertai, D. 2014b. “From bābānu to bētānu: Looking for Spaces in Late Assyrian Palaces,” in N. N. May and U. Steiner, eds., The Fabric of Cities: Aspects of Urbanism, Urban Topography and Society in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. Leiden: Brill, 189–​201. Kertai, D. 2015. The Architecture of the Late Assyrian Royal Palaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marchetti, N., and L. Nigro. 1997. “Cultic Activities in the Sacred Area of Ishtar at Ebla During the Old Syrian Period: The Favissae F.5327 and F.5238.” JCS 49: 1–​44. Matthiae, P. 1977. Ebla. Un impero ritrovato. Dai primi scavi alle ultime scoperte. Turin: Einaudi. Matthiae, P. 2008. Gli Archivi Reali di Ebla. La scoperta, i testi, il significato. Milan: Mondadori. Matthiae, P. 2010. Ebla, la città del trono. Archeologia e filologia. Turin: Einaudi. Matthiae, P. 2013a. “The Standard of the maliktum of Ebla in the Royal Archives Period,” in P. Matthiae, Studies on the Archaeology of Ebla 1980–​2010. Ed. F. Pinnock. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 455–​477. Matthiae, P. 2013b. “The Temple of the Rock of Early Bronze IVA–​B at Ebla: Structure, Chronology, Continuity,” in P. Matthiae, Studies on the Archaeology of Ebla 1980–​2010. Ed. F. Pinnock. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 203–​215.

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Matthiae, P. 2013c. “The Lions of the Great Goddess of Ebla: A Hypothesis about Some Archaic Old Syrian Cylinders,” in P. Matthiae, Studies on the Archaeology of Ebla 1980–​2010. Ed. F. Pinnock. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 383–​391. Mazzoni, S. 1985. “Elements of the Ceramic Culture of Early Syrian Ebla in Comparison with Syro-​ Palestinian EB IV.” BASOR 257: 1–​18. McMahon, A. 2013. “Space, Sound, and Light: Towards a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monumental Architecture.” AJA 117: 163–​179. Moorey, P. R. S. 1994. Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Moortgat, A. 1967. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Classical Art of the Near East. London and New York: Phaidon. Nelson, R. S. 2000. “Descartes’s Cow and Other Domestications of the Visual,” in R. S. Nelson, ed., Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–​21. Pinnock, F. 1992. “Le ‘turban royal éblaïte’.” NABU 1992 (18): 15–​16. Pinnock, F. 2000. “The Doves of the Goddess: Elements of the Cult of Ishtar at Ebla in the Middle Bronze Age.” Levant 32: 121–​128. Pinnock, F. 2007. “Middle Bronze Ceramic Horizon at Ebla: Typology and Chronology,” in P. Matthiae, F. Pinnock, L. Nigro, and L. Peyronel, eds., Proceedings of the International Colloquium “From Relative Chronology to Absolute Chronology: The Second Millennium BC in Syria-​Palestine” (Rome, 29th November–​ 1st December 2001). Rome: Bardi, 457–​472. Pinnock, F. 2011. Materiali e Studi Archeologici di Ebla. IX. Le giarette con decorazione applicata del Bronzo Medio II. Rome: Missione Archeologica Italiana in Siria. Pinnock, F. 2012. “Colours and Light in the Royal Palace G of Early Syrian Ebla,” in R. Matthews and J. Curtis, eds., Proceedings of the 7th ICAANE. 12–​16 April 2010, the British Museum, and UCL London, Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 271–​286. Pinnock, F. 2013a. “Sculpture and Minor Arts of the Early Dynastic and Akkade Periods and Their Relation to Mesopotamian Art,” in W. Orthmann, P. Matthiae and M. al-​Maqdissi, eds., Archéologie et Histoire de la Syrie, I. La Syrie de l’époque néolithique à l’âge du Fer. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 199–​214. Pinnock, F. 2013b. “Palace vs Common Glyptic in Early Syrian Ebla and Its Territory,” in P. Matthiae and N. Marchetti, eds., Ebla and Its Landscape: Early State Formation in the Ancient Near East. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 66–​72. Pinnock, F. 2014. “The Image of Power at Mari between East and West.” Syria Suppl. 2: 675–​689. Pinnock, F. 2015. “The King’s Standard from Ebla Palace G.” JCS 67: 3–​22. Pinnock, F. 2016a. “Memoria dell’acqua, memoria degli antenati: aree di culto a cielo aperto in alta Siria,” in P. Matthiae and M. D’Andrea, eds., L’archeologia del sacro e l’archeologia del culto. Sabratha, Ebla. Ardea, Lanuvio (Roma, 8–​11 ottobre 2013)—​Ebla e la Siria dall’età del Bronzo all’età del Ferro. Rome: Bardi, 257–​293. Pinnock, F. 2016b. “Royal Images and Kingship Rituals in Early Syrian Ebla: A Multi-​Faceted Strategy of Territorial Control in EB IVA North Inner Syria.” Zeitschrift für Orient-​Archäologie 9: 98–​116. Pinnock, F. 2018. “A New Dress for the Maliktum: Attires and Functions of Court-​Ladies at Ebla in the Early and Old Syrian Periods.” Studia Eblaitica 4: 59–​110. Pinnock, F. 2019a. “To See and/​or to be Seen,” in D. Nadali and F. Pinnock, eds., Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Contexts. Proceedings of a Conference Held in Rome, June 4th, 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1–​24. Pinnock, F. 2019b. “The Royal Palace G of Early Syrian Ebla: Structure and Functions,” in M. Bietak, P. Matthiae, and S. Prell, eds., Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Palaces. Vol. II. Proceedings of a workshop held at the 10th ICAANE in Vienna, 25–​26 April 2016. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 67–​79. Pinnock, F. 2020a. “Representing the Elites in Middle Bronze I–​II Ebla,” in A. Otto, M. Herles, and K. Kaniuth, eds., Proceedings of the 11th ICAANE, Munich. Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 245–258. Pinnock, F. 2020b. “Building in Stone and Mudbrick: The Monumental Architecture of Ebla in the Middle Bronze Age I–​II,” in M. Devolder and I. Kreimermann, eds., Ashlar: Exploring the Materiality of Cut Stone Masonry in the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age. Louvain-​la-​Neuve: Presses Universitaires, 97–120. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2019. “Sound as an Expression of Social Interactions in Akkadian Literature,” in D. Nadali and F. Pinnock, eds., Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Contexts. Proceedings of a Conference Held in Rome, June 4th, 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 101–​116.

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Sonik, K. 2013. “The Monster’s Gaze: Vision as Mediator between Time and Space in the Art of Mesopotamia,” in L. Feliu, J. Llop, A. Millet Albà, and J. Sanmartín, eds., Time and History in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Barcelona 26–​30 July 2010. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 285–​300. Sonik, K. 2017. “Emotion and the Ancient Arts: Visualizing, Materializing, and Producing States of Being,” in S. Kipfer, ed., Visualizing Emotions in the Ancient Near East. OBO 285. Göttingen: Academic Press Fribourg, 219–​261. Steadman, S. R., and J. C. Ross, eds. 2010. Agency and Identity in the Ancient Near East: New Paths Forward. London and New York: Routledge. Verderame, L. 2019. “Noisy City, Silent Steppe, Tweeting Marsh: Soundscapes in Sumerian Literature,” in D. Nadali and F. Pinnock, eds., Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Contexts. Proceedings of a Conference Held in Rome, June 4th, 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 85–​100. Wachter-​Sarkady, C. 2013. “Consuming Plants: Archaeobotanical Samples from Royal Palace G and Building P4,” in P. Matthiae and N. Marchetti, eds., Ebla and Its Landscape: Early State Formation in the Ancient Near East. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 376–​402. Wagner-​Durand, E. 2019. “I Am Walking about Shining and Radiant with Joy: Linking the Senses and Emotions in Mesopotamia,” in D. Nadali and F. Pinnock, eds., Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Contexts. Proceedings of a Conference Held in Rome, June 4th, 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 217–​246. Winter, I. 2000. “The Eyes Have It: Votive Statuary, Gilgamesh’s Axe, and Cathected Viewing in the Ancient Near East,” in R. Nelson, ed., Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 22–​44.

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15 The Ishtar Gate A sensescape of divine agency Beate Pongratz-​Leisten

Introduction In recent decades, the perception of space—​through acts of viewing, sensing, touching, smelling, and sound—​ has become a cornerstone of archaeological studies (Hamilakis et al. 2002; Hamilakis 2013) and phenomenological archaeology in particular (Tilley 1994; 2004; Brück 2005).1 Whereas the active interplay between the body and that which it perceives was once characterised as a “primitive” kind of engagement with the world (see the notion of “participation” in Lévy-​Bruhl 1926 [1910] or the “Savage Mind,” Lévi-​Strauss 1966), contemporary phenomenology recognises the centrality of body-​space relationships to all cultures, ancient and modern. Considering landscape and environment to contain “perceived and embodied sets of relationships between places, a structure of human feeling, emotion, dwelling, movement, and practical activity” (Tilley 2004: 25), phenomenology tackles questions of inhabitation, experience, and embodiment of space.2 While a phenomenological perspective acknowledges that “places gather together persons, memories, structures, histories, myths, and symbols” (Tilley 2004: 25), and modern archaeology has developed an integrated theory of material culture that combines social anthropology, cognitive sciences, psychology, and biology (Knappett 2005), these approaches are, however, primarily concerned with what places and landscapes do to the body apart from the specificities of cultural meaning and so remain ahistorical in their approach. Emotional reactions to monumentality can vary cross-​culturally, and so it is highly problematic to treat the human body as universal (Brück 2005: 55). Taking inspiration from scholarly discourse on cultural geography (Harvey 1990; Mitchell 2000; Atkinson 2005) and on architecture as a coded sensory experience that has been created by a group of skilled craftsmen under the supervision of ancient scholars (Parpola 1995; Thomason 2016; Neumann 2018), this chapter develops a cultural-​historical approach to the bodily engagement with the built environment in ancient Mesopotamia. Although there are limitations in our ability to recreate the ancient experiences of monumentality, we can at least glimpse these experiences by considering all of the sources available to us, including textual, pictorial, and archaeological evidence. The choice of particular depictions, for example, as well as the lustrous shine of metal coatings and the scintillating colours of glazed bricks were all aimed at sparking an image in the mind that was rooted in cultural knowledge and experience (Winter 2010; Benzel 320

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2015; Fügert and Gries 2019; Thavapalan 2019).3 Such knowledge is preserved in the textual sources and can be gleaned from comparative material within the same culture, and so I posit that we can at least approach to some degree ancient experiences. Embracing the insights of contemporary archaeological and phenomenological studies in a broad way, this chapter therefore additionally draws upon the rich textual documentation that provides insights into the construction, perceived agency, and symbolic meaning of landscapes and monumental architecture and Babylon’s Ishtar Gate in particular. In working with the premise that “the patterns and meanings of built environments reflect fundamental cultural concepts of distinct cultural and social groups” (Neumann 2018: 182), the chapter offers a more comprehensive approach to the famous monument, exploring how it was constructed and experienced as material artefact, how it was a representation in itself, and how it is represented in cultural discourse. Monumental architecture lies at the core of the present investigation of the sensory experience of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate—​a monumental gateway located along the northern inner-​city wall of the sacred city. Palaces and temples have been the focus of excavations and research since major archaeological expeditions started in ancient Mesopotamia (for important recent studies, see Margueron 1982; Heinrich 1982; 1984; Novák 1999; Kertai 2015a; 2015b; Kaniuth et al. 2013; Wicke 2019). City gates, however, have received more consideration only recently in archaeological studies (Miglus 1982), as well as investigations into the role of the city gate with regard to jurisdiction (Niehr 1987; Crüsemann 1992; Otto 1995; Schmitt 2000), cultic practices (Mazzoni 1997; Bernett and Keel 1998;Waetzoldt 2004), and royal ideology (Pongratz-​ Leisten 1994; 2015; Battini 1998; 1999; 2003; 2009). As these studies show, city gates represent an essential component of a city’s monumental architecture and urban life. Indeed, they offer a materialised expression of power and social control and, as I want to discuss in this chapter, also a means to exercise an active force on behalf of divinities and/​or the king (Osborne 2014: 3). This chapter will explore how the agency of monuments was conceived of and materialised through performance in the ancient Mesopotamian cultures. The immense scale of urban monuments like city walls and city gates, temples, and palaces was one of many aspects that impacted individual viewers. Form and structure were equally important in shaping social interaction (Moore 1996: 116–​118). Visibility—​often achieved through raising the monument on a platform—​and permanence—​attempted by the use of fired bricks—​played a role in engraving the monument into the cultural memory. However, monumentality is more than the size, shape, visibility, or permanence of the monument. “Monumentality lies in the meaning created by the relationship that is negotiated between object and person, and between object and the surrounding constellations of values and symbols in a culture” (Osborne 2014: 13). Movement through the cities of ancient Mesopotamia, and the capitals of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings in particular, offered not only an experience of enormous monumental scale but also of meaningful pictorial decoration as well as a chance to engage with archetypes of social memory and building blocks of collective imagination revolving around the role of the city (Nora and Kritzmann 1996–​1998).

The affect of architecture and the protective powers of city gates The notion of architecture as an active force and agent in its own right—​capable not only of directly affecting the emotions and cultural knowledge of the beholder, but also of taking action in the city life—​has its roots in ancient Sumer. The Sumerian Hymn to the Temple of Kesh, for example, demonstrates how the description of temple architecture relies especially on the agency of fauna, natural phenomena, and fabricated tools of civilisation to create an embodied temple. Beyond directly affecting the emotions of the beholder, by implicitly referencing its 321

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occupants—​humans engaged in the sustenance of the cult and divinities determining the destinies of the land—​the temple also takes on the role of an active agent in the life of the city (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature t.4.80.2: 47–​58Q, 58A–​58Q; Wilcke 2006): House, at its upper end a bison, at its lower end a stag; house, at its upper end a wild sheep, at its lower end a deer; house, at its upper end a dappled wild sheep, at its lower end a beautiful deer! House, at its upper end green as a snake-​eater bird, at its lower end floating on the water like a pelican! House, at its upper end rising like the sun, at its lower end spreading like the moonlight; house, at its upper end a warrior mace, at its lower end a battle-​axe; house, at its upper end a mountain, at its lower end a spring! House, at its upper end threefold indeed! Will anyone else bring forth something as great as Kesh? House … … inspiring great awe, called with a mighty name by An; house … whose fate is grandly determined by the Great Mountain Enlil! House of the Anuna gods possessing great power, which gives wisdom to the people; house, reposeful dwelling of the great gods! House, which was planned together with the plans of heaven and earth, … with the pure divine powers; house which underpins the Land and supports the shrines! House, mountain of abundance which passes the days in glory; house of Ninhursaga which establishes the life of the Land! House, great hillside worthy of the purification rites, altering (?) all things; house without whom no decisions are made! House, good … carrying in its hands the broad Land; house which gives birth to countless peoples, seed which has sprouts! House which gives birth to kings, which determines the destinies of the Land; house whose royal personages are to be revered! Will anyone else bring forth something as great as Kesh? Another beautiful example is offered by a hymn from the time of Gudea (end of third millennium BCE ), who ruled over the city-​state of Lagash/​Girsu at the end of the third millennium BCE , and so was a contemporary with Ur Nammu, founder of the Ur III Dynasty. This hymn celebrates his renovation of the temple of Ningirsu at the city of Girsu. In a lengthy passage describing in mythologising terms Ningirsu staffing the temple, one section is dedicated to the temple gate divinised as the divinity Ig-​alim (RIME 3/​1: Gudea E3/​1.1.7. Cyl. B, vi, 11–​23): That he (Ig-​alim) might guide the hand of the righteous one and force the evil-​doer’s neck into a neck stock, that he might keep the door safe, keep it in harmony, that he might give instructions to his city (and) the sanctuaries of Girsu, that he might establish a throne of firm promise, hand over a scepter for long days, that he might make the shepherd called by Ningirsu lift high the head as if it wore a blue crown, that he might appoint to (their) offices in the courtyard of Eninnu the “skin-​clad”, the “linen-​clad,” and the “covered head” –​he (Gudea) brings along with himself (and introduces) to the lord Ningirsu, the Great Door, the Pole of Girnun, the chief bailiff of Girsu, his beloved son Ig-​alim. Gudea’s description of Ig-​alim, the temple gate, with its first lines in particular, is evocative of the jurisdiction generally performed either in the temple gate or in the city gate, but inscribes the human agency into the architectural structure itself. And so, the gate as embodied jurisdiction manifests the civil order otherwise performed by human agents. As suggested by such references, architecture was perceived to be an active intentional agent within the city’s life (see Chapters 4, 10, and 12, this volume).4 Though temples are often the focus of evocative building descriptions, other elements of the city—​including palaces, city walls, and city gates—​also played an affective role in urban life.

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City walls and city gates in Mesopotamia City walls helped demarcate the economic and political uses of urban space and served as defensive barriers against enemy attacks. Together with the walls, city gates and the streets that led to them were part of the urban architectural as well as ritualistic and cosmological delineation of the city and represented essential components of urban monumental architecture. Sumerian debate literature and dialogues created in the context of the ancient training of the scribes (Reinink and Vanstiphout 1991), as exemplified by the Debate between the Bird and the Fish, teaches us that, in the ancient world view, cities were considered to have been created by the gods. In the Gilgamesh Epic, the wall of Uruk carries this element of sacred construction, even as the monument is associated with the ruler Gilgamesh (George 2003: 539): He built the wall of Uruk-​the-​Sheepfold, of holy Eanna, the pure storehouse. See its wall which is like a strand of wool, view its parapet which nobody can replicate! Take the stairway that has been there since ancient times, and draw near to Eanna, the seat of Ištar, that no later king can replicate, nor any man. Go up to the wall of Uruk and walk around, Survey the foundation platform, inspect the brickwork! (See) if its brickwork is not kiln-fired brick, and if the Seven Sages did not lay its foundations! In the epic, the wall is said to be “without rival”—​its construction of kiln-​fired bricks, its height, and its placement in the city’s deep foundations all being evidence for the wall’s technological refinement. What is more, the epic claims that the wall’s foundations are not man-​made, instead, they were laid by the Seven Sages of the Apsu, the fresh water ocean. The Apsu was considered to be the realm of the god Sumerian Enki/​Akkadian Ea, and the Seven Sages acted as Enki/​Ea’s helpers, and therefore represented the epitome of purity. Thus, although the king is allowed to tell about his construction and restoration of city walls, by associating their foundations with the pure freshwater realm of Enki/​Ea, the notion of divine authorship is maintained. While the Gilgamesh Epic cites the role of the Seven Sages in the construction of the monument, other textual genres gesture to the sacralisation of city walls and gates by putting them under the surveillance of the gods. As is evident from their names, they were put under divine control and so were supposed to ensure the inviolability of the city, and thereby the cosmic order. At Babylon, the two inner citadel walls were associated with the god Enlil, and known by the names “Enlil-​Showed-​Favor” (Imgur-​Enlil) and “Bullwark-​of-​Enlil” (Nīmīt-​Enlil) (George 1992: 66–​67). As such, city walls and city gates in the ancient Near East and in Mesopotamia, in particular, need to be considered in the larger framework of the ancient world view and royal ideology. The notion of the divine origin of the city explains why Mesopotamian societies made a strong distinction between the city as the epitome of civilised order and the areas that lay outside the city walls. It is this strong distinction between the inside and the outside, civilisation and wilderness, order and anti-​order that places the city gate as a threshold (Latin limen) between the two realms at centre stage. Here, the outside and the inside met: city gates often functioned as a place of trade between pastoralists and merchants as well as the city dwellers and as a locale of jurisdiction, and ritual performance. However, being a vulnerable spot in the city wall, such

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gates also needed protection. They were strongly fortified with towers on both sites to prevent the invasion of the enemy during times of war. These physical aspects of fortification were complemented by the names of the walls and gates evoking the protective agency of the gods. Seeing the city of Babylon from a distance surrounded by moats must have created a vision of the city as a mound that had arisen out of the water in primordial times, which positioned it firmly within the cosmic order (Maul 1997; George 1999; van De Mieroop 2003: 262). King Nebuchadnezzar II (605–​562 BCE ), by contrast, in his inscriptions, emphasises the destructive force of the waters of the ocean rather than the freshwater domain of Enki: “Alongside Babylon great banks of earth I heaped up. Great floods of destroying water like the great waves of the sea I made flow around it; with a marsh I surrounded it” (Langdon 1912: 93, col. 2, 10–​14). Indeed, Nebuchadnezzar II seems to use the motif of flooding the city in order to destroy it,5 by transforming the waters into an aggressive destructive force against the invading enemy and so elaborating on a well-​established metaphor. Beyond the moats stood the immense city walls that in their tripartite outline protected the citizens of Babylon and their ordered civilised life from the chaotic forces roaming the countryside including enemies, marauding nomads, wild animals, and ghosts.

Craftsmanship and the affect of monuments Beyond stirring cultural memory though, the “technology of enchantment” (Gell 1992) achieved through materials and the skilful work of the craftsmen was also meant to affect the senses and emotions turning the palace into a locale of multisensorial experience, as is beautifully illustrated by an inscription of the Neo-​Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (745–​727 BCE ) dedicated to the building of the new palace in Kalḫu/​Nimrud, of which a snippet is provided below (RINAP 1: Tiglath-pileser III 47, r. 26′–​34′): (r. 26′–​27′) I roofed them with long beams of cedar, which are sweet to smell as the scent of the hašūru-​wood, a product of Mount Am[anus], Mount Lebanon, (and) Mount Ammanāna, thus I demonstrated appropriate care (for their roofing). In order to splendidly provide appropriate decorations (ana ṣurruh simāti) for the locks […] … I fashioned stones of the stonecutter’s craft and (thus) made (its) gates befitting (a royal palace). (r. 28′–​29′a) I fastened bands of shiny silver (zahalû) and ešmarû-​silver on double doors of cedar (and) cypress-​wood, which bestow (great) pleasure on those who enter them (and) whose fragrance wafts into the heart, and I hung (them) wherever there were gates. (r. 29′b–​30′) I set up in its entrances (statues of) lions, šēdu, (and) lamassu (protective genii), whose features are very skillfully wrought (ša bināte ma’diš nukkulū) (and) which are clothed with attractiveness6 (hitlupū kuzbu), and I erected (them there) as objects of wonder (ana tabrâte ušazziz) (for the people). … (r. 32′) To put the finishing touch on them (the palatial halls), I arranged knobbed pegs of gold, silver, and bronze around them, (and) thus made their appearance bright (ušanbiṭa bunnīšin). (r. 33′–​34′) For my royal abode, I set up therein a glittering chamber inlaid with precious stones. I named them “(The) Palatial Halls of Joy (ekallāt hidâti) Which Bear Abundance (našā hegalli), Which Bless the King, (and) Which Make Their Builder Long-​Lived. The emphasis on the materials used to fabricate the various architectural parts of the palace is noteworthy. They are not only mentioned for their particular usefulness in the construction of 324

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specific parts of the building such as the cedar beams for roofing; they are valued also explicitly for their effect on the olfactory perception of the beholder by choosing them for their fragrance and scent, an aspect that equally applies to the immense doors made of cypress wood providing access to the various halls and chambers of the building. Coatings of various metals applied to the surface of the doors and decorations of the walls with precious stones contributed to the visual, tactile, and kinaesthetic experience when walking through the halls and intensified the overwhelming impression of splendour and glamour of the palace (see Thomason 2016; see also Chapter 30, this volume). Moreover, royal artistic skill as propagated in this inscription, is rewarded with the palace acting in favour of the king by blessing him with fame generated by the joy it produces in its occupants, abundance, and a long life. Again, also in this first-​millennium text, architecture is taking on agency in its own right to effect in return a beneficial life for the king.

Decorating the walls and infusing them with agency In antiquity, the defensive character of the city walls and/​or city gates due to their strong fortified architectural structure was enhanced by means of decoration. Archaeological evidence from the Assyrian capital of Khorsabad (ancient Dur-​Sharrukin), for instance, has revealed that parts of the city wall were decorated with glazed bricks below the battlements (Reade 1995). Glazed bricks as architectural element were used for the first time in a royal palace by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I (1114–​1076 BCE ) who reports on the completion of the palace his father had started to build at Nineveh (RIMA 2: A.0.87.63–​66): [The palace] which Aššur-​rēša-​iši (I), my father, vice-​regent of the god Aššur, had built (but) not completed—​this palace I constructed (and) completed. I raised its walls and towers and made (them) fast, with a façade of bricks glazed (in the colour of) obsidian, lapis lazuli, pappardilû-​stone, (and) parūtu-​alabaster.7 All these various materials destined to affect the passers-​by were acquired from afar thus metaphorically standing in for Assyrian control of either the trading routes or the territories themselves, from which they originated. In addition, these stones were used for their particular range of colours, which had cognitive effects as well as cultural meaning. The Assyrian evidence demonstrates that, when talking about the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, we have to be aware that, while it stands out due to its huge dimensions of glazed brick walls, Nebuchadnezzar II’s decision to use glazed bricks for sections of the procession street and the Ishtar Gate was not a new invention, although the way the figures were fabricated in high relief was new (Thavapalan 2019: 132). And still, for us as for the ancient visitor to Babylon, the Ishtar Gate with its choice of radiant blue for the walls and red, yellow, and white for the decorative and figurative elements offers an impressive sensory experience. In the following, I will explore what exactly leaves this stunning sensorial impact and inquire into how the decorative features form a unity with the architecture and evoke the transitional context and liminal character of the city gate. Particular attention will be paid to the emotional affect of colour, the arrangement of the mythological figures, and how the material experience effectuated the act of naming the Ishtar Gate and the procession street. By focusing on the “enchantment” achieved through technical virtuosity (Gell 1992) in combination with cultural knowledge of the names, a “sensescape”8 will emerge that reflects the synaesthetic experience of the visitor to Babylon.9 325

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Colour and affect at Babylon Modern techniques, including Raman spectroscopy, polarised light microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy, revealed an extensive use of painting in Mesopotamian temples and palaces from the earliest periods of monumental architecture. Thus, detected traces of yellowish colour in the pillar building at Uruk (fourth millennium BCE ) allowed for a reconstruction of a façade decoration that combined mosaics of cones coloured in black, white, and red with yellow plaster (Eichmann 2013: 124, fig. 16.9). Equally, the examination and analysis of pigments on reliefs from Ashurnasirpal II’s (883–​859 BCE) palace in Nimrud revealed an extensive use of colour (Thavapalan and Warburton 2010), creating a landscape of floral, faunal, and figurative elements that in their sensorial effect can be at least partially experienced in the reconstruction of the wall paintings from Til Barsip, the modern Tell Ahmar, set up in the Musée du Louvre (Tomabechi 1983–​1984; Abbate 1994; Albenda 2005). Except for the example in the Louvre, ancient architecture and mural decorations in form of reliefs thus had an appearance that was very different from the aesthetic experience with which we view them today in their museum settings with the colouring long gone in antiquity. The choice of particular colours for the decoration of the walls can be illuminated by texts concerned with ritual performance, as colour played an important role in purification rituals, in particular. These used strings of coloured wool and semi-​precious stones in various colours (Haas 2003). It is this magic context, in particular, which teaches us about the symbolic meaning of colours. In Mesopotamian culture, colours frequently took “their meaning and value not from perceptions of hue, but rather from the brightness and lustre characteristic of particular materials” (Thavapalan et al. 2016: 198; Schuster-​Brandis 2008: 453). The colour red (Sumerian: sa5 containing the sign SI for “horn” and vertical gunû-​strokes/Akkadian: sāmu) has a positive but also repellent meaning: the exorcist is wearing a red cloak (CAD N/​1: s.v. nahlaptu, 1) as well as a red garment (ṣubâtu) meant to ward off evil forces. The same was true for a lahmu figure discovered in the foundation at Khorsabad which still shows traces of red colour (Roaf 1991: 184). The faces of Marduk and Nanâ are said to have a reddish-​shining appearance (zīmē ruššûti) designed to evoke terror and fear (puluhtu) to repel the enemy (Tallqvist 1938: 95). However, the reddish-​ shining face of Marduk may also have had a propitious effect as told by the procession omina in the omen series “When a City on High”: “When (Marduk) his face is red: Enlil will bestow wealth onto the country (the south wind will blow” (Sallaberger 2000: 236, l. 11). There existed no term for the colour blue; instead the term for the semi-​precious stone lapis lazuli (Sumerian: za-gìn/​Akkadian: uqnû) could designate a range of blue gemstones, and even faience and glass (Thavapalan et al. 2016: 202). It could be used to ward off the evil eye. In cognitive studies, the colour blue, by contrast, is said to affect the human being mentally rather than physically, and its positive properties include communication, trust, serenity, and calmness. However, it can also have negative effects of coldness, unfriendliness, aloofness, and a lack of emotion. As evidenced by entries in omen compendia and medical compendia, the colour yellow/​green written with the sign sig7 = arqu could have an unfavourable meaning. Thus, yellow water of the river is said to provoke jaundice in the land. White (Sumerian: babbar/​Akkadian: peṣû) often has a positive meaning: decorative elements of the palaces are said to be made of white stone fit for royalty and the god Assur receives white horses (Fales and Jakob-​Rost 1991: 74, no. 33, r. 5). The symbolic meaning of colours was not restricted to the human realm. One of the Assyrian cultic commentaries that provides exegetical explanations for the ritual performance during state rituals is concerned with cosmic features and describes the heavens as being constructed of three layers that are made of a variety of stones in different colours including: the Upper Heaven made of luludānītu stone, a reddish stone with white and black patches, probably banded agate; 326

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Figure 15.1  Mark Rothko, “No. 3,” 1967. Yale University Art Gallery, Katharine Ordway Collection.

the Middle Heaven made of saggilmud-​stone, which is violet-​blue and has been identified as amethyst; and the Lower Heaven made of chalcedony, which has a greyish, light blue colour and translucent quality associated with the clear as well as cloudy sky (SAA 3: 39; Horowitz 1998: 3–​ 15; Schuster-​Brandis 2008: 14; Ataç 2018: 78–​79). The culturally specific meaning of colours in Mesopotamia can be linked with observations that have been made in cognitive studies. Cognitive studies have demonstrated that colour perception “is actually visual information, providing some sort of detail about the object or idea it is associated with. Colour adds characteristics to the world around us, and perception of the external world can affect thought processes” (Caschera 2015). By researching the effect of exposure to certain colours in task performance, either as approach orientation or avoidance orientation, results showed that the mere perception of the colour red, for instance, can inhibit cognitive performance (Caschera 2015). While the psychological property of red can produce warmth, strength, and energy, in its negative effect it can also produce aggression and defiance. Both effects can be experienced in paintings by Mark Rothko. While Rothko’s painting “No. 3,” 1967 (Figure 15.1) produces a warming effect, the combination of red with white in Rothko, “Untitled,” 1968 (Figure 15.2) by contrast, elicits alertness, and, indeed, has something threatening to it, an effect reiterated in our modern stop sign (Figure 15.3). While these inherent properties of materials and colours have the potential of provoking certain cognitive reactions that apply to any human being, materials also possess subjective qualities that are culturally assigned, as shown by the material discussed above. Thus, when Sargon II (722–​705 BCE ) claims that he wrote his name on tablets made of gold, silver, copper, tin, lapis lazuli, and alabaster, he was certainly not only thinking of them as precious objects but also of their shining, lustrous, and resplendent appearance which the ancients associated with purity and sacredness.10 Not only were these materials imbued with purity and sacredness, when applied to 327

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Figure 15.2  Mark Rothko, “Untitled,” 1968. Source: © 2020 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko /​Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 15.3  Standard North American Stop Sign. Source: United Nations, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

the walls of temples, palaces, and city walls, in their glaring effect they irradiated awe-​inspiring and terrifying splendour (melammu), as reflected in Shalmaneser III’s (858–​824 BCE ) choice for the name of the inner wall in the city of Assur: “Whose Terrifying Splendour Covers the Land.”11 A major tenet of sensory studies is that some aspects of the human body—​especially sensory organs—​are universal, and, therefore, we can attempt to “feel” as ancient people felt. The distinction between sensing and perception in psychology is also useful here. We all sense similarly, but perceive differently (Howes and Classen 2014). One could posit that, in addition to the culturally specific meaning of colours, psychological effects also played a role in the choice of colours the ritual experts and building masters made for the building of palaces, city walls, city gates, and temples, and that ritual usage of colour might have impacted the choices made for their decorations. How the combination of red and white plays out on the reliefs of the ancient Assyrian palaces has been recently illuminated by digital installations in the exhibition 328

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Figure 15.4  Sebetti figures from a doorway at the North Palace of Ashurbanipal, Nineveh, Exhibition, I am Ashurbanipal, at the British Museum. Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

I am Ashurbanipal at the British Museum (November 8, 2018–​February 24, 2019). On the basis of traces of colours on the relief, the curators restored the original appearance of Sebetti figures watching over gateways in Ashurbanipal’s North Palace at Nineveh (Figure 15.4).12 These guardian figures or demons were clad in white garments holding in their left hand a dagger and smiting any intrusive and hostile force with an axe held in their right hand.13 This depiction of the Sebetti in the relief comes very close to the description transmitted in the so-​called Göttertypentext, a text that lists a variety of gods and demons, for the lion-​man (ugallu). Here the lion-​man appears in the following terms: “[the representation/​statue?] has a lion’s head and lion’s ears, it holds a … in its right hand and carries an ax in its left, it is girded with a dagger, its name is ugallu” (Köcher 1953: 68; Wiggermann 1992: 170). In the imagery of the Ashurbanipal’s North Palace, instead of carrying the dagger in a girdle, the Sebetti figures raise it in their left hand. The contrast between the red dagger and the white garment in a powerful way reinforces and intensifies the lion-​man’s threatening and aggressive gesture of raising his dagger to any unwanted intruder to the palace. Such guardian figures in doorways are already attested in Sennacherib’s (704–​681 BCE ) Southwest Palace at Nineveh, where the lion-​man (ugallu) is paired with Lulal, another demon in smiting poise, as well as the six-​locked hero holding a standard in external gates and the doors leading to ablution rooms used for ritual purification (Battini 2014). These figures are rendered with a frontal body and their faces in profile, but as in the case of the Sebetti figures in Ashurbanipal’s North Palace, their eyes again are directed frontally so that in the combination of their marching action and their gaze directed outward they are directly meeting and warding off any unwanted intruder (Kertai 2015a: 342; Neumann 2015: 90). This specific action is also reflected in a ritual text which teaches 329

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us that the ugallu was supposed to “turn away the breast of the evil one and the enemy” (KAR 298; Wiggermann 1992: 49, text II, o. 42). The particular sculpting of the eyes in high relief and their being painted in white with Egyptian blue to render the iris, and black carbon to accentuate the eyebrows intensified the interaction with the viewer (Neumann 2015: 91). Moreover, even when the visitor or the intruder had passed the doorway, the sense of the glaring gaze of the demons would have lingered accompanying the person into the succeeding chamber (Neumann 2015: 91). The choice of colours is an important aspect to think of when we investigate the function and meaning of the Ishtar Gate. One could posit that the colour blue of the lapis lazuli, which pervasively dominates the walls of the Ishtar Gate together with the procession street, had been chosen deliberately for its protective and repellent quality. In addition, however, it also evoked a notion of purity and sacredness associated with lapis lazuli (Pongratz-​Leisten 2009). It is interesting to observe that the colours chosen for lions marching towards the outside of the gate warding off any kind of unwelcome intruder is the same combination—​white and red—​as the one for the guardian figures in the palaces of the Assyrian kings. The glazed bricks used for their bodies are white while their manes and peritoneum are coloured in shades of yellow and red, producing a glaring and nearly blinding effect when hit by the blazing sun. This affective experience of the lion’s colour is intensified by the reddish bands framing it above and below, which have a decorative element of a brick glazed in a black-​white-​black pattern set into the band in a regular design evoking the representation of a glaring eye (Figure 15.5). One could posit, consequently, a commonality for guardian figures in gateways, whether demons in palace gates or lions in city gates, both being depicted in this particular set of colours—​white and red—​to enhance their protective and repellent force. The blue background of the gate and its gateway would have disappeared in the darkness of the night leaving the lions protruding from the walls almost like a “reflector” effect used on the edges of signs set up on the side of roads so that cars pick them up in the dark. Lions in gateways have a long history in Mesopotamia usually being placed at the entrance of temples (Battini 2009). The first evidence comes from the reign of Enannatum I (twenty-​ fifth century BCE ) who tells us about having installed wooden guardian lions at the gateway of Ningirsu’s temple (RIME 1: E1.9.3.4). Such guardian lions made of wood, copper, stone, or clay have been found in various sites of the Early Dynastic period and of the Old Babylonian and Middle Babylonian periods (second and third millennia BCE ). Their number diminishes in the first millennium BCE to be replaced by the composite lamassu figures.14 The archaeological and textual evidence reveals that lions generally come as a pair crouching, sitting, or standing at either side of the gate, as for example at the entrance to the shrine room of the goddess Nisaba in her temple at Old Babylonian Shaduppum, modern Tell Harmal. This kind of pairing equally applies for colossi and winged genii set up in the gates of the Neo-​Assyrian palaces. Lions, while the emblematic animal of the goddess Ishtar, could be set up at temples of a variety of divinities, and so had a much more universal presence which even extended into its metaphorical function as standing in for the king to celebrate his physical might and vigour as discussed further below. In the context of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, however, we can safely assume that it was chosen as a medium to presence the deity, who herself, in her bellicose agency, in particular, might be compared to the lion. In contrast to earlier kings setting up pairs of lions in the gateways of temples, Nebuchadnezzar II, when planning the doorway of the Ishtar Gate in Babylon, chose a different way of depiction and showed Ishtar’s lion in multiplicity. Multiplicity has been defined as a “production of presence that for the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians is a continuous process of becoming that has no end” (Bahrani 2014: 118–​119). The fact that the lions are represented in a walking gait reinforces this continuous kinaesthetic perception.

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Figure 15.5  Portion of the Reconstructed Processional Way, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. Brick glazed in a black-​white-​black pattern set into the band in a regular design evoking the representation of a glaring eye. Source: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin –​Vorderasiatisches Museum; photo by Olaf M. Tessner.

While in Mesopotamian art typically the lion is normally shown crouching below Ishtar or with the goddess standing on it, here, in the Ishtar Gate, it is represented multiple times on both sides. Its depiction runs beyond the actual entrance of the gate, that is to say in the gateway protruding into the outer world, and forming the transitional context and interface from the open country into the urban space. This passage has a length of about 200 metres, thus emphasising in its immense monumentality the transitory passage from civilised order within the city into the region beyond the city walls which, in the ancient world view, was perceived as belonging to anti-​order. The defensive character of the gate and even the street leading up to it comes across in their names. The street passing along the Esagila temple (dedicated to the patron god Marduk) and through the Ishtar Gate, was known under two names: “May the Arrogant Not Flourish!” (Ay-​ibūr-​šabû) and “Ištar is the Guardian of her Troops” (Ištar-​lamassi-​ummānī-​šu), which are used in an alternating way in the royal inscriptions (George 1992: 360). The progressive movement of the lions marching in lines one after the other equally evokes metaphorically the advancing of military troops. The aggressive character of the name as conveyed in the street names also applies to the Ishtar Gate itself, which was called “Ishtar Overthrows its Assailant” (Ištar-​sākipat-​tēbîša). 331

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The cultural practice of presencing the agency of temples, statues, cultic paraphernalia, streets, city walls, and gates through naming is a strategy that is pervasive in Mesopotamia, and is particular to its culture; it is not to be found in Hittite culture, for instance.15 It reveals the ancient world view that the materialised presence of a divinity could extend into anything that was associated with her or him and could act on her/​his behalf including the name. The particular placement of Ishtar’s lion and the fact that it is depicted in infinite repetition marching towards the world of anti-​order suggests that, in its striding aggressive movement towards the hostile world, ferociously roaring, snarling, and marching towards the intruder, the lion similar to the image (ṣalmu; Bahrani 2003: ch. 5; Sonik 2015; Pongratz-​Leisten forthcoming) of Ishtar performs the defensive and aggressive action conveyed in the name of the Ishtar Gate. Repetition, here, conveys constant and perpetual movement warding off the hostile and chaotic forces from outside. Thus, the depiction of the multiple lions rather than being understood as a decorative feature must be seen in unity with the architecture (Hamilakis 2013: 182–​194) forming an arena of constant bellicose performance and imaginary soundscape16 to bring the outsider under the political control of the city. For the visitor to the city passing through the seemingly endless flow displayed in the gateway, this encounter with the infinite image of Ishtar’s aggression that was meant to generate fear and anxiety must have been a powerful sensorial and affective experience. Ishtar’s lion can be perceived as a mnemonic device, evoking and re-​enacting perpetually her protection of the king and the city. The street leading up to the Ishtar Gate as well as the gate itself also had a prominent role in religious ritual. The architectural emphasis on the transitory aspect of the gateway and its defensive character elicited by means of the marching lions with no end would have been especially significant in the moment of the performance of the New Year festival, when Marduk, patron deity of Babylon and chief god of the Babylonian pantheon, together with the king performed the procession towards the akītu house situated outside the outer city walls. Descriptions of Marduk in the Babylonian directory known under the title Tintir (tin.tirki = Babylon) mention him as being seated in the akītu house on top of the defeated chaos monster Tiamat. This entry together with hymns performed during the procession suggest that the procession itself was perceived as reiterating Marduk’s battle against Tiamat (Pongratz-​Leisten 1994; Zgoll 2006; van der Toorn 1991; 2018) known from the Babylonian creation epic, in which the patron deity of Babylon defeats the older generation of gods (Lambert 2013). Various inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar II report on using the street for the procession of Marduk during the New Year festival (akītu), which he also referred to as the “road to the Akītu (Temple)” as well as the construction work carried out for embellishment. Thus, Nebuchadnezzar II refers to the work of his father (Nabopolassar) in the following terms (East India House Inscription [I R 55, v, 12–​20], quoted after George 1992: 360): From Du-​ku Kinamtarrede, the Dais of Destinies (located in the Esagila Temple), to Ay-​ ibūr-​šabû, the Street of Babylon, opposite Ka-​sikilla, (Nabopolassar) beautified (ubannâ) the roadway (sulê), the procession-​way (mašdaha) of the great lord Marduk, with slabs of breccia. Nebuchadnezzar II himself continued the work of his father up to the Ishtar Gate (I R 56, v, 38–​54, quoted after George 1992: 360): (On) Ay-​ibūr-​šabû, the Street Of Babylon, I made a massive filling for the procession-​way of the great lord Marduk, and embellished it with slabs of breccia and mountain quarry-​stone

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from Ka-​sikilla to Ištar-​sākipat-​tēbîša (Ishtar Gate), for his divine procession-​way; I joined it with the part my father had treated, and beautified its roadway. Breccia is composed of fragments of minerals and has a shining appearance which was well suited as architectural stone for a procession-​way. Additionally, one also has to keep in mind that during the festival this road normally used for daily activities was sanctified by additional magic actions such as the sprinkling of flour. This ritual act was performed by the king as he was preceding the god during his procession towards the akītu house outside the city. The sprinkling of flour is a performance typical of purification rituals and was meant to sacralise and purify the road and turn it into a sacred procession-​way. Thus, choices in architectural construction and ritual performance both aimed at making the road suitable to be used by Marduk on his way out to the festival house. Once arrived at the gate itself, the visitor encountered two other guardians: the mušhuššu dragon and the bull both also represented to scale in moulded brick (Figure 15.6). All three animals—​bull, lion, and mušhuššu—​represented on the walls of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way have a long history of protecting gateways in the ancient Near East.17 In palaces and temples, bulls and mušhuššu-​dragons were found positioned at entryways possibly as early as the middle of the third millennium BCE .18 Moreover, these three beasts—​the bull, the lion, and the mušhuššu-​dragon—​were associated with deities: the bull with the Storm God Adad; the lion, as

Figure 15.6  Reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate, Neo-​Babylonian period (reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 604–​562 BCE ), moulded and glazed baked clay, Babylon, Iraq. Voderasiatisches Museum, Berlin (VA Bab 01409–​01412, 01414–​01417, 01435–​01438, 07661). Source: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin –​Vorderasiatisches Museum; photo by Olaf M. Tessner. 333

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already discussed with Ishtar; and the mušhuššu in later Mesopotamian history with Marduk. In the creation epic Enuma elish (“When above”), the mušhuššu is listed among the eleven monsters that form the army of Tiamat against whom Marduk goes into battle to regain the tablet of destinies epitomising the exercise of power by the supreme god. Once defeated, the mušhuššu, probably under the impact of older mythical traditions, became Marduk’s emblematic animal (Wiggermann 1993; Pongratz-​Leisten 2018). Texts inscribed on a pair of lions found at a city gate in the city of Til Barsip, modern Tell Ahmar, evoke the notion of the protective force of these animals on the Ishtar Gate exemplified by their names: “Furious storm demon, whose onslaught is irresistible, feller of the subordinate, who helps achieve one’s desires,” and “Repulser of battle, overwhelmer of the enemy land, who drives out evil, who brings in good” (Watanabe 2015: 220 with references). The selection of the bull, lion, and mušhuššu-​dragon was particularly meaningful, as these three animals could be envisioned in a concert of action. For example, Nebuchadnezzar II’s inscriptions from Wadi Brisa in Lebanon, which discuss the construction of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, mention explicitly these three divinities—​Adad, Ishtar, and Marduk—​passing along this street in procession (Langdon 1912 = VAB IV, 156 no. 19, v, 49). By drawing upon the very ancient apotropaic function of these animals as well as their direct association with particular divinities, Nebuchadnezzar increased and intensified the defensive forces of the gate. Once the protection of the gate is recognised as a fundamental concern, strategies used to represent the animals of the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way become clearer. In particular, the manner in which the divine beasts are portrayed was probably designed to underscore the protective nature of the animals. Bulls, lions, and mušhuššu-​dragons emerge from the walls into the space of the viewer, becoming part of the human world. Lions are shown with extended claws, and the horns of the bulls and mušhuššu-​dragons gleam. The procession during the akītu festival also allowed for the display of the king’s political and military achievements, which fits well with an epithet of the Ishtar Gate: “Entrance of Kingship” (nēreb šarrūti). Given the symbolic meaning of Marduk’s return to the city as annually celebrated adventus to his cultic centre Babylon and divine abode Esagila, this name could function to celebrate Marduk’s kingship over the gods. As, however, the earthly king is the main participant in the festival, taking the god by his hand and leading him in procession, the name could equally refer to human kingship and so refer to the ideological function of the akītu festival which in addition to celebrating Marduk’s triumph over Tiamat also reconfirmed the king in his office. Ambiguity in this regard could well have been intended to evoke the concert in action performed by god and king to secure and maintain the social and cosmic order. Returning to the image of the lions in the Ishtar Gate, an alternative reading of the lion has been suggested recently in the context of the discussion revolving around the use of astroglyphs in the palace of Sargon II in his newly built capital Dur-​Sharrukin (Khorsabad) (Figure 15.7) and in one of Esarhaddon’s inscriptions known as the Lord Aberdeen’s Black Stone to write the king’s name (Figure 15.8). In these contexts, the lion has been interpreted as standing in for the king, based on the equation of king and lion as attested in lexical texts; here, the sign for lion pirig3 = nēšu might be used to write šarru “king” (Roaf and Zgoll 2001: 289; Rochberg 2019). Moreover, the king’s star (mullugal) “corresponds to the star Regulus and is part of the Mesopotamian lion constellation” (Roaf and Zgoll 2001: 280–​281), which appears on later Seleucid tablets (Figures 15.9 and 15.10) and again merges the agency of the king with that of the lion. Such conflation of the lion standing in for Ishtar and the king might have been intended with the stamp impressed on baked bricks from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II showing a lion in addition to the alphabetic Aramaic (Figure 15.11; Baker 2019: 59, fig. 3c). 334

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Figure 15.7  Astroglyphs on the wall of the Sin Temple at Khorsabad. Source: Place 1867–​1870: fig. 104.

Figure 15.8  Astroglyphic inscription on Lord Aberdeen’s Black Stone. Source: Roaf and Zgoll 2001: fig. 1; © Michael Roaf; drawing Cornelie Wolff.

Literary texts might compare the king with the lion or the wild bull to praise his virile strength and royalty. That the king or warrior divinity assimilate the nature and features of their opponents and then can be compared to the wild bull, lion, and even the ferocious lion-​ eagle Anzû after having heroically vanquished them, is a common motif in Sumero-​Babylonian literature.19 These motifs show that the theme of the divine hero smiting the rampant lion inspired the iconographic choice of the royal seal of the Neo-​Assyrian kings, which symbolised royal authority and was pervasively stamped onto important tablets in administrative and cultic spheres (Radner 2008). The association of king and lion also gave rise to the famous hunting scenes depicted on the reliefs of the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883–​859 BCE ) at Nimrud and in Ashurbanipal’s North Palace at Nineveh (668–​627 BCE ) as well as the pictorial choice for the Neo-​Assyrian royal seal (Herbordt 1992; Maul 1995). In Babylonia, by contrast, the topos of the king confronting the lion is not depicted until Nebuchadnezzar II (605–​562 BCE )—​the builder of the Ishtar Gate—​who, when campaigning in the area of Lebanon decided to put up his rock relief in an area where formerly the Assyrian 335

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Figure 15.9  Seleucid astrological tablet showing a lion (= Leo) standing on a winged dragon-​ snake (= Hydra) with eight-​pointed star. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin (VAT 7847). Source: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin –​Vorderasiatisches Museum; photo by Olaf M. Tessner.

Figure 15.10  Seleucid astrological tablet showing a group of seven stars (= Pleiades), a man in the moon holding a crouching leonine creature by the tail, and a bull in jumping posture (= Taurus). Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin (VAT 7851). Source: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin –​Vorderasiatisches Museum; photo by Olaf M. Tessner. 336

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Figure 15.11  Stamp seal impressed on a baked brick from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin (VA Bab 4389). Source: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin –​Vorderasiatisches Museum; photo by Olaf M. Tessner.

Figure 15.12  Drawing of the rock relief from Wadi Brisa, Lebanon, showing Nebuchadnezzar II stabbing a rampant lion. Source: Da Riva 2012: 153, fig. VIII/​1.

kings also had demonstrated their territorial claim in the same way. It is not a coincidence that in one of his two rock reliefs at Wadi Brisa located at one of the most important routes in North Lebanon connecting the Biqa’ Valley with the Lebanon Mountains and the Mediterranean, the Neo-​Babylonian king is represented in Assyrian manner, that is to say stabbing the rampant lion (Figure 15.12) (Da Riva 2010; 2014; 2015). 337

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This inscription provides the reasoning for his campaign, namely to exploit the Lebanon Mountains for their cedars, which he used to build the temple of Marduk in Babylon (Da Riva 2010: 174), and also describes his work on the procession street and the Ishtar Gate. The pictorial and textual evidence of the Wadi Brisa rock reliefs, far away from Babylon in Lebanon, suggests that we should allow for multiple meanings for the lion in the Ishtar Gate. It insinuates that the image of the king as lion had entered Nebuchadnezzar II’s ideological discourse of self-​ representation, although no reference to the lion as astroglyph as in the cases of Sargon II and Esarhaddon described above, either pictorial or textual, can be found in the contemporary Neo-​ Babylonian pictorial and textual repertoire. Nonetheless, the king and the lion as Ishtar’s animal could have been blurred in the cultural memory of the ancients, turning the lion in the Ishtar Gate into a powerful agent defending civilized order against chaos.

Conclusion Exploring the world-​making (Goodman 1978) aspect and symbolic meaning city walls and city gates had in the ancient world view and social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann 1966) from the textual perspective providing insight into the perceived agency and symbolic meaning of architecture as well as from their very materiality including their pictorial décor and use of colours both destined to enhance and reinforce their defensive character, allows us, as I would claim, at least to some degree, to relive the sensory experience of the ancient visitor to Babylon walking the Processional Way towards the Ishtar Gate.20

Notes 1. Synaesthesia, the fusion of sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste, represents an important aspect of these approaches as it treats the different modes of sensory perception together, rather than separately or in hierarchical order (Tilley 2004: 14–​16). This approach originated with the work of the French phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-​Ponty (1962). 2. In doing so, phenomenological archaeology goes beyond the notion of spatiality (Campbell 2018) as originating with the work of Henri Lefevbre (1974), which conceptualised a three-​way dialectic of perceived, conceived, and lived-​in space focusing on the spatial practice, representation of space and the symbolic associations that overlay geographic space. It adds the aspect of the embodied engagement of the material world, which is perceived as animate, alive, active. 3. While elements of monumental enhancement, like floral and faunal representations, may appear to be mere decorative elements, in antiquity, these representations were part of a dense image filled with symbolic meaning to be associated with fertility and abundance (Winter 2002: 256), with religious notions, and/​or with agency (Pongratz-​Leisten 2018). 4. On the distinction between agency and intentionality with intentionality being a fundamentally human trait in contrast to agency see Knappett 2005: 22–​34. 5. Destruction through flooding was a well-​established military strategy and used by Sennacherib (704–​ 681 BCE ) in his destruction of the city of Babylon (Machinist 1997: 191), the description of which interestingly is to be found in his Bavian inscription dedicated to his major construction works at the Khinnis Canal north of Nineveh (RINAP 3/​2: Sennacherib 223). 6. RINAP 1: Tiglath-​pileser III 47, translates kuzbu with “splendour.” 7. On the glazed bricks in the Assur Temple, see Andrae 1925; on the archaeological evidence dating only from the Neo-​Assyrian period, see Moorey 1985: 171 and Nunn 1988: 165–​173, and the most recent discussion in Gries 2017. On the glazed bricks of the Assur temple, see further Zeßin 2019, and the ongoing Berlin Assur project, which aims to reconstruct the decorative programme of the glazed brick façades of the Assur Temple (www.geschkult.fu-​berlin.de/​en/​e/​altorient/​forschungsprojekte/​ forschung/​abgeschlossene_​projekte/​assur/​index.html). 8. I borrow the term sensescape from Thomason 2016. 9. For my first exploration of the Ishtar Gate, see Pongratz-​Leisten 2019.

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10. For the discussion of inherent properties and culturally assigned qualities of materials, see Benzel 2015. 11. See RIMA 3: A.0.102.11, ii 3, for the use of melammu for architecture; see also further entries in CAD M/​II: s.v. melammu, 1. d). 12. Whether the figures were fully painted or only in select areas of the body is not clear. Various scholars have argued for a limited use of colour, intended to highlight specific features, see Neumann (2015: 90, n. 10 with bibliography). 13. In Hittite ritual the combination of red and white has a sexual as well as cathartic, that is to say cleansing and purifying function; the latter fits well with the location of these reliefs showing the lion-​ man (Haas 2003: 643). 14. For a survey of the evidence, see Battini 2009. 15. For examples see description of Babylon as transmitted in Tintir and the Assur Directory, both edited in George 1992. 16. Thomason (2016: 251) describes the peaceful atmosphere created by the depiction of birds flying overhead and rustling in the trees of Ashurbanipal’s Banquet Scene adding to the soundscape of the event; see further McMahon 2013. 17. Watanabe (2015: 219) suggests that the entrance to the twenty-​second-​century BCE Eninnu Temple at the city of Girsu may have had depictions of all three of these animals, based on the text known as Gudea Cylinder A. 18. The king Gudea describes the decorative programme of Ningirsu’s temple as having a mušhuššu-​ dragon hissing at a wild bull (Watanabe 2015: 219; RIME 3/​1: 86). At Nineveh, a representation of a mušhuššu-​dragon was found on a relief slab near an entryway (Watanabe 2015: 215). 19. The material has been recently discussed by Soohoo 2018. 20. Part of this chapter can be found in my contribution to the catalogue of the ISAW exhibition A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate (Amrhein et al. 2019).

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16 The Jerusalem Temple A sensory encounter with the sacred Christine Elizabeth Palmer

Introduction The Jerusalem Temple has long captivated the attention of scholars, many of whom have sought to bring it to life through archaeological reconstruction (Dever 2001: 144–​157; King and Stager 2001: 330–​338; Monson 2006; Hurowitz 2011; Mumcuoglu and Garfinkel 2019), while yet others through an elucidation of its symbolism (Levenson 1984; Bloch-​Smith 1994; 2002; Stager 1999). The recent sensory turn in approaches to text and artefact invites us to look beyond the Temple’s physical structure and its symbolic world to consider the worshipper’s embodied engagement with it. This allows for a unique perspective into how the built environment’s sensory affordances captivated its ancient audience and how the drama of Temple ritual helped shape a distinctively Israelite identity. To speak of the materiality of the built environment and its affordances when there are no material remains of the Jerusalem Temple presents a challenge, but not one that cannot be overcome. The most significant surviving remains for a sensory analysis are the textual artefacts preserving strata of ritual practice.1 As Hesse et al. (2012: 221) reflect, “In ancient times, practitioners built reminders of ritual into their art and architecture … and in less-​ambiguous forms as well: written texts.” This chapter proposes to recover a moment in time in the life of biblical Israel with a view towards exploring the sensorial landscape of the Jerusalem Temple during the First Temple Period (c. 930–​587 BCE ), by accessing the built environment through descriptive narrative texts and the performance of ritual through prescriptive priestly texts.2 My discussion of the worshipper’s experience will foreground a particular sensory modality, while allowing other senses to add texture from the background.3

Journey to the Temple A worshipper’s4 experience begins with an ascent to the heart of the hill country, to Jerusalem, rising above the valleys that surround it to an elevation of 750 metres. Motion is the most sustained image of worship in Israelite cultural expression, where the expression “to walk (hālak) with Yahweh” is the consummate idiom for the covenant relationship.5 Religious devotion is conceived of as a metaphorical journey (see Gen. 12:1; 17:1; 1 Kgs. 8:23; Mic. 6:8), which 344

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nevertheless finds its highest expression in literal pilgrimage to the central sanctuary where Yahweh is said to dwell (see also Chapter 24, this volume). If the worshippers come at the time of one of the appointed festivals, they may join in with the festival throng,6 singing as they make their way (Ps. 122:1–​4)7: I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD!” Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem! Jerusalem—​built as a city that is bound firmly together, to it the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD. The choreography of pilgrimage is written into the landscape: the movement of bodies streaming from all directions converge on the ancient paths to become one body, reinforcing a collective identity that reaches across clans and tribes and even into the past. The rise and fall of the natural landscape that inspired songs sung by previous generations now shapes the experience of each individual as he takes them upon his lips. The journey, lasting as long as three days for some, connects the length and breadth of the land to the regal-​r itual city through the movement of people streaming to “the mountain of the LORD’s house … the highest of the mountains … raised up above the hills” (Mic. 4:1). Whether travelling along the watershed through the central hill country or from the deep depression of the Rift Valley, all who make their ascent to Jerusalem catch their first sight of the Temple from the heights of the surrounding hills before descending into the valleys that encircle it. The passage is most dramatic from the Rift Valley, a favoured route for its ease of travel on flat terrain. From 240 metres below sea level, the final day of the journey would bring an arduous climb along the ascent of Adummim to reach the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives, traversing an elevation gain of 1,000 metres over 24 kilometres. From the summit across the Temple Mount, pilgrims view the blush-​coloured8 limestone facing the rising sun and resonate with the celebration of Jerusalem as “beautiful in elevation, the joy of all the earth … is the city of the great King” (Ps. 48:2). As they make their way down into the valley, their eyes adjust from terraced farming to terraced buildings along the slopes of the City of David. The streets swell as pilgrims process, crowds press, voices surge, and animals clamour. Walking along the city walls past the spring called the Gusher, they begin their final ascent to the divine abode (Faust 2011) (Figure 16.1). The Temple is accessed by a monumental staircase that continues the upward motion, slowing the pace and bringing the rhythmic steps of those who approach to a measured and intentional climb. At a slower gait, the Temple emerges in the reflective brilliance of smooth limestone and polished bronze. The worshipper must lift his head to look upward, embodying in his posture the journey that brought him there. His gaze is drawn forward by the monumental doorway surrounded by a four-​tiered recessed frame marking graded boundaries into sacred space (Mumcuoglu and Garfinkel 2018). Recessed frames that gradually decrease in size around an entryway’s opening architecturally replicate the ever decreasing access through spheres of ever increasing holy space. On either side stand 10-​metre-​high bronze pillars whose capitals drip with wreaths of pomegranates. From a distance their fiery metal sheen may have been perceived 345

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Figure 16.1  Artist’s reconstruction of the Temple Mount in the First Temple Period. Source: © Balage Balogh/​archaeologyillustrated.com.

as the pillar of flaming fire that attended Israel on their journeys, a familiar emblem of the divine presence memorialised in bronze (Exod. 13:21). Once within the main, open-​air courtyard, the upward motion progresses by a set of steps into an inner sub-​courtyard (Hurowitz 2011: 47).9 For the priests, the ascent may continue into the Holy Place (main hall); for the high priest, into Yahweh’s throne room in the Holy of Holies (inner sanctum), elevated by about 2 metres and approached by another series of steps (Mumcuoglu and Garfinkel 2019: 11). The worshipper, however, is barred from entering. His ascent takes him as far as the altar of the outer court where he brings offerings that will continue ascending on his behalf—​first, by the agency of the priest who climbs a 4.5-​metre ramp to arrange them on the altar (2 Chr. 4:1), and then by the transformation of the offerings into rising smoke. Sacrificial language derives the most common word for offering (qorbān) from the verb qārab, meaning “to draw near.” A worshipper’s offering is conceived of as drawing near to God in vertical ascent by its transformation into an immaterial substance that reaches the heavens. Having come to Yahweh’s house, the materiality of the space forces a reorientation upon the pilgrim; ritual objects in the courtyard are to a different scale than his ordinary experience. To the southeast stands a bronze basin measuring close to 5 metres in diameter with a capacity for 37,800 litres of water and rightly called a Sea (yām).10 Bronze lavers line the courtyard—​five to the north and five to the south—​towering at 5 metres high with a capacity of 900 litres each. Their sheer volume adds to the reflective radiance of the Temple’s outer court, combining polished metal with liquid fluidity. In the Holy of Holies Yahweh’s royal throne is represented by close to 5-​metre-​high flanking cherubim, their wings alone spanning the width of the room and touching both of its sides to create an avian canopy over the inner sanctum (1 Kgs. 6:27). Although the worshipper was not ever likely to see this sight, the courtyard’s magnitude of scale 346

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effectively communicated the divine kingship of Israel’s God and reinforced the notion of every Israelite as his subject. An Israelite worshipper’s approach is halted at the altar. It is here that the longest and most significant aspect of his experience is located, and here where the whole panoply of senses is engaged—​the sounds, sights, and smells of worship, the taste and feel of sacrifice (discussed below). Limits imposed upon the movement of a worshipper’s body in space suggest that the space is filled by another, inhabited by the high and lifted up One, who in Isaiah’s vision fills the Temple with merely the edges of his garment (Isa. 6:1). The God whose throne is the heavens and earth the place of his feet (Isa. 66:1), arouses a sense of wonder whose contours only the imagination can fill. Sacred space inspires awe through a dynamic interplay of what is seen and what is left unseen, where movement is invited and where it is halted.

Musical performance The auditory environment of the Temple initially strikes a note of the familiar—​the shuffle of footsteps, the bleating of sheep and bellowing of cattle, the thud of metal blades and the cracking of bones on wooden preparation tables, the hollow din of bronze vessels clanging, incense shovels raking coals on the altar, and the raised voices of those gathered in the courtyard. These could well be the sounds of any Israelite household were it not for the context that interprets them as the ambient sounds of the divine estate. The environment dramatically changes at dawn and at dusk, the turning points of the day, as a surge of orchestrated sound unique to the Temple fills its courts at the offering of the morning and evening sacrifice. Choral music synchronises with choreographed ritual to create a sacred atmosphere that envelops the worshipper and signals holy time (1 Chr. 23:30–​31). Vocal performance is the primary ritual rite with music as accompaniment, which is reflected in the naming of instrumentalists as “singers” (mĕšorărîm) (2 Chr. 5:12) and musical instruments as “instruments of song” (kĕlê-​šîr) (Amos 6:5; 1 Chr. 15:16; 2 Chr. 5:13; 7:6). The orchestra augments sacred song with an ensemble of nine string players, two trumpeters, and a cymbalist (1 Chr. 16:5).11 Though the texts are less clear about the size of the choir, the primacy of song suggests the sound of the human voice dominates the performance. The Levitical orchestra arrayed in fine linen is stationed east of the altar, elevated on the “steps of the Levites” that mark zones of the inner court (Neh. 9:4; 2 Chr. 5:12).12 In front of them are trumpeters (2 Chr. 7:6; m. Tamid 7.3). The priests are physically positioned between the sanctuary and the worshippers, the arrangement of their bodies highlighting their role as intermediaries. Singers and instrumentalists lead the acclamation of Yahweh (2 Chr. 5:13): It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the LORD, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the LORD, “For he is good,     for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud. It is not possible to recover the original melodies of ancient Israel, though musical notations still mark the text and have been preserved in its transmission.13 The lyrics of the ancient liturgy do survive, however, as echoes through time of the Temple service’s musical experience, revealing that singing was responsorial (Smith 1998). Call and response and repeating refrains invite participation by drawing the worshipper into antiphonal choruses.14 Priests lead in a litany of 347

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Yahweh’s faithfulness and cue the gathered worshippers to weave their voices into sacred song (Ps. 118:1–​4): O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;     his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say,     “His steadfast love endures forever.” Let the house of Aaron say,     “His steadfast love endures forever.” Let those who fear the LORD say,     “His steadfast love endures forever.” Repeated refrains have the effect of extending the experience of time and aiding in a sustained reflection on a theme. Voices lifted in the company of others—​now answering the leader, now embedding between strophes—​cultivates unity as the individual harmonises into a greater, collective sound. Music provides the structure that creates an additional dimension to space and time where the community is gathered into a shared experience. The sacrificial rites are set to the instrumentation of strings and brass. The kinnôr, the lyre that takes pride of place in Israelite musical culture, is shaped as two parallel arms with a crossbar from which strings attach vertically. It was held out from the body at a 45°–​90° angle and played with both hands. The nēvel, almost always appearing in the textual sources together with the kinnôr, is a ten-​stringed vertical harp (Ps. 33:2) that produced a deeper sound (Isa. 14:11). Lyres are broadly represented in scenes of tribute, well-​known examples of which include the nineteenth-​century BCE Beni Hasan fresco of Aamu nomads bringing their tribute to Egypt (Kamrin 2009), and the thirteenth-​century BCE Megiddo ivory of an enthroned Canaanite king before whom captives of war are paraded to the sound of a lyre (Figure 16.2). The Assyrian king Sennacherib received lyre-​playing musicians as tribute as illustrated in the Lachish reliefs of Nineveh’s Southwest Palace (BM 124947) and recorded in the king’s annals.15 Two trumpets of beaten silver (Num. 10:2) and a pair of bronze cymbals are added to the strings. Ancient Israelite trumpets appear to have resembled the fourteenth-​century BCE hammered silver trumpet from Tutankhamun’s tomb (Cairo JE 62007), which has no valves and can sound only two to three notes clearly (Montagu 2002: 31–​32). Trumpets were blown in different combinations of duration in a rhythmic single pitch, described in later sources as “a prolonged, a quavering, and a prolonged blast” (m. Tamid 7.3). Cymbals appear to have announced the beginning of a song and invited response between strophes rather than setting the rhythm. Sources record that singers with cymbals and lyres and 120 priests sounding trumpets performed at the inauguration of the Temple service (2 Chr. 5:12–​13). Montagu (2002: 31) notes that “with only two or three notes available on either trumpet it seems unlikely that they were actually in unison, all on the same pitch, and one suspects that the sound must have been both deafening and probably discordant.” Sounds contextualised within the Temple’s sacred space are laden with meaning in the moment of encounter with the divine. Sounds perceived as deafening are part of a narrative that associates them with the terrifying voice of Yahweh at Sinai (Exod. 20:18–​19). In ancient Israel’s national story, the advent of the divine presence manifested in the sensory phenomena of a thick cloud, peals of thunder, and the blast of horns (Exod. 19:18–​19): Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. 348

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Figure 16.2  Megiddo ivory inlay of a tribute procession before Canaanite ruler. Israel Museum (IAA 1938-​780). Source: Photo by author.

As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. In Temple worship, the clash of cymbals and sounding of trumpets herald Yahweh’s arrival to grant his subjects audience and receive their daily offering (Exod. 29:42–​43). The peals of thunder identified with Yahweh’s voice are concretely replicated by the sounding of trumpets to dramatise his speaking with his people.16 Human voices lifted in song and the divine voice answering, meet and merge together at the hour of sacrifice. The call of the trumpet stirs the worshipper to response before the divine presence. The trumpet’s sound is not only heard, but also physically experienced as vibrations that echo in the body, compelling a bowing down (ḥāwa) before the altar during the presentation of the daily offering (2 Chr. 29:27–​28; m. Tamid 7.3).17 The worshipper’s posture is described as falling down and “bow[ing] with face to the ground” (2 Chr. 20:18) in a gesture of submission and supplication. Uri Ehrlich (2004: 38) concludes that “prostration is the preeminent, most ritualized physical gesture in the sacrificial and prayer services.”This embodied response to Yahweh’s presence at the altar is to be envisioned as the Israelite vassal Jehu pictured on the ninth-​century BCE Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (Figure 16.3). The scene is one of obeisance and bodily homage that is attested throughout the ancient Near East as an expression of political allegiance to a king (Gruber 1980: I, 182–​291). In Temple ritual the ancient Israelite is socialised into a bodily comportment that recognises Yahweh as divine King. The production of music in antiquity is unrepeatable: live performances may be the same, but never identical. The Temple orchestra plays live music unique to sacred space, creating a tangible atmosphere around the worshipper to transform his perception of the time as no longer ordinary 349

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Figure 16.3  Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III depicting prostration of Assyrian vassal, Jehu. British Museum (BM 118885). Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

time and his disposition from an Israelite in ordinary life into a subject on holy ground in holy time engaged in worship (see also Chapter 17, this volume). The sound of singing and music is connective, joining the physical spaces of courtyard and beyond. In the open-​air courtyard, the sounds of liturgy spill over boundaries of sacred space, enlarging it. For those outside the courts, they know it is the hour of sacrifice. For the worshipper inside, he is caught up in a collective sound that is greater than himself; it is the voice of the community that enlarges the space vertically, bridging earth and heaven as melodies and song rise in concert with the smoke of the burnt offering.18 It draws the worshipper forward with deep affective power as music intersects with time and space to create a dimension where he may have an audience with Yahweh. Melodies and rhythms would surely resound well after the ceremony concluded, extending the individual’s memory of worship and his identity as a worshipper even as he leaves sacred space. Choruses linger, verbally inscribed in his consciousness, so upon his return he finds himself singing the familiar refrains, thereby extending sacred space further out onto ordinary life.

Ritual of sacrifice Categories of social meaning in biblical Israel are created and expressed through physical contact.19 Touch affords direct contact with the material objects of sacred space that, if engaged, would represent direct communion with the divine. Here is where strict limits are drawn for the Israelite worshipper who is prohibited from approaching the altar or making contact with ritual objects (Haran 1985). An offerer may not touch the articles of sacred service because they belong to Yahweh; the only ones permitted contact are the priests who have been brought into Yahweh’s domain as his consecrated servants (Exod. 29). While the engagement of the other senses in Temple ritual serves to forge a connection to the divine realm, the prohibition of touch creates separation and a clear distinction between the offerer and God. Where the worshipper is afforded haptic engagement is in the extended physical contact with the animal he presents. The ritual of sacrifice begins in the individual household with the act of selection.20 The offerer selects an animal from the herd or flock according to cultic requirements and the 350

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economics of his household.21 In most cases, the animal he brings is an unblemished yearling male from the flock. The offerer physically examines the animal from head to tail to ensure it is free of blemish or injury (Lev. 1:3). While he is able to assess if the lamb is maimed or physically deformed from a distance, he needs to handle it closely and run his hand over its coat and skin to look for parasites, scabs, or abnormalities that would render it unfit for sacrifice. He restrains it and lays it on its side to check that the genitalia are not bruised or crushed. He looks the lamb directly in its eyes to see there is no growth (Lev. 22: 21–​25). In his handling of the animal, he senses its warmth and breath; he feels the rough and oily texture of its coat; he hears its sounds and smells its odours. The offerer relies on his senses, especially that of touch, to select an animal acceptable to Yahweh. In the journey from the worshipper’s household to Yahweh’s divine estate, the offerer may at times lead, at times carry a small animal from the flock against his body before guiding it to the Temple’s courtyard for inspection by the priest. Once it is pronounced an acceptable offering, he and his animal approach the bronze altar and turn toward the sanctuary’s entrance to face in the direction of the divine presence.22 The worshipper then presses his hand on the lamb’s head in an act of presentation. This haptic gesture signifies that what has been in his grasp, in his sphere of ownership, is now given over to be dedicated to Yahweh (Wright 1986). As the offerer’s hand presses down on the lamb’s head, it tilts backward to expose the throat. In this same position, with the animal restrained, its throat is slit in sacred slaughter with a swift and deep cut that severs the windpipe and arteries. It is a matter of two to eight seconds before the lamb loses consciousness and the hand of the offerer loses contact with the pulsating life now draining onto the ground in what is described as “the life that is in the blood” in biblical idiom (Lev. 17:11). The tactile physicality of worship is most clearly observed at the altar where every Israelite is called to ritually slaughter his own offering (Lev. 1:4). The role of the priest is to catch the sacrificial blood in bronze bowls and dash it upon the sides of the altar (Lev. 1:5). Such a bowl as would have been used to collect the animal’s blood may be identified with a bronze vessel discovered in the altar area of Tel Dan, in a side room off the courtyard (Greer 2010). The bowl, measuring 16 centimetres in diameter and 4.5 centimetres in height, was found at the base of a small altar together with three incense shovels and a pot of animal bones (Figure 16.4). The vessel’s capacity suggests it was not intended to collect all the blood from exsanguination; most of it would pour onto the ground with only a portion caught in the vessel.23 As the sacrificial

Figure 16.4  Ceremonial bowl for collecting and dashing sacrificial blood, Tel Dan. Source: Courtesy of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology/​Hebrew Union College–​ Jewish Institute of Religion. 351

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victim’s throat was slit, its blood would forcefully gush and fully drain within the first minute—​ the surging movement, copious volume, depth of colour, and liquid warmth all registering through the worshipper’s senses to impress this as a sacred moment. Some of the free-​flowing blood might spatter the offerer and his gathered household, touching them as it also touched the sacrificial altar. The dashing of the blood of sacrifice is an important symbol in Israel’s religious practice that binds every Israelite in covenant to Yahweh since Sinai (Exod. 24:6–​8): Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar … Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “See the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” The worshipper’s haptic engagement with his offering continues as he skins his animal (Lev. 1:3–​6). The lamb is hung upside down and its hide cut with a sharp knife before it is stripped off by hand and “pulled down and off its body like a sock,”24 as registered by the verb pašaṭ, which is otherwise used of stripping off clothing. From this point forward, the offerer relinquishes the carcass to the priest who dismembers it and ascends the altar to arrange its pieces according to the ritually prescribed order: suet, meat quarters, head, entrails, and legs. The active sense of touch elides into the passive sense of sight for the worshipper who observes the priest handling the offering on his behalf. Transference of ownership is concretely expressed through touch—​ from the offerer’s hand, to the hands of the servant in Yahweh’s estate, to the altar’s consuming fire for it to be “transformed, sublimated, etherealised, so that it can ascend in smoke to the heaven above, the dwelling-​place of God” (Hicks 1953: 13, quoted in Milgrom 1991: 161). The physicality of touch is combined with kinaesthetic motion around the altar. In the act of sacrifice, the bronze altar becomes the focal point of bodies in motion: the animal is slain to the north (Lev. 1:11), hands are washed in the laver to west (Exod. 40:30), the ascent up the altar to arrange the animal’s quartered portions is to the south (m. Middot 3:3), and finally, the remains are discarded in an ash heap to the east (Lev. 1:16), bringing the worshipper, his offering, and officiating priest all full circle around the altar. Not only the movement of bodies, but also the movement of life-​liquids centre around the most sensory artefact of Israelite worship. The altar is described as having a trench around its base to collect the liquids of offerings (1 Kgs. 18:32; Ezek. 43:13–​17) (Milgrom 1991: 238–​239). This finds good correspondence with the fieldstone altar at Arad which was covered with a large flint slab and surrounded by plastered channels to collect the blood of sacrifice and libations (Aharoni 1968: 19). Were the lens to be pulled back from this scene to gain vision of the broader panorama, a cloud of dense smoke would be seen rising from the Temple Mount’s altar that recalled the Sinai experience (Exod. 19:9). Rivers of water and blood would be observed flowing into the Kidron Valley through channels for the flow of life-​liquids from the altar area (The Letter of Aristeas 90): At the south-​western corner there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured over the western base and the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water-​channel and flow out into the brook Kidron. 25 A similar drainage system may have been in place in the First Temple Period as reflected in the visionary oracles of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 47:1): … water was flowing from below the threshold of the Temple toward the east (for the Temple faced east); and the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the Temple, south of the altar. 352

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The materiality of ritual practice extends beyond the boundaries of sacred space through the copious water and blood of sacrificed animals streaming from the Temple from the height of Mount Zion to the depth of the Kidron Valley.

Aromas of worship In biblical idiom, sacrifice is “turned to smoke” (Lev. 1:9; 2:9). The language implies that the offering is not merely consumed by the fire burning on the altar, but transformed into a different state as it is translated from the earthly sphere to the heavenly (Milgrom 1991: 160–​161). Texts conspicuously note the olfactory appeal of sacrifice as a “pleasing odour” to Yahweh.26 Curiously, the ritual burning of incense is not spoken of as a pleasing aroma, but this unique distinction is reserved for the food offerings of meat, grain, and wine. The offerer breathes in the smells of sacrifice from the time he handles the animal to inspect it until it is slaughtered in the Temple courts and its flesh and fat portions sizzle on the altar. Animals and their odours are part and parcel of everyday life. In the typical Iron Age pillared house, livestock is kept in personal living spaces, in stables on either side of a central courtyard containing a hearth, mud brick oven, and cistern (Stager 1985: 12).27 Israelites are not only acquainted with the smell of sheep and goats, but these are the very familiar odours that define their household and are tied to their own identity. The smell of a worshipper’s offering is the smell of his animal mingled with the scents of his household, and while a slaughtered animal has the distinctively strong odour of fresh meat, this smell is culturally conditioned as familiar (Stevenson and Boakes 2003).28 In the cultural world of ancient Israel, smell is understood to be personal. When the patriarch Isaac, whose eyesight has grown weak, wishes to bless his sons, he must rely on smell to discern the person who speaks to him in Jacob’s voice yet smells like his firstborn Esau: “Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, ‘See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed!’ ” (Gen. 27:27). Esau’s scents of dewy woodlands and wild game tell a different story than the smells of hearth and livestock that cling to Jacob. Odour is a personal emanation that identifies the individual. The same holds true for the divine estate where fragrance exclusive to Yahweh cloaks sacred space as an immaterial manifestation of the divine presence. Aromas of sacral anointing oil and pulverised incense must remain exclusive to the sanctuary and no common Israelite may dress in the divine fragrance on pain of death (Exod. 30:32–​33, 37–​38). Sacral scents are guarded as “most holy” because they are associated with Yahweh’s personal presence. The unique mixture of fragrance that characterises ancient Israel’s religious performance derives from oils and incense that are compounded in the Temple, producing wafting aromas that are an olfactory marker of sacred space. Fragrant oils are compounded by infusing 11 kilograms of dry spices—​myrrh, cinnamon, aromatic cane—​into 3 litres of olive oil and used for anointing to sacralise the Temple and its servants (Exod. 30:32–​33). At the inauguration of the Israelite cult, the sanctuary’s fabrics and furniture, as well as its personnel and their officiating garments are anointed with heavenly smells that mark them as belonging to the sphere of the divine and smelling like the deity himself (Exod. 29:21; 40:9). The high priest is the most fragranced and perfumed person of the Israelite cult. Liturgical texts enshrine the sensorial experience of his installation to office as an outpouring of liquid sacrality: “precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes” (Ps. 133:2). This luxuriant profusion occasions his title as “priest who is exalted above his fellows, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured” (Lev. 21:10). The high priest’s layered robes are also suffused with the scent of fragrant resins as he offers up incense twice daily on the 353

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gold-​plated altar before the Holy of Holies. There is great concern that the priests who serve in Yahweh’s estate emanate his aroma of holiness and not the worldly smells of human sweat (Ezek. 44:17–​18). Incense is offered in Temple service at daybreak and at dusk, a time when smells are most saturated (Porteous 2006: 99). The recipe for its composition is given as balsam resin, cress, galbanum, and pure frankincense (Exod. 30:34–​36) (Nielsen 1986: 65–​66).29 The fragrant resins, spices, and herbs are finely pulverised and mixed with salt for combustion so that as the mixture burns on smouldering coals, it produces a smoky, scented cloud before the throne room, veiling its entrance. The effect is as dramatically visual as it is olfactory. Incense offered in the Holy Place permeates boundaries that cannot otherwise be crossed, drifting into the Holy of Holies and forging an ethereal bridge between heaven and earth. When only once a year the high priest is granted entrance into the inner sanctum, he must enter cloaked in an incense cloud of Yahweh’s atmosphere to be granted access (Lev. 16:12–​13) (Houtman 1992: 464). The eighth-​century BCE temple at the Israelite fortress of Arad preserves the physical arrangement of the Holy of the Holies as prescribed for Israel’s worship (Aharoni 1968: 19). Excavations uncovered two limestone incense altars positioned to flank the elevated entrance to the inner sanctum behind which, on a small platform, was a rounded standing stone (Figure 16.5). Burnt remains are still observable on the surfaces of these small altars. As illustrated by the archaeological remains, smell is evoked in transitional zones at the boundaries of sacred space where smoke and scent can cross in ways that humans are not permitted. The fragrant incense cloud of ritual service replicates the experience of Israel’s encounter with Yahweh appearing on Mount Sinai as a glowing fire within a dark cloud (Exod. 19:18). The prayer of Temple dedication recalls this tradition: “The LORD has said that he dwell in thick darkness. I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever” (1 Kgs. 8:12–​13). The God of Sinai now dwells in the Jerusalem Temple, and the most obvious sign of his presence is the dense cloud of incense, linking Israel’s experience of the past with the present. The worshipper’s encounter with the fragrance of Yahweh comes by the agency of the high priest who carries it among the congregation in incense pans (Num. 16:46), examples of which have been recovered in cultic context of ninth-​century BCE Tel Dan (Biran 1994: 192–​198). Though the worshipper may see no physical form of his God, he breathes in an immaterial representation of his presence. An olfactory encounter with the divine may in fact be more intimate than a visual one as prohibited in the Israelite cult. Vision distances a viewer from the object by engaging his observation and cognition; smell, however, permeates the body to elicit a spontaneous and indelible affective response (Porteous 2006: 91). Smells, more so than sights and sounds, are most keenly associated with memory and elicit emotional impact. The Temple’s aromas of worship leave a lasting impression of an encounter with the divine, as anyone who has smelled the incense of liturgy can attest.

Feasting in Yahweh’s presence Food is integral to Israel’s self-​definition. Their identity as a people was constructed through a ritual meal that is observed annually in remembrance of the exodus from Egypt (Exod. 12:4–​ 11).30 Specially scripted meals celebrate communal memory by enacting and re-​appropriating the national narrative for each successive generation. Seasonal celebrations and occasional offerings afford the worshipper the opportunity to eat a meal before Yahweh. The ritual calendar summons Israelites to the central sanctuary in Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate a feast: “you shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your households together, rejoicing in all the undertakings in which the LORD your God has blessed you” (Deut. 12:7). In 354

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Figure 16.5  Reconstruction of the Arad sanctuary’s Holy of Holies at the Israel Museum, including the original incense altars at the threshold. Israel Museum (IAA 1967-​1401, 1967-​ 1402, 1967-​1403). Source: Photo by author.

addition, Israelites may at any time bring a voluntary sacrifice, šelāmîm, in fulfilment of a vow or thanksgiving for answered petition (Lev. 3). Whereas all other offerings are burnt whole or in part with allotted prebends for priests, the šelāmîm is consumed by the offerer and becomes the primary means by which “to provide meat for the table” (Milgrom 1991: 221). The extended household feasts on the meat portions of sacrifice presented at the sanctuary and gathers to eat in the vicinity of the altar.31 This is a special occasion where the private household is hosted by the divine patron and invited to a banquet in his courts. Tel Dan’s Iron II sacred precinct is instructive for how feasting was carried out at the Jerusalem Temple (Figure 16.6). The courtyard area around the monumental altar has yielded numerous finds associated with communal feasting, predominantly in the bones of young sheep and goats, and to a lesser degree cattle. The bones bear cut marks associated with slaughter and preparation, showing evidence of slitting the throat, dismembering, and breaking the long, meat-​bearing bones to fit in cooking pots (Hesse et al. 2012: 224). Knife blades of metal and flint support that animals were slaughtered and then prepared for feasting in the sacred area. Feasting activities are

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Figure 16.6  Altar area of Tel Dan’s sacred precinct. Source: Photo by author.

further visible in the abundance of recovered vessels that are typical of domestic ware, suggesting that worshippers brought their own bowls and cooking pots for the sacred meal.32 Shallow cooking pots with thick, wide-​mouthed rims suitable for ladling out stews comport well with biblical accounts of boiling as the mode of meat preparation for priests and worshippers in temple precincts (Num. 6:19; 1 Sam. 2:13–​14; Ezek. 46:20, 24).33 The experience of savouring the taste of meat is placed in proper perspective when considering that the typical ancient Levantine diet consisted of bread, wine, and olive oil (Deut. 11:14), modestly supplemented with fruit, vegetables, legumes, and milk-​products (MacDonald 2008: 68). Meat was consumed sparingly as sheep and goats were mainly raised for their by-​ products and cattle for their labour (Borowski 1998: 59).34 Meat in ancient Israel represented significant investment and was consumed as a prestige food by the elite or as occasional festive fare by the rest of the population. Peter Altmann (2011: 124) reflects that “meat was a rarity for most, and therefore something quite special. This made its consumption exceptional, and easily tied to the cultic context.” Because of its high value, meat acquires symbolic significance, making it a most fitting expression of religious devotion and also a powerful symbol of communal solidarity. Lavish abundance characterises Israel’s sacred repasts in meals that are distinct from everyday fare and afford the tastes of meat and wine: “oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire. And you shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your household rejoicing together” (Deut. 14:26). The commensal celebration is of a larger scope than the patrimonial

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household and involves multiple households related by kinship who are brought together over a shared meal.35 A whole animal is offered, quartered, and shared between the worshipper, his extended family, officiating priest, and the God of Israel (via the altar), its body becoming the physical symbol that binds them all together. At the same time, it also materialises social hierarchies in the portions that each receive. The fat of the sacrificial animal is reserved exclusively for Yahweh and burned on the altar to acknowledge a distinction between a worshipper and his God that is in keeping with offering the firstling of the flock and first fruits of the land’s yield as tribute (Lev. 3:16). Fat (ḥēleb), which adds richness of flavour, moisture, and texture to cooking, is highly regarded in Israel’s dietary laws as evidenced by the term being broadly applied to the best and choicest of portions of the land and its produce (for example, Gen. 45:18). Prophetic images of restoration and abundance anticipate a time when quality wine and meat with all its fat will satisfy every Israelite in “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-​aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-​aged wines strained clear” (Isa. 25:6). While eating is necessary for survival, to taste is not. Taste has everything to do with pleasure and fulfilled anticipation. The taste of meat in Israelite cultural practice becomes associated with celebration and community identity. Writing on the anthropology of meat consumption, Nick Fiddes (1991: 32) maintains that taste is tied to experience more than to biology: “chemical taste does not become perceived taste until we have learned it.” Taste is culturally acquired and shaped by its social context: the palate is trained to relish certain foods, flavours, and textures above others. For the ancient Israelite, the taste of meat is an embodied memory invested with associations of personal, social, and religious identity. The sense of taste in special festive meals reaches deep into the memory of other such shared meals and heightens the emotional response of the worshipper. The affordance of taste translates to the emotion of joy, as expressed in the biblical summons to feast in Yahweh’s courts: “you shall eat … rejoicing there.” The biblical usage of joy (śimḥâ), in fact, is often shorthand for the festal šelāmîm offering. Later rabbinic interpretations would make this most clear by the adage “Joy means nothing other than eating meat” (b. Pesaḥim 109a, cited in Anderson 1991: 23). Ritual feasting climaxes in a harmony of the tastes and smells and sights and sounds of a shared meal with the extended household. Cooking techniques reflected in ethnographic studies of the region invite us to imagine chunks of meat are placed in squat cooking pots over a fire and left to stew for over an hour and a half (Klenck 1995: 64). The experience of unhurried time in sacred space marks this as no ordinary occasion. The cooking time is long, but does not need constant attending, allowing for all to savour conversation and shared memories of feasting in Jerusalem in years past. The worshippers sit in proximity to the altar that rises up before them like a stylised mountain with four horns prominently jutting to the heavens. Would there also have been stories told of Israel’s ancestors who had ascended the mountain at Sinai to eat and drink before Yahweh (Exod. 24:11)? The sounds of ladles stirring then scooping into bowls, the clang of ceramics and utensils of wood or bone, and the pouring of brothy liquids all mix with the smells of bread and wine and fat melting on the altar. Aromas prime expectation. The celebrants all share from the common pot, embodying the oneness of their communion. Their eyes take in the flickering of fires and lighted lamps, as the lamps recovered at Tel Dan tell the story of feasts lasting into the night (Greer 2013: 82). In high spirits from wine, the feasters may have joined in song: “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Those who seek the LORD lack no good thing” (Ps. 34:8, 10). At the conclusion of their meal, bones would be collected and discarded, and bowls may be intentionally broken after they had acquired holiness from use

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in the sacred precincts (see Lev. 6:28; Greer 2013: 93). These shattering sounds would signal with finality the end of the celebration.

Sacred space and the dimming of the senses Reflective of how biblical Israel preserved their traditions, when it comes to the sense of sight, the texts invite us to consider what the ancient Israelite worshipper does not see.36 Textual traditions stress the prohibition of sight in religious experience—​Yahweh may not be beheld as an image because the manifestation of the divine presence at Sinai was aniconic (Deut. 4:11–​12): … you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain while the mountain was blazing up to the very heavens, shrouded in dark clouds. Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice … In culturally distinctive religious ideology, Israel is not permitted to fashion a cult statue that would physically embody the divine presence (Exod. 20:4).37 The worshipper who has ascended to Jerusalem with an offering seeks an audience with his God, affectively expressed in songs of pilgrimage as: “When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Ps. 42:2; see Gruber 1980: II, 557–​598). The etiquette of eye-​contact before the divine King, however, prohibits an ordinary Israelite from beholding Yahweh since “in spatial terms, looking is a form of access, of crossing a boundary to enter a domain” (Chavel 2012: 9). He instead shows deference by lowering his eyes and bowing down at the place of his sovereign’s feet as did his ancestors at Sinai (Exod. 24:10; see also Ps. 99:5; 132:7; Isa. 66:1). The visual riches of the sanctuary are hidden from the worshipper’s gaze. In the wood-​ panelled Holy Place, carved figures of cherubim, palmettes, and rosette blossoms all gilded with gold create an aura of otherworldliness as is fitting for the divine dwelling. The abounding floral motifs are themselves suggestive of smell, paraphrasing scent into the visual realm. The resinous “oil wood” doors of the inner sanctum exude the scent of cedar that mingles with the aromas of cinnamon, frankincense, and myrrh of holy incense (King and Stager 2001: 332). Light diffuses from the clerestory windows to softly illuminate sacred space. Five golden lampstands ablaze on either side of the room shine against the gold-​gilded panelling. It is an attenuated fire. Incense burns on the golden altar before the threshold to the Holy of Holies to saturate the Holy Place with aromas exclusive to Yahweh’s dwelling. It is a scaled-down sacrificial altar. Sound here is muted. The volume of the outer court’s sacrificial rites is tuned down so that only whispers are heard—​unshod priestly feet on the smooth floor, golden snuffers on the lamps, and the ringing of the bells that encircle the high priest’s robes echoing against the walls. A dimming of the sensory affordances produces a diminished sense of self-​awareness, not by suggesting a grand scale to the divine body as in the vertical space of the open courtyard, but through the dimming of human perception. For the priests who are granted privileged access into the Holy Place, there is an intimacy to the encounter felt through the scripted motion of their daily service. In the inner sanctum, sealed by a door and a veil, Yahweh sits enthroned above the cherubim. No human sound is heard here. Like a rest in a symphony, the instruments and singing and sounds of human service are muted, making the silence all the more dramatic. Words are still present although not spoken but inscribed on the stone tablets of the covenant (Exod. 25:16). Suspending the senses through which the world is experienced creates a space that defies definition. There is mystery in the presence of the divine. This space is the most sacred of all, “unapproachable, inviolable, invisible to all” (Josephus, Jewish War V, 219). 358

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Conclusion A sensory approach to the Jerusalem Temple reveals a richly textured and carefully constructed sensory landscape that is designed to evoke and re-​enact the narrative at the heart of Israel’s national identity. The Sinai event is experientially revisited through fire and smoke at the altar, the shedding of the blood of covenant sacrifices, and the invitation to a meal at the deity’s feet. Yahweh’s reflective radiance may be encountered in the glowing fires and gleaming metals that mirror a luminous manifestation of the divine presence. The sound of his voice may be heard in the blowing of the trumpets and his immanent presence may be said to fill the sanctuary and reach the senses through the unique aromas of incense, allowing for a physical though incorporeal experience of the divine. Senses are both engaged and restricted in the liturgy of the Jerusalem Temple. The affordances of musical performance and the tastes of a festive meal connect a worshipper to his God and community, while the restriction of motion in sacred space, touch of sacred vessels, and sight of the inner sanctum all communicate an inaccessibility and otherness to Israel’s God. A dimming of the senses in sacred space enhances the power and mystery of the indescribable and ineffable divine presence. Shared sensory and affective experiences foster cohesive communal bonds as Israelite worshippers are embedded into a shared narrative of ethnic identity. The experience of every successive generation is that they are each called to worship as their forefathers, bringing Yahweh their tribute and bowing down to do homage to him in covenant allegiance.

Notes 1. The biblical texts are theological in nature, reflecting the beliefs of the community that textualised their traditions. Jerusalem as a regal-​r itual city represents the royally sanctioned worship of Yahweh. For an overview of other places of worship, see Zevit 2001; Nakhai 2015. 2. Within this broad time period, there are significant changes in the Temple’s built environment as reflected in the royal annals and embedded in texts chronicling religious reforms. On multiple occasions the Temple’s ritual vessels of silver and gold were seized by raiding armies (1 Kgs. 14:26; 2 Kgs. 14:14; 16:8) or paid out as tribute (1 Kgs. 15:18; 2 Kgs. 12:17–​18), as also the gold overlay of temple doors (2 Kgs. 18:16). Assyrian influence was introduced in the reign of Ahaz after a state visit to Damascus to offer tribute to Tiglath-​pileser III. Upon his return, he installed a replica of a Syrian altar for worship in Jerusalem and moved Solomon’s altar to the north of the Temple courts for personal divination (2 Kgs. 16:10-​15). Reforms of the seventh century BCE saw the purging of non-​Yahwistic elements, such as Asherah poles and chariots dedicated to sun worship (2 Kgs. 23:6, 11). Even in the occasional discontinuity of some of the material objects, our treatment assumes a continuity of sensorial perception in an attempt to sketch out enough contours that may recreate a worshipper’s sensory landscape. 3. Yael Avrahami’s (2012: 127) ground-​breaking study on the cultural sensorium of the Hebrew Bible finds that though Hebrew does not have a word for “senses,” they are instead conveyed as “experiencing the world through body organs, a category that incorporates six elements, six experiential organs: the eye, the ear, the nose, the mouth, the hand, and the foot.” These correspond to the sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste and speech, touch, and motion, respectively, for a seven-​sense model. 4. The description of the sensescapes of worship that follows is meant to be understood as gender inclusive. While biblical texts specify that Israelite males are summoned to appear before Yahweh three times a year to offer their tribute—​“No one shall appear before me empty-​handed” (Exod. 23:15)—​they come with their household (Deut. 31:10–​13). Israel’s worship reveals a vibrant female presence with “women as full partners in Israelite society” (Nakhai 2015: 90). Women are found praying at the sanctuary (1 Sam. 1:10–​16), fulfilling vows as individuals (Num. 30:3–​15; 1 Sam. 1:21–​24), and making sacrificial offerings (Jdg. 13:15–​23; 1 Sam. 1:24–​25). They serve at the entrance to the sanctuary (Exod. 38:8; 1 Sam. 2:22) and lead communal praise (Exod. 15:20–​21). They may participate in the highest expression of consecration by taking a Nazirite vow and adopting the purity requirements of the priesthood (Num. 6:2). They observe holy days and participate in religious feasts (Lev. 16:29;

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Deut. 12:12). They are included, together with their children, in the public reading of Torah (Neh. 8:1–​3). 5. Variations on the theme include the expressions “to follow after Yahweh” with the nuance of observance of the commands, and “walk in the ways of Yahweh,” with the emphasis on living in conformity to the covenant. This language captures the embodiment of religious observance that continues to this day in Judaism’s halakhah. 6. Conservative estimates place the population somewhere around 110,000 for Judah and 460,000 for all Israel prior to the Assyrian deportation of the northern kingdom under Sargon II (Broshi and Finkelstein 1992). 7. All translations are from NRSV. 8. Quarries in Jerusalem show evidence of nari limestone in use for the ashlar masonry of monumental building projects in the Iron Age; see Shiloh and Horowitz 1975. 9. This is inferred by rabbinic tradition (m. Kelim 1:9); see further Milgrom 1991: 149. The Mishnah (compiled c. 200 CE ) reflects the time period of the Second Temple, and while the relevant material is not contemporaneous with First Temple ritual, the likelihood of it preserving earlier traditions is strong enough to consider when filling in the picture of a sensory experience of worship. 10. Measurements are approximate and based on the standard cubit of 18 feet/​45 centimetres in use at the time of the First Temple Period (2 Chr. 3:3). Ancient Israelite measurements are in reference to the human body: ’ṣb‘ fingerbreadth, ṭpḥ handbreadth (width of four fingers), zrt span (outstretched hand), and the ’mh cubit measuring the length of the forearm from the elbow to the fingertips (Powell 1992). With the human body as the point of reference, the objects in the courtyard are suggestive of the enormous scale of the divine body inhabiting the space. 11. Other occasions reflect a different orchestral arrangement. The ark processional into Jerusalem is recorded as comprising seven trumpeters, six lyre players, eight harpists, and three cymbal players (Kleinig 1993: 49). The dedication ceremony of Jerusalem’s fifth-​century BCE city wall was celebrated with two choirs, each consisting of seven trumpeters and a conductor (Neh. 12:31–​42). 12. According to the Mishnah, the singers of the Second Temple stood on 15 steps leading to the inner court from which they sang the 15 “Songs of the Steps”—​Psalms 120, 122–​134 (m. Middot 2.5–​6). Elevation for public reading and prayer is well attested in the postexilic period (Neh. 8:4–​5). 13. The Psalter’s notations codify the cultic performance of song. Masoretic notations which were originally accents to clarify readings (ṭeʿamim) remain in use as musical notations in synagogue cantillation today. 14. The practice of call and response is also observed in settings outside of Temple liturgy, such as the recitation of covenant blessings from Mount Gerizim and curses from Mount Ebal, where priests lead the recitation and the people are invited to respond (Deut. 27:12ff; Josh. 8:33–​34). 15. The Taylor Prism records that Sennacherib received from Hezekiah “every kind of valuable treasure, as well as his daughters, his palace women, male singers (and) female singers brought into Nineveh, my capital city, and he sent a mounted messenger of his to me to deliver (this) payment and to do obeisance” (RINAP 3/​1: Sennacherib 22, iii, 45–​49). This finds resonance within the biblical traditions of the Babylonian captivity: “On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs …” (Ps. 137:1–​3). 16. This is a known metaphor celebrated in Temple worship that ascribes to Yahweh the voice of thunder (Ps. 18:14; 29:3–​9; 46:7; 68:34; 77:18). 17. The musical notation śelâ may signify a pause during which the trumpets are blown and the people bow down (Smith 1990: 173). 18. Prophets in biblical Israel were inspired to receive divine oracles as they played on harps. There is a cultural understanding that music connects the earthly realm with the heavenly (1 Sam. 10:5; Ezek. 33:32). 19. In ancient Israelite religious thought, boundaries between ritual states are crossed through physical contact. A person in a clean state may contract uncleanness through touching anything unclean, such as a leper or a corpse (Lev. 5:2–​3). On the other side of the spectrum, one is equally capable of contracting holiness by coming into contact with holy objects of Yahweh’s domain (Exod. 29:37; 30:29; Lev. 6:18). In this case, whatever comes into contact with the holy is regarded as having become sanctified and now belongs exclusively to the sanctuary. Contagion by touch shows that the essence of an object is perceived to be transferred by physical contact with it. 20. The sacrificial scripts of biblical texts provide the backbone for a sensory reconstruction that may be further illuminated by archaeological remains and contemporary practice among Bedouin tribes of the Negev (Klenck 1995). The ‘olâ, or “ascending” offering, is the oldest and most representative offering 360

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of Israelite religious practice (Milgrom 1991: 172–​176) and provides the script for the scene that follows (Lev. 1:3–​17). 21. The optimal timing for slaughter is when investment in feeding is low, immediately following weaning or upon reaching maximum meat weight as a yearling (Borowski 1998: 57). The preference among the Bedouin of the Negev observed by Klenck is to sacrifice a young male lamb six to twelve months old (Klenck 1995: 58). 22. m. Yoma 3:8 preserves the tradition that both offerer and offering faced west—​towards the direction of the divine presence—​in the sacrificial rite. Bedouin practice observed by Klenck (1995: 61) likewise displays sensitivity to the presentation of the animal, turning its head to the east in the direction of Mecca. 23. The estimated circulating blood volume for a young lamb about six to eight months old is approximately 3.8 litres. 24. Klenck’s (1995: 61) description of the Bedouin skinning their animals. 25. On the cisterns below the Temple Mount, see Gibson and Reich 1996. 26. The expression is found with all categories of sacrifice, including the burnt offering (Exod. 29:18), grain offering (Lev. 2:2), peace offering (Lev. 3:5), and libation (Num. 15:7). 27. See also the Passover legislation that specifies the sacrificial animal remain in the home for four days prior to slaughter (Exod. 12:6). The odours of animals and their dung permeated the household, as Stager (1985: 12) writes, “In winter, warmth radiating from the animals up to the bedrooms or sleeping lofts would have provided an effective, if malodorous, heating system.” 28. The viscera and dung of slaughtered animals unquestionably strikes us as offensive, but Israelite sacrificial practice as scripted in the texts mitigates this experience. The Temple’s daily offerings are whole burnt offerings, meaning that the animal is incinerated in its entirety with the exception of the hide. In all sacrifices, the organs and fat are dedicated to the deity by burning on the altar (Lev. 3:3–​4) and the animal’s blood is completely drained (Lev. 17:10–​12). Sacrificial meat must be consumed within two days so that there is no decay present in the sacred precincts (Lev. 7:15–​17). As one can imagine, with almost 50,000 litres of water on the Temple Mount, concern for ritual purity expressed itself in the frequent washing of priestly and animal bodies during the handling of the sacrificial offerings (e.g., Lev. 1:9; 16:28). Disposal is also carefully managed with ashes collected to the east of the altar (Lev. 1:16; 6:10), wood ash being noted for its odour-​absorbing properties. At the contemporaneous Israelite temple of Moṭza, a disposal pit adjacent to the altar was found filled with bones and ash (Kisilevitz and Lipschits 2020: 46), as is likewise the case with the sanctuary at Tel Dan (Greer 2013). For a present-​ day eyewitness account of sacrifice, see Weddle (2013: 144) who comments, “In general, the smells of slaughter and butchering were milder than I had anticipated, especially considering the number of animals sacrificed prior to my arrival.” 29. While it is difficult to accurately translate these botanicals, their enumeration occasions two observations: the variety speaks to a sophisticated usage of aromatics in the Israelite cult, and as none are indigenous, it also speaks to a well-​developed trade network that reached as far as India. 30. In addition, extensive dietary laws define Israel vis-​à-​vis other nations (Lev. 11). 31. In the Second Temple Period, the entire city of Jerusalem was considered as holy as the vicinity of the altar and it was permissible for festal offerings to be eaten in the homes within the city (m. Zebaḥim 5.6–​8). 32. Greer (2013: 75) records 216 bowls, 84 store jars, 88 jugs, 26 platters, and 99 cooking pots in the area of the sacred precinct. 33. See also Klenck 1995: 63–​64. Klenck (1995: 71) notes that the presence of any burnt bones among the Bedouin (less than 2 per cent), were not due to the cooking practices of roasting but rather to waste removal. Likewise at Tel Dan meaty long bones evidenced no burning but showed cut marks associated with boiling (Greer 2013: 82). 34. MacDonald (2008: 70) challenges the prevailing notion of meat’s rarity, yet concedes that its unequal distribution among the society’s elite or its consumption by Judah’s Assyrian overlords in effect renders it rare for the common Israelite. 35. The high representation of cattle bones at Tel Dan (25 per cent) attests to the participation of extended kin groups that would be needed to consume the animal in its entirety in no longer than two days as prescribed in ritual texts (Lev. 7:15–​17). 36. Avrahami (2012: 191) concludes that sight emerges as central in the biblical sensorium. It should be noted that her conclusions rest on a linguistic study of the Hebrew Bible, whereas this chapter approaches the topic from the perspective of ritual enactment scripted in the text. Not surprisingly, 361

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kinaesthesia, the sensory awareness of the body’s movement, emerges dominant as the “muscle memory” of Sinai. Sight is underplayed for theological reasons, suggesting that different sensory modalities may be highlighted in different social spheres. 37. In Temple iconography, the divine throne is not occupied by an image but instead is left as empty space to communicate transcendence. Similarly, where images of the deity might be expected to be pictured with sacred trees in the decorative program of the Holy Place, there are none (Bloch-​Smith 1994: 24). Priestly texts do, however, preserve accounts of the manifestation of the divine presence that is a sight to behold. Yahweh’s personal presence is visually conveyed by a fiery radiance cloaked in smoke and dense clouds (Exod. 19:18), flashing lightning and resplendent light, polished metal, and a rainbow-​like brilliance (Ezek. 1). This is how priestly vision chooses to remember and enshrine any physicality that is permitted the imagination.

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King, P. J., and L. E. Stager. 2001. Life in Biblical Israel. Library of Ancient Israel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Kisilevitz, S., and O. Lipschits. 2020. “Another Temple in Judah!” Biblical Archaeology Review 46 (1): 40–​49. Kleinig, J. 1993. The Lord’s Song: The Basis, Function and Significance of Choral Music in Chronicles. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Klenck, J. D. 1995. “Bedouin Animal Sacrifice Practices: Case Study in Israel,” in K. R. Ryan and P. J. Crabtree, eds., The Symbolic Role of Animals in Archaeology. MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology 12. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 57–​72. Levenson, J. 1984. “The Temple and the World.” The Journal of Religion 64 (3): 275–​298. MacDonald, N. 2008. What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Milgrom, J. 1991. Leviticus 1–​16. Anchor Bible 3. New York: Doubleday. Monson, J. 2006. “The ‘Ain Dara Temple and the Jerusalem Temple,” in G. M. Beckman and T. J. Lewis, eds., Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion. BJS 346. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies. 273–​299. Montagu, J. 2002. Musical Instruments of the Bible. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Mumcuoglu, M., and Y. Garfinkel. 2018. Crossing the Threshold: Architecture, Iconography and the Sacred Entrance. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Mumcuoglu, M., and Y. Garfinkel. 2019. “The Temple of Solomon in Iron Age Context.” Religions 10 (3): 198. Nakhai, B. A. 2015. “Where to Worship? Religion in Iron II Israel and Judah,” in N. Laneri, ed., Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 90–​101. Nielsen, K. 1986. Incense in Ancient Israel. Leiden: Brill. Porteous, J. D. 2006. “Smellscape,” in J. Drobnick, ed., The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, 89–​106. Powell, M. 1992. “Weights and Measures,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 Volumes. New York: Doubleday, 897–​908. Shiloh, Y., and A. Horowitz. 1975. “Ashlar Quarries of the Iron Age in the Hill Country of Israel.” BASOR 217: 37–​48. Smith, J. A. 1990. “Which Songs Were Sung in the Temple?” Music and Letters 71: 167–​186. Smith, J. A. 1998. “Musical Aspects of Old Testament Canticles in their Biblical Setting.” Early Music History 17: 221–​264. Stager, L. E. 1985. “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel.” BASOR 260: 1–​35. Stager, L. E. 1999. “Jerusalem and the Garden of Eden,” in Eretz-​Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 183–​194. Stevenson, R. J., and R. A. Boakes. 2003. “A Mnemonic Theory of Odor Perception.” Psychological Review 110: 340–​364. Weddle, C. 2013. “The Sensory Experience of Blood Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 137–​159. Wright, D. P. 1986. “The Gesture of Hand Placement in the Hebrew Bible and in Hittite Literature.” JAOS 106: 433–​446. Zevit, Z. 2001. The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. London: Continuum.

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17 The ancient synagogue at Nabratein The acoustic dynamics of architectural change Paul V. M. Flesher

Introduction In first-​century CE Judea and greater Galilee, synagogues adhered to a common architectural form, that of an open-​centre hall surrounded by benches along the walls with ceilings and roofs supported by two rows of pillars. This style remained dominant up to the Bar Kokhba rebellion (132–​135 CE )—​appearing at Herodium and Modiin—​and then began to disappear during the rest of the second century CE , being replaced by the architectural forms of synagogues known as basilica, broadhouse, and basilica with an apse.1 These forms overlapped in time, with basilicas and broadhouses appearing in the second and third centuries CE , while the open-​centre synagogues were built as late as the fourth century.2 Despite their co-​existence, one observation is clear: no community went back to the open-​centre plan once they built a synagogue of a different plan. The move away from the open-​centre synagogue was not motivated solely by aesthetics; acoustics played a key role as well. The oldest, documented Sabbath ritual—​the reading of Scripture—​carried with it an auditory requirement;3 Scripture needed to be heard. Of the four architectural styles of Galilean synagogues, the open-​centre plan had the poorest acoustics. It provided no architectural enhancement of the speaker’s voice. The three other architectural forms had significantly better acoustics for halls of the same dimensions. All three feature a raised platform against a wall. The platform not only lifted speakers above their audiences to ensure that the direct sound of their voices encountered no obstacles as it moved towards the audiences’ ears—​obstacles such as heads or bodies—​but the wall behind the speaker reflected the speakers’ voices in a way that amplified them in their listeners’ hearing. To be sure, once different architectural plans were introduced, visual aesthetics played a role in their continued use, but acoustic improvements were what ensured it. In the terms of synagogue architecture, the raised platform is called a bema. Its closest analogue is the stage in a theatre—​or, centuries later, a concert auditorium—​which serve both a visual and an auditory function. Visually, a stage and a bema place performers before the audience—​enhancing the audience’s view of them—​and auditorily, their structural placement 364

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-18

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in the building enhances the sound performers produce, whether speech or music. While archaeologists have long recognised the visual importance of bemas, synagogues’ acoustic character have remained largely unacknowledged. This chapter aims to demonstrate the role acoustic considerations played in synagogue design in Roman-​period Galilee, and along the way to illustrate some of the acoustic analyses that can shed light on the worship experiences that took place in them. It constitutes an initial assay into reconstructing the acoustics of synagogue architecture. The Nabratein synagogue provides an ideal structure for showing how acoustic considerations influenced the interior design of synagogue space. The earliest phase of the hall—​Synagogue 1—​ actually provides evidence of two stages: an open-​plan synagogue and a “pre-​basilica” synagogue. Nabratein Synagogue 1 thus enables an analysis of the acoustic character of two arrangements of the same space, rather than a comparison of the acoustics of two different halls that would require controlling for the different size and shape of the two structures. This comparison shows that performing the ritual of Scripture reading at a location along a side rather than in the centre enhances the loudness of the performers’ voices for the entire audience. At first consideration, this seems an odd claim, for moving the speakers from the middle to one side increases the distance between the speakers and at least half the listeners in the congregation. The direct sound of the readers’ voices has further to go, so the sound level is not as high. Right? But direct sound is not the end of the story. Sound reflects off walls, ceilings, and other surfaces and each listener hears the reflections that reach his or her ears. In certain conditions, which I will explain below, those reflections significantly enhance the listener’s ability to hear the speakers. This chapter will explore the acoustic phenomenon of “first reflections” and show how the placement of the readers and translators within the synagogue affect the impact of first reflections. Shifting the ritual performers from the centre to one side of the Nabratein hall significantly improved the congregation’s ability to hear them. The study herein constitutes an initial exploration of how some acoustic features impacted synagogue congregations’ worship experiences; it does not comprise a complete aural analysis of a synagogue hall. Evaluating the acoustic character of each synagogue’s architectural layout is not simply a matter of the physics (i.e., the physics of sound) of the synagogue hall but of how humans produce that sound and how their ears receive and process that sound. Sound’s physical characteristics can differ significantly from the way humans experience that sound biologically and neurologically. That is why this chapter begins by describing the Torah ritual, for it identifies the context in which the rite’s performers produce the sound through speech and the circumstances under which the congregation hears their voices. After that depiction, the chapter moves to describe the two architectural arrangements of Nabratein Synagogue 1, as I interpret them, and then to an examination of the acoustic character of each one during the ritual.

The ritual of Scripture reading and translation The history of synagogues in ancient greater Galilee reveals the synagogue’s shift from a secondary institution to a new role as Judaism’s central worship institution. Before its destruction in 70 CE , the Jerusalem Temple anchored Judaism’s cultic network as the sole institution for worship ordained by Scripture. Synagogues functioned only as satellites to its centre. It was not until Bar Kokhba’s defeat in 135 CE that Judaism began to come to grips with the Temple’s permanent destruction and the realisation that a new form of worship needed to take its place. It was at this point that the Scripture reading ritual came out of the mists of rhetoric and took centre stage as the primary public ritual of the synagogue. While Jewish writers from the first century CE like Philo and Josephus link public Scripture reading to Sabbath gatherings, they do so for propaganda purposes—​aiming to elevate the place of Scripture (“Law”) in Judaism 365

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and thereby position the Jews among the peoples of the Mediterranean as model citizens.4 Jews’ weekly study of the Law makes them exemplary because they are taught how to understand and follow it. Josephus and Philo reveal almost nothing about how the Scripture reading rite actually took place. Luke 4’s story of Jesus’ reading of Isaiah may reflect first-​century CE ritual practices, but it is only with the Mishnah, published at the end of the second century CE , that a consistent presentation of this synagogue ceremony first appears. This ritual should properly be called “Scripture reading and translation,” for it was a bilingual rite in which a passage from the Hebrew Scriptures was read and then echoed by a Targum translation rendering the passage into Aramaic, the Jewish lingua franca of Galilee.5 Unlike earlier authors, the rabbis presented a Sabbath rite that required two performers, one to deliver the Hebrew and the other to deliver the Aramaic rendering. Mishnah Megillah 4:4 provides one discussion of its ritual requirements:6 A. He who reads in the Torah [should read] no fewer than three verses. B. He may not read to the translator more than one [verse at a time], C. and, in the Prophets, [no more than] three. This passage shows how Scripture was performed in an antiphonal manner—​switching between the Hebrew text and its Aramaic translation at the end of one to three verses—​with the two linguistic versions intertwining in an exchange of language and meaning. The rite intends both versions to be heard in company of the other. The Mishnah and later rabbinic works were composed in Galilee during the centuries in which the synagogues excavated by archaeologists were built and used, from the Mishnah at the end of the second century CE to the Palestinian Talmud in the fifth century CE . If the rabbinic portrayal of the Scripture reading and translation rite describes the ritual actually practised, then Galilean synagogues—​some at least—​should have been architecturally designed to facilitate this ritual. And therein lies the rub. Scholars debate the precise manner in which the rabbis intended this ritual to be carried out and how many communities actually adhered to those intentions. From passages in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and even the Palestinian Talmud, one can see in the Scripture rite the use of one written text or two written texts. Some passages clearly indicate that the Targum texts should not be present, even though the Aramaic translation should be given. Other pericopae show that whatever the rabbis intended, local communities did what they chose, with some synagogues using two texts. It is clear, however, that Scripture should be heard and its meaning understood—​and thus in Galilee a translation into Aramaic was required.7 The architectural character of the Nabratein synagogue provides a perfect laboratory to explore the rite of Scripture reading and translation. The Nabratein synagogue hall contained two platforms, known as bemas. These fit the two-​person ritual precisely, providing a bema for the Scripture reader and a bema for the Scripture translator. Both platforms are large enough for not only a person, but also a table to hold a text for reading. This suggests that the Jews who worshipped at Nabratein developed a tradition of reading both the Hebrew Tanakh and the Aramaic Targum translation from written texts.8 This development can be traced in the synagogue’s early architectural history.

The two architectural arrangements of Nabratein Synagogue 1 The Nabratein synagogue excavations were directed by Eric Meyers, with associate directors Carol Meyers and James F. Strange. The site’s final report was published by Eric and Carol 366

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2002 = 5010

6035

2032

1005 = 6033

1024

5040

1007 = 6006

2003 = 5011

Figure 17.1  Top plan of Nabratein Synagogue 1. Source: Meyers and Meyers 2010: fig. 7.

Meyers (Meyers and Meyers 2009). The report identified three main phases of the synagogue over its existence: Synagogue 1, a small, almost-​square structure from the Middle Roman period (second to mid-​third century) which the Meyers term a broadhouse; Synagogue 2, a larger Late-​ Roman-​period basilica synagogue (mid-​third century to late-​fourth century); and, after a break in occupation, Synagogue 3, an even larger synagogue of the Byzantine/​Early Arab period, with a dedicatory inscription dating to 564 CE (Meyers and Meyers 2009: 30–​32). The Meyers’ report presents Synagogue 1 in a single phase; see the plan in Figure 17.1 and the artist’s reconstruction in Figure 17.2 (Meyers and Meyers 2009: 33–​41, figs. 7–​8).9 Its walls were made of field stones, which would have been plastered to provide a smooth surface. The synagogue has a centrally positioned door on the south side, with a bema to either side of it. The remaining walls were lined with stone benches, as well as a door in the north wall. The synagogue’s floor was covered in plaster. Since the south wall constitutes the long wall in this rectangular building, the Meyers term this a “broadhouse,” even though it lacks a broadhouse synagogue’s other characteristics, namely, a single bema on the long wall, a wall that contains no door. Indeed, apart from the side-​walls’ length, the architectural features here are arranged like a basilica synagogue. That is why I term this a “pre-​basilica synagogue.” The last paragraph of the Meyers’ analysis of Synagogue 1 (Meyers and Meyers 2009: 41) mentions an interesting feature. There is a small rectangular depression in the floor located at the hall’s precise centre where the plaster is absent (70 centimetres by 80 centimetres). The report suggests this “may have been the place where a lectern or reader’s table stood.” The Meyers interpret this within the context of Medieval synagogues, but I argue that it should be understood within the synagogue forms of the time, namely, the open-​centre hall ubiquitous in the first and early second century CE . The rectangle thus indicates an initial stage of Synagogue 1 as an open-​plan synagogue which was then rebuilt into a pre-​basilica form with two bemas. The first synagogue I designate Synagogue 1a and the second, described in the final report, Synagogue 1b. Let us look at this interpretation more closely. First, the level of precision in the excavation permits such an interpretation. The pottery found across the entirety of Synagogue 1 was Middle Roman, which for the excavation was identified as approximately 135 to 250 CE . The resolution of the pottery does not allow for 367

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Figure 17.2  Artist’s rendering of Nabratein Synagogue 1; this represents Synagogue 1b in my analysis. Source: Meyers and Meyers 2010: fig. 8.

a more precise dating. Nor are the few coins found in the excavations of this level helpful in distinguishing different periods. The hall of Synagogue 1 could therefore easily have had two arrangements—​perhaps even a century apart—​that the archaeological record is simply unable to differentiate. Second, it makes no sense to have a central reading table at the same time as two prominent bemas. A synagogue might need one or the other, but not both (see the odd configuration of Figure 17.3, which illustrates such an arrangement). Instead, the central square in the plaster floor indicating a ritual table emphasises the open centre of the synagogue, as Figure 17.4’s view of the hall from the south indicates. The archaeological evidence suggests the central podium was set onto the floor and then, when the floor was plastered, the plasterers worked around the podium rather than move it. Later, as part of the hall’s rearrangement, the podium was removed and the floor covered with carpets or reed mats; this would have preserved the rectangle despite the hall’s new architectural character. Third, archaeologists commonly think of a bema as a platform for enabling a speaker to be seen by the congregation. But the placement of columns in most Galilean synagogues actually prevents a large portion of the congregation from having a view of the bema(s). More importantly, the Scripture reading rite does not require the ritual to be seen, but only to be heard.10 The intent of a bema is to provide acoustic enhancement; visual stimulation is secondary. Fourth, given the small size of the Nabratein synagogue, it would be counter-​productive to take up so much space with two performance locations. The two bemas remove a noticeable amount of floor space, so it would be unlikely to have a separate reading table with two or three people around it at the same time. Finally, here at Nabratein, the shift from an open-​centre hall to a pre-​basilica arrangement parallels what we know about the Torah rite. The two bemas appear here at the same time—​late second century CE ?—​as the rabbinic movement sets up this ritual requiring two versions of

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Figure 17.3  Reconstruction of Nabratein Synagogue 1, according to Meyers’ interpretation, including both a Torah reading table in the centre and two bemas on the side. Source: Created with Sketch-​Up graphic software.

Scripture, namely, the Hebrew Torah and the Aramaic translation. The two bemas provide a location for both the Scripture reader and the translator, whether the translator recites from memory or reads from a scroll. Therefore, since the open-​centre synagogue plans of the first century continue into the second century CE (and beyond), it makes sense to suggest that the synagogue hall was initially built as an open-​centre plan of this type (Synagogue 1a) and later converted into a pre-​basilical plan (Synagogue 1b). Synagogue 1 had exterior dimensions of 11.2 metres by 9.35 metres and interior dimensions of 10.10 metres by 7.85 metres.11 This remained the same in both arrangements. Synagogue 1a presumably had benches along the walls, some of which remained in Synagogue 1b, and a central podium that fit into the rectangular depression in the plaster floor at the hall’s centre. The Scripture reader could have faced either south or north (Figure 17.4); for convention’s sake, I will assume he faced north. Synagogue 1b follows the description in Meyers and Meyers. It had the same interior dimensions as Synagogue 1a, as well as benches along the walls except where the two bemas were placed. The two large platforms were placed along the south wall on either side of the main entrance. Both rose approximately one metre above the floor. The west bema was 3.17 metres wide and extended about two metres into the hall, while the east bema was only 2.62 metres wide and went the same distance into the hall. These were used for the Scripture reading and the Targum translation (Figure 17.5).12 We now proceed to a brief description of how a reader produces sound in a synagogue and then turn to our examination of the acoustics of Synagogue 1a and Synagogue 1b, before concluding with a comparison of the two.

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Figure 17.4  Reconstruction of Nabratein Synagogue 1a, according to the author’s interpretation, with just the Torah reading table in the centre. Source: Created with Sketch-​Up graphic software.

Figure 17.5  Reconstruction of Nabratein Synagogue 1b, according to the author’s interpretation, with two bemas on the south side. Source: Created with Sketch-​Up graphic software. 370

The ancient synagogue at Nabratein

The acoustics of a Scripture reader’s or a Scripture translator’s voice The sound produced when a Scripture reader or a Scripture translator speaks before a congregation goes through three stages, each of which is acoustically significant to most listeners in the room. First, when the reader speaks, the direct sound of the speaker’s voice goes to a listener’s ears. Let us call this listener Ruth. Second, since a human’s voice is omnidirectional, the reader’s voice goes in all directions. It will encounter walls, the ceiling, the floor and other surfaces. Each of these will absorb some of the sound and reflect the rest onwards. Some of these reflections will arrive at Ruth’s ears. Those that arrive within 50 milliseconds of the direct sound will be indistinguishable from it—​this is a matter of human physiology and neurology. Instead, Ruth will perceive the reader’s voice as louder than it actually was. Such reflections are called early reflections or “first reflections.” Third, the reflections from the reader’s or translator’s voice will continue bouncing around the room, reflecting off its surfaces and gradually dying out as it is absorbed with each contact. This is called reverberation. Some surfaces are highly reflective, absorbing less than 5 per cent of a sound’s energy at each encounter and hence extend the time span of the reverberation. Stone, brick, and traditional plaster can fall into this category. Other surfaces—​like rugs, tapestries, clothes, and even human bodies—​are highly absorptive and drop the sound level quite rapidly. Open doors and windows will also impact reverberation, with 100 per cent absorption and no reflection of any sound that moves through them. The reverberation will impact each audience member—​including Ruth—​raising the perceived volume of the speaker’s voice for its duration. For many synagogue excavations, the hall’s remains provide sufficient evidence to calculate at least an estimate of all three stages of the sound production from a Scripture reader’s voice. The more complete the finds, the more reliable the reconstruction will be. This study focuses only on the first two stages of the sound produced by the reader’s voice, direct sound and first reflections. The chapter’s goal of showing how a synagogue’s architectural design stems in part from acoustic considerations will become clear from these two stages. This simplified, two-​part analysis by itself reveals how acoustic considerations impact a synagogue hall’s layout. Of course, it is not a complete study of the synagogue’s acoustic character, for it lacks any study of reverberation.13

The acoustics of Synagogue 1a The following analysis of Synagogue 1a’s acoustics begins by analysing the experience of the direct sound of the Scripture reader’s and the Scripture translator’s voices as it arrives at the ears of listeners in four different locations: directly in front of the speaker, directly behind, and on the two sides. It will then examine the first reflections that reach the listeners in each location, adding them to the direct sound to provide an understanding of how the two stages combine for each listener.

Direct sound The analysis of Synagogue 1a’s acoustics begins by analysing the direct sound of the Scripture reader’s voice as it moved straight and unobstructed from the reader’s mouth to each listener’s ears. Sound pressure decays at an exponential rate rather than a linear rate.14 This means that sound pressure does not change at a one-​to-​one ratio over distance, but rather drops at an increasing amount in accordance with the “inverse square rule”: whenever the distance from a

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Figure 17.6  Exponential decay of sound pressure by distance. Source: Tontechnik-​Rechner, www.sengpielaudio.com/​calculator-​SoundAndDistance.htm (sampled 12/​1/​2019).

sound’s source is doubled (2x), its pressure is reduced to a quarter (1/​4y) of what it had been. On a graph, it is thus a curve rather than a straight line (Figure 17.6). The basic formula for the decay of direct sound is (Everest and Pohlmann 2015: 35, eq. 3-​4): L2 = L1-20*log ( r2/r1)

[Equation 1]

Here, L1 is the sound pressure (i.e., level) of the first location of measurement and r1 is the distance of that measurement from the sound’s source. L2 is the sound pressure of the second measurement’s location and r2 is its distance from the sound source.15 For the calculations, I will assume that the Scripture reader and the translator speak at 65 decibels (dB), the middle of the range of normal conversation, which is considered to be 55 dB to 75 dB. This is conventionally measured at a distance of one metre from the head. In the following calculations, then, r1 will be one metre and L1 will be 65 dB. For ease of calculation, I will round off the interior measurements of the synagogue. Instead of 10.10 metres by 7.85 metres, I will round this off to a space measuring ten metres by eight metres. For convention’s sake, I will assume the reader is facing north from the centre table with a slight lean over the podium. That means the Scripture reader stands in the hall’s centre, four metres from the people sitting on the benches directly in front or behind him and five metres from those sitting immediately to his left and right on the wall benches. The first calculation focuses on the simplest circumstance, namely, the sound pressure level of the reader’s voice at the ears of the listener sitting directly in front of him, along the wall some four metres away. In the formula, this is r2. Our question is, what is the sound level at the listener’s ears? When I plug the numbers into Equation 1, it looks like this: L2 = 65-20*log (4/1)

372

[Equation 2]

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When the equation is solved for L2, the sound pressure when it reaches the listener, the result is 52.9 dB. The level has dropped just over 12 dB in the four metres’ distance between the Scripture reader and the listener. The resulting sound level of 52.9 dB is slightly below the comfortable lower level of conversation. With this straightforward example in hand, we now need to complicate it by bringing in the acoustic characteristics of a head. The human head is omnidirectional. That is, when a person speaks, sound goes out from the head in all directions. However, it does not go out at the same sound pressure. The statement, “she speaks at 65 dB,” means in this acoustic analysis that the sound level of a speaker’s voice one metre directly in front of their mouth is 65 dB. However, that is not the sound level at the head’s side or behind it. Figure 17.7 provides a map of the sound pressure around a human head at one metre (looking down from above, facing right). This circular graph shows that the level drops some 7 dB between the front and the back of the head. A person who speaks at 65 dB at the front (0°), then, only produces about 62 dB at the side (90° and 270°) and 58 dB at the back (180°).16 To determine what the listeners hear at the side and behind the reader, we need to calculate those directions as well. The person who sits directly behind the Scripture reader in the Nabratein hall will receive a sound that begins (at one metre) at 58 dB rather than 65 dB. Other than that, the numbers

Zone C sub-zone C2

sub-zone C1

Horizontal plane

90

Relative Level, dBA

–4

60

120

0

Zone A

Zone B 30

150

–8

–12

0

180

–8

–4

330

210 Zone B

Zone A 0

300

240 sub-zone D2

270

sub-zone D1

Low Normal High

Zone D

Figure 17.7  Map of sound pressure around the head at one-​metre distance, with four sound zones and two sets of sub-​zones labelled (C and D). Source: After Warnock et al. 2002: fig. 3. 373

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characterising their location vis-​à-​vis the speaker are the same and produce the following equation: L2 = 58-20*log (4/1)

[Equation 3]

This results in a sound pressure of 46 dB reaching the listener, nearly 20 dB below the reader’s forward projecting voice level and about 7 dB below what the listener four metres in front of the speaker hears. Within the Nabratein hall, the Scripture reader’s voice reaching the listeners on either side must travel five metres. In addition, the sound pressure of his voice at each side of the head is 62 dB, when he speaks at 65 dB in the front. The equation looks like this: L2 = 62-20*log (5/1)

[Equation 4]

Solving the equation gives a sound pressure of 48.0 dB reaching each listener located on the side. That is higher than the listener at the rear, but nowhere near that of the listener in front. This is because of the difference in both distance and location. Take another look at Figure 17.7 and note the lopsided circles—​ especially the one indicated by the line with the white squares—​that go around the head. These are mostly on the circular diagram’s right side, that is to say, to the front of the head. These lines indicate the sound pressure at one metre’s distance from the head and the different levels at different angles around the head. The pressure is highest in the front part of the head and drops rapidly on the sides and the back. Note also the straight lines indicating 60° and 300° angles from the exact front. Most of a voice’s sound pressure lies within the 120° width at the head’s front, 60° on each side. Laying this diagram over Synagogue 1a’s plan clarifies how sound levels change around the room (Figure 17.8). They are highest in the 120° in front of the speaker, but the rest of the room—​some 240°—​quickly loses the strength of the voice’s direct sound. That explains why the sound pressure to the side and rear of the speaker is so much lower than the front.

Location 1: the impact of first reflections on the listener in front of the Scripture reader If a voice’s direct sound was all the sound a listener heard, then this analysis would be over. Inside a building, however, sound reflects off the walls, the floor, and the ceiling—​indeed off every surface—​until absorption and distance cause the sound pressure to decay below the level of hearing. These continuing reflections are called reverberation. The study of reverberation can be quite revealing, but it requires a deeper analysis than I can fit into this short chapter. So instead of studying all reflections, let us analyse just the first ones. The category of “first reflections” reveals a great deal of information about a space and the interaction of speakers and listeners within it. First reflections are those that reach a listener within 50 milliseconds of the arrival of the direct sound (which reaches a listener from the speaker quickest because it travels the shortest distance). The human ear cannot separate sounds that arrive within 50 milliseconds of each other, so it treats them all as a single sound, adding them together into what the brain interprets as a single, louder sound. This is what is meant by “loudness”; it is the amount of sound perceived by Ruth, our model listener, as opposed to the physics of the sound around her.

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Figure 17.8  Synagogue 1a schematic with the sound zones from the central position indicated.

There are two ways of calculating first reflections for a structure, wave analysis and point analysis. Wave analysis focuses on the sound source (for example, the speaker) and can provide a full reconstruction of sound behaviour in a space as it moves in all directions out from the sound source(s) and reflects around the space, decaying as distance and each contact with a surface loses more and more pressure to absorption. Point analysis, by contrast, concentrates on listeners, permitting us to analyse a few key reflections as they strike each listener. It enables the individual consideration of representative reflections and allows us to combine them to understand how each one contributes to a listener’s sound experience. I will use the approach of point analysis to study the first reflections that bounce off each side (east and west) of the synagogue and the reflection that bounces off the ceiling.17 For the listener straight in front of the speaker, there are three key reflections to study: one off the left wall, one off the right wall, and one off the ceiling. The two wall reflections are the same, since both the reader and the listener are along the building’s central axis.18 Each reflection requires a three-​step analysis: the distance which the sound travels, the time it takes to arrive at the listener’s ear, and the sound level when it arrives. Side reflections, Step 1 Since a voice’s direct sound moves straight from the speaker’s head to the listener’s head—​a generally horizontal trajectory—​the side reflection stays on the same horizontal plane, but goes out to the side wall at a point halfway between the speaker and the listener and then is reflected back (at the same angle) to the listener. This distance can be readily calculated as the hypotenuses of two right triangles, one the reverse of the other. One triangle defines the trajectory of the sound

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moving from the speaker’s head to the wall, and the other defines the sound’s trajectory as it moves from the wall to the listener. In this calculation, the hypotenuse of the first triangle is the same as that of the second. The formula for calculating the hypotenuse of a right triangle, C, is: C 2 = A2 + B 2

[Equation 5]

or

(

)

C = Square root A2 + B 2

[Equation 6]

In this equation, A and B are the two legs of the triangle which are joined by the right angle. A is half the distance between the speaker and the listener, while B is the shortest distance between the speaker (or listener) and the side wall. In our first calculation above, where the listener sits 4 metres directly in front of the speaker, half the distance between them is 2 metres. The distance to the wall is 5 metres. The resulting equation is:

(

)

C = Square root 22 + 52

[Equation 7]

The computation results in a hypotenuse of 5.6 metres, which when doubled provides 11.2 metres for the total reflected distance of the sound off the east wall. The distance is more than twice that taken by the direct sound. The same result applies to the west wall. Side reflections, Step 2 The calculation of Step 1 is only important if the reflected sound arrives within 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) of the direct sound. The formula to determine this is simple: multiply the distance (in metres) by the time it takes sound to travel a metre; the latter is a constant:19 Length of time = Distance x 0.00292 m/second

[Equation 8]

To determine whether the two times are within 50 milliseconds of each other, subtract the first arrival time from the second: 50 ms > Time2 − Time1 50 ms > 32.6 ms − 11.6 ms (=21 ms )

[Equation 9] [Equation 9a]

In this calculation, the direct sound arrives in 0.0116 seconds (between 11 and 12 milliseconds) while the sound reflected off the wall takes 0.0326 seconds to arrive. Since there are only 21 milliseconds between the two arrival times, the ear adds them together to interpret them as a single sound. Side reflections, Step 3 The sound reflected off the wall will arrive at a sound pressure of 44 dB. Since sound pressure is an exponential number rather than linear, we cannot just add the reflected sound level to the direct sound level of the voice. We could apply a logarithmic formula to accomplish this, or we could do what most engineers do, use a look-​up table for determining an additive factor to add to the sound with the highest sound pressure. This rule of thumb approach provides sufficient precision for our purposes (Table 17.1).20

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The ancient synagogue at Nabratein Table 17.1  Look-​up table for estimating the addition of two sound sources, measured in decibels (Peterson and Gross 1972) Difference between two dB levels to be added

Factor to be added to higher level for total

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

3 2.6 2.1 1.8 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2

The first reflection from the side wall arrives at the listener’s ear at 44 dB, which is 9 dB lower than that of the direct sound of 53 dB. Looking up 9 dB difference on Table 17.1 indicates an additive factor of just 0.5 dB. Since there are two reflections, one off each wall, that gives an added amount of 1 dB, for the listener’s experienced volume of 54 dB of direct sound and the two side reflections. Ceiling reflection: Steps 1 through 3 One more reflection should be taken into account, that off the ceiling. To perform this calculation, I assume that the synagogue has a flat plastered ceiling four metres high.21 This allows me to use the same computational approach used above in determining the distance side reflection (Step 1), that of two right triangles. However, since the ears of seated listeners are lower than the standing speaker’s mouth, the triangles will not be the same size. The first triangle is between the speaker’s mouth and the ceiling while the second is between the ceiling and the listener’s ear. If I assume that the speaker’s mouth is 1.55 metres above the ground and the listener’s ear is 1.15 metres above the ground, then the calculation for the total reflected distance looks like this:22 C = Square root

((4-1.55) + 2 ) + Square root ((4-1.15) + 2 ) 2

2

2

2

[Equation 10]

The total distance of the ceiling reflection is 6.6 metres, so the reflected sound will arrive well within the 50 milliseconds required for adding (less than eight milliseconds later in fact, Step 2) at the level of 48.6 dB (Step 3). That means there is only 4.4 dB difference between its level and that of the direct sound (53 dB). The factor from the look-​up table (Table 17.1) is 1.3 dB, which makes their combined volume, as perceived by the listener, to be 54.3 dB. Finally, since all the reflections arrive within the 50-​millisecond time frame, they all need to be added together. When we add the level of the direct sound received by the listener to the three different reflections from the two side walls and the ceilings, it becomes clear that the listener will perceive the loudness of the sound they receive from the reader’s voice at the level of 55.3 dB (Table 17.2, as well as summary in Table 17.3).

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Paul V. M. Flesher Table 17.2  Total sound experience of listener 4 metres directly in front of speaker. For this calculation, total sound experience included direct sound of Torah reader’s voice plus first reflections. The latter comprise two side reflections and one ceiling reflection.

Direct sound Side reflection Ceiling reflection

Step 1 Distance (metres)

Step 2 Elapsed time (milliseconds)

Step 3 Sound level (decibels)

4 11.2 6.6

11.7 20.9 7.7

53 44 48.6

Difference

Additive Factor

9 4.4

0.5 1.3

Total loudness

55.3

dB

Table 17.3  Table of direct sound and first reflections for the listeners at the four key locations of Nabratein Synagogue 1a Listener locations

Direct sound Side reflections (2) Ceiling reflections Total loudness

Front

Behind

Sides

Sound Pressure (dB)

Additive Factor (db)

Sound Pressure

Additive Factor

Sound Pressure

Additive Factor

53.0 44.0 48.6

1.0 1.3

46.0 37.4 41.6

1.0 1.3

48.0 42.5 44.7

2.4 1.7

55.3

48.3

52.1

Location 2: the impact of first reflections on the listener behind the Scripture reader For the listener directly behind the Torah reader, the calculations for the reflections off the ceiling and the two side walls are essentially the same as for the listener in front of the reader. The only difference is the starting sound pressure: 58 dB instead of 65 dB. That makes the direct sound pressure only 46 dB when it reaches the listener, following the calculations detailed above. The side reflections each come in at 37.4 dB—​for a difference of 8.6 dB—​which gives each one an additive factor of only 0.5 dB from Table 17.1 and thus a total of 1 dB for the two sides. The ceiling reflection is 41.6 dB, which works out at 4.4 dB difference from the direct sound, for a factor of 1.3 dB. The total loudness as the brain interprets the confluence of these sounds within the 50-​millisecond time frame is 48.3 dB, significantly lower than the voice loudness heard by the listener in front of the speaker (55.3 dB) (Table 17.3).

Location 3: the impact of first reflections on the listeners to each side of the Scripture reader To calculate the reflections from the Scripture reader to the listeners on either side of him, we must again alter the level of the initiating sound source, this time to 62 dB. This number is taken from the head diagram in Figure 17.7. A second change switches the figures for the distances to the walls. This time the listeners are five metres from the reader while the side reflections go only four metres to the wall.

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The ancient synagogue at Nabratein

The side reflections that reach the two listeners located on the Torah reader’s sides actually travel to the north and south walls. This distance (Step 1) is calculated by dividing it into two identical right triangles, with the distance the sound travels equal to the hypotenuse of the two added together. The equation for calculating half the distance the side reflections travel—​one triangle—​is:

(

C = Square root 2.52 + 42

)

[Equation 11]

The sound pressure calculated from this equation is 42.5 dB (Step 3), not quite as short as the ceiling reflection, but still significant. It gives an additive factor of 1.2 dB, for a total of 2.4 dB for the two sides. The ceiling reflection calculation is thus as follows: C = Square root

((4-1.55) + 2.5 ) + Square root ((4-1.15) + 2.5 ) 2

2

2

2

[Equation 12]

This23 results in a distance of 7.3 metres (Step 1) and a sound pressure of 44.7 dB (Step 3). Since this is fairly close to the level of the direct sound at 48 dB the additive factor is 1.7 dB. In the end, the total loudness experienced by the listeners on the two sides is 52.1 dB (Table 17.3).

The acoustic zones of the open-​centre synagogue, Nabratein Synagogue 1a The four locations in the synagogue analysed above represent four zones of acoustic experience within the synagogue. While every location within the synagogue requires its own analysis, those next to each other in an uncluttered and architecturally uniform setting such as this synagogue hall can be seen as exhibiting similar auditory characteristics. This enables us to draw some general conclusions about the loudness at which listeners in different parts of the synagogue hear the voices of the Torah readers and the Targum translators. To see how the measurements in the four listener locations represent all the listeners in an area, look at the diagram of the voice’s sound pressure around the head in Figure 17.7. The head diagram shows that there are essentially four different zones around the head with different sound characteristics. At normal conversational levels, the direct sound that goes out from the mouth, the head’s front, varies within only a single decibel over a forward spread of 120° (between 60° and 300°). This is Zone A. The direct sound level at normal, conversational levels that goes out from a head’s back side is approximately 7 dB less, a feature that is essentially constant over a zone of 90° (135° to 225°). This is Zone B. In between these two zones, on either side, the direct sound lessens significantly as it moves from the front zone towards the rear zone, dropping 6 dB in the process. Each of these two zones—​Zone C and Zone D—​covers 75°. This understanding of the voice’s direct sound identifies four zones of the listeners’ acoustic experience in Nabratein Synagogue 1a. See Figure 17.8, where the synagogue plan is overlaid with lines indicating these four zones. We can characterise the total sound experience of the voice’s direct sound and its first reflections for each. In front of the speaker to the north, Zone A forms the largest zone, 120°; it is a third of the synagogue’s space as measured in degrees. In this area, the full impact of the direct sound of the speaker’s voice takes place. There is no significant lowering of the voice’s sound pressure as it leaves the speaker’s mouth—​that is to say, the variation across this arc is at most a single decibel within four metres from the speaker. Indeed, those sitting closer to the speaker than the analysed 379

Paul V. M. Flesher

location will have a louder first-​reflection experience than the listener locations studied, while those sitting further away—​in the corners, for example—​will have quieter experience, but all locations within this arc will have the total experience based on what is essentially the maximum possible sound level of the speaker’s voice. A quick calculation of the area of this 120° arc reveals this sweet spot consists of 16.7 square metres, and the people sitting within it have the best seats in the house! The listeners located in Zone B on the south side of Synagogue 1a, the 90° area behind the speaker, will have the worst total sound experience. This area constitutes one fourth of the synagogue hall, as measured in degrees. In this zone, the voice’s direct sound begins at a level 7 dB lower than the Zone A—​a significantly lower level. While those positioned closer to the speaker in Zone B than this location will receive more direct sound and have a louder experience—​with the opposite being true for those sitting further away—​none of them will hear a loudness anything similar to those seated in Zone A. This area is smaller than the area going to the loudest area of Zone A; it is 12.6 metres square. Finally, those seated in the two side areas of Zone C and Zone D are in an area with a high degree of variability; indeed, the sound here drops over a range of 6 dB. Zones C and D can be best understood in two parts. Those sitting in the 30° sections next to Zone A—let us identify these sub-​zones as C1 and D1—​will have the better experience, for the direct sound which forms the basis of their total sound experience—​and on which the reflections are added—​drops only 2 dB in this space. In the end, then, the congregation members sitting in the northern half of the synagogue, 90° or less from the speaker’s front on either side, receive a direct sound that begins at 62 dB or more, no more than 3 dB less than directly in front of the speaker (at 0°). Those in the back half of the synagogue on the south side of the 90° lines—​sub-​zones C2 and D2—​will have a sound experience of rapidly decaying loudness, for in this 45° arc the direct sound drops 4 dB. While not as badly off as Zone B, this is a poor area to sit if the highest loudness of the speaker is needed (Figure 17.8). Zone C and Zone D are each 16.4 metres squared, and between them they comprise 32.8 square metres of the hall’s floor area. This is by far the largest area of the synagogue. But the listeners seated in the two parts of these zones have distinctly different experiences. In sub-​zones C1 and D1—​which are 6.5 square metres each—​the level of the speaker’s direct sound drops only 2 dB from Zone A. So, while they are not in the sweet spot, these listeners have the second-​ best sound experience in the hall. The listeners in sub-​zones C2 and D2 are less well off. In their 45° area—​with a square area of 9.2 square metres on each side—​the pressure of the direct sound drops 4 dB. This is so rapid that two people sitting next to each other will have noticeably different total sound experiences. To conclude, it is clear that the front half the synagogue (the front 180° arc) has the best sound experience—​and the closer one can sit to the north the better that experience is—​while the sound experience in the back half of the synagogue (the south 180°) goes from poor to quite poor rather rapidly.

The acoustics of Nabratein Synagogue 1b The interior redesign that resulted in Synagogue 1b changed the arrangement significantly, placing both the congregation and the ritual performers in new locations, even though the building itself did not change size or shape (Figures 17.2 and 17.5). The primary difference is that the Scripture reader and Targum translator were positioned along the south wall of the building in front of all the people; no one sat or stood behind them. They were also raised above the congregation by about one metre on the two bema, giving their voices unobstructed auditory access

380

The ancient synagogue at Nabratein

to the people’s ears. With the ritual performers moved to one end of the building, they are farther away from at least half the congregation than they were in the configuration of Synagogue 1a. Despite this, most of the congregation can hear better in this architectural arrangement than someone in all but the best area of Synagogue 1a, that is to say, Zone A. The larger bema on the western end of the south wall was obviously the home of the Scripture reader, to read from a scroll table there. For analysis’s sake, I posit he stood one metre from the wall behind him and two metres from the western wall. The Targum translator would have taken his place on the eastern bema, similarly placed at two metres from the east wall and one metre from the south wall behind him. In no sense of the term are they “centred.” For this set of analyses, our ideal listeners will sit in front of them two metres from the closest side wall, at distances of four metres and then seven metres. Since the acoustic calculations will be the same for both performers, just mirror opposites, we will examine just the Scripture reader. The remodelling of Synagogue 1b leaves only one comparable listener location between the two synagogues, the position four metres directly in front of the speaker. This listener position in front of the speaker is no longer definitive, however. Rather than marking the furthest location in one direction, four metres is simply a random location in the middle of the congregation. Although I will analyse this position for comparison’s sake, the more telling examination will be of the position seven metres directly in front of the speaker, along the back wall. Another change is that the two side reflections now differ and need separate calculations. In addition, there are at least two new reflections available for the computation of first reflections that were unavailable in the previous configuration. Two reflections significantly enhance the loudness the listener experiences (closest side wall and ceiling), while two contribute only a small amount (furthest side wall and reflection off wall behind speaker).

Listener at four metres Since direct sound changes only with distance, the direct sound of the Scripture reader’s voice at four metres in Synagogue 1b is the same as the direct sound at four metres in Synagogue 1a, namely, 52.9 dB. Moving on to the calculation of first reflections. First, the ceiling reflection in Synagogue 1b is similar to that of Synagogue 1a, with one important difference—​the speaker stands on the bema, one metre above the floor. That alters the height of the speaker’s mouth, leaving it only 1.45 metres from the ceiling and thus shortening the distance the reflected sound needs to travel Table 17.4  Total sound experience for listeners in two locations of Nabratein Synagogue 1b—​4 metres and 7 metres directly in front of reader—​including direct sound of reader’s voice and first reflections Listener locations

Direct sound Ceiling reflection W side reflection E side reflection Wall behind reader Total loudness

4 metres

7 metres

Sound Pressure (dB)

Additive Factor (dB)

52.96 49.5 49.9 40.7 42.4

1.6 1.8 0.2 0.4 57.0

Sound Pressure

Additive Factor

48.1 46.6 46.9 40.2 38.9

2.4 2.5 0.6 0.5 54.1

381

Paul V. M. Flesher

to 5.6 metres. That means the sound level is 49.5 dB—​just 3.5 dB below the voice’s direct sound and earns an additive factor of 1.6 dB (Table 17.4). Second, since the west wall is only two metres away from the axis linking the speaker and the listener, the voice’s reflected sound travels less distance—​just 5.7 metres. The reflection delivers a sound level reading of 49.9 dB, just over three metres less than direct sound, which provides an additive factor of 1.8 dB. Added together, these two reflections bring an additional 3.4 dB of sound to the direct sound received by the listener, raising their sound experience to 56.4 dB, a significant increase. Third, the east wall constitutes another story; it is eight metres away and so the reflection from it has a longer distance to travel and the sound level it contributes is rather low. Indeed, the distance is nearly three times as much, 16.5 metres. Yet despite the distance, it still arrives only 36 milliseconds after the direct sound, still within the 50-​millisecond limit. The sound pressure when it arrives is only 40.7 dB, however, more than 12 dB below that of the direct sound. That gives it a low additive factor of only 0.2 dB. Fourth, the new reflection coming into this situation is that off the wall directly behind the speaker. The voice’s sound goes behind the speaker, bounces off the wall, and then moves out towards the listeners. While this reflection travels a fairly short distance, it starts 7 dB below that going forward from the speaker’s mouth, at only 58 dB. Although it travels only six metres, then, it arrives with a sound pressure of 42.4—​10 dB below that of the voice’s direct sound—​and so acquires an additive factor of just 0.4 dB. To bring all these numbers together, the listener sitting four metres in front of the speaker experiences a sound loudness of 56.9 dB (Table 17.4). Note that this level is nearly 2 dB higher than that experienced by a listener at the same distance and placement in Synagogue 1a (55.3 dB). The difference in first reflections in Synagogue 1b compared to Synagogue 1a significantly enhances this listener’s ability to hear the speaker, as well as those at the same distance or closer.

Listener at seven metres At seven metres of distance, the direct sound of the Scripture reader’s voice drops from 65 dB down to 48.1 dB as it travels straight to the listener. At this greater distance and lower sound level, two of the reflections deliver a sound pressure quite close to that of direct sound and so provide a large boost, but the other two reflections give only a small addition to the total sound received by the listener in first reflections. First, the ceiling reflection is rather strong. Travelling just 1.3 metres further than the direct sound, it delivers 46.6 dB, just 1.5 decibels below that of the direct sound. This earns it an additive factor of 2.4 dB. Given that the highest additive factor is 3 dB—​when the reflection and the direct sound provide the same sound pressure—​this indicates a significant increase in the listener’s experience of the sound’s loudness (Table 17.4). Second, the reflection off the west wall is even more powerful than the ceiling one. Its sound pressure arrives at 46.9 dB, having travelled slightly more than a metre further than the direct sound. At only 1.2 dB less than the voice’s direct sound, it earns an additive factor of 2.5 dB. Third, the opposite wall’s reflection (i.e., the eastern wall) again travels quite far. Here the sound travels 17.46 metres, and can deliver only 40.2 dB, 8 dB below that of the direct sound. Thus, reflection earns an additive factor of only 0.6 dB. Fourth, the reflection off the wall behind the speaker is also low. Although it travels only nine metres, it can deliver only 38.9 dB because it began at 58 dB rather than 65 dB. This last reflection in our analysis gives it just 0.5 added value. 382

The ancient synagogue at Nabratein

In the end, the total reflection at seven metres—​the far wall of the room from the Scripture reader on the bema—​is 54.1 dB. Furthermore, although the loudness is noticeably lower than for the listeners sitting just four metres from the Torah reader, it provides a louder sound experience for nearly all the congregation in Synagogue 1b than the experience of those in Synagogue 1a. Indeed, it is just over a decibel less than the best sound analysed in Synagogue 1a (i.e., 55.3 dB in Zone A), that of the listener just four metres directly in front of the speaker (Table 17.4).

The acoustic character of Nabratein’s pre-​basilical synagogue, Synagogue 1b The ability of listeners in Synagogue 1b to hear the Scripture reader and Targum translator is better than the ability of the congregation in Synagogue 1a to hear the performers because Synagogue 1b eliminated all but the best position in Synagogue 1a, the one in front. Synagogue 1b’s design took away the ability of the congregation to sit on the speaker’s side or behind him. Everyone sits in front of the speakers and benefits from the full direct sound of their voices. Even when we compare Synagogue 1a’s best position (four metres in front of the speaker) with the same location in Synagogue 1b, the latter provides better acoustics, for Synagogue 1b’s listener experiences a loudness of 57 dB, while the listener in Synagogue 1a hears at a loudness of only 55.3 dB—​almost 2 dB difference. Indeed, it is not until a listener moves back a metre and a half, to 5.5 metres, in Synagogue 1b that she or he receives a comparable sound experience to that of four metres in Synagogue 1a: a loudness of 55.2 dB. The second measurement analysed in Synagogue 1b, that at seven metres, also reveals an important result. In that location, the loudness that listeners can experience is 54.1 dB, which is nearly two decibels higher than the two side zones in Synagogue 1a (52.1), and 6 dB higher than the 48.1 dB of the listener behind the speaker. In other words, the worst of the two sampled measurements in Synagogue 1b is better than all but the best sampled measurement in Synagogue 1a, even though it is further from the speakers. Furthermore, that worst sample in Synagogue 1b (54.1 dB at seven metres) is only 1.2 decibels lower than Synagogue 1a’s best sampled measurement (55.3 dB at four metres). Why is this difference so pronounced? The reason is straightforward. Synagogue 1b’s builders designed it to acoustically enhance the speakers’ voices whereas Synagogue 1a had no enhancement for the readers’ voices. First, by placing each speaker near a corner and thus next to two walls in Synagogue 1b, those walls add reflections to increase the total sound energy from the speaker that reaches the listeners. Second, all the listeners are in front of the ritual performers in Synagogue 1b, so they benefit from the voice’s direct sound pressure, both as itself and as the basis for most of the reflections. This is unlike many listeners in Synagogue 1a who are on the speakers’ side or behind. So, Synagogue 1b’s congregation benefits from the highest level of direct sound from the speaker’s mouth, which in turn provides a high acoustic foundation for the first reflections they receive. Third, the speakers’ one-​metre elevation on the bema in Synagogue 1b puts them closer to the ceiling and thus increases the sound power that the ceiling reflection adds to the total sound listeners receive. When we turn to the question of zones, the acoustic situation with Synagogue 1b is quite different (Figure 17.9) from that of Synagogue 1a. The architectural redesign of the interior—​ with the elimination of people to the side and rear of the ritual performers—​removes listeners from the areas where the sound emanating from the speaker’s head is the lowest; Synagogue 1b’s design eliminates what would be the equivalent to the back half of Synagogue 1a. Most of the area of Synagogue 1b equates to its Zone A, while the rest is equivalent to sub-​zones C1 and its 383

Paul V. M. Flesher

Figure 17.9  Synagogue 1b, with arcs indicating 4 metres, 5.5 metres, and 7 metres from Torah reader. Sound Zone A and Sound Zone C1 are indicated; no other zones are relevant.

parallel space D1. That means all of the listeners are in front of either the Scripture reader or the Targum translator. Indeed, for one or other of the two ritual performers—​the Scripture reader and the Targum translator—​everyone in the congregation is within the 120° arc that defines the best area for the voice’s direct sound. To put it another way, everyone sits in the front 180° for both speakers. That is, none of the listeners are in a location where the direct sound pressure emanating from the speaker’s head towards them drops more than 3 dB, for the speech of either performer. Two comparisons of Synagogue 1b with Synagogue 1a’s Zone A are revealing. First, as we saw above, the listener’s total sound experience at four metres from the reader or translator in Synagogue 1b is almost two decibels louder than the comparable listener in Synagogue 1a (57.0 dB vs. 55.3 dB). However, the area in front of each speaker is smaller, because the side wall eliminates some of the 120° arc; the area is only 12.4 square metres as opposed Synagogue 1a’s 16.8 square metres. Second, moving Ruth, our imagined listener, back from Synagogue 1b’s speaker to find a loudness level similar to that of the four-​metre listener in Synagogue 1a, it is not until the 5.5-​metre distance from the speaker that the sound experience drops to a near parity, at 55.2 dB. The area covered by the 120° (and fits into the synagogue space) is 23 square metres. This is more than six square metres larger than Zone A in Synagogue 1a, which is just 16.7 square metres. So, there is a 25 per cent larger space in Synagogue 1b that is as good or better than the area in Synagogue 1a with the same sound experience of first reflections. The seven-​metre arc drawn in Figure 17.9 indicates the area where the analysis of a listener sitting seven metres in front of the Torah reader or Targum translator is representative. The loudness of that total first-​reflection listening experience is 54.1 dB, not quite 1 dB lower than the 55.3 dB experience of the best of the four measurements for Synagogue 1a and significantly 384

The ancient synagogue at Nabratein

higher than the other three measurements for Synagogue 1a. Just how much better? Let’s do one more calculation to find out. The figures for the first-​reflection experience of the two listeners on the side walls of Synagogue 1a are centred in Zones C and D. That is, they indicate the dividing line between sub-​zones C1 and D1 on the one hand and on the other, sub-​zones C2 and D2. It would tell us more about the acoustic improvement of Synagogue 1b if we knew the first-​reflection experience of a listener at the dividing lines between Zone A and Zones C and D (60° and 300°). We can quickly approximate that total loudness experienced there by the listeners. Assuming a decibel level of exactly 64 dB, one decibel below the exact front of the speaker, the total loudness to a speaker at that location (four metres out) would be about 53.9 dB, just slightly under that of the seven-​metre experience of the listeners in Synagogue 1b (at 54.1 dB). This means that anyone within the seven-​metre zone from either ritual performer in Synagogue 1b will have a better total sound experience than two-​thirds of the listeners in Synagogue 1a (i.e., those outside the front 120° of Zone A). Moreover, the size of the space within the seven-​metre zone of Synagogue 1b is quite large. The listeners in 36.7 square metres of the seating area of this synagogue have a superior first-​reflection sound experience to the listeners in two-​thirds of the space in Synagogue 1a. And indeed, this sound experience is only 1 dB below the best four-​ metre sound experience of Synagogue 1a. So, there is a significant improvement in the design of Synagogue 1b over that of Synagogue 1a.

Conclusion: from the open-​centre synagogue to the basilica synagogue In the middle of the third century CE , the citizens of Nabratein knocked out the synagogue’s back wall and extended the building another four metres, creating a synagogue with the classic basilica shape, that of the so-​called “Galilean Synagogue.” The excavators termed this structure “Synagogue 2.”The building’s interior now measured roughly 10 metres by 12 metres. The floor and the bemas were raised somewhat higher, but otherwise the southern area of synagogue kept the same architectural layout. The south door and the two bemas on either side remained in the same location. In other words, a full acoustic analysis of Synagogue 2 would show an extension of the acoustic character of Synagogue 1b. A single measurement in Synagogue 2 illustrates this. If our listener Ruth sat in Synagogue 2 along the back wall, a full 10 metres in front of the Scripture reader, she would hear him at 52.1 dB (combining direct sound and first reflections). This is the same sound experience of a listener sitting in Synagogue 1a at the side of the reader (90°), a location that marks the halfway line of the earlier synagogue in terms of acoustic quality. To the north of that line, the people sitting in the northern half of the synagogue—​an area of four metres by five metres, or 20 square metres—​heard as well or better than 52.1 dB, while those in the half of the synagogue south of that line—​also 20 square metres—​had a poorer listening experience. In Synagogue 2, the listener with the total sound experience of 52.1 dB sits not four metres from the Torah reader, but ten metres away. This means that the people sitting in the synagogue’s area closer than ten metres to the speaker had a total sound experience as good or better than him. This area is approximately 65 square metres (Zone A), more than three times the size of the area in Synagogue 1a—​and thus contains approximately three times the number of people who have this total sound experience or better. In the end, the decision to abandon Nabratein’s open-​centre plan with its centrally located ritual performers—​that of Synagogue 1a—​and instead move the performers to one end of the synagogue hall and close to the side rather than centred—​as in Synagogue 1b and Synagogue 2—​improved the total sound experience for a large number of the congregation. The initial 385

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change as seen in Nabratein Synagogue 1b was strong, but the acoustic importance became even more apparent as the building was transformed into a larger basilica.

Afterword This chapter has taken a proof-​of-​concept approach to the acoustic study of the Nabratein synagogue with the aim of showing three points. First, the Nabratein synagogue, like many excavated ancient synagogues in Galilee, provides sufficient information about the hall’s design to enable acoustic studies to be carried out. Second, the design of these synagogue halls, as they were constructed, owed a great deal to acoustic considerations—​perhaps as much if not more than they owed to visual, aesthetic expectations. Third, the basilica design of ancient Galilean synagogue halls (and the pre-​basilica design) was acoustically quite superior to the open-​centre design. This study of the Nabratein synagogue was necessarily simplified; it did not aim to provide a complete reconstruction of all the sound phenomena experienced by the audience. As I made clear above, no attempt was made to study reverberation, even though it comprised a significant amount of the aural experience of listeners. Nor did I raise the issue of intelligibility—​the ability of listeners to understand what was said. In the small size of Synagogue 1, this was not really an issue, but as the congregation enlarged it to Synagogue 2 and then into the even larger Synagogue 3, this measurement would have revealed much about the listeners’ worship experience. These questions warrant study. This chapter’s simplified approach left out consideration of many of the architectural and decorative aspects that were or might have been part of the synagogue. Many of these would not have affected a first-reflections analysis, but would require decisions for a reverberation study. Take doors and windows, for instance. The archaeology reveals the number of doors, as well as their locations and width, but how tall were they? What were they made of ? Did Scripture reading take place with them open or closed? Windows are a completely different matter. The excavated remains of Nabratein’s walls are not high enough to indicate the number, size or type of windows in the walls. Where were they located? Where there any at all? The Nabratein synagogue is not well-​enough preserved to answer those questions, but the excavations of the Gamla and Bar ’Am synagogues uncovered evidence of windows. Reverberation studies would need to make determinations about these and other aspects because the sound movement of reverberation takes place on all surfaces in a room. The analyst must take into account the absorptive and reflective character of every surface material. That means that floors and their coverings need to be considered. And perhaps the walls had tapestries hung on them. What about the worshippers themselves? Both people and clothing absorb and reflect a significant amount of sound. A full reconstruction of a synagogue hall’s acoustic character needs to take these factors into account (see also Chapters 10 and 16, this volume). Finally, columns cause complications in Galilean synagogue halls, acoustically as well as visually. Sight of course happens only in a direct line. If our listener Ruth sits with a pillar between her and the speaker, she will not see the speaker, obviously. Sound is not so limited. Ruth will not hear the direct sound of a Scripture reader’s voice, but she will hear both the first reflections and the reverberation produced by the reader’s voice. Being behind a column may lower the loudness that Ruth experiences and may interfere with the spoken words’ intelligibility, but she still takes part in the aural experience of worship even though she misses its visual character. Studying the acoustic impact of column design is also an important desideratum. A column with a simple rounded surface distributes reflections in a standard pattern, similar to any other circular object. A fluted column by contrast breaks up the sound waves that strike it, reflecting 386

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them outwards in myriad directions, concentrating and crossing them as they contribute to the hall’s sound experience. This is especially true for higher frequencies. Does this improve or hinder sound pressure levels and/​or intelligibility of the spoken words? When we examine the excavation reports from different Galilean synagogues, their preservation levels clearly differ. At Nabratein, the hall is preserved only for a few courses above the floor. At Gamla, by contrast, four of the synagogue’s six sides are well preserved; only the south wall and the ceiling are missing. The excavations of the Khirbet Shema synagogue unearthed a well-​ preserved western end but much of the eastern end had fallen down the hill. Different levels of physical preservation enable different acoustic analyses, each of which can teach us something different about the liturgical experience in these ancient synagogues and how architects altered the design of Galilean synagogue halls over the centuries to improve the listening experience of the worshipping congregation.

Notes 1. For the characteristics of the basilica, broadhouse, and basilica with an apse, see Urman and Flesher 1995: xxv–​xxix; Foerster 1995. I have coined the term open-​centre synagogue to refer to synagogues like those at Gamla and Masada. 2. After being destroyed by the earthquake of 306 CE , the Khirbet Shema synagogue was rebuilt on an open-​centre plan (Meyers et al. 1976: 64–​81, especially 71–​73). In Synagogue 2, the excavators found a hall built on an open-​centre plan. The report unfortunately attempts to populate the hall’s interior with materials not found there in order to make it conform to a broadhouse configuration. 3. Public prayer is often mentioned in this context, but evidence from first-​and second-​century CE texts does not place public recitation of the Shema or the Amidah in the synagogue nor does it limit expectations for public prayer to Shabbat. 4. Josephus, Against Apion, 1:175 (Josephus 1926); Philo, Hypothetica 7:12–​14 (Philo 1941), as well as his discussion of the Essenes in Every Good Man is Free, 81–​83 (Philo 1941). See also the Letter of Aristeas (Shutt 1985) which portrays the translators of the Septuagint as learned men who publicly demonstrate their wisdom to Ptolemy Philadelphus at a welcoming banquet. 5. See Flesher and Chilton 2011: 285–​297, which analyses the rite presented in the Mishnah as well as in the later Tosefta, Palestinian Talmud and Babylonian Talmud; see also 5–​7. 6. Translation Flesher, based on Flesher and Chilton 2011: 287. 7. Two passages indicate that hearing the Hebrew text alone is enough for a listener to fulfil their obligation to hear the book of Esther read on Purim, even if a person does not understand Hebrew: Mishnah Megillah 2:1 and Tosefta Megillah 2:6. In both passages, however, the preferred approach is for listeners to hear Esther in their own language. 8. Of course, it does not require that interpretation. The second bema might have provided a stage for the performance of the translation from memory. 9. Given this chapter’s focus on Nabratein Synagogue 1, I should note that Jodi Magness (2010) critiqued the final report in a manner that completely eliminated Synagogue 1. The response by Meyers and Meyers (2010) addresses her reinterpretation satisfactorily. 10. This is particularly clear with regard to the Megillah (Esther). See Flesher and Chilton 2011: 297–​302. Comments about Scripture and Targum reading across rabbinic literature emphasise the importance of hearing the reading of Scripture. I know of no passage even suggesting that seeing Scripture read is important. 11. Exterior dimensions are given in Meyers and Meyers 2009: 30. The interior dimensions come from Spigel 2012: 92, 285. Doron Chen’s interior dimensions (10.10 metres by 7.58 metres) contain a typo (Chen 1990: 524). 12. The elevation of the bema also overcame the problem of grazing attenuation, which interferes with people’s ability to hear when the sound source is at an elevation close to people’s ears, as when a speaker stands on the same floor as the listeners. 13. For an analysis of reverberation in a synagogue, see my study of the Gamla synagogue currently in process, “The Acoustic Experience of Scripture Reading in the First-​Century Gamla Synagogue.”

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14. The correct terms for the physical character of sound colloquially known as loudness in acoustic science are “sound pressure” and “sound level.” The terms “loudness” and “volume” refer to the human experience of sound. The human ear often interprets sound in ways that do not reflect the characteristics of sound as defined by physics (Everest and Pohlmann 2015: 1; Howard and Angus 2017: 92–​95). This difference enables the experience of “first reflections.” 15. In this study, r1 will always be one metre from the speaker’s head. 16. The sound map in Figure 17.7 charts how a voice’s sound pressure changes as measured in a circle around a head. The drop in decibels results from the skull’s interference. The Relative Level key to the circular graph’s left identifies the drop in pressure indicated by the circles drawn on the diagram. If the reader or translator speaks at 65 dB (Normal) directly in front of them (0°), their voice level remains 65 dB some 30° to either side of that line (30° and 330°). At 60° from the 0° line, the sound level drops to 64 dB, and then to 62 dB at 90° (90° and 270°). It finally crosses the –​4 dB line at 110° and then by about 135° drops 7 dB to 58 dB and remains there to about 225°. So, in front of the speaker there are 120 degrees where the direct sound is essentially at the peak level (decaying less than 1 dB). Behind the speaker there is an area in a 90° arc (135° to 225°) where the sound pressure is at its lowest, 7 dB below the peak. 17. To keep this chapter’s demonstration brief, I will limit the investigation to these reflections. The speaker’s voice will of course bounce off the floor and off other objects in the room, including people. People are highly absorbent of sound waves. The same is true of a floor covered with carpets, as this one most likely was during the time the synagogue was in use. While these reflections certainly added to the total sound that each listener experienced, leaving them out in this simplified analysis will not alter the conclusion of this chapter’s analysis significantly. 18. The hall’s interior walls would have been covered in plaster, probably sealed with paint or whitewash. Since the excavators found no evidence concerning the room’s ceiling, this simplified study will assume a flat plastered ceiling. Standard tables of absorption coefficients indicate that painted plaster has an absorption coefficient no higher than 0.02 (Howard and Murphy 2008: 79). This means that it reflects 98 per cent or more of the sound that comes into contact with it. For standard tables of absorption coefficients, see Knudson and Harris 1978: 355–​377; as well as Everest and Pohlmann 2015: 593–​594. Versions of these tables can also be found on the internet, as at: http://​heyizhou.net/​ notes/​absorption-​coefficients (sampled 11/​1/​2020). For the purposes of this chapter’s exploration, the absorption coefficients are close enough to complete reflectivity that we will leave the coefficients out of our calculations, for simplicity’s sake. Painted plaster is one of the few materials with a consistent absorption rate across male and female vocal ranges. 19. Actually, the speed of sound varies slightly based on temperature and the density of the medium through which it travels (air versus water versus stone). But this variation is so slight that we use the standard constant for this speed. 20. To use the look-​up table, subtract the lower dB number from the larger and use that result to look up a factor that represents a decibel increase can be added to the higher dB number. I use the table from Peterson and Gross 1972. Note that a doubling of the sound pressure constitutes an increase of 3 dB. 21. This is a reasonable assumption. The ceiling of the Gamla synagogue was at least five metres high, but it is a much larger building. We could also assume a pitched roof with a pitched interior ceiling—​perhaps made of wood. The acoustic impact of such a reconstruction can be calculated, but it would add nothing to this chapter’s goal, which is simply to show the different impacts of open-​centre synagogue and a synagogue that places its performers on a side. 22. Note that two metres is half the distance between the speaker and the listener directly in front of him. 23. Note that 2.5 metres is half the distance between the speaker and the listeners to the sides (at 90°).

Bibliography Chen, D. 1990. “On Planning of Synagogues and Churches in Palaestina: A Comparison with Syria and Illyricum,” in G. C. Bottini, L. Di Segni, and E. Alliata, eds., Christian Archaeology in the Holy Land: New Discoveries. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 523–​533. Everest, F. A., and K. D. Pohlmann. 2015. Master Handbook of Acoustics. Sixth Edition. New York: McGraw-​Hill. Flesher, P. V. M., and B. Chilton. 2011. The Targums: A Critical Introduction. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

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Foerster, G. 1995. “Dating Synagogues with a ‘Basilical’ Plan and an Apse,” in D. Urman and P. V. M. Flesher, eds., Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Volume 1. Leiden: Brill, 87–​94. Howard, D. M., and J. A. S. Angus. 2017. Acoustics and Psychoacoustics. Fifth Edition. New York: Routledge. Howard, D. M., and D. T. Murphy. 2008. Voice Science, Acoustics and Recording. Oxford: Plural Publishing. Josephus. 1926. The Life. Against Apion. Trans. H. St. J. Thackeray. LCL 186. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Knudsen, V. O., and C. M. Harris. 1978. Acoustical Designing in Architecture. Acoustical Society of America. Magness, J. 2010. “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein.” BASOR 358: 61–​68. Meyers, E. M., A. T. Kraabel, and J. F. Strange. 1976. Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema‘, Upper Galilee, Israel 1970–​1972. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Meyers, E. M., and C. L. Meyers. 2010. “Response to Jodi Magness’ Review of the Final Publication of Nabratein.” BASOR 359: 366–​376. Meyers, E. M., and C. L. Meyers. 2009. Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Peterson, A. P. G., and E. E. Gross, eds. 1972. Handbook of Noise Measurement. Seventh Edition. Concord, MA: General Radio. Philo. 1941. Every Good Man is Free. On the Contemplative Life. On the Eternity of the World. Against Flaccus. Apology for the Jews. On Providence. Trans. F. H. Colson. LCL 363. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shutt, R. J. H. 1985. “Letter of Aristeas,” in J. H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 2. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 7–​34. Spigel, C. S. 2012. Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Urman, D., and P. V. M. Flesher, eds. 1995. Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis & Archaeological Discovery. Volume 1. Leiden: Brill. Warnock, A. C. C., W. T. Chu, and J.-​C. Guy. 2002. “Directivity of Human Talkers.” Canadian Acoustics 30 (3): 36–​37.

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Part IV

Death and burial

18 Sensing the ancestors The importance of senses in constructing ancestorship in the ancient Near East Nicola Laneri

Introduction More than 100 years ago, Émile Durkheim (1995: 60–​61) stated that “there is an ancestor cult only if sacrifices are made on the tombs from time to time, if libations are poured there more or less frequently, or if regular feasts are celebrated in honor of the dead person,” and, additionally, “the real ancestors must become the object of a cult after they die” (i.e., they acquire a divine role within the world of the living). Following the words of the father of modern sociology, it is possible to state that the cult of the ancestors is a pivotal element in framing the religiosity of a society as well as in constructing social solidarity among the members of communities. Since then, the interpretation of the cult of the ancestors in ancient and ethnographically known societies has been increasingly applied in order to search for the “universality of ancestor worship” in framing human religiosity (Steadman et al. 1996). Within this epistemological framework, a necessary semantic distinction must be affirmed between “worship” (e.g., linked strictu sensu with the religious dimension and the beliefs of a given society) and a “cult” (i.e., linked to ritual practices associated with the remembrance of selected dead) of the ancestors (Insoll 2011: 1043). In the field of archaeology, research directed towards identifying ancestor worship and cult has intensified over the last decades because archaeological research can now more easily identify traces of ancient ritual practices enacted near tombs or ancestral shrines thanks, for example, to the use of scientific analysis that can support the identification of chemical residues of foodstuff in vessels; these data, combined with the support of the available written texts, can now lead scholars towards a clear interpretation of the role played by ancestors in ancient religious beliefs. The increasing interest in this type of research has stimulated the production of numerous studies (see Antonaccio 1995; Barrett 1988; Fowler 1996; Insoll 2011; Jonker 1995; Liu 1999; McAnany 1995; Morris 1991) that, in certain cases, have overemphasised the role of the ancestors among ancient communities without clarifying when we are entitled to affirm the existence of the cult of the ancestors in archaeological contexts. It is for this reason that James Whitley (2002: 119) stated that “there are too many ancestors in contemporary archaeological investigation, and they are being asked to do too much.” Although this statement is correctly posed and has rightly

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-19

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criticised a recent trend in archaeology, we cannot reduce the active role played by ancestors in framing the social organisation of ancient societies. In addition, historical sources are clearly informing us on the existence of such cults and, consequently, scholars interested in the interpretation of ancient societies should fine-​tune research strategies in order to more clearly define traces of the cult of the ancestors among ancient communities. Thus, the question arising from these premises is the following: can we reliably define the cult of the ancestors using archaeological data even when historical sources are not at our disposal? Antonaccio’s study (1995) on tomb cult and hero cult in early Greece (c. 1100–​600 BCE ) is probably the most coherent work on such a subject, and she correctly relates ancestor cult with the “genealogical memory” of a given community (e.g., three-​to-​four generation family memory [Antonaccio 1995: 264–​265]). Another pivotal point emerging from her study is the importance given to the relation between the remains of ritual actions found within the funerary contexts (e.g., objects for libation, presence of votive objects, etc.) and the active remembrance of the ancestors as indicators of a religious cult (1995: 245–​268). Thus, the creation of the tomb as a locale of ancestral worship can be fundamental in organising the social dynamics (e.g., lineage descent, inheritance strategies, and access to economic resources) of a given society because the power of the dead can be very effective when the social organisation engages in a transformational process (see also Chapter 6, this volume). With this perspective, the social control over the funerary dimension is a precious source of ideological power for any ancient elite (D’Agostino and Schnapp 1982), and it is within this branch of archaeological research that most of the recent studies in the archaeology of death have been directed (e.g., Laneri 2007a). The importance of the social dimension of ancestor cults is clearly stated in McAnany’s pivotal study (1995) that focused on the analysis of ancient Maya societies. Following the seminal study of ancestors in modern African societies (see Bloch 1994; Fortes 1987; Goody 1962), the author affirms that “ancestor veneration is a potent ritual through which lineage membership [to the kin group] is expressed” (McAnany 1995: 15), and is recognisable through a detailed analysis of the remains of ritual practices surrounding the burial and the commemoration of selected deceased (McAnany 2010). Following these theoretical premises, the materiality of ritual activities in the burial locale can thus help archaeologists gain possible insights into the cult of the ancestors among ancient societies. Obviously, the corresponding presence of written sources can be used to further confirm the presence of ancestor cults among a given ancient society. However, archaeologists can also be faced with the difficult task of defining ancestor veneration through archaeological remains of ancient funerary practices even when written sources are not available. For example, Li Liu (1999: 602) made such an attempt in her analyses of Neolithic Chinese societies; according to Liu, “ancestor veneration is a process of ritual that can be reconstructed by analyzing archaeological material remains showing a non-​random pattern of use and discard offering insights into the nature of the ritual itself.” Based on this premise, Liu (1999: 602–​603) defined four types of rituals associated with ancestor veneration: (a) group-​ancestor worship; (b) female excluded from group-​ancestor worship; (c) ancestral veneration of individuals (within a family); and (d) ancestor veneration of individual family members and higher divine figures. However, scholars should keep in mind the complexity of the term “ancestral veneration” as part of a cognitive process that establishes “primitive” forms of religious experiences. Because, as pointed out by Mithen (2004: 34–​35), certain types of ancestor cults (e.g., those linked to the physical remains of the dead) appear to have been embedded “in episodic and emotive memories” and are to be executed on a familial basis (i.e., genealogical memories); whereas, as mentioned before, a proper “ancestor worship” is part of a more complex system of religiosity

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that is not necessarily linked to the locale in which selected dead individuals are disposed, but more often is embedded in dogmatic forms of relationships with the numinous. The transformation of the system of ancestral veneration among ancient societies (i.e., from the cult of the dead to the veneration of a divine figure) complicates the archaeologist’s task of defining ancestral veneration using solely the archaeological record. In numerous ancient societies, scholars encounter ancestral figures that transcend the traditional role of ancestors in the “collective memory” of a given community and instead play a fundamental role in defining the “historical memory” and the religiosity of the whole society. For example, it is through the creation of sanctuaries dedicated to the “cult of heroic figures” that social structure is given to ancient Greek societies (Antonaccio 1995). Such a differentiation between types of mnemonic transmission among groups of people has already been envisioned by Jan Assmann (2006: 48–​56) when he distinguished between a “cultural” (i.e., historical) and a “communicative” (i.e., collective) kind of memory. The second type is a form of memory that was established and passed on within generations of families through the use of oral anecdotes and other forms of social interactions (Jonker 1995: 188). It is within this act of remembrance that ancestors came to play a pre-​eminent role in the religious dimension of the family. Along these lines, the literature at our disposal clearly defines two types of ritual practices associated with ancestor cults and veneration: • •

one enacted at the tomb where the physical remains of dead ancestor are located one at a shrine (that can also be an open space or a private chapel in a dwelling) dedicated to memorialising the ancestors through their cult

This dichotomy in the types of ritual practices associated with ancestral veneration among ancient societies leads to several challenges for interested archaeologists: where must we investigate to correctly identify the cult of the ancestors from the archaeological remains? How do we define ancestor cults as different from the cult of the dead and ancestral worship? What elements should we take into account to identify relics of ancient ritual practices associated with ancestor cults? Answers to these questions can be found by bringing together archaeological data, historical sources, and human, faunal, and botanical remains, which can further elucidate the role played by ancestor cults in framing the collective memory of a given society both at an “episodic” (i.e., emotional) and “semantic” (i.e., “mental representations of a general, propositional nature” [Whitehouse 2000: 5]) level. In particular, in order to distinguish between a regular cult of the dead and forms of ancestor cult we should also take into consideration those elements in the archaeological record that can be considered as signs of the ancestor cult, as is the case, for example, for: the selection of the deceased and/​or of their body parts (typical sign of ancestor veneration); the constant and visible connection between the funerary depositions and the daily life activities (as is the case for residential graves or chapels/​shrines directly connected to the locale of burials); the smell of the decaying body that will then turn into a pile of bones; as well as the presence of relics associated with post-​funeral libations at the entrance to the grave (such as vessels, palaeobotanical and faunal remains). Written documents informing us about the practice of ancestor cults, when available, can obviously be a fundamental support in solving the conundrum. Viewed using such an holistic perspective, it is clear that human senses played a fundamental role in constructing the social memory of ancestors within the community of the living, because, as proposed by Melissa Cradic (2018: 199), “interaction with the dead after burial represented

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one way in which the existence of the deceased could be prolonged after biological death.” This kind of interaction was experienced through sensing the body of the departed by touching the human remains and smelling the process of biological decomposition, as well as tasting the offerings during postmortem rituals and hearing the lamentations of the mourners, and, obviously, viewing the long-​lasting physical testimony of the deceased’s presence within the community through the construction of a grave or stele. Thus, through sensory experience the memory of the ancestors is materially engraved in the life of the members of a given community, especially in ancient times.

Senses and the cult of the ancestors in the ancient Near East Such sensorial elements related to ancestorship are clearly recognisable in the traditions of ancient Near Eastern communities, among which the role of the ancestors played a fundamental role in framing the cognitive schemata of the involved community members. In fact, ancestor cults have been embedded in the tradition of ancient Near Eastern societies since prehistoric times, as is evident by “the physical and symbolic manipulation of human skulls” (i.e., the removal, caching, deformation, and, in some cases, decoration of the skull) (Verhoeven 2011: 802) that is part of the so-​called “skull cult,” a ceremonial practice that started during the Natufian period (c. 12,500–​9500 BCE ) and was enacted until the Late Neolithic (c. 6200 BCE ) from the Levant all the way to southeastern and central Anatolia. One of the first steps in defining a link between funerary customs and religious beliefs is clearly related to how, within a given community, the cult of the dead was transformed into a cult of selected deceased, otherwise known as the cult of the ancestors. The idea that the spirit of a family member continues to live beyond death is a defining factor of ancestor worship in the ancient Near East, and this belief explains the need for humans to have an ongoing relationship with the dead through funerary feasts, prayers, and offerings. In this way, the physical death of the deceased does not imply a rupture of the relationship between the living and the deceased, but rather becomes an opportunity to reinforce family ties through a series of reciprocal obligations.

The power of touch: fragmentation, manipulation, and decoration of the human body as a proxy for ancestral veneration Since prehistoric times, the manipulation of human skulls illustrates that ancestral cults were deeply embedded in the traditions of ancient Near Eastern societies, through actions ranging from the removal of skulls from corpses, to their caching, deformation, and, in some cases, decoration (Verhoeven 2011). This tradition was part of the so-​called “skull cult,” a ceremonial practice that started during the Natufian period and was enacted until the Late Neolithic from the Levant all the way to southeastern and central Anatolia. Even though the manipulation of the human body is evidenced since the Late Natufian period, it is particularly during the Pre-​Pottery Neolithic (PPN, c. 9500–​7000 BCE ) that the custom of decapitating selected deceased and using these skulls, either a single skull or caches of skulls, becomes common among groups that were slowly transitioning from a nomadic to a more sedentary lifestyle. This is especially the case in the Levant during the Pre-​Pottery Neolithic B, when plastered skulls were found in caches either buried in pits at the end of their life-​history, such as those found at Jericho, ‘Ain-​Ghazal, Beisomoun, and Kfar HaHoresh in the southern Levant, or displayed above ground, as in the case of the four plastered skulls discovered at Tell Aswad in western Syria (Kujit 2008; Verhoeven 2011). According to Croucher (2012: 303), 396

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“plastered skulls were intended to be displayed rather than kept permanently hidden or stored” and were used as part of religious cults (probably associated with the memory of the ancestors) in ceremonial practices that served to connect ties among early agricultural communities in a transforming (and probably stressful) social and cultural environment. In this process, the body (or part of it) was reused after its initial burial in graves both intramurally (the highest number of cases) and extramurally, constituting a form of construction of social memories of the ancestors through the circulation of body parts of the selected individuals. Thus, as mentioned by Kujit (2008: 183), “Neolithic secondary mortuary practices are a form of bodily recirculation.” In so doing, this process of selecting body parts allowed for the memory of particular deceased individuals to be reintroduced into the daily life of the other community members. Within this framework, the physical contact with the material remains of the ancestors helped the PPN communities of southeastern Anatolia in defining an overarching form of religiosity that, through a complex material network, entangled their spirits, through for example the deposition of human remains in buildings, as seen with the skull building at Çayönü, with an already existing devotion to spirits embedded in natural phenomena, as recognisable in the natural stone enclosures with special ritual purposes, such as the case of Göbekli Tepe (see also Chapter 12, this volume). In Anatolia, the importance of displaying and touching decorated skulls in ritualised contexts is also evidenced in later Neolithic contexts (c. 7000–​6200 BCE ), as is demonstrated by the recently discovered skull of an adult male, plastered and decorated with red ochre, that was found in an intramural tomb excavated at Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia and buried in the arms of a woman deposited in a pit that was part of the foundation of the house. The numerous layers of plaster and red paint that covered the skull led Hodder (2006: 149) to suggest that the plastered skull was circulated prior to its final burial. The skull has been interpreted as the head of a person of prestige status (e.g., a sort of shaman) that was displayed and buried in this particular manner, within the foundation of a new house, as a means of creating genealogies for the people inhabiting the house. Such examples illustrate that the fragmentation of the body served the purpose of embodying the memory of the dead among the living and strengthening the relationship between ancestors and the community of the living. In this way, the body could be transformed into an object useful for materialising the memory of ancestors among the society of the living. This aspect of the cult of the ancestors associated with the process of fragmenting the body of the dead ancestors can be seen in other archaeological contexts in which the display and use of body relics were important elements for constructing community identities in the ancient Near East.1 In fact, as pointed out by Cradic (2017: 224–​225), with regards to the second millennium BCE funerary practices at the Levantine site of Megiddo, “dismemberment facilitated the transformation of the deceased from a whole, corporeal person with an individual name and biography into a fragmented, non-​corporeal, nameless ancestor with a shared biography that was, in a sense, crowd-​sourced.” In general, the touching of parts (and especially of the skull) of the human skeleton was a fundamental process in entangling the community with a mnemonic reference to the dead ancestors. This was especially necessary in moments of dramatic transformation as is the case of the Neolithic period when changes in subsistence strategies affected social structures of Near Eastern communities. In particular, the fragmentation and display of parts of the body in public might have occurred to emphasise commonality versus individual personhood when cooperation was needed or in instances of radical transformation of the social and economic organisation that could have increased the level of stress among the community’s members. 397

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Don’t open that door! Residential graves as locales for creating a visual reference for the cult of the ancestors Beginning in the third millennium BCE graves that were visible within the natural (i.e., extramural cemeteries) as well as urban landscapes started to become common among Near Eastern communities. In particular, the presence and visibility of residential graves in both Mesopotamian palatial and non-​ elite private dwellings characterised ancient Mesopotamian communities throughout their history. In addition, information in the available textual sources regarding how the cult of the ancestors was practised demonstrates that, between the third and first millennia BCE , the ancestors assumed a pre-​eminent role as active agents in supporting the political and economic decisions made by the living (e.g., the kispu ritual of the second and first millennia BCE , discussed below). It is within this context that, for example, the statement “the dead as communicators of memory within the family circle” (Jonker 1995: 187) accurately captures the role of family ancestors among Old Babylonian societies during the early second millennium BCE .2 During this period, selected ancestors were brought inside the house and placed in crypts, presenting a clear and visible sign of their presence within the community of the living that was recognisable throughout all of the daily activities, through the creation, for example, of tombstones on the floor. In fact, archaeologists have uncovered residential graves in southern Mesopotamia that date back to the Early Dynastic period (beginning of the third millennium BCE ) that are embedded in private architecture (Algaze 1983–​1984) and, in some cases (for example, at Abu Salabikh; Postgate 1980: 75), relics of ritual activities associated with an underground tomb found on the floor. Starting from the late third and early second millennia BCE , funerary crypts embedded (and planned) within the dwellings became a custom used by elite families for establishing familial ancestor cults. This is the case, for example, for the northern Mesopotamian site of Titriş Höyük, where, during the late Early Bronze Age (c. 2400–​2100 BCE ), residential graves were ubiquitously associated with private dwellings, which were built as part of newly developed urban planning practices that enhanced the social visibility of emerging elite private families (Laneri 2007b; Nishimura 2015). These graves were used to bury selected deceased. This custom represents a shift in the funerary tradition of the communities inhabiting these settlements as compared to the previous period (middle Early Bronze Age, c. 2700–​2400 BCE ), which is characterised by extramural funerary depositions. In addition to this, some of the residential funerary chambers of the late Early Bronze Age are also marked by signs of ritual libations performed after the closing of the graves, as is evidenced in the disposal of cachets of vessels and associated faunal remains at the entrance-​dromos to the grave. Such a transformation in funerary customs was part of a more general transformation in the urban and social fabric at this site during the last quarter of the third millennium BCE that was brought about as “a consequence of radical changes in the economic subsistence of northern Mesopotamian societies with an intensive use of Mediterranean polyculture (i.e., cultivation of olives and grapes) and the increase of long-​distance trade in commodities typical of the late-​third and early second millennium” (Laneri 2018: 231). In another venue I have focused my attention on the socio-​economic role played by residential graves in structuring the social organisation of emerging elite families (i.e., merchants and entrepreneurs) within the Mesopotamian societal landscape (Laneri 2010). However, the main issue emerging from these graves and confirmed by textual evidence is the role of the ancestors (and their cult) in a changing society. It is within this social context that, paraphrasing Jonker’s words (1995: 187), the ancestors became a means of communication for the collective memory and the tradition of the family “within the family circle.” Such a mnemonic force is reinforced 398

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by the act of reviving the ancestors during the performance of the kispu ritual at given calendrical dates, a ritual that aimed at venerating, nourishing, and caring for the family ancestors (see further below). This element is easily recognisable in the relics of food offerings and libations left behind at the entrances to the graves. Such a continuous act of remembrance can also be identified as part of rituals of religious worship in the “private chapels” associated with the graves discovered at Ur during the early second millennium BCE . The custom of constructing funerary crypts and residential graves within private dwellings became a more distinctive marker of ancient Near Eastern societies during the second millennium BCE as is demonstrated by their presence in numerous settlements in ancient Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia, but also in the Levant (Cradic 2017; 2018). Such a funerary custom aimed to reinforce the visibility of mnemonic references to the dead ancestors within the house and, as a consequence, make them “available” to the community of the living on a daily basis through the creation of “lieux de mémoire” (Nora 1989) that were embedded in the foundation of the houses of the emerging elites.

Do you remember that smell? Human decay and the use of perfumes for a sensorial experience of the dead ancestors The presence of funerary crypts inside dwellings might have also evoked strong smells due to the decay of human tissue and, thus, stimulated the olfactory system alongside visual references in the process of creating and reinforcing a connection with the ancestors. In particular, the use of oils and spices burnt inside lamps, as well as the anointment of the deceased with special oils, were likely procedures used during the interment of the bodies inside residential graves in order to reduce the strong smell associated with the process of human decomposition. In this way the unique smell of the dead ancestors could have been a powerful way of connecting the present time with an historical glorious past (De Martino 1997: 35).3 Olfactory sensations could also provide a way to connect with the supernatural world, as demonstrated, for example, in ancient Egypt. In this case, the use of precious unguents on a dead king’s body created the “divine scent”; when experienced at a royal funeral, for example, such a scent might have given the impression of a divine presence for the individuals assembled in the crowd (Morris 2007: 17). Moving back to ancient Near Eastern examples of how the olfactory sense was a meaningful component of funerary rituals, recent studies on residues inside funerary chambers dating to the second millennium BCE (i.e., funerary contexts of the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Syria and the Levant) have demonstrated that the use of unguents for anointing the body, as well as the ritual of burning spices inside specific ceramic containers to create a scent that produced an olfactory form of remembrance of the dead, were pivotal elements in framing the memory of the ancestors, who were buried in residential graves, in the cognitive schemata of the members of Near Eastern societies. More specifically, the cases of the Royal Tomb discovered under the Royal Palace of Qatna (Pfälzner 2012; 2014; 2016; 2017) and of grave T. 100 at Megiddo (Cradic 2017; 2018) offer the best reconstructed examples, at least for the second millennium BCE, of how the olfactory sense was stimulated during funerary practices. Even though the two funerary contexts are different in terms of the socio-​economic contexts in which these graves were found (i.e., in a Royal Palace in Qatna and in a private dwelling T. 100 at Megiddo), in both cases archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the funerary sequence of the rite of passage that includes “activities that directly involved the corpse and/​or grave site from death through long-​term care and treatment of the dead” (Cradic 2017: 224, see also Chapter 19, this volume). Within the sequence reconstructed at Megiddo, this process involved the transformation of the physical status of the dead body through constant touching (even through its fragmentation), 399

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the creation of a locale (i.e., a residential grave) that, as noted above, was visible within the building, but, most of all, the sensorial perception of the performance of the funerary sequence. The latter was strongly stimulated by the use of opium poppies (Papaver somniferum), the burnt residue traces of which were found inside lamps used to burn the drug, an act that could have masked the unpleasant smells coming from the decay of the dead bodies, as well as result in “powerful narcotic effects such as hallucination, euphoria, and disassociation, which is the feeling of being outside of one’s body” (Cradic 2017: 238). At Qatna, the funerary sequence is even more complex and involves primary, secondary, and tertiary burial processes that created “a complex network of commemoration” (Pfälzner 2017: 159) in order to reinforce and legitimise the political role of the kingdom through an ancestral veneration of the members of the royal elite. Within this process, the reconstructed primary burial process involved at least seven stages of activities (Pfälzner 2012: table 1), among which the anointing and heating of the body were pivotal for a successful funerary sequence. In particular, residues of a “paste made of oil, resin and earth pigments” were found on the skeletal remains of the body together with the fragments of coloured textiles in which traces of royal purple were found (Pfälzner 2012: 208–​209). The body was then smoked at a temperature of about 250°C. The smell created by this act of fumigation, together with the oils covering the body, was likely very strong, and would have reduced the malodours of the decay of human tissue. Thus, residential graves within dwellings stimulated a daily remembrance of the dead ancestors not only through the continuous visibility of the grave within the dwelling or the palace, but also through olfaction, which evoked the memory of the dead ancestors in the cognitive schemata of the members of the community inhabiting the building.

Feasting with the spirits of the ancestors: offerings and lamentations during postmortem rituals However, in order for the funerary ritual to be sensorially effective, all the senses must have been stimulated and this was achieved, for example, by the organisation of feasts for the deceased in which music, lamentations, chants, and food were offered as forms of postmortem celebration of the dead ancestors. For example, using again the extraordinary case of the previously mentioned Royal Hypogeum of Qatna, stacks of vessels associated with food offerings were excavated in the main chamber of the Royal Hypogeum alongside the skeletal remains of secondary burials. The archaeologists suggested that such remains of ritual feasting might have been associated specifically with the kispu ritual known from contemporaneous cuneiform texts—​a ritual that aimed at venerating, nourishing, and caring for the family ancestors (Pfälzner 2012: 213). Textual evidence is here of fundamental importance, as the cuneiform texts support the archaeological evidence, thus allowing for a better reconstruction of the ritual feasting involved in postmortem ritual activities performed among ancient Near Eastern societies. Information regarding the devotion to royal ancestors is available from the textual sources from the south as well as the north of ancient Mesopotamia dating back to the second half of the third millennium BCE (i.e., the Ebla archives; Archi 2012). The preserved texts reveal that the deceased ancestors were remembered by the living through the periodic performance of ceremonies involving libation offerings. To offer a specific example, cuneiform texts of this period describe the ritual ki-sì-ga in Sumerian (that is similar to the kispu in Akkadian), which was used for the remembrance and commemoration of elite ancestors; this ritual included liquid offerings and the sacrifice of a large number of animals in canals and funerary chapels dedicated to the memory of the deified kings; the term ki-a-nag probably designates this type of memorial chapel (Tsukimoto 1985; 2010). 400

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Elements helpful for interpreting the graves as relics for the cult of the family’s ancestors include archaeological materials associated with food offerings and libations in the entrance-​ dromos (e.g., bottles for containing liquids, bowls with remains of animal bones, etc.). At Ur, the construction of altars that can be connected to the funerary chamber in some of the rooms located above the graves of the city dated to the early second millennium is further evidence of this type of tradition (Woolley and Mallowan 1976). According to Jonker (1995), it is during this specific historical moment (and especially with the emergence of Amorite dynasties) that the recitation of names as part of religious practice moves from a public context (the temple), typical of the third millennium BCE , to a more private context (the throne room and/​or the private house) in Mesopotamia. In particular, the written documents of this period allow Jonker (1995: 187–​188) to state the following: The form this collective memory took became the family ritual for the dead, the kispu. This included both offering at the burial and the periodically repeated ritual for the dead, in which the deceased members of a particular family were invoked by name and food and drink offered to them. The content of the transference of memory changed too. Memory shifted from predecessors to ancestors. What is more, the funerary goods of the graves of the Early Dynastic Royal Cemetery at Ur (c. 2500 BC ) include objects associated with libations as well as musical instruments, suggesting that the funerary rituals included music and lamentations (Winter 1999). The repetition of words “as a form of lulling that can create a state of trance among the participants of the ritualistic performance” (Laneri 2008: 208) is also present in numerous texts associated with funerary rituals (e.g., the “Incantation to the Sun-​God Utu”; Alster 1991).

Conclusions As demonstrated by the data here presented, the pivotal role played by senses in framing the cult of the ancestors in the cognitive schemata of the members of Near Eastern societies is clearly evident from both historical and archaeological sources. In particular, the touching of the selected and decorated skulls would have provided for the Neolithic communities of the Levant and Anatolia a means of connecting with the spirits of the ancestors. Whereas residential graves, funerary crypts, intramural mausolea, royal hypogea, and funerary monuments, as well as relics of post-​funeral libations at the entrance to the grave, all of which were visible to the community at large, were probably meant to reinforce the role played by the household (the oikos) in the socio-​economic organisation of Near Eastern societies. The crypts in houses and palaces, which created visual references to the deceased and the strong smell of decaying tissues, would have had the power of reinforcing the memory of the ancestors for those within the household; perhaps there was also an element of fear triggered by the decomposition of the body. Finally, it was through the act of feasting in postmortem activities that the full sensorial experience would have created a definite liaison with the dead ancestors, therein strengthening familial lineage and at the same time reinforcing the cohesion of the community’s collective memory. In conclusion, adopting a sensorial perspective in analysing the archaeological remains of funerary contexts, alongside textual sources, demonstrates that among ancient Near Eastern societies there were many ancestors and they were expected to serve a particular role—​that is, being a spiritual support for the community of the living through their constant and physical presence. 401

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Notes 1. See, for example, the “body libraries” found in charnel houses at Bab edh Dhra in Jordan dated to the Early Bronze Age II, c. 2900–​2350 BCE (Chesson 2007). 2. A libation prayer from the Old Babylonian period confirms the importance of libations dedicated to the ancestors for “conserving the patrilineal identity and self-​consciousness of the group” (Postgate 1992: 99). 3. “Negli odori erranti, dolci o cattivi che siano, e simili ad alcuni spiriti vaganti nelle strade, nei campi, nelle case, fra i mobili della nostra memoria, sia d’estate che d’inverno, c’è questo potere di reminiscenza: come se gli effluvi potessero serbare in sé le cose morte fragranti, dandoci l’impressione di un passato restaurato nel presente” (De Martino 1997: 35).

Bibliography Algaze, G. 1983–​1984. “Private Houses and Graves at Ingharra: A Reconsideration.” Mesopotamia 18–​19: 135–​194. Alster, B. 1991. “Incantation to Utu.” Acta Sumerologica 13: 27–​96. Antonaccio, C. 1995. An Archaeology of Ancestors: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Early Greece. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Archi, A. 2012. “Cult of the Ancestors and Funerary Practices at Ebla,” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, and A. Wissing, eds., (Re-​)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 5–​33. Assmann, J. 2006. Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Barrett, J. C. 1988. “The Living, the Dead and the Ancestors: Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices,” in J. Barrett and I. A. Kinnes, eds., The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age: Recent Trends. Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 30–​41. Bloch, M. 1994. Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organization in Madagascar. Second Edition. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. Chesson, M. 2007. “Remembering and Forgetting in Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices on the Southeastern Dead Sea Plain, Jordan,” in N. Laneri, ed., Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean. OIS 3. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 109–​123. Cradic, M. 2017. “Embodiments of Death: The Funerary Sequence and Commemoration in the Bronze Age Levant.” BASOR 377: 219–​248. Cradic, M. 2018. “Residential Burial and Social Memory in the Middle Bronze Age Levant.” Near Eastern Archaeology 81 (3): 191–​201. Croucher, K. 2012. Death and Dying in the Neolithic Near East. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D’Agostino, B., and A. Schnapp. 1982. “Les morts entre l’objet et l’image,” in G. Gnoli and J.-​P. Vernant, eds., La mort, les morts dans les sociétés anciennes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17–​26. De Martino, G. 1997. Odori: Entrate in contatto con il quinto senso. Milan: Urra. Durkheim, E. 1995 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Trans. K. E. Fields. New York: The Free Press [Les formes élémentaires de la vie religiose: Le système totémique en Australia. Paris: Alcan]. Fortes, M. 1987. Religion, Mortality and the Person: Essays on Tallensi Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fowler, H. I. 1996. Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Goody, J. 1962. Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the Lodagaa of West Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hodder, I. 2006. The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük. New York: Thames & Hudson. Insoll, T. 2011. “Ancestor Cults,” in T. Insoll, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1043–​1058. Jonker, G. 1995. The Topography of Remembrance: The Dead, the Ancestors, and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia. Leiden: Brill. Kuijt, Ian. 2008. “The Regeneration of Life: Neolithic Structures of Symbolic Remembering and Forgetting.” Current Anthropology 49 (2): 171–​197.

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Laneri, N., ed. 2007a. Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean. OIS 3. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Laneri, N. 2007b. “Burial Practices at Titriş Höyük, Turkey: An Interpretation.” JNES 66: 241–​266. Laneri, N. 2008. “Texts in Context: Praxis and Power of Funerary Rituals Among Elites in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in L. Fogelin, ed., Religion, Archaeology, and the Material World. Occasional Papers 36. Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Center for Archaeological Investigations. Carbondale: SIU, 196–​216. Laneri, N. 2010. “A Family Affair: The Use of Intramural Funerary Chambers in Mesopotamia during the Late Third and Early Second Millennia B.C.E.,” in R. L. Adams and S. King, eds., Residential Burial: A Multiregional Exploration. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 20. Hoboken: Wiley-​Blackwell, 121–​135. Laneri, N. 2018. “The Impact of Wine Production in the Social Transformation of Northern Mesopotamian Societies during the Mid-​to-​Late Third Millennium BCE.” Die Welt des Orients 48 (2): 225–​237. Liu, L. 1999. “Who Were the Ancestors? The Origins of Chinese Ancestral Cult and Racial Myths.” Antiquity 73: 602–​604. McAnany, P. 1995. Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society. Austin: University of Texas Press. McAnany, P. 2010. “Practices of Place-​ Making, Ancestralizing, and Re-​ Animation within Memory Communities,” in R. L. Adams and S. King, eds., Residential Burial: A Multiregional Exploration. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 20. Hoboken: Wiley-​Blackwell, 136–​142. Mithen, S. 2004. “From Ohalo to Çatalhoyuk: The Development of Religiosity during the Early Prehistory of Western Asia, 20,000–​7,000 BCE,” in H. Whitehouse and L. H. Martin, eds., Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, History, and Cognition. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 17–​44. Morris, E. 2007. “Sacrifice for the State: First Dynasty Royal Funerals and the Rites at the Macramallah’s Rectangle,” in N. Laneri, ed., Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean. OIS 3. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 15–​37. Morris, I. 1991. “The Archaeology of Ancestors: The Saxe-​Goldstein Hypothesis Revisited.” CAJ 1: 147–​169. Nishimura, Y. 2015. “A Systematic Comparison of Material Culture between Household Floors and Residential Burials in Late Third-​Millennium Mesopotamia.” AJA 119: 419–​440. Nora, P. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26: 7–​24. Pf älzner, P. 2012. “How Did They Bury the Kings of Qatna?,” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, and A. Wissing, eds., (Re-​)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Tübingen Post-​Graduate School “Symbols of the Dead” in May 2009. Qatna Studien Supplementa 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 205–​220. Pf älzner, P. 2014. “Royal Funerary Practices and Inter-​Regional Contacts in the Middle Bronze Age Levant: New Evidence from Qatna,” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, S. Lange, and T. Köster, eds., Contextualising Grave Inventories in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of a Workshop at the London 7th ICAANE in April 2010. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 141–​156. Pf älzner, P. 2016. “Royal Corpses, Royal Ancestors and the Living: The Transformation of the Dead in Ancient Syria,” in C. Felli, ed., How to Cope with Death: Mourning and Funerary Practices in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the International Workshop Firenze, 5th–​6th December 2013. Pisa: ETS, 241–​270. Pf älzner, P. 2017. “Cultural Memory and the Invisible Dead: The Role of ‘Old Objects’ in Burial Contexts,” in J. Bradbury and C. Scarre, eds., Engaging with the Dead: Exploring Changing Human Beliefs about Death, Mortality and the Human Body. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 149–​162. Postgate, N. J. 1980. “Early Dynastic Burial Customs at Abu Salabikh.” Sumer 36: 65–​82. Postgate, N. J. 1992. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. London: Routledge. Steadman, L. B., C. T. Palmer, and C. F. Tilley. 1996. “The Universality of Ancestor Worship.” Ethnology 35 (1): 63–​76. Tsukimoto, A. 1985. Untersuchungen zur Totenpflege (kispum) im alten Mesopotamien. Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker. Tsukimoto, A. 2010. “Peace for the Dead, or kispu(m) Again.” Orient 45: 101–​109. Verhoeven, M. 2011. “Retrieving the Supernatural: Ritual and Religion in the Prehistoric Levant,” in T. Insoll, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 795–​810.

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Whitehouse, H. 2000. Arguments and Icons: The Cognitive, Social, and Historical Implications of Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitley, J. 2002. “Too Many Ancestors.” Antiquity 76: 119–​126. Winter, I. 1999. “Reading Ritual in the Archaeological Record: Deposition Pattern and Function of Two Artifact Types from the Royal Cemetery of Ur,” in H. Kühne, R. Bernbeck, and K. Bartl, eds., Fluchtpunkt Uruk: Archäologische Einheit aus methodischen Veilfalt. Aufsätze für Hans J. Nissen. Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 229–​256. Woolley, L., and M. Mallowan. 1976. Ur Excavations VII: The Old Babylonian Period. New York: Carnegie Corporation.

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19 Sensing the dead in household burials of the second millennium BCE Melissa S. Cradic

Introduction Funerary practices in the ancient Near East involved a complex combination of visual, corporeal, cognitive, temporal, and mnemonic cues which created an embodied way of sensing and recalling the dead. The Ugaritic narrative text, Tale of Aqhat, illustrates the point (CAT 1.19, iv, 9–​31; translation Parker 1997: 75–​76):1 9–​11

‘rb.b/​kyt. bhklh.mšspdt. bḥẓrh/​pẓǵm.ǵr.

11–​13 ybk.laqht/​ǵzr. ydm‘.lkdd.dnil/​mt.rpi. 13–​15

lymm.lhrḫm/​ lyrḫm.lšnt. ‘d/​šb‘.šnt.

the weepers come The mourners into his palace, Those breaking their skin to his court He weeps for Aqhat the hero Sheds tears for the child of Daniel, man of Rapiu. From days to months, From months to years, To seven years,

15–​17 ybk.laq/​ht.ǵzr. yd[m‘] lkdd/​dnil.mt.r[pi

He weeps for Aqhat the hero Sheds tears for the child of Daniel, man of Rapiu

17–​18

Then, in the seventh year,

mk].bšb‘/​šnt.

18–​20 wy‘n [dnil mt] rpi/​ yṯb.ǵzr.m[t hrnmy

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-20

Daniel, man of Rapiu The hero comes back, the man of the Harnemite,

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20–​22

y]šu/​gḥ. wyṣḥ t[b‘ bbty]/​bkyt. bhk[l]‌y.mšspdt/​ bḥẓry pẓǵm.ǵr

He raises his voice and cries: “G[o from my house], you weepers Hence from my palace, you mourners, You, breaking your skin, from my court.”

22–​25

wyq[ry]/​dbḥ.ilm. yš‘ly.dǵṯ[h]‌m(?)bšmym. dǵṯ.hrnmy.[bk]/​bkbm.

He pres[ents] a meal for the gods, Into the heavens sends incense, [To the] stars the Harnemite’s incense.

25–​27

[  ]/​[ ]‌lh.yd.‘d. [  ] … [mṣ]/​ltm.mrqdm.dšn[ ]‌l[ ] [Cym]bals, castanets of ivory…

28

wt‘n.pǵt.ṯkmt.mym/​

29–​31 qrym.ab.dbḥ.lilm/​ š‘ly.dǵṯ[h(?)].bšmym/​ dǵṯ.hrnmy.[bk]bkbm/​

Then Paghit, bearer of water, answers: My father’s presented a meal for the gods, Into the heavens sent incense, [To the] stars the Harnemite’s incense.

This literary excerpt provides a window into the world of death and burial in the second millennium BCE Levant and places the specific sensory experiences of mourning and funerary practice in context. The text situates the place, timing, and embodied performances of the mourning procedure including scent, taste, and sound. Mourners enter the house of the father of the deceased—​a palace in the case of royalty—​and express their grief by weeping.2 As I demonstrate below, such residential loci of mourning, burial, and ancestor commemoration can be traced at the sites of Qatna and Megiddo. As mentioned in this and other Ugaritic texts, mourners also engage in acts that are destructive to their own bodies including lacerating their skin, gnashing teeth, cutting their flesh and hair, and rending their clothing (KTU 1.5, vi, 11–​25; 1.5, vi, 26–​1.6 i, 29; 1.15, v, 12–​14; 1.19, iv, 10–​26; 1.61, 13–​34; Brody 2008: 530). Eventually, Daniel closes the mourning period after seven years by offering a meal, incense, and music for the gods. These textual descriptions of food and drink offerings correspond with material evidence of ceramic serving vessels and faunal remains in mortuary contexts, especially cases in which the animal bones are placed in bowls and platters as if presented for consumption. Scent and fumigants also play important sensory roles in mortuary rituals. As explained below, odour is a particularly powerful feature in continuously used tomb spaces which contain the bodies of multiple individuals in varying states of decomposition. The senses are a category of embodiment that allow access to many dimensions of the human experience, including the physical and material as well as emotional, cognitive, and divine (Ashbrooke and Mullet 2017: 2). Sensory perceptions and their meanings enrich understandings of ancient cultures, yet factors of biology, culture, and distance of time place limits on analysis of sensory experiences from the deep past. Sensing is a process of translating stimuli through multiple channels: first through physical receptors, such as the eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and skin, and then through the brain, which makes sense of these patterns utilizing learned semantic codes and frameworks of embodied interpretation (Ashbrooke and Mullet 2017: 2). Moreover, although humans possess the same organs that receive sensory stimuli, individual bodies vary based on age, (dis)abilities, and experience, which affects the reception and interpretation of the same stimuli (Skeates 2010: 3). In other words, sensory experiences are embodied within cultural frameworks as well as individual bodies and personal histories, memories, and cognition; they are culturally 406

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relative, subjective, and socialised, varying across different cultural, temporal, and geographical contexts (Skeates 2010: 3). Needless to say, death is an unavoidable and universally relatable part of life that involves transformations of the body and attendant sensory experiences for those tasked with disposing of it. However, the ways in which humans experience death and dying, and their relationship to these events, are culturally situated and relative to factors such as identity and social status (Parker Pearson 1999). Indeed, the cognitive, embodied, and sensory experiences of death, dying, and burial differ in fundamental ways in the world of the ancient Near East than in the contemporary world. First, in the context of the ancient Near East death did not necessarily end the life-​course. Rather, the dead could continue to exist alongside the living in the form of gods, ghosts, and ancestors (see also Chapter 18, this volume).3 Death began a prolonged process of mortuary rituals that transformed the deceased into these new postmortem entities, altering their bodies, identities, and social statuses (Cradic 2017a). Second, certain mortuary and commemorative practices, such as multiple-​ successive burial, funerary feasts, and ancestor commemoration, occurred inside of occupied living spaces, most often under floors of residential buildings. This residential location facilitated an immediacy and intimacy between the living and the dead that continued their relationships and togetherness as a household unit through the generations. Third, these household funerary rituals incorporated close and continuing interactions with the bodies of the dead in the months, years, and even decades after death and burial, as the bodies progressed from whole corpses to fragmented bones. Unlike the singular event of a funeral today, with a body cremated or hidden behind a closed casket, ancient Levantine funerary rituals involved multiple episodes of re-​locating and disarticulating the skeletons of the dead. These interactions between living and dead bodies took place in small, enclosed, unventilated burial spaces. It would have smelled of decay. It would have been difficult to see, both materially in terms of low levels of lighting, and emotionally in terms of witnessing the transformation of loved ones into ever-​changing and irrevocable states of decomposition and disarticulation. This chapter focuses on sensing the dead as persons and as bodies in the Levant during the periods of the Middle Bronze II through Late Bronze Age IIA periods (c. 1800–​1340 BCE ). Specifically, I investigate the sensory experiences of burying and revisiting the dead in tombs located below the floors of occupied buildings, including sight, smell, touch, and cognitive experiences of mind-​altering substances as well as interaction with the divine. The aim of this approach is to apply data-​driven interpretation to enlighten understanding of sensing the dead through the mind, body, and the social apparatus of the house and household. Following the ritual sequence approach (Green 2009; 2014; Pf älzner 2012; Cradic 2017a), I demonstrate how practices of mortuary ritual followed a prescribed order and fit into a shared network of material and cognitive elements, such as objects, persons, animals, and the divine. These elements, in certain combinations and sequences, contributed to a “common lexicon” of mutually understood semantic and syntactical cues that provided meaning to the sensory experiences of Levantine ritual performance (Connerton 1989: 88; Laneri 2011: 77). Specific and ordered experiences of sight, smell, taste, touch, and the altered mind formed a restricted constellation of senses—​the mortuary sensorium—​which were utilised to negotiate the social status of the dead after burial. Analysis of reused residential burials, as a focused subset of a larger mortuary corpus, provides a means of evaluating everyday experiences of inhabitants who lived alongside the dead for generations. Quotidian interactions with the dead highlighted the intensity of funerary sensory experiences and their social significance in households, which were structured by and around these tombs (Cradic 2018). This approach reveals the rich array of sensory experiences that surviving household members encountered in graves, and how these understandings related to the 407

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changing social roles of the dead over time. I argue that close and continuing interactions with the bodies of the dead, encountered at different stages of decomposition, created a controlled and ritually situated mortuary sensorium. This novel set of sensory experiences emerged out of experimentation with postmortem embodiment in the Middle Bronze Age, a period in which sensing the dead was a multifaceted experience mediated through the deceased body as a site of decay, transformation, and social negotiation within households.

Research questions, data, and methodology How did surviving household members—​as co-​residents with the dead dwelling underneath floors in the home—​perceive the dead in terms of sight, touch, and smell? What steps did the living take to alter the bodies and social statuses of the dead? In order to address these questions, this study draws from analytic methods of sensory archaeology and burial taphonomy,4 framed within the theoretical approaches of materiality,5 corporeality,6 and embodiment.7 As I explain below, this approach considers the sequential performance of mortuary ritual and its impacts on bodies and sensory experiences. In this context, a culturally situated semantic and syntactical understanding of corporeality and afterlives framed relationships with postmortem human bodies and identities. In other words, sensory stimuli such as the tangible and visible signs of bodily decay served as ritualised cues in the funerary sequence. Moreover, this study frames deceased bodies as integral components of the broader material and social assemblage of the household. Such an approach views the dead as physical and social entities whose bodies and grave goods were enmeshed within the architectural confines of the house, as well as within the social construction of the household (Cradic 2018). This perspective aligns with recent work on “practice-​based concepts of place,” applied here to the house and household (Tringham 2013: 178). In this framework, place is a socially embedded sensory arena in which imagined practices and remembered events are triggered by specific stimuli including visual, olfactory, and auditory media as well as haptic and movement-​based embodied practices (Tringham 2013: 178). In the ancient Near East, imagined and remembered household practices associated with the mortuary realm could include descent to the Netherworld, commemoration activities, and emergence of ancestors as a social category. Each of these practices was imbued with very real material, sensorial, and corporeal experiences of the funerary sequence. The dead, in their embodied and disembodied forms, constructed a sensory paradigm that informed both a sense of place within specific households and a broader Levantine sensibility of death within residential spaces. I utilise case studies of multiple-​successive intramural burials from two high-​resolution and well-​documented Levantine mortuary contexts to illustrate these phenomena: (1) the Royal Hypogeum and TombVII underneath the vast palace of Qatna in Syria, dating to c. 1800–​1340 BCE ; and (2) Tomb 100, a subfloor residential chamber tomb at the urban settlement of Tel Megiddo in the present-​day state of Israel, which dates to c. 1600–​1450 BCE . Both the Qatna and Megiddo tombs were elite mortuary contexts, in the sense that the burials are located inside major urban settlements. However, there are important differences of status and scale to point out. The Qatna tombs consisted of two discrete complexes, both cut from bedrock underneath the sprawling royal palace that covered an area of around 142 by 90 metres, or about 1.3 hectares (Morandi Bonacossi 2013: 115). The Royal Hypogeum was spacious and well built, with architectural features including multiple rooms, a colonnaded main chamber, an arched gateway, and an elaborate stepped dromos (passageway). Due to the

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Figure 19.1  Aerial image of House 12/​K/​15 marked with the locations of intramural burials. Tomb 100 (shown after removal of roofing stones) is located in the southwest of the building. Source: Courtesy of The Megiddo Expedition.

highly elite locations of the Hypogeum and Tomb VII—​not only inside the palace but, in the case of the Hypogeum, near the throne room (Hall A)—​the tombs presumably contained the remains of the royal dead, the most elite group of the entire population (see below). In contrast, Tomb 100 at Megiddo was located inside a non-​palatial residence. It was one of 15 known intramural chamber tombs at the settlement which varied in size, architectural elaboration, and location.8 They were typically small, one-​chamber masonry-​constructed tombs without dromoi (Figure 19.1; Cradic 2018). The patterns that emerge between these two mortuary contexts reveal a broadly unified sensory programme in chamber tombs of the second millennium BCE Levant that cross-​cut geography, wealth, and social status. These two arenas demonstrated a consistent sensibility of death which was framed around ritualised experiences of sight, smell, and touch. This shared mortuary sensorium was linked to the performance of the funerary sequence in intramural chamber tombs, which followed the same basic ritual formula throughout the Levant (Cradic 2017a; 2017b). At Megiddo, Qatna, and elsewhere, shared tomb spaces contained the remains of multiple individuals whose skeletal remains were disarticulated and co-​mingled, a form of burial practice termed compound inhumation. This state of disarticulation resulted from the actions of the living who carried out extended sequences of funerary rituals. These rituals involved prolonged interactions with the remains of the dead after burial in both royal and non-royal households.

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From flesh to bone: the funerary sequence approach The funerary sequence approach connects the static conditions of a burial site encountered archaeologically with the dynamic, lived experiences in the past that produced them. In the context of multiple-​successive chamber tombs, the sequential performance of funerary activities involved three major stages after death: pre-​interment preparations, which comprised selecting the burial space, gathering grave goods, and preparing the corpse for inhumation; the interment phase, which encompassed inhumation and positioning of the corpse and grave goods inside the burial; and post-​interment activities, which included any activities associated with continued visitation of the grave site, such as deposition of offerings involved in care and feeding of the dead, and re-​locating bodies for secondary and compound disposals. The diachronic accumulation of bodies in multiple-​ successive chamber tombs altered conditions inside these subfloor graves and triggered specific sensory stimuli. I argue that close and continuing encounters with the bodies of the dead at different stages of the funerary sequence created a culturally specific and embodied mortuary sensory experience. These conditions required restricted uses of light as well as controlled experiences of scent which were used to permeate odours of decay, introduce new aromas into the tomb space through topical application and fumigation, and invoke deities.

Case study: the funerary sequence of Qatna’s Royal Hypogeum Using a case study from Middle and Late Bronze Age Qatna, I demonstrate that interactions with the remains of the royal dead involved a restricted but powerful repertoire of visual, olfactory, touch, and taste stimuli. This specialised complex of stimuli created a cultural sensibility of death that was widely used and recognised throughout the second millennium BCE Levant.

Pre-​interment phase: navigating the burial chamber The royal palace of Qatna incorporated the dead into its living space, fitting with broader regional patterns. The expansive Qatna palace contained two underground rock-​cut burial complexes within the palace walls: the Royal Hypogeum, which housed the remains of 19–​24 individuals in a combination of primary, secondary, and compound disposals, and Tomb VII, which contained an assemblage of over one thousand grave goods as well as human remains of at least 79 individuals in secondary and compound disposals (Pf älzner 2014: 144). Both chambers were located in significant ceremonial areas of the palace. The Royal Hypogeum was accessed via a tripartite complex of monumental rooms of ceremonial significance: the palace’s main audience chamber (Hall C), the palace throne room (Hall B), and a ceremonial room decorated with orthostats (Hall A) (Pf älzner 2007: ­figure 16, 43–​51). In the North-​West Wing of the palace, Tomb VII was accessed via Room DF. Room DF was one of two chambers in this wing which contained a “peculiar” deposit of elephant bones (Pf älzner 2014: 142). This intriguing find may indicate that this area of the palace hosted an unusual and enigmatic set of elite ritual activities. The special and elite locations of both the Royal Hypogeum and Tomb VII serve as a strong indication of the royal status of their decedents (Figure 19.2). Inhabitants of the palace continuously used the Hypogeum for c. 400–​500 years until its untimely destruction in a violent conflagration (Pf älzner 2014: 147; Lange 2014: 244). Its four burial chambers were situated about 12 metres below the palace foundations and, via a long-​ stepped corridor, connected to Hall A, a ground-​floor space behind the main throne room that may have functioned as an “ancestral ceremonial hall” (Pf älzner 2007: 49–​50; Lange 410

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Figure 19.2  Plan of the Qatna royal palace showing the route from the Royal Hypogeum to Tomb VII. Source: After Pfälzner 2014: fig. 12; Courtesy Peter Pfälzner, Qatna-​ project, University of Tübingen.

2014: 243–​244). This location showed a clear functional, ritual, and architectural connection between the spaces for the living and the dead members of this royal household. However, despite the symbolic and functional linking of these two spaces and groups of royalty, access to the burial chambers was controlled and challenging, requiring a deep descent below the floors, into the realm of the dead. From Hall A, the Hypogeum was accessible only through a passageway leading to a series of doors, ladders, and a gate (Laneri 2016: 59). The low hallway consisted of a subterranean, sloping space which was divided into a series of enclosed spaces by four wooden doors spaced at around 10-​metre intervals (Lange 2014: 244). After arriving at the final door, another challenge awaited: climbing down two consecutive wooden ladders that descended five more metres below the corridor’s floor, into an antechamber around five by four metres in area (Laneri 2016: 59–​60). Remains of food and material offerings in the antechamber and throughout the corridor indicate that funerary activities took place in these spaces, likely during a procession or set of rituals conducted during the pre-​interment phase of the funerary sequence (Lange 2014). Several sets of three to five small and large ceramic bowls have been excavated in three places: at the third door; at the end of the corridor immediately before entering the antechamber; and within the antechamber. In each assemblage, a small bowl was placed upside down (Lange 2014: 244). This patterned arrangement of offerings, possibly a localised version of lamp-​and-​bowl foundation 411

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deposits (see below), ritually and symbolically set the tone for entering the tomb chamber as a place of inversion of life, and as a place to experimentally challenge sensory norms through interactions with decaying bodies and materials. The sensorial challenges of the pre-​interment phase were many, not least of which was navigating the dim, slanting passageway and encountering obstacles along the way, such as multiple doors, some of which may have been locked or partially blocked with ritual offerings. Without lightwells, windows, or ventilation, the air in the passageway, antechamber, and Hypogeum would have been still and stuffy. The entire journey would have been undertaken in low light provided by lamps carried by hand. Additionally, transport of materials into the Hypogeum posed physical challenges. Human corpses, as well as cumbersome materials such as whole sheep carcasses and large, weighty ceramic storage jars—​their heaviness perhaps increased by their food or liquid contents—​would have been carried by hand through the passageway, down two steep ladders into a deep, dark antechamber, and then through the (locked?) entry gate. These activities would have required at least two people at a time to achieve, moving gingerly to avoid disturbing ritual deposits in the hallway and antechamber. The division of space in this elaborate entry passage may have also configured the ritual, sensory, and cognitive experience of entering the burial chamber in several ways. First, it prepared participants sensorially by acclimatising them to the dark confines of the underground space. Second, it introduced physical and possibly social and ritual boundaries—​the series of doors, descent down the ladder, and antechamber—​that could be crossed only by able-​bodied members of the royal household, setting up a system of restrictions in accessing the spaces of the dead. Third, the physical barriers structured the procession to the chamber below semantically and syntactically. It clearly separated the realms of the living in the palace above from the realm of the dead below. Moreover, the layout of the passage placed material and possibly social and ritual obstacles in a certain order that resonated with concepts about death and afterlife in the ancient Near East (Lange 2014: 244; Laneri 2016: 62). The ritual journey through the passage was one of descent, thresholds, and liminal spaces, as if symbolically representing a descent to the Netherworld, a common mythological theme in ancient Near Eastern literature. The passageway may have served as a materialisation of the descent, while the journey itself allowed mourners to embody the experience of descent.

Interment phase: inhumation and disturbance The range of embodied obstacles that mourners encountered in simply entering the Hypogeum set the tone for the interment phase, which posed even greater sensory challenges: the intense smell of decaying human and animal bodies; close tactile interactions with decomposing corpses and bones; and possibly the involvement of feasting in this putrid environment. Lange (2014) has demonstrated that specific zones of activity shaped the mortuary experience after entering the Hypogeum, spatially delineated by the four chambers of the tomb. Chamber 1, the largest and main chamber, served as the main repository for material and food offerings and as a storage area for secondary inhumations, which were mixed with animal bones. Chamber 2, an “ossuary,” was an area for secondary or tertiary deposition of the long-​dead, whose remains were mixed with animal bones and refuse debris (Lange 2014: 252). Chamber 3 served as an area for secondary deposition of human remains, which were mixed with faunal bones. Finally, Chamber 4 has been interpreted as a “banquet room for the royal spirits” (Lange 2014: 251; Pf älzner 2007: 58), or, alternatively, as an area for corpse preparation. Chamber 4, unlike the other chambers, was largely devoid of human remains except for the Hypogeum’s only example of a primary inhumation. This skeleton, found in anatomical order on a bench, 412

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may have been undergoing a prolonged process of corpse preparation at the time the palace burned down (Pf älzner 2016: 248–​251).

Scents and sensibility The material repertoire in the Hypogeum included a range of bodies and objects, including fleshed, decaying, and de-​fleshed human bodies. The assemblage also encompassed a large corpus of around 2,000 material objects, primarily ceramic vessels for storing and serving food and drink (Laneri 2016: 60), and an abundant accumulation of animal bones. These faunal bones represented butchered and unbutchered remains of domesticated and wild species which were found in the antechamber as well as in each chamber, with the highest concentrations in Chambers 1 and 2 (Vila 2011: 385). A total of 3,399 specimens, many of which were friable and not well preserved, came from sheep, goat, cattle, birds (goose, pigeon, dove, fowl, owl, and game birds), gazelle, fallow deer, weasel, hare, dog, and land tortoise (Vila 2011: 383–​384).9 The role of the faunal remains for feasting inside the Hypogeum is worth considering in terms of smell and taste. Analysis of the bones indicates two scenarios regarding preparation and consumption of meat inside the tomb. First, the cattle were likely butchered outside the tomb, with the meaty parts brought inside. The sheep, whose skeletal remains were more often found in articulation, were likely slaughtered outside the chamber; the entire carcass would then be brought inside for butchering on site in two locations, the antechamber and the main chamber (Lange 2014: 254; Vila 2011: 399–​400). Would the meat have been consumed inside the chamber, and if so, where? Faint traces of carbonisation on some of the faunal bones from Chambers 1 and 4 could signify cooking of the meat, although it is not clear if the burning was intentional or accidental (Vila 2011: 399). Additionally, several examples of faunal bones in the refuse debris in Chamber 2 bore cut-​marks indicating removal of flesh from bone for consumption, another sign that mourners would actually have consumed meat inside the Hypogeum (Vila 2011: 399; Lange 2014: 254; Pf älzner 2016: 254).10 However, even if some animals had been butchered and cooked for consumption, this practice did not extend to all, or even most, individuals. In several cases, sheep bones were in articulation without clear signs of butchering or heating, likely representing offerings for the dead (Vila 2011: 401). These primary deposits of meat offerings and butchering debris would have been left to rot inside the chamber. According to Lange, “the rotting meat would have produced a tremendous smell and would have made any longer stay inside a closed environment like the tomb impossible” (2014: 254). Moreover, the stench of rotting animal flesh would have been intensified by and layered on top of the odours of many decaying human corpses. Although in the context of contemporary sensibilities it may be difficult to imagine that feasting could have taken place in close proximity to the sights and smells of death, such emotional and physical reactions to disgust may have registered differently or not at all for mourners in the Bronze Age (see also Chapter 20, this volume). What is clear from the evidence at hand is that the mortuary sensorium involved a distinctive and recognisable package of intense sensual experiences that stimulated smell and triggered an association with death. If it did indeed take place, then Chamber 1 was the most likely area for banquets where descendants would have gathered to feast the dead. It contained an abundance of faunal bones as well as ceramic vessels for storage and serving, some of which originated from the palace warehouse and may have held milk, according to cuneiform sealings and labels (Pf älzner 2016: 254–​255). A cluster of wooden benches in the southwest corner could have served as a dining area. Further, the chamber’s architectural resemblance to the reception hall in the palace above, with a set of four pillars, further supports the identification of this space as the feasting locus (Pf älzner 2007: 58). 413

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Whether or not they consumed food and drink in this location, mourners would have been confronted with the visual and olfactory realities of decomposing flesh in this dank, unventilated basement. Human bodies posed yet a different set of challenges than animal carcasses. Funerary participants may have taken steps to preserve corpses as a way of mitigating—​but not eliminating—​the stench of decomposition through applying perfumed unguents, wrapping bodies in textiles prior to inhumation, and heating the corpses (James et al. 2009; Lange 2014: 250). Evidence of burning on the skeletal remains showed sustained exposure of corpses to high temperatures at a range of 200–​250 degrees centigrade for at least an hour, which would have desiccated rather than burned the corpse (Pf älzner 2016: 250). Such treatment may have reduced body liquids and thus decreased the intensity of the smell of decomposition (Lange 2014: 254; Witzel and Kreutz 2007: 185). Moreover, residues identified on the skeletal remains indicated that a paste of oils, resins, and pigments would have been applied to the skin prior to heating, possibly as a preservative or for aromatic effect (Witzel and Kreutz 2007: 178–​179; Lange 2014: 251). Short of mummification, however, corpse treatment could only do so much to slow down the effects of death on the body. Moreover, it is not clear how effective such measures would have been in mitigating smells of decomposition, or whether such a goal was even the original intention. Activities such as burning, anointment, and wrapping may have served a different purpose, such as engineering of the sensory environment in order to create a recognisable aroma of mourning as one element of a prolonged process. Primary inhumation and its attendant preservation techniques therefore comprised only the first step of a multi-​staged funerary sequence for Qatna’s royal dead that involved a complex array of sensory stimuli.

Post-​interment phase: body curation and representations The Hypogeum’s Chamber 2, which contained disarticulated bones and refuse, may have functioned as a holding spot for the transfer of the human remains into their final resting place in Tomb VII, where mourners carried out practices of the post-​interment phase. Tomb VII consisted of a kidney-​shaped subterranean space located below the largest room of the northwest wing of the Royal Palace, Room DA (Figure 19.2; Pf älzner 2014: 142).11 It was accessed from an adjoining room to the west, Room DF (Pf älzner 2014: 142–​143). The entrance into the burial chamber was less elaborate than that of the Royal Hypogeum but also involved a descent into a lower level. According to the excavators, the entrance “led down from the antechamber through a door in the bedrock and over four rock-​hewn steps” (Pf älzner 2014: 143). Inside the tomb, an assemblage of 16 wooden boxes contained the well-​preserved cranial remains of at least 50 individuals (out of at least 79 total individuals), which were carefully stacked on top of postcranial remains (Pf älzner 2014: 144–​145). Grave goods were deposited in groups next to the bone boxes (Pf älzner 2014: 145). The careful arrangement of cranial and postcranial bones indicated that Tomb VII was the final resting place for the royal dead of Qatna. The bodies of the dead had originally been prepared, interred, and commemorated in and around the Hypogeum, which served as the locus of inhumation, decomposition, and secondary disposal (Pf älzner 2014; Lange 2014). Some of the bones were then systematically collected after disarticulation and moved along with the original burial assemblage into Tomb VII, where they were re-​buried in boxes. Tomb VII provided a dedicated space beyond the Hypogeum, which was the more actively utilised of the burial spaces, in which to mark the deceased as long-​dead ancestors in compound disposals (Pf älzner 2016: 258). This final phase of the ritual sequence required transporting wooden boxes filled with human bones out of the Hypogeum’s Chamber 2, up the ladder, and through passageway to 414

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the living areas of the palace. From there, the boxes would have been carried a considerable distance of around 90 metres west, through the main habitation and administrative areas to the palace annex, which was a basement level (Pf älzner 2016). From here, the boxes were taken into Room DF, which gave access to Tomb VII below through a vertical passage. These activities posed a different set of physical and, perhaps, ritual requirements than the initial deposition in the Hypogeum complex and would also have required at least two authorised people to perform these activities. After final inhumation in Tomb VII, the long dead continued to be commemorated in the post-​interment phase, taking on a new embodied form as anthropomorphic figurines. Two in situ figurines flanked the entrance to the Royal Hypogeum in the antechamber.12 These nearly identical figures were seated and frontward facing, gazing towards the approaching mourner, and hold a vessel in the outstretched right hand (Lange 2014: ­figure 4; Herrmann and Schloen 2014: figure C9). Each wore a long, fringed garment, a cap, and a snake draped around the shoulders. Their faces were not personalised (see further, Herrmann and Schloen 2014: 120–​ 139). Their generic rendering indicated that they represented the collective dead as a corporate group, rather than any specific individual. The statues may have been considered a real locus for encounters with the dead. The statues received actual food offerings in line with traditional kispum rites (see below). Moreover, the close spatial proximity between the statues and the skeletal remains in the burial chamber reinforced the connections between these bodies, which represented the long dead and the newly dead, respectively. The presence of both the statues and the skeletal remains demonstrated that dual practices of embodiment after death exist at Qatna. The visual representation of the dead within the material and sensory repertoire of the mortuary sphere added another dimension to how embodiment could be understood, objectified, and represented through mnemonic proxies.

Discussion: corporealities and sensing the dead at Qatna Interaction with the dead as embodied persons was a complicated matter at Qatna that involved whole and disarticulated bodies as well as anthropomorphic representations in new and experimental combinations. Secondary and compound disposals indicated that at a certain point during the post-​interment stage, the bones could be touched, collected, and re-​located, creating composite bodies of the royal dead. The order of the ritual sequence mattered, as did the sensory environment. Mourners initiated the multi-​staged process after burial and continued it until the bones were transported to Tomb VII, where they were re-​buried in wood boxes. The process reimagined relationships with the dead body and transfigured the deceased into a collective group of royal ancestors. The complex and mutable relationships with embodiment created a sensorial syntax of mortuary religion. In the Hypogeum, the co-​mingling olfactory stimuli of perfumed oil, roasted meat, and decomposing human and animal flesh transgressed normative sensory boundaries. The potent combination of smells formed a socially restricted and highly situated—​if revolting—​ sensory paradigm that signalled the Hypogeum as a place of the royal dead. The pungent odour would have been instantly recognisable and unmistakably different from the realm of the living. The chamber unequivocally served as a place of novel embodied experiences which were organised for and around corpses, their assemblages, and their transmutation into royal ancestral beings. Through socially and physically restricted movement through this dark, gloomy place, mourners performed an imagined descent into the Netherworld that was reserved for members of the royal household. 415

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Sensing the dead in Tomb 100 at Megiddo I now turn to the ways in which the materiality of burial assemblages generated certain material and sensory effects of mortuary practice, drawing on the case study of Tomb 100 at Tel Megiddo. I argue that specific configurations of material assemblages constructed a restricted but powerful mortuary sensorium involving sight, smell, and cognitive experiences. A focus on the material assemblages reveals the specificity of materiality of death in context and brings clarity to touch and movement as experiential components of the mortuary sensorium. Additionally, analysis of lamps in the tomb assemblage reveals scent, sight, and cognitive dimensions of the mortuary sensorium. Although the scale of Tomb 100, a non-​elite context, differed from the tombs at Qatna, these two contexts shared multimodal combinations of sight, scent, taste, and touch. In both cases, the funerary sequence structured the use of these elements, informing a common semantic and syntactical paradigm of death. Tomb 100, a masonry-​constructed tomb, was located underneath the floor of a mudbrick courtyard house. It remained in continuous use for around 100 years, during which time the chamber witnessed many episodes of successive inhumation of approximately two dozen individuals. The vaulted chamber was constructed of medium fieldstones and measures 1.7 metres long by 1.5 metres wide, with a maximal height of 1.4 metres between floor and ceiling. The interior of Tomb 100 was a low, cramped space without much room to move around, reposition bodies, or handle large objects. During excavation of the tomb in July 2010, at most two average-​height adults could fit inside the chamber at a time if kneeling, crouching, or sitting.13 Inside the chamber, the stuffy, hot, and humid air would quickly attract mosquitoes. These sweaty and uncomfortable excavation conditions were experienced in the heat of the summer, with the tomb entrance slab fully open, and eventually, with most of the chamber’s roofing stones removed for safety, providing additional air flow and sunlight (Figure 19.3). In contrast, the conditions in antiquity would have been darker, danker, and smellier. During its original use, the tomb’s roof was intact and sealed from above by a floor. The narrow entryway, 0.55 metres wide, provided the only source of natural light and ventilation. Moreover, the air circulation inside the tomb and in the small room around it, which comprised a roughly square space around three by three metres, would have been limited within this interior space of the house. Neither entry thresholds nor windows were preserved in this part of the building, so it is not clear where the door would have been located relative to the tomb entrance for light and air. The floor and other features of the room provided better clues. The thick plaster floor above the tomb’s roof likely sealed off permeating aromas in between uses. However, like other contemporaneous tombs of its type, the very top of the entrance slab may not have been completely sealed by plaster. Rather, it may have been visible at floor level, either flush with the floor or protruding slightly above it, forming a visual and tactile marker—​and perhaps a trip hazard—​that signalled what laid beneath (Hallote 2001: 36; Martin and Cradic 2021).14 The overwhelming odours of decomposition would have permeated the entire space each time the seal was broken when the tomb was opened. These aromas of decay would have combined with the scents of consumable funerary offerings placed inside and outside the tomb, such as burning olive oil and meat, as well as other typical components of funerary offerings elsewhere in the Levant and Near East such as bread, beer, wine, and water (Cradic 2017a: 234–​239). In between openings for interments, the room above the tomb likely hosted regular funerary and commemoration rituals involving food and drink. Its ritual function is indicated by the presence of a possible libation

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Figure 19.3  Excavation of Tomb 100 interior with contents in situ. Note the mass of disarticulated remains and objects in the back and along the sides of the chamber. Source: Courtesy of The Megiddo Expedition.

installation above the tomb in combination with unusually high quantities of deposits related to food and drink in the surface matrix directly above the tomb (Cradic 2017a: 234–​236; Martin and Cradic 2021). The tastes and smells of these offerings would have contributed to creating a funerary sensorium that was accessible inside the tomb as well as outside of it in the interim between interments. A phenomenological experiment conducted by the excavators illustrated the difficulty of moving a (live) adult body through the doorway and into the chamber, even after removal of the tomb’s roof. This physically challenging and delicate task required one adult positioned inside the tomb holding the head and shoulders, and one adult holding the opposite end of the body from outside the tomb. These two participants manoeuvred the body through the narrow entrance, which involved stepping down into the chamber, a depth of around 0.15–​0.65 metres from the entry threshold to the chamber floor. In antiquity, this endeavour would have become more difficult over time, as debris around 0.50–​0.65 metres thick accumulated inside the chamber, mostly along the periphery and in the back of the tomb, thereby restricting the usable space for foot traffic to the centre and front of the chamber. The vertical space from floor to ceiling also would have contracted over time to a height of around 0.75–​0.9 metres. Despite these physical challenges, the funerary sequence in Tomb 100, like at Qatna’s two royal burial complexes, involved episodic repositioning of previously interred corpses during the inhumation of a new body (Cradic 2017a). The repetitive process of re-​burial in this small tomb space resulted in the complete fragmentation of skeletons, except for a few isolated cases of partially articulated skeletal elements, such as a hand-​arm-​shoulder still in place (Figure 19.4). This evidence indicated that most of the tomb’s individuals were moved around within the 417

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Figure 19.4  Tomb 100: hand-arm-shoulder in articulation. Source: Courtesy of The Megiddo Expedition.

chamber many times over while a small minority were disturbed just once or twice while in a less advanced state of decay. Therefore, it is safe to say that during this process mourners would have come face-​to-​face with the decaying mortal remains of family members, some of whom would have remained recognisable through their clothing and jewellery, if not their bodies or faces (see also Chapter 6, this volume). How would the living have coped with such sights and smells? What materials did they use to mask or intensify the realities of death? Below, I focus on the materialisation of mourning practices and how the mourners engineered a sensory environment of light, scent, and cognitive experiences as a means of connecting the living with supernatural entities including deities and the dead.

Materializing mourning: burial assemblages The burial assemblage stands out as an important material feature of mortuary sensory environments. The Bronze Age “funeral kit” included specific sets of materials such as serving and storage vessels; jewellery, pins, scaraboids, and seals; ground stone objects; weaponry; and faunal bones, which were likely the remains of funerary meals and/​or food offerings to the dead (Baker 2012). Tomb 100’s assemblage fit within these typical parameters (Tables 19.1–​19.2). Like the human remains, these materials underwent transformations of meaning and function once they were deposited in the funerary realm. The burial assemblages and other offering deposits were ritualised through their involvement in the funerary sequence and attained altered meanings as components of the burial cache. Taking this interpretation a step further, a burial space like a chamber tomb could be considered as an accumulative repository for bodies and objects, which were taken out of daily circulation of the world of the living and transferred permanently to the world of the dead. 418

Sensing the dead in household burials Table 19.1  Burial assemblage of Tomb 100 Ceramic vessels

Stone vessels

Bronze objects

Silver objects

Scarabs

Bone inlays

Beads

61

2

13

2

4

multiple

1

Table 19.2  Burial assemblage (vessels) in Tomb 100 Bowls

Jugs

Juglets

Storage jars

Lamps

Other

Total

5 (8%)

13 (21%)

24 (39%)

2 (3%)

14 (23%)

3 (5%)

61 (100%)

Sight and light Focusing on the category of ceramic oil lamps in burial assemblages, I evaluate their place in creating an affective mortuary setting in multiple-​successive tomb spaces. Through tracing patterns of use and deposition of lamps in Tomb 100, I situate the experiential and symbolic implications of scent and illumination in the context of reused chamber tombs. Ceramic oil lamps stand out as a particularly enlightening category of material culture in Canaanite funerary religion. Unlike the bowls, jugs, and jars found in burial assemblages, lamps were not used for serving or storing food and liquid. Instead, lamps fulfilled fundamentally different roles, such as allowing mourners to navigate the narrow subterranean chambers and neutralising odours sealed inside multi-​use tombs. For example, at Qatna, one lamp was placed in a wall niche inside Tomb VII, where it served as a stationary source of light while mourners performed activities inside the tomb. Similar niches are attested across the Levant at Tell el-​ ‘Ajjul (Tombs 246, 263, 406, 407, 411, and 1166), Jericho (Tomb J14), Tel el-​Far’ah (S) (Tombs 905, 914, and 960), and Ras Shamra (Baker 2010: 11–​14; Marchegay 1999).15 Tomb 51 at Ras Shamra, for example, contained three niches, inside of which were five lamps with burnt nozzles, facing inward toward the back of the chamber.16 Across the Levant, lamps comprised a small proportion of the ceramic assemblage in burials of the Middle Bronze Age, typically between 1 per cent and 13 per cent (Hallote 1995: 116, ­figure 11). These proportions translated to 0–​2 lamps per individual, which decreased to 0–​1 lamp per individual during the Late Bronze Age. Lamps were most frequently attested in chamber tombs and were rarely found in pit burials (Gonen 1992: 19). Within chamber tombs, lamps occurred more frequently in burial spaces used for multiple individuals than for single, primary inhumations.17 Likewise, at Megiddo lamps generally comprised a small proportion of burial assemblages, increasing from 3 per cent in the Middle Bronze II to 9 per cent in the Middle Bronze III/​LB I (Cradic 2017b: 204–​205). Matching broader regional trends, half of all lamps from burials at Megiddo originated from masonry-​constructed chamber tombs, with lower proportions coming from pit and jar burials. Tomb 100 contained 14 lamps, which comprised 23 per cent of the tomb’s ceramic assemblage of 61 vessels (Table 19.2).18 At nearly a quarter of the ceramics, this proportion of lamps was considerably higher than the average of 9 per cent in Megiddo tombs. The most obvious function of these lamps was to provide light inside the chamber, possibly during 14 separate inhumation episodes, if each lamp is correlated to one instance of inhumation. All of the lamps with preserved nozzles had blackened rims, showing evidence of burning at some point. Although Tomb 100 did not contain niches, in one case a lamp was balanced on the mouth of a jug near the entrance to the chamber, carefully placed to maximise light from the flame (Figure 19.5). 419

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Figure 19.5  Tomb 100: lamp balanced on jug. Source: Courtesy of The Megiddo Expedition.

Both lighting and extinguishing of lamplight may have featured symbolically and sensorially in funerary rituals, and these practices can be discerned through careful readings of object deposition. For example, extinguishing of light may have symbolically sealed tombs and may explain the presence of inverted lamps and bowls in Megiddo’s extramural chamber tombs.19 Similarly, the corridor and antechamber of the Royal Hypogeum contained several sets of inverted bowls, possibly a localised interpretation of ritual closure, but one that did not directly involve light. At Tomb 100, two lamps excavated next to the entrance may likewise have marked the ritual closure of the tomb. Elsewhere through the Levant, patterned vessel distributions reveal similar practices. Lamps were co-​present with bowls, plates, and platters in mortuary contexts at Ashkelon, Tell es-​Sa’idiyeh, Wadi ‘Ara, Tel Dan, Ras Shamra, Abu Hawam, and Megiddo (Gonen 1992; Hallote 1994; Ilan 1996: 214–​215 table 4.2; Baker 2006; Green 2006: 237–​238; Gadot et al. 2014: 37, fig. 5.4; 116). The combination of lamps with other vessel types, particularly bowls, may have been related to the widespread lamp-​and-​bowl foundation deposits found in Late Bronze Age Canaanite contexts, which were typically buried under surfaces to mark important areas in a structure or room such as walls, corners, door jambs, and thresholds (Green 2006: 237; Müller 2018: 188). Although they appeared most frequently in monumental public and residential buildings such as “governor’s residences,” palaces, and temples, these deposits have also been documented in non-​elite domestic buildings as well as in mortuary contexts (Green 2006: 237; DePietro 2012: 102–​111). Lamps and lamplight may have also been used to invoke mortuary deities. In Mesopotamia, lighting of lamps may have featured in special kispum rituals in which firewood or torches “lit the way of the souls of the dead who ascend on the night of the 9th of Abu” (Langdon 1935: 20, in Tsukimoto 1985: 48). Along with the lighting of the flames were feasts in honour of the collective, unnamed dead (van der Toorn 2014: 82–​84). In Ugaritic mortuary tradition, the sun deity ŠPŠ—​whose epithet is “Lamp of the Gods” (nrt.ilm.špš)—​held a prominent position in death and burial (Wiggins 1996).20 After being invoked during funerary rites, the goddess 420

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accompanied the spirits of the royal ancestors between the realm of the living in the palace and the realm of the dead in the Netherworld (KTU 1.161, 18–​26; Lewis 1989: 171; Teinz 2012: 240–​241; Niehr 2012: 156–​157). In this role, ŠPŠ was also closely related to the sacrificial pgr mortuary ritual in which she guided the royal spirits from the Netherworld to the palace in order to partake in the feast (KTU 1.39, 12, 277; 1.102, 12; del Olmo Lete 2004: 40, 164; Niehr 2012: 156–​157).21 In an analogous tradition, the Mesopotamian Sun God Šamaš, one of whose many epithets was “lord of the ghosts,” presided over the Netherworld at night (Scurlock 2006: 21). Magico-​medical prescriptions against ghosts, who were frequently blamed for mysterious or sudden medical and psychological ailments (Bottéro 1992: 283; Harrington 2012: 22–​ 27; Scurlock 2006; Scurlock and Andersen 2005), often invoked Šamaš and were performed in the late afternoon so as to send ghosts to the Netherworld along with the setting of the sun, as personified by the Sun God (Scurlock 2006: 21, 28–​29). In both traditions, light and its divine manifestation were used as visual and cognitive components of mortuary religion in order to draw symbolic connections to the afterlife.

Altered minds Beyond invoking deities and ritually closing tomb spaces at the end of their use-​phase, lamps may have opened other cognitive dimensions through burning of mind-​altering substances. In Tomb 100, one lamp contained organic residues with morphine components derived from opium poppy (Namdar 2021). Opium in the eastern Mediterranean is well-​known from secondmillennium BCE Egypt and from Late Bronze Age trade in Cypriot bilbils (Koschel 1996; Bisset et al. 1996; Chovanec et al. 2012; Guerra-​Doce 2015). Globally, the presence of psychoactive substances in mortuary contexts has a long and rich history. For example, burnt cannabis seeds have been found in third millennium burials in Eastern Europe and Caucasus. Intoxicating preparations of wormwood and cannabis occurred in Bronze Age burial mounds in Russia, and beer with hallucinogenic additives was attested in Spain during both the third millennium and second century BCE . From second millennium BCE Iberia, opium residues in vessels and opium poppy seeds inside burials showed a similar use to Tomb 100 at the cemetery site of Fuente Álamo in southeast Spain (Guerra-​Doce 2015: 756–​770). What was the purpose of altered consciousness during funerary rituals? The use of lamps to heat mind-​altering substances may explain an important but previously unknown cognitive aspect of Canaanite funerary ritual. Opiates such as morphine are powerful narcotics which can cause euphoria, hallucination, and dissociation, a feeling of being outside of one’s body. Dissociation may have been the goal. In the ancient Near East, the dead could simultaneously exist in embodied and disembodied forms. They could reside physically inside the tomb as bone (Akkadian eṣemtu), while also existing as non-​corporeal, supernatural beings such as ancestors, ghosts, and the deified dead (Akkadian eṭemmu) in the Netherworld (Jacquet 2012: 123; MacDougal 2014: 107–​112). Through opium-​induced effects of corporeal dissociation, mourners could have achieved similar states of dual embodiment, blurring the lines between living and dead bodies and activating new social relationships with the dead.22 Temporarily, the realms of the living and the dead could have been united through the use of psychoactive substances. Concerns with odour and purity may have also influenced the use of opium in Tomb 100. Beyond its psychoactive and hallucinogenic properties and medicinal applications, the opium poppy emits a distinctive floral and musty fragrance (Lee 2006: 205). The powerful, long-​lasting aroma could have masked putrid smells of decay, which would have been intensified by factors such as the high density of decaying human remains as well as the stuffy space of the tomb 421

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chamber which was sealed in between episodes of funerary activity. Indeed, the continual accumulation of corpses decaying at different rates would have been malodorous to say the least. Gottlieb Schumacher, an early excavator of Megiddo, even noted the “powerful odor of putrefaction” that lingered in a subfloor chamber tomb millennia after-​the-​fact (1908: 142). The high quantity of lamps inside the tomb may be explained by a desire to mask this stench as well as related concerns with purification and ritual procedure through light, fumigation, and burning. Burning of incense or scented substances in funerary and other ritual contexts was well documented throughout the ancient Near East, as referenced in the Tale of Aqhat, which involved burning of incense to end the mourning period. Use of prescriptive fumigants was also recorded in medical contexts involving ghost-​induced illnesses. In some cases, the prescribed ingredients were burned inside a human skull, rather than in a ceramic vessel such as a lamp or incense burner, showing an unexpected material use of human remains (Scurlock 2006: 62, no. 282). Similarly, other mortuary materials were mined for use as fumigants including tomb dust, a thorn that sprouted from a tomb, and even body parts from corpses (Scurlock 2006: 63, nos. 277, 282).

Discussion and conclusions This study has parsed the meaningful roles of constructed sensory environments in creating a sensibility of death in the second-millennium BCE Levant. The significance of the mortuary sensory environment can be traced in literary sources, such as the Tale of Aqhat, as well as through archaeological finds. Both of these sources inform how ancient inhabitants purposefully engineered scent, sound, taste, touch, and sight at multiple stages of the funerary sequence. These sensory stimuli combined with the powerful element of time as a means of transformation, particularly with respect to the visual, olfactory, and tactile effects of the decay of human remains. The body comprised an integral and essential component of the Levantine mortuary sensorium in reused tomb spaces. Its central role in the Levantine mortuary sensorium illustrates one way in which mourners embodied, confronted, and coped with the corporeal realities of death. The two case studies examined in this chapter, Qatna’s Royal Hypogeum and Tomb VII and Megiddo’s Tomb 100, differed widely in scale, elaboration, wealth, and other factors. Despite these status differences, in each case mourners crafted a broadly similar mortuary sensorium that drew on parallel features and stimuli. The sensorium provided mourners a controlled way in which to experience and mark the Levantine funerary sequence that resonated across class lines among elite and non-​elite inhabitants from north to south. Significantly, many of these same sensory variables are also expressed in Ugaritic literary sources, which provide further evidence of the role of the mortuary sensorium in Levantine ritual and culture. Observations of mourning also occurred outside of tomb spaces, removed from the immediate presence of the body. Archaeological evidence examined in this chapter demonstrates that deposits of consumable offerings for divine entities (deities and/​or the dead) occurred alongside specialised uses of lighting and scent outside of burial spaces. These stimuli can be contextualised further in light of the description of archaeologically invisible practices quoted at the beginning this chapter in which Aqhat’s father Daniel created a restricted sensory environment inside his house during the mourning period for his son in order to communicate his grief and externalise his loss. Daniel drew on sound in the form of wailing, weeping, and use of cymbals as well as on embodied pain through skin lacerations. Although he relied on others to perform these embodied actions of grieving, he personally prepared the concluding ritual of mourning that

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closed the funerary sequence: a presentation of a meal to the gods and sending of incense to the heavens. Various material iterations of these ritual performances also show up in the archaeological record, a clear testament to the potency of the mortuary sensorium in Levantine culture of the second millennium BCE . Tombs served as a locus of ritual and social negotiation, as well as a site of passage, performance, and transformation. Together, the sensorially potent combination of low light, enclosed subterranean spaces, specific material assemblages, intoxicating substances, and strong odours of decaying human and animal flesh constructed specialised mortuary spaces. These stimuli also impacted cognitive engagement with the mortuary sphere, which could have involved altering the mind, invocation of deities, and mnemonic cues in the form of bodies and effigies. These activities were undertaken to achieve certain mortuary and social goals. Burial and decay of bodies created opportunities to reimagine the status of the dead after burial, and to negotiate their membership in the household. Sensory and physical interactions inside the enclosed tomb spaces intentionally interfered with the natural processes of corporeal decomposition that transformed the bodies of the dead from flesh to bone. These destructive activities re-​composed the dead as embodied and disembodied members of the household who took on a new status as commemorated ancestors. The location of these burial spaces in the innermost areas of the residence restricted access to these sites and their sensory and mnemonic affects. Control over when and by whom the graves were accessed allowed broader household social and power dynamics to permeate life and death. In the cases of Qatna and Megiddo, relationships among household members may not have been equal; not everyone was interred inside these shared chamber tombs. Rather, the household social structure may have privileged certain members both during life and after death, perhaps linked to the construction of specific lineages within the group who were chosen for ancestorhood (Cradic 2017a). Further, the sights, smells, tastes, and otherworldly experiences of biological death were regularly experienced within the household, reinforcing the place of the dead and their continuing ability to impact and permeate the sensory environment of the living long after burial. The constellation of specific experiences and materials within the tombs generated a sensory environment that indexed a certain kind of death in dwelling areas: that of the household ancestors, who underwent a dynamic transition from once-​living person into a new, corporate social entity. Unlike primary inhumations, in which a corpse was placed in a grave and never disturbed, reused intramural tombs were intended to be experienced dynamically and in a ritual sequence over time. The mortuary sensorium was primarily mediated through the dead body, which was a significant and mutable variable during all stages of the funerary sequence, from preparation through post-​interment activities. Engineering the light, aromas, tastes, and cognitive expressions of the mortuary space enabled the living to control the bewildering and disorientating changes in corporeal and social status of the deceased that they witnessed over long spans of time. The funerary sequence utilised the elements of time and order to structure intimate tactile, olfactory, visual, and cognitive activities as a means to make sense of the social and personhood transformations of the dead from living, to deceased, to ancestral. These sensual circumstances brought order to survivors’ prescribed interactions with the dead. Until they achieved ancestorhood, the dead existed as marginal beings at the fringes of two worlds: the world of the living, occupying space underneath the floors of houses, and the world of the dead in the Netherworld. Through a unified programme of cognitive, visual, olfactory, and tangible inputs, the mortuary sensorium created a sensibility of death.

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Notes 1. This text (RS 3.322; RS = Ras Shamra) was excavated from Room 7 in the Library of the High Priest at Ras Shamra (Dietrich et al. 1995: 55). 2. The “house of the father” comprised the most basic social and political unit of Bronze Age society in the Levant (Schloen 2001). 3. For treatments on textual sources of these postmortem entities and the extended life-​course across the ancient Near Eastern world, see Tsukimoto 1985; Lewis 1989; 2014; Schmidt 1994; van der Toorn 1996; 2014; del Olmo Lete 2004; Pardee 2009; Teinz 2012; MacDougal 2014; Scurlock 2016. 4. Burial taphonomy is the study of depositional processes of burials, including the conditions and order of deposition, diagenesis, and human-​induced disturbances to bodies and objects. It encompasses study of mortuary context, body disposal methods, and relationships between human remains and material assemblages. 5. In this study, materiality includes physical properties, sensory characteristics, and social meanings of skeletal remains, material assemblages, and burial contexts. 6. Corporeality considers the physical and social attributes of the living and deceased human body, body parts, and skeletal remains, and the contextualised relationships between these different corporeal components. 7. Embodiment views social actions, status, and identity as inscribed on, performed by, and communicated through bodies and body parts in intentional and non-​ intentional ways, such as through dress, adornment, and appearance; health, diet, and subsistence activities; gendered performances; movement and action; and practices of curation, fragmentation, disarticulation, and co-​mingling of human skeletal remains. 8. Tombs belonging to the city cemetery at Megiddo, which contained rock-​cut, multi-​chambered shaft tombs (Guy and Engberg 1938; Arie 2008), are excluded from this study because of their extramural location. The focus of this chapter is on the sensory components involved in burials cut into subfloor domestic spaces, and their implications for impacting the lived experiences of household inhabitants occupying those shared spaces. 9. Additionally, excavators found remains of microfauna including rodents. Rodents, and possibly the remains of pigeons and doves, may represent intrusive rather than intentional deposits (Vila 2011: 399). 10. These examples included four specimens from sheep, one from cattle, and four from geese (Vila 2011: 399). 11. This 12-​room wing of the palace may have been added to the palace around the eighteenth–​seventeenth centuries BCE and remained in use continuously from the Middle Bronze IIA through the Late Bronze IIA periods. Radiocarbon dates derived from a charred wick of an oil lamp place the last use of the tomb between 1514 and 1436 BCE . These dates match the pottery found inside the chamber, although the bulk of the pottery dates to the Middle Bronze II period, indicating that the heaviest use of the tomb occurred during the Middle Bronze Age (Pf älzner 2014: 142–​144). 12. Across the ancient Near East, anthropomorphic figurines or other symbolic representations may have been utilised for commemorative activities because the physical remains of the dead were not directly involved. The corpse itself was not always available or necessary for mourning and commemoration, prompting the use of various bodily representations as stand-​ins to receive offerings on behalf of the dead. These various representations of the dead included anthropomorphic figurines, standing stones, iconography of the deceased, or a combination of these factors, to differing degrees of personalisation. For example, Ugaritic literary texts described setting up a stela of the father’s deity, a “votive” of the clan, and dedication of incense and grain offerings in the temple of Ba’lu as essential components of a son’s filial duties (KTU I, 26–​33, 44–​47; II, 1–​8; Kim 2011: 122–​127). 13. Excavation of Tomb 100 was carried out in June–​July 2010 in Area K, supervised by Mario Martin with the assistance of Robert Homsher, Melissa Cradic, Adam Prins, and Jen Thum (Martin and Cradic 2021). 14. See Martin and Cradic (2021) for discussion of various possibilities regarding the tomb’s entrance. 15. These niches were variable in size, shape, function, and location within a tomb chamber. Some were cut into the wall while others were cut into the floor. Others were built into dromoi. Some of these niches functioned as ossuaries or burial beds rather than for holding grave goods (Baker 2010; Marchegay 1999: 101–​102).

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16. One niche contained four lamps and another contained one lamp. The other niches contained offerings such as a bronze javelin and bronze dagger, ceramic plate, and fragments of a necklace (Marchegay 1999: 120). 17. This explanation does not apply to all cases, however, such as at Tell es-​Sa’idiyeh, where lamps occurred in simple pit primary inhumations. Yet even in this case, lamps may have fulfilled specialised ritual functions, one being lamp-​and-​bowl foundation deposits and the other being closing rituals (Green 2014: 162–​163). 18. It is worth noting that another 14 burials, mostly simple pit and jar burials, were located in the same building as Tomb 100. None of these infilled burials contained an oil lamp (Martin et al. 2021). 19. For example, Tombs 989 and 912 (Guy and Engberg 1938: 39, figs. 40–​41; 68, fig. 75). 20. Other deities were invoked in the funerary text KTU 1.161, including Didanu, Ulkn and Trmn (“the hero[es]”), Sidanu-​wa-​Radanu, Toru ‘llmn, heroes of old, and dead kings Ammittamru and Niqmaddu (Lewis 1989). 21. The second part of this two-​phase ritual took place at night (lll) in the palace (bt mlk) (KTU 1.39, 12–​22; del Olmo Lete 2004: 213). KTU 1.39 is a sacrificial liturgy dealing with the royal funerary cult that involved the entire pantheon on the night of Špš pgr wtrmum “of the dead/​funerary offering” (del Olmo Lete 2004: 213). 22. Similar practices have been documented ethnographically. For example, the Chachi in Ecuador consume large quantities of tobacco and rum during funerary games. As mourners become more intoxicated, they imaginatively shape-​shift into ghosts as a way to embody and presence the dead (Praet 2005).

Bibliography Arie, E. 2008. “Urban Land Use Changes on the Southeastern Slope of Tel Megiddo during the Middle Bronze Age,” in A. Fantalkin and A. Yasur-​Landau, eds., Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein. CHANES 31. Leiden: Brill, 1–​16. Ashbrook Harvey, S., and M. Mullet. 2017. “Introduction,” in S. Ashbrooke Harvey and M. Mullet, eds., Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium. Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1–​17. Baker, J. L. 2006. “The Funeral Kit: A Newly Defined Canaanite Mortuary Practice Based on the Middle and Late Bronze Age Tomb Complex at Ashkelon.” Levant 38: 1–​31. Baker, J. L. 2010. “Form and Function of Mortuary Architecture: The Middle and Late Bronze Age Tomb Complex at Ashkelon.” Levant 42: 5–​16. Baker, J. L. 2012. The Funeral Kit: Mortuary Practices in the Archaeological Record. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Bisset, N. G., J. G. Bruhn, and M. Zenk. 1996. “The Presence of Opium in a 3.500 Year Old Cypriot Base-​Ring Juglet.” Egypt and the Levant 6: 203–​204. Bottéro, J. 1992. Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brody, A. J. 2008. “Late Bronze Age Intramural Tombs,” in L. E. Stager, J. D. Schloen, and D. M. Master, eds., Ashkelon 1: Introduction and Overview, 1985–​2006. Harvard Semitic Museum Publications. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 515–​532. Chovanec, Z., S. Rafferty, and S. Swiny. 2012. “Opium for the Masses.” Ethnoarchaeology 4: 5–​36. Connerton, P. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cradic, M. S. 2017a. “Embodiments of Death: The Funerary Sequence and Commemoration in the Bronze Age Levant.” BASOR 377: 219–​248. Cradic, M. S. 2017b. “Transformations in Death: the Archaeology of Funerary Practices and Personhood in the Bronze Age Levant.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, University of California, Berkeley. Cradic, M. S. 2018. “Residential Burials and Social Memory in the Middle Bronze Age Levant.” Near Eastern Archaeology 81: 191–​201. del Olmo Lete, G. 2004. Canaanite Religion According to the Liturgical Texts of Ugarit. Trans. W. G. E. Watson. AOAT 408. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. DePietro, D. D. 2012. “Piety, Practice, and Politics: Ritual and Agency in the Late Bronze Age Southern Levant.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

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Langdon, S. 1935. Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars. Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1933. London: Oxford University Press. Lange, S. 2014. “Food Offerings in the Royal Tomb of Qaṭna,” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, S. Lange, and T. Köster, eds., Contextualising Grave Inventories in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of a Workshop at the London 7th ICAANE in April 2010 and an International Symposium in Tübingen in November 2010, both Organised by the Tübingen Post-​Graduate School ‘Symbols of the Dead’. Qaṭna Studien Supplementa 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 243–​257. Lee, P. 2006. Opium Culture: The Art and Ritual of the Chinese Tradition. Rochester: Park Street Press. Lewis, T. J. 1989. Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit. Harvard Semitic Monographs 39. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Lewis, T. J. 2014. “Feasts for the Dead and Ancestor Veneration in Levantine Traditions,” in V. R. Herrmann and J. D. Schloen, eds., In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East. OIMP 37. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 67–​74. MacDougal, R. 2014. “Remembrance and the Dead in Second Millennium BC Mesopotamia.” Ph.D. Dissertation, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester. Marchegay, S. 1999. “Les Tombes d’Ougarit: Architecture, Localisation et Relation avec l’Habitat.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Université Lumière Lyon-​2, Lyon. Martin, M.A.S., and M.S. Cradic. 2021. “Area K: Tomb 100 (Level K-10),” in I. Finkelstein and M.A.S. Martin, eds., Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons. Volume 1. Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. University Park, PA/Tel Aviv: Eisenbrauns/Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, 306–391. Martin, M.A.S., M.S. Cradic, and R. Kalisher. 2021. “Area K: Intramural Pit and Jar Burials (Level K-10),” in I. Finkelstein and M.A.S. Martin, eds., Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons. Volume 1. Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. University Park, PA/Tel Aviv: Eisenbrauns/Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, 224–305. Morandi Bonacossi, D. 2013. “The Crisis of Qatna at the Beginning of the Late Bronze Age II and the Iron Age II Settlement Revival: A Regional Trajectory Towards the Collapse of the Late Bronze Age Palace System in the Northern Levant,” in K. Aslıhan Yener, ed., Across the Border: Late Bronze-​Iron Age Relations between Syria and Anatolia. Proceedings of a Symposium held at the Research Center of Anatolian Studies, Koç University, Istanbul May 31–​June 1, 2010. Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement 42. Walpole: Peeters, 113–​146. Müller, M. 2018. “Foundation Deposits and Strategies of Place-​Making at Tell el-​Dab‘a/​Avaris.” Near Eastern Archaeology 81: 182–​190. Namdar, D. 2021. “Appendix II: Residue Analysis of Three Lamps,” in I. Finkelstein and M.A.S. Martin, eds., Megiddo VI: The 2010–2014 Seasons. Volume 1. Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. University Park, PA/Tel Aviv: Eisenbrauns/Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, 392–399. Niehr, H. 2012. “Two Stelae Mentioning Mortuary Offerings from Ugarit (KTU 6.13 and 6.14),” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, and A. Wissing, eds., (Re-​)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Tübingen Post-​Graduate School ‘Symbols of the Dead’ in May 2009. Qaṭna Studien Supplementa 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 149–​160. Pardee, D. 2009. “A New Aramaic Inscription from Zincirli.” BASOR 356: 51–​71. Parker, S. B. 1997. “Aqhat,” in M. S. Smith and S. B. Parker, eds., Ugaritic Narrative Poetry. Atlanta: SBL Press. Parker Pearson, M. 1999. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Stroud: Sutton. Pf älzner, P. 2007. “Archaeological Investigations in the Royal Palace of Qatna,” in D. Morandi Bonacossi, ed., Urban and Natural Landscapes of an Ancient Syrian Capital Settlement and Environment at Tell Mishrifeh/​ Qatna and in Central-​Western Syria: Proceedings of an International Conference held at Udine 9–​11 December 2004. Studi Archeologici su Qatna è Pubblicata in Coedizione 1 con la Serie ‘Documents d’Archéologie Syrienne’ XII. Udine: Forum, 29–​64. Pf älzner, P. 2012. “How did They Bury the Kings of Qatna?,” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, and A. Wissing, eds., (Re-​)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Tübingen Post-​Graduate School ‘Symbols of the Dead’ in May 2009. Qaṭna Studien Supplementa 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 205–​220. Pf älzner, P. 2014. “Royal Funerary Practices and Inter-​Regional Contacts in the Middle Bronze Age Levant: New Evidence from Qatna,” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, S. Lange, and T. Köster, eds., Contextualising Grave Inventories in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of a Workshop at the London 7th ICAANE in April 2010 and an International Symposium in Tübingen in November 2010, both Organised 427

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by the Tübingen Post-​Graduate School ‘Symbols of the Dead in May 2009’. Qaṭna Studien Supplementa 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 141–​156. Pf älzner, P. 2016. “Royal Corpses, Royal Ancestors, and the Living: The Transformation of the Dead in Ancient Syria,” in C. Felli, ed., How to Cope with Death: Mourning and Funerary Practices in the Ancient Near East, Proceedings of the International Workshop, Firenze, 5th–​6th December 2013. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 241–​270. Praet, I. 2005. “People into Ghosts: Chachi Death Rituals as Shape-​Shifting.” Tipití: Journal of the Society of the Anthropology of Lowland South America 3: 131–​146. Schloen, J. D. 2001. The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East. Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant 2; Harvard Semitic Museum Publications. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Schmidt, B. B. 1994. Israel’s Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 11. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr. Schumacher, G. 1908. Tell el-​Mutesellim I: Bericht über die 190–​-​1905. Leipzig: Haupt. Scurlock, J. 2006. Magico-​Medical Means of Treating Ghost-​Induced Illnesses in Ancient Mesopotamia. AMD 3. Leiden: Brill. Scurlock, J. 2016. “Mortal and Immortal Souls, Ghosts, and the (Restless) Dead in Ancient Mesopotamia.” Religion Compass 10: 77–​82. Scurlock, J., and B. R. Andersen. 2005. Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine: Ancient Sources, Translations, and Modern Medical Analyses. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Skeates, R. 2010. An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teinz, K. 2012. “How to Become an Ancestor: Some Thoughts,” in P. Pf älzner, H. Niehr, E. Pernicka, and A. Wissing, eds., (Re-​)Constructing Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the First International Symposium of the Tübingen Post-​Graduate School ‘Symbols of the Dead’ in May 2009. Qaṭna Studien Supplementa 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 235–​243. Tringham, R. 2013. “A Sense of Touch—​the Full Body Experience—​in the Past and Present of Catalhoyuk, Turkey,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 177–​195. Tsukimoto, A. 1985. Untersuchungen zur Totenpflege (kispum) im alten Mesopotamien. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 216. Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. van der Toorn, K. 1996. Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life. Studies in the History and Culture of the Near East 7. Leiden: Brill. van der Toorn, K. 2014. “The Dead That Are Slow to Depart: Evidence for Ancestor Rituals in Mesopotamia,” in V. R. Herrmann and J. D. Schloen, eds., In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East. OIMP 37. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 81–​84. Vila, E. 2011. “Les Restes de Faune dans le Complexe Funéraire Royal de Qaṭna,” in P. Pf älzner, ed., Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Königsgruft von Qatna. Qaṭna Studien 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 383–​402. Wiggins, S. A. 1996. “Shapsh, Lamp of the Gods,” in N. Wyatt, W. G. E. Watson, and J. B. Lloyd, eds., Ugarit, Religion and Culture: Proceedings of an International Colloquium on Ugarit, Religion and Culture. Edinburgh, July 1994. Ugaritisch-​Biblische Literature 12. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag, 327–​350. Witzel, C. and K. Kreutz. 2007. “First Results of the Anthropological and Paleopathological Examination of the Human Skeletal Remains Recovered from the Royal Tomb of Tell Mishrifeh/​Qatna,” in D. Morandi Bonacossi, ed., Urban and Natural Landscapes of an Ancient Syrian Capital Settlement and Environment at Tell Mishrifeh/​Qatna and in Central-​Western Syria. Studi Archeologici su Qatna è Pubblicata in Coedizione 1 con la Serie ‘Documents d’Archéologie Syrienne’ XII. Udine: Forum, 173–​187.

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20 The smells of eternity Aromatic oils and resins in the Phoenician mortuary record Helen Dixon

Introduction Our own scholarly engagement with death in the ancient world is embedded in and intertwined with the objects and iconography of burial—​the tomb or grave itself and its embellishments, a variety of grave goods, perhaps the skeletal or cremated remains of the dead. We know rationally that this picture is incomplete, but rarely confront just how inadequate it is: of course the primary experience of an ancient burial for those participating in it would have been sensory and emotional—​ancient funerals were body-​centred events, enriched by poignant memories, in which those objects that become the whole story for us (e.g., the shape of the sarcophagus, the jewellery on the body), play only a supporting or even minor role for the family members in attendance. Those studies that have attempted in-​depth analysis of the experiential elements of the ancient Mediterranean funeral or burial event might focus on the sounds of professional mourners or funeral musicians (e.g., Garcia-​Ventura and López-​Bertran 2013) on the one hand, or grave-​side feasting on the other, exploring commensality and the last shared meal with loved ones (e.g., Hamilakis 1998; López-​Bertran 2019: 148–​149). Sight and touch within an ancient burial are perhaps more self-​evident experiences to contemporary academics, while sound and taste provide more vivid, if uncomfortable, texture to our narratives. But exploring the smells of death and burial likely strikes many readers as a crude or even repulsive subject. With other scholars working in this marginalised arena (e.g., Classen et al. 1994; Skeates 2010; Avery 2013), I argue that as with most deeply held memories, a tapestry of smells—​some unintended and some curated or added—​likely formed a significant core component of the experience of burial in the first-​millennium ancient Mediterranean world. To investigate this notion in more detail, this study surveys the aromatic substances associated with burial and preservation of the dead in the Phoenician1 city states of the Iron Age central coastal Levant (modern coastal Syria, Lebanon, and northern Israel/​Palestine), focusing on the second half of the first millennium BCE , from the Iron Age III or Persian period forward. A review of archaeological and textual evidence, along with comparanda and context from the wider Mediterranean world, will be provided to establish the range of smells and substances that were associated with mortuary practice at this time. It is particularly notable that the oleo-​resins (referring to plant resin held in solution with oil, or a particularly oily resin) in use in the burial record overlap to some DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-21

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degree with aromatics used in everyday life—​in perfumes, religious practice, and other uses of scented oils.

Death and the sense of smell A fuller investigation of sensory experience in the ancient Mediterranean world supports not only a more accurate narrative of the events and rituals of the past, but also enhances our ability to visualise life in other times and places. One of the more compelling reconstructions of the experience of a tomb might be Hamilakis’ narration (2013a: 132, 134), inviting the reader to enter a tholos tomb from Bronze Age Crete: A dead person is carried to a circular, stone-​built, most probably vaulted tholos tomb from a nearby village, along with objects, some belonging—​or perhaps relating—​to the dead (sealstones, figurines, stone vases), many—​perhaps most—​brought especially for the funerary ceremonies. As you enter the dark, humid spaces of the tomb through the only opening (its small and low entrance), in some cases having to crawl in and even pull the corpse from inside, you are in a different world. You are disoriented, but only temporarily. Darkness, lack of space for movement, and, above all perhaps, the strong odour of decomposing flesh, amplified by the enclosed, hemispherical space, transports you to a realm both spatially and temporally distinct, and markedly different from that of the everyday. Yet, you have been here before. The smell is familiar; the flickering light of the lamp aids the recognition of the micro-​regions of the tomb. In some cases, you can even recognize distinctive objects, peculiar stone and clay vessels, and the odd sealstone, metal dagger, or marble figuring. You recall persons long dead, you start making associations; you connect bones, skulls, and objects with times, places, living humans. The picture Hamilakis paints is vivid—​using the second-​person direct address, and mentioning no other living beings, the narration creates the feeling of being in a video game, being able to explore the space and objects unencumbered by ritual events. Smell is evoked as a significant component of the experience, but only in terms of the smell of the body itself—​“the strong odour of decomposing flesh”—​and the meaning that particular smell would have for someone who would have attended many burial events before. While the scent of the dead body is not described as simply repulsive or “bad,” it is evoked as a single-​note mnemonic perfume, the only notable smell in the space. Certainly, two specific compounds known as cadaverine (H2N[CH2]5NH2) and putrescine (H2N[CH2]4NH2) mark the olfactory landscape wherever dead humans or animals can be found, whether that be at funerals or a butcher’s shop (Bartosiewicz 2003: 186). The common human reaction to be revulsed by these compounds is thought to have developed through selection pressures to protect humans from certain diseases (Bartosiewicz 2003: 175–​176), and perhaps to have motivated codified religious taboos surrounding corpse handling. To a contemporary audience who may have had little experience of these smells, their presence likely forms one of the most notable details of the imagining, and it is understandably exoticised in some descriptions of burial. But understanding the meaning of these and other smells present during burial requires a more nuanced picture of smell in the ancient Mediterranean world. While the semantics of some smell reactions could be said to be evolutionarily hard-​wired, many others are culturally relative: what constitutes desirable scents, but also what smells are appropriate for what occasions, and what other data can be conveyed through specific olfactory features (Bartosiewicz 2003: 175–​176).2 Even a seemingly straightforward application of scent, like perfuming the body, 430

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can be motivated by several different desires, and culturally constrained in terms of what smells are expected according to gender norms, when this type of adornment is appropriate, and for what audiences (Classen et al. 1994: 126–​129). What little we know about the meaning of scents in the ancient world indicates that the sense of smell was one that carried valuable information—​about what was good and bad, ripe and rotten, even true or false, pure or dangerous. Smell is, after all, the only way to know many foods and liquids have begun to rot or ferment. Throughout the Mediterranean, and particularly in religious contexts, smell should be recognised as “a medium that both physicalizes and de-​physicalizes,” as Clements (2014: 46–​47) put it, “bringing with it an indeterminacy that transcends boundaries, permeates bodily limits, and effects a unity of perceiver and perceived, a taking ‘over by otherness’, or an atmosphere of something shared” (see also Classen 1993: 20–​21; 2006). Texts within the Hebrew Bible emphasise the smell of sacrifice as the force that attracts divine attention, and the uniqueness of scent and smoke in their ability to travel from earth to the heavens. An array of imagery associated with Yahweh’s nose, power to smell out intention, and other olfactory associations are at play in the Hebrew texts, often obscured by modern English translations—​an obfuscation that may have begun already in the third century BCE Septuagint translation (Ritchie 2000).3 The extensive long-​distance trade in incense from the beginnings of urban habitation speaks for itself in terms of the importance of scent as a dimension of marking the sacred. The intentional inclusion of desirable scents in religious ritual might be thought to attract and invite deities and worshippers alike. A secondary benefit of strong smells during a religious ritual is their universal accessibility to any participant or attendee; in a large public ceremony with extensive crowds, being able to see or hear the proceedings will be limited by one’s location and faculties, while being able to smell the incense or burning of a sacrifice may be possible for anyone in attendance. Another complicating dimension of the human sense of smell is that it is attenuated to changes in scent—​scents are processed relative to a baseline that adjusts according to one’s surroundings. When the human sense of smell is compared to that of dogs, for example, this is the central distinction: dogs continuously process scent information, while our sense of smell is more selective. We can quickly become accustomed to strong, complex, and even initially disgusting scentscapes, as workers in industrial-​scale animal farming can attest (Bartosiewicz 2003: 188). As Bartosiewicz (2003: 188) writes, “it is worth distinguishing between acute or dynamic smells (that carry new information and influence human decisions) and chronic or static smells (a constant and unavoidable part of the cultural landscape).” Rather than thinking in terms of where perfume, incense, or scented oils are or are not in play, we may do better to think about the vast variation in these substances that would have been present in the olfactory landscapes we are exploring.4 With these preliminary observations in mind, I would like to explore smelling and scents in one specific cultural context within the first ​millennium BCE Mediterranean world, and through the evidence from burials as one type of religious ritual.

The Phoenician evidence The evidence for scents relating to death and burial in the central coastal Levant during the second half of the first millennium BCE could be characterised as tantalisingly slim. But the inscriptions, artefacts, and burials that contain information about scents used when burying the dead may be contextualised through a complex web of data from diverse bodies of evidence. While scholarly attention to this data has long been minimal (notable exceptions include Carreras Rossell’s 2010 431

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study on unguents, cosmetics, and perfumes in the Phoenician and Punic culture sphere), impressive preliminary work by López-​Bertran (2019: 147–​149) on what she characterises as “trees, perfumes and flavours: taste and smell in funerary rites” went far in demonstrating the viability of explorations of these under-​studied senses in the archaeology of the central coastal Levant. Here, I assemble linguistic and textual data in conjunction with material culture that indicates the range of aromatics in use during burial in the second half of the first millennium BCE .

Smelling in Phoenician? First, the problem of the paucity of Phoenician-​language texts (and therefore linguistic data) should be addressed. While thousands of inscriptions from the first millennium BCE in various dialects of Phoenician and Punic have come to light, they constitute a skewed corpus, mostly consisting of personal names and fuller mortuary or votive inscriptions that are highly formulaic in nature. Some of the most intensely debated issues in the reconstruction of Phoenician history and religion (e.g., the problem of Punic child sacrifice and the use of the so-​called tophet sites) arise from the ambiguous nature of recurring noun phrases within this corpus. The relative lack of long texts or inscriptions in the birthplace of the ’abjad has long been explained by the reliance on organic writing media that has been lost to the humid and unfavourable coastal conditions of the region. But recent scholarship has begun to explore the idea of an intentional avoidance of lengthy, centralised text production within these city states in the Iron Age II–​III periods (c. 1000–​300 BCE ; Quinn 2018). In any event, our extant Phoenician vocabulary is limited both in scale and in contextual depth. Handicapped as we are in surveying Phoenician thinking and writing about scent, the potential or circumstantial evidence we do have is intriguing. My best guess is that the Phoenician verb “to smell” was related to the classical Hebrew hollow root R-​Ḥ. It is perhaps not surprising that in that Northwest Semitic language, the concept of “scent” is related to that of “breath” or even “soul” (Hebrew ruaḥ), since smelling requires the movement of air through the nasal passages (where molecules are absorbed into the nasal mucosa, in which olfactory neurons are embedded). One candidate for preservation of this R-​Ḥ root in Phoenician or Punic might be found in the obscure title of a cultic functionary, which has been heavily debated among scholars for more than 100 years. Sixteen Phoenician, Punic, or Neo-​Punic inscriptions (Appendix A, nos. 1–​16) dated from the fourth through second centuries BCE attest this title: mqm ’lm mtrḥ ‘štrny, in which the third word-​unit (mtrḥ, as commonly divided5) may (or may not!) relate to a Phoenician verb R-​Ḥ, “to smell.” Another 12 inscriptions contain the first two elements of this title (mqm ’lm), either with no modifier (Appendix A, nos. 17–​256) or, in three examples (nos. 27–​29), with another ambiguous and debated term, making clarification through semantic parallels difficult. In fact, no part of this title has gone without linguistic debate. A selective summary of interpretive proposals is given in Table 20.1. Like many other noun phrases in the Phoenician and Punic corpora, this title only occurs in epigraphic contexts, modifying male personal names in votive or funerary context; the cultic title does not appear in any narrative texts that might offer clues as to what this religious office entailed. Nearly all the interpretations conclude that mqm should be understood as deriving from the hollow root Q-​M, with a semantic range including “to rise,” “to establish,” or “to go up.” Similarly, most scholars agree that ’lm likely refers to one or more deities, although the nature of this construct phrase (and its relationship with the next phrase or concept) is less clear. The full collection of 28 inscriptions containing the phrase mqm ’lm indicates that this initial mqm ’lm unit can stand alone or with at least three modifying clauses, probably each indicating different cultic officials.7 432

Aromatic oils and resins Table 20.1  Select interpretations of the Phoenician, Punic, and Neo-​Punic title mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny Source

mqm ʾlm

mtrḥ ʿštrny

Berger 1912

The meqim [~antistes, a title associated with the cult of Mithras] of the god Establisher of gods/ordainer of things religious [~επιμελητής] The one who raises the god

Mitraḥastarni = Mithra [husband] of Astronoë [an androgynous deity]

Awakener of the dead [mt] god

by the scent of ʿštrny [likely a version of the goddess Astarte/ Astronoë] astroneal husband [referring to the goddess Astarte/Astronoë]

Honeyman 1940 Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995: II, 710, 1002–​1003 Krahmalkov 2000

Zamora 20178

The raiser/resurrected of the deity

bridegroom/consort/husband/ spouse of Aštart of Nineveh [uncertain cultic function]

The final column of Table 20.1 shows that scholarly interpretation of mtrḥ ‘štrny has ranged from a deity name in apposition with ’lm, a construct phrase in apposition to the (mortal) mqm ’lm, or an adverbial phrase indicating means (and referring to a specific ritual role). All see ‘štrny as derived from the name of a goddess; many scholars assume this spelling indicates it should be vocalised as the Greek Astronoë, attested in the Late Antique writings of Damascius (458–​550 CE ). In fragment 348 of his Life of Isidore, Damascius tells the story of Astronoë, a Phoenician goddess, who resurrects and divinises the mortal Asklepios (or Asklepios-​Herakles, often understood as Ešmun-​Milqart; Krahmalkov 2000: 309, 390). Although this Greek text (preserved only in fragments) is quite late, it may reinforce the religious or mythic context for the ritual specialist in broad outline. This leaves us with the potentially relevant term in question: mtrḥ. Zamora (2017) adopts Honeyman’s suggestion that the term should be understood as derived from the root TRḤ (otherwise unattested in Phoenician, Punic, or classical Hebrew, but derived from Akkadian terḫatu, “to marry,” and appearing in Ugaritic) and indicating that the person bearing the title mqm ’lm is to be understood as the ritual husband or consort of the goddess. This is appealing to those interested in finding support for Near Eastern rituals that involved sacred marriages, or symbolic sexual congress with deities. But Krahmalkov’s (2000: 309) translation, largely overlooked, deserves revisiting. Krahmalkov proposed that this male cultic functionary should be understood as something like the “awakener of the dead god with the scent of [the goddess] štrny.” Evoking an unnamed dying-​and-​r ising god, this interpretation parses the ritual title as mqm ’lm mt rḥ ‘štrny, with m[w]‌t modifying ’lm: the “dead god.”The idea that a god could be awoken from death (or resurrected) with the scent of another is intriguing, and perhaps a bit uncomfortable for the modern reader. But I welcome this proposal as a corrective to the tendency in Near Eastern scholarship to avoid, overlook, or euphemise sensory experience (especially that connected with smell) in the ancient sources we seek to understand. Ritchie (2000) offers an in-​depth exploration of this phenomenon in English-​language translation of the Hebrew Bible; his work provides an illuminating discussion of how the root R-​Ḥ or ryḥ, when used in the Hebrew biblical texts to refer to Yahweh or human response to the deity, likely referred to scent or smelling in all cases, but over time was treated as metaphorical or edited out entirely through generations of translators uncomfortable with anthropomorphisms. He points out that while phrasing like “I [Yahweh] will not smell in your solemn assemblies” 433

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(Amos 5:21) was present in the 1611 English King James Version, by the nineteenth century English-​language translators grew uncomfortable with the implication that Yahweh had a nose and that smell carried weight or information valuable in the religious sphere (with some notable exceptions; Ritchie 2000: 70). This is what Ritchie (2000: 71) calls the “olfaction avoidance syndrome,” a phenomenon he traces through Western scholarship drawing support from the observations of critical scholars like Foucault and Said.9 Along these lines, Krahmalkov also suggests translating the Phoenician verb srḥ in the Piel/D-Stem (attested only once, in KAI 10, the Yehawmilk stele) as “to make stink” a sensual, concrete rendering of “to render offensive,” as opposed to the more common translation “to destroy.”10 Through this interpretive lens, curse formulae threaten disruptors of tombs and votive dedications with being made smelly by divine agents! Similar expressions of sensorial disgust are well documented in east Semitic dialects (de Zorzi 2019), and Ritchie’s point about the modern scholar’s resistance to references to olfaction is still operative. In rethinking the Phoenician linguistic evidence for vocabulary related to the root R-​Ḥ, it seems possible that the inhabitants of the central coastal Levant, like their southern neighbours, thought of scent as deeply connected to the divine realm. Smell was a vector that could (possibly) resurrect the divine, and mark mere mortals as criminal, ripe for exile from their human communities (see also Chapter 29, this volume). Whether or not you are convinced by these tenuous linguistic hypotheses, we are on surer footing with Phoenician epigraphic references to the odiferous substances themselves. A handful of extant Phoenician or Punic vocabulary words begin to outline for us the manufacture of, trade in, and use of fragrant substances: • •

• •

lbnh (attested in the construct form lbnt) = frankincense (Tomback 1978: 156; Krahmalkov 2000: 253); incense altar (Krahmalkov 2000: 253). qtrt = incense (Tomback 1978: 287–​288; Krahmalkov 2000: 426); perfume (Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995: II, 1007); mkr ’qtrt = incense seller (Tomback 1978: 177; Krahmalkov 2000: 282). rqḥ (attested in the noun forms hrqḥ, rq’, and mrqḥ) = perfumer (Tomback 1978: 306–​307; Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995: II, 1083); ointment (Tomback 1978: 306–​307). šmn = oil (Tomback 1978: 323; Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995: II, 1163; Krahmalkov 2000: 470).

These four terms are those well agreed upon, though others have been proposed (e.g., Delcor 1983; Février 1955). Still, these terms do not provide clear-​or narrow-​enough contexts to aid our understanding of the use of aromatic substances during burial or connected in other ways with the treatment of the dead. To investigate how specific resins or other fragrant materials were used to prepare dead bodies or adorn the tomb, we must turn to a fuller investigation of the available textual data.

Buried in myrrh and bdellium The most significant Phoenician inscription for our purposes refers explicitly to the use of scented substances in the burial of an elite person, that of the late sixth-​to early fifth-​century BCE unknown king of Byblos (Figure 20.1).11 The inscription was found on a fragment of a (likely rectangular) marble sarcophagus; only a 56 by 43 centimetres marble fragment survives, found reused in the courtyard of the crusader castle at Byblos and preserved in the Beirut National Museum (inv. no. 26780). Traces of seven lines of Phoenician characters are visible, but 434

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Figure 20.1  Inscribed marble sarcophagus fragment of an unknown king of Byblos, with a box indicating the phrase “prepared in myrrh and bdellium,” describing the burial preparations for the king’s body). Beirut National Museum (26780). Source: After Starcky 1969: pl. 1.

the first three lines are the most legible. Cross’ 1979 transcription of these lines of the inscription follows (emphasis added): i. [ʾnk (PN and titulary) škb bʾrn] zn ʾnk lḥdy wkn hn ʾnk škb bʾrn zn ʾsp bmr wbdl[ḥ ii. wʾm kl ʾdm ybqš lptḥ ʿlt ʾrn zn wlrgz ʿṣmy hʿgzt bqšn hʾdr wbkl dr [bn ʾlm iii. lk prs] wmdy ʾdn mlkm wdrkm {wdrkm} ylkt brbm[ Informed by previous translators’ discussions (Starcky 1969; Cross 1979: 41), I read: i. I [PN and titulary] lie in this sarcophagus—​I alone, here! Behold, I lie in this sarcophagus, prepared in myrrh and bdellium […]. ii. […] and if anyone tries to open this sarcophagus or to disturb my remaining bones, find him, [Ba‘al] ’Addir, and with all the assembly of the gods […]. iii. […] king of the Persians and the Medes, lord of kingdoms and dominions {and dominions}. I walked among the great […]. This mortuary inscription, written in the first person from the perspective of the deceased, specifies that the body of the unnamed king was prepared through some type of treatment with two gum resins, myrrh and bdellium. The specific significance of these aromatic products will be explored below, but the fact that they are articulated by name is already notable. Whoever commissioned this inscription wished to emphasise the importance of leaving the burial undisturbed and underscores the lack of valuable burial goods in the sarcophagus (“I alone”) by way of deterrent. This context is clear in light of other Phoenician-​language royal inscriptions from the Iron Age III period (c. 500–​300 BCE ) Levant, which emphasise leaving the burial undisturbed, and call on the gods to ensure punishment for anyone who opens the tomb.12 But what does it mean to be “prepared in myrrh and bdellium”? 435

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The Phoenician phrase ʾsp b-​is likely being used here in an idiomatic sense specific to human remains. While ʾsp is often translated as “gathered” (see Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995: I, 89 for the inscriptional corpus), it is clear from later Punic contexts as well as classical Hebrew comparanda (e.g., Jer. 8:2 and 25:33) that the verb is used of bones and corpses that are being collected, arranged, or prepared for burial (Krahmalkov 2000: 66; Brown 1906: 62; thus, Starcky 1969: 262). Since both myrrh and bdellium were used in perfumes, medicines, and as incense (see below), the process translated here as being “prepared in” these two ingredients for burial could be interpreted in several different ways: • • • • • •

Oils containing these resins might have been used to soak cloth strips or a shroud applied to the body. Oils containing these resins might have been poured directly over the body. Thicker unguents containing these resins might have been rubbed into or layered on top of the body. The solid resins (in droplets or chunks) might have been poured over the body or included with it inside the sarcophagus. The solid resins—​or oils, unguents, or poultices containing them—​might have been stuffed inside the body cavities. Smoke from the burned resins could have been released over the body or perhaps trapped inside the sarcophagus.13

There is literary support from classical authors for several of these methods being in use in the ancient Mediterranean, though we cannot confirm what preparation this king of Byblos underwent without any physical remains. Still, it seems likely that the two resins were named in the text of the inscription (a) because of their high value and recognisable status as expensive aromatics, (b) because of their appropriateness in a mortuary setting,14 and possibly (c) because they were thought to aid the preservation of the body, in addition to enhancing its smell. Since the late nineteenth-​century excavation of the royal necropolis at Sidon, the possibility that royal or elite dead from culturally Phoenician city-​states were mummified has been an intriguing hypothesis. Early accounts described sarcophagi opened to reveal perfectly preserved bodies, which unfortunately quickly decayed upon exposure to the air; the body of King Tabnit of Sidon was a notable exception in that some soft tissue still survives on the underside of the remains, on display in Istanbul (for the initial accounts, see Hamdi Bey and Reinach 1892: 101–​ 103; Torrey 1902: 168–​169; Jessup 1910: 507). Indirect evidence of mummification (including the use of linen wrappings and unknown resinous substances) was also reported in more recent excavations at Arwad (Elayi and Haykal 1996: 121). Finally, a mummified body wrapped in linen was excavated in the modern excavations at the Sidon royal tombs (Ghadban 1998: 147). While it is now clear that the people of the first-​millennium BCE central coastal Levant did not perform elaborate mummification as we might expect based on Egyptian exemplars (no removal of organs or filling of body cavities as far as we know), it seems probable that the Sidonian royal family practised some form of mummification (Sader 2019: 228–​229), and it is possible that some components of elite inhumation elsewhere in the central coastal Levant (and its diaspora communities) also involved behaviours intended to conserve, protect, and even preserve the body of the dead exactly as it had been arranged in the burial vessel. In practice, it is likely that corpses were rubbed with scented oil as part of preparing the body before burial, as they were in other Mediterranean contexts. Other oleo-​resins may have

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been added over top or even used to fill the sarcophagus as funds allowed. Resins or other oily substances have often been mentioned in reports of Phoenician and Punic sarcophagi, often in conjunction with the remains of textiles where the substances can be especially notable, though testing has been limited (e.g., in the case the fifth-​century BCE anthropoid sarcophagi from Cadiz containing the burial of a woman; Alfero Giner 1983: 286, n. 9). If the primary purpose of the myrrh and bdellium used in the burial of the unknown king from Byblos was preservative, a secondary effect would of course have been their effect upon the senses of the living. The scents coming from the body or sarcophagus of an inhumation burial would have mingled with many other smells during the funeral procession and burial act. As López-​Bertran (2019: 148) put it, “the material culture connected to smell features prominently in all cemeteries: incense-​burners, perfume bottles, bowls, oil-​lamps and alabastra suggest that ‘odorous rituals’ were held in cemeteries and inside the funerary chambers.” Phoenician mortuary practices are famously diverse: adult members of society could be inhumed in a variety of settings, cremated in whole or in part, and it seems (e.g., at the cemetery at Khaldeh) both inhumed and cremated individuals could be buried in the same tomb (Dixon 2013 495–519). One element uniting these varied burial practices is a concern for the olfactory landscape, evinced by the use of oleo-​resins in the treatment of inhumed bodies as discussed above, aromatic woods among more practical fuel choices on funeral pyres (López-​Bertran 2019: 147–​148, and see below), and the ubiquity of small vessels with narrow necks or mouths in all types of burials—​the unguentaria, alabastra, amphoriskoi, and other juglets thought to contain scented oils or unguents (Carreras Rossell 2010). Other ephemeral elements are more difficult to reconstruct; incense was probably used as part of funeral processions, and we often find incense altars inside elite rock-​cut or built tombs indicating these smells may have continued throughout rituals conducted at the final resting place of the dead. Further evidence for the use of incense includes the small stone altars from the Palermo cemetery or depicted on stelae (Spatafora 2010: 30), as well as one particularly notable double-​plate incense burner from the sixth-​century BCE so-​called bishop’s house monumental tomb in Cadiz (López-​Bertran 2019: 148).15 The specific oleo-​resins and other aromatics used in burial contexts in the central coastal Levant were likely a mix of locally available and imported substances. There are explicit references to Phoenician merchants involved in the spice trade in later periods. For example, Arrian, writing in the second century CE , mentions Phoenicians who accompany Alexander the Great to Gadrosia/​Balouchistan (in modern Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) for myrrh and spikenard (Anabasis 6.22). Archaeological evidence confirms that the inhabitants of the central coastal Levant were involved in the raw material acquisition, production, and trade of perfumes and aromatics in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (Frangié-​Joly 2016). On the one hand, these materials could be construed as widely available throughout the Mediterranean world—​ they often appear as ingredients in perfumes, are mentioned in literary and scientific texts, and are well known by reputation in our available sources. On the other hand, current research indicates that these resins, oils, and aromatic woods would have been highly prized and very expensive materials in all periods. Royalty, temples, and religious cults throughout the ancient Mediterranean would have provided a steady and competitive market for the high-​end raw materials, which were accessible only to those who could afford them, and therefore likely reserved for important occasions. Finally, it is notable that within the full repertoire of expensive smells, plants, resins, and oils, only a handful of these substances seem to have been selected by the inhabitants of the central Levantine coast for use in burial contexts, as far as our evidence currently suggests.

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Aromatics in Phoenician mortuary contexts Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha): Phoenician mr; Akkadian murru; Hebrew môr; Greek σμύρνα A highly prized and expensive resin, myrrh has a woody, musky scent that to the modern palette can smell medicinal. It is possible that even its etymology reflects a slightly “bitter” (e.g., Hbr mr) perception among its earliest harvesters and traders. The myrrh and bdellium mentioned on the late sixth-​or early fifth-​century BCE inscribed sarcophagus of the unknown king from Byblos (Figure 20.1) are resins from closely related species: “Twenty-​ nine species of scraggy, thorny trees of the genus Commiphora (formerly Balsamodendron), native to East Africa, Arabia and India produce oleo-​gum-​resins known in antiquity (and today) by the names balm, balsam, bdellium, myrrh and staktê” (van Alfen 2002: 37). The myrrh in question probably comes from the Commiphora gileadensis species, known to have been grown in the southern Levant. Unfortunately, this is the only appearance of the term in the Phoenician or Punic corpus, though it appears a handful of times in other Northwest Semitic inscriptions (Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995: II, 682). The use of myrrh in this elite burial from the Levant is perhaps replicated in the contemporaneous tombs at Carthage, where remains of myrrh resin were found (Bénichou-​Safar 1982: 270–​271). If we broaden our search to Greek historiographic and botanical works, more context surrounding its mortuary uses is available. Myrrh appears in several accounts as connected with the preparation of the human body for burial. Herodotus (c. 484–​425 BCE ), whose account of Egyptian mummification methods has proved generally consistent with even Predynastic mummy preparations (see Jones et al. 2014), describes the body of the Egyptian deceased undergoing the most expensive form of preservation as being filled with ground myrrh (σμύρνα) and cassia (κάσια, along with “other spices, except frankincense”) before it spends 70 days desiccating (Historiae II.86.5). Four hundred years after Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus (writing c. 60–​ 30 BCE ) also discusses Egyptian mummification, mentioning cedar oil (κεδρία), myrrh (σμύρνα), cinnamon (κιννάμωμον), and other spices as used to prepare the body over the course of thirty days (Bibliotheca Historica I.91.5). Closer to home but even later chronologically, the author of the gospel of John (John 19:39–​40; dated c. 90–​110 CE ) also mentions myrrh (actually μίγμα σμύρνης καὶ ἀλόης, “a mixture of myrrh and aloes”) as being used in conjunction with linen to wrap the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. Of course, myrrh was also a well-​known ingredient in perfumes. Esther 2:12 mentions a (perhaps exaggerated) treatment for women at the Achaemenid royal court that involved “six months with oil of myrrh and six with perfumes and cosmetics” (NRSV).16 The stakte or stacte mentioned above was a Hellenistic and Roman myrrh-​based perfume of the highest quality, prized by Seleucid kings and mentioned by several ancient historians (Frangié-​Joly 2016: 38–​ 40). Theophrastus (c. 371–​287 BCE ) discusses around 20 notable fragrant plants or compounds in his work On Odours. Approximately half of these are native to the Mediterranean, with the other half from South and East Asia. Myrrh is among those given the most attention in the work, alongside frankincense, balsam, and two types of cinnamon. Of particular note is his description of the production of myrrh as a scented oil (de Odoribus 14–​35), indicating its circulation in solid, liquid, and combustible forms. Finally, Roman and Late Antique sources indicate that myrrh was among the 20 most costly aromatics available; according to the Diocletian edict on maximum prices (301 CE ), the only aromatic more valuable was Saffron (Zohar and Lev 2013:16).17

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Bdellium or bdelium (Commiphora mukul): Phoenician bdlh; Akkadian guhlu18/​ ˘ budulhu; Hebrew bedolah∙; Greek βδέλλιον19 ˘ Bdellium was also used in perfumes, medicines, and as incense throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As mentioned above, bdellium or guggul is an aromatic gum resin very similar to myrrh, probably from the Commiphora wightii tree.20 The Hebrew term bedolaḥ is used in Genesis 2:12 (LXX: ἄνθραξ) and Numbers 11:7, where manna is compared to bdellium for somewhat opaque reasons.21 Like myrrh, bdellium resin was one of the most expensive aromatics available in the Roman and Late Antique periods, though Diocletian’s edict (301 CE ) prices it at 11–​175 dinar per libra (to myrrh’s 600 dinar per libra; Zohar and Lev 2013: 16). While it might be tempting to look at bdellium as a kind of off-​brand or imitative myrrh, the fact that it is named alongside its cousin in the above-​mentioned sixth-​or fifth-​century BCE Phoenician mortuary inscription indicates that the resin was valuable in its own right in the central coastal Levant during the mid-​first millennium BCE . Their smells are quite distinct; bdellium can be described both as sweeter and stronger than the fragrance of myrrh (sometimes even as peppery). Cedar (Cedrus libani): Phoenician ʿṣ (?), Akkadian erēnu, Hebrew ʿeren/ ʿerez, Greek κέδρος Though not explicitly referenced in any extant mortuary inscription from the central coastal Levant, cedar in various preparations may well have been used in conjunction with burial. Of course, cedar trees have long been associated with Phoenician culture and Lebanon in particular, and were celebrated throughout the ancient Mediterranean world for their sacred significance (Brown 1969; Chaney and Basbous 1978).22 Both cedar oil and resin have long been produced in the central coastal Levant, and were used for a variety of purposes.23 Several ancient authors mention cedar-​derived products as part of embalming or burial in Egypt in the first millennium BCE . As mentioned above, Herodotus’ (II.87) discussion of fifth-​ century BCE Egyptian mummification methods lists specific ingredients used by embalmers, including a passage describing the injection of cedar oil into the body cavity, much like the cedar oil discussed by Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca Historica I.91.5). All the ingredients mentioned together in this latter text are described as “such spices as have the faculty not only of preserving it for a long time but also of giving it a fragrant odour” (Diodorus Siculus 1933: 312–​313). Pliny describes Egyptian corpses as being steeped or bathed in cedrium or cedar resin to embalm them.24 Evidence from Late Period (712–​323 BCE ) Egyptian mummies indicates cedar sawdust was used in the mummification process, validating these Greek literary accounts.25 The preservative properties of cedar were noticed outside of Egypt as well. Vitruvius, writing c. 30–​15 BCE , discusses both the oil and wood as having this protective quality (Brown 1969: 156; translating De architectura 2.9.13): As resin comes from cypress and pine, from cedar there comes what is called cedar-​oil. When objects like books are rubbed with it, they are unharmed by worms and rot. […] The statue of Diana in the temple of Ephesus is of this kind of wood; also the ceiling beams [lacunaria], both there and in other famous temples, are made of it because of its durability. Pliny’s encyclopaedic Naturalis Historia offers the fullest treatment of the cedar and its reputation as being able to slow or stop decay, though his account is in part dependent on the work of Vitruvius. Book 13, ­chapter 11 is devoted to the cedar tree, explicitly connecting some of

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its varietals to “Phoenicia.” Pliny adds, “From it is obtained the resin held in the highest favour, while its actual timber lasts for ever, and consequently it has been the regular practice to use it even for making statues of the gods” (Pliny 1945: 128–​131). The idea that the cedar’s timber lasts forever might be hyperbole, but the general principle is articulated elsewhere by Pliny (16.218) thus: “broadly speaking it can at all events be said that those woods have the most outstanding durability which have the most agreeable scent” (Pliny 1945: 528–​529). Book 24 is devoted to the uses of forest trees, in which sections 17–​19 address medical remedies derived from the cedar tree and its pitch or oleo-​resin (cedria), with a memorable note about its use in burial: “[Cedar] preserves dead bodies uncorrupted by time, but causes living ones to decay—​a strange inconsistency, to rob the living of their life and to give a quasi-​life to the dead! It also makes clothes decay and kills animal life” (Pliny 1956: 16–​17). Other aromatic woods Other aromatic woods have been recovered in both inhumation and cremation burials from the first-​millennium BCE central coastal Levant. The burial of the late sixth-​to early fifth-​century BCE King Tabnit of Sidon in his famous re-​inscribed anthropoid sarcophagus (Figure 20.2)26 saw the king’s mummy or semi-​preserved corpse tied down to a wooden plank the length of the body, no doubt intentionally selected for its royal role. Several other sarcophageal burials in the same necropolis produced similar wooden planks, perforated by holes. All these were identified by the nineteenth-​century excavators as made from sycamore wood (Hamdy Bey and Reinach 1892: 147).27 It is unclear on what basis this identification was made, and to my knowledge this has not been confirmed by more recent scholarship.28 But if these purpose-​made wooden corpse platforms were indeed made from sycamore, this term might (even in modern times) refer either to the Platanus orientalis or Ficus sycomorus, both of which are native to the region, large enough

Figure 20.2  Anthropoid amphibolite sarcophagus of King Tabnit of Sidon (c. 525–​475 BCE ), containing his mummified remains. Istanbul, Topkapi Palace Archaeological Museum 800. Source: Image courtesy of Art Resource. 440

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to support a body, and known for their longevity and associations with the afterlife in the ancient world (e.g., Assman 2005: 129, 180). At the adult cremation cemetery excavated at Tyre al-​Bass, cremations seem to have been conducted at an unknown location inside or near the excavated area.29 Ash from the funeral pyres was then gathered and buried in urns, sometimes accompanied by a small number of burial goods, remnants of a meal, or marked by an inscribed stele. In some cases, burial of these urns was accompanied by small fires set inside the trenches, likely as part of a ritual conducted before closing the grave. Charcoal testing confirmed a broad range of coastal species of wood: the aromatic olive leaves, as well as olive, pine, fig, poplar, and lime branches were found among quick-​ burning kindling (like reeds and tamarisk) and sustaining, longer-​burning woods (white oak and Celtis australis; Aubet 2004: 31, 34, 38, 48, 61). In the Punic sphere, similar phenomena may be posited—​charcoal from oak (Quercus ibex or suber) and juniper ( Juniperus macrocarpa) were detected among cremation burials at Monte Sirai, Sicily; oak, wild plum, and almond branches at the necropolis in Palermo, Italy; and Pinus halepensis and Prunus domestica in the necropolis of Puig des Molins, Spain (see bibliography in Guirguis 2011: 3, n. 9). Other oleo-​resins and scented oils More evidence from the tombs at Carthage indicates that some bodies (probably of priests or other elites) were subsumed in what have been termed “resin baths,” in one instance forming a smooth-​surfaced resinous bubble-​filled layer at the bottom of a sarcophagus, encasing the skeletal remains (Bénichou-​Safar 1978: 137). Late twentieth-​century testing determined these were likely composed primarily of the oleo-​resin of the Pistacia terebinthus, or Chio terebinth, though some of the resins were probably perfumed with aromatic plants or other additives. Most scholars agree that perfumed oils were often part of the burial rituals in tombs of the first-​millennium central coastal Levant. Olive, sesame, linseed/​fl ax, and almond oils were used as liquid carriers for other scented additives or spices, and animal fat could be used for thicker scented or medicated unguents (Carreras Rossell 2010: 16). Molecular traces of essential oils from aromatic plants such as jasmine30 were found in sediment tested from a sixth-​century BCE monumental tomb in Cadiz (e.g., the so-​called “bishop’s house” tomb), suggesting the body was anointed or dressed in scented animal fat and perfumed oil (Domínguez Bella et al. 2011: 317). Another intriguing later literary source records a mythological mortuary story connected with the central coastal Levant. Plutarch’s retelling or appropriation31 of the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris in Moralia (written c. 100 CE ) gives a version of Isis’ treatment of a “pillar,” made from wood that had grown from the place where a chest containing Osiris’ body had washed ashore (Plutarch, Moralia, De Isis et Osiris 16; 1936: 41–​43): Then the goddess disclosed herself [to the queen of Byblos, Ashtart/Astarte] and asked for the pillar which served to support the roof [of the palace]. She removed it with the greatest ease and cut away the wood of the heather which surrounded the chest [containing Osiris’ corpse]; then, when she had wrapped up the wood in a linen cloth and had poured perfume [μύρον] upon it, she entrusted it to the care of the kings; and even to this day the people of Byblus venerate this wood [ξύλον] which is preserved in the shrine of Isis.32 This account is all the more remarkable for our purposes given its setting in Byblos (modern Gbeil, Lebanon), and the fact that it seems to illustrate the treatment of a corpse through the proxy of the wood or chest that encased the body of the god. The treatment of the wood—​wrapped 441

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in linen with a perfumed oil or unguent poured over it—​offers an intriguing parallel to the Persian-​period physical remains discussed above. Lipids testing and other chemical analysis is our best hope for refining our understanding of the specific aromatic ingredients used in Levantine burials and the larger Phoenician and Punic cultural beliefs about what smells were appropriate for sending the dead into their next phase of existence. Studies of Roman period cosmetics or perfumes (e.g., Perez-​Arantegui et al. 1996; Ribechini et al. 2008) helped develop many of the technologies useful in testing fatty acids, residues, and other chemical traces from ceramic, stone, and glass juglets or bottles, as well as larger samples from sarcophagi as they become available.33

Smells of life, smells of death So, what were the “smells of eternity” in the first-​millennium BCE central coastal Levant? When I first presented parts of this research at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR), I tried to evoke these perfumes of the dead by passing bottles containing towels soaked in the essential oils of myrrh and bdellium around the room, for audience members to smell. Of course, smelling each in succession, isolated from other smells, was reductive and disjointed (fun for a conference, but hardly a sensory reconstruction). I learned subsequently that it is possible to purchase synthetic cadaverine and putrescine, which, when layered with the aromatic resin scents, might have made a more accurate olfactory landscape to simulate the smell when anointing the body, processing to the grave, or standing in the tomb. But this would also be an anachronistic construct. One might apply Hamilakis’ (2013b: 413–​ 414) critique—​I made “the implicit assumption that what the researchers experience, often for the first time, would loosely correspond to the experiences of past people, forgetting thus that these past sensorial experiences would have been infused with people’s memories, memories that would have shaped that sensorial experience.” Certainly, “funereal odours in general, whatever their source, help mark the rites of death as extraordinary occurrences, olfactory ruptures in the varying sensory patterns of day-​to-​day life” (Classen et al. 1994: 150). But the fact that the oleo-​resins that show up in mortuary contexts overlap with and duplicate those that appear in other ritual and social contexts in the first-​millennium BCE Levant lies at the crux of the matter. Like many types of objects, these substances are subject to multiple cultural contexts and social registers (Blakely 2017: 2) and might have been specifically selected to imbue the transitional rituals involving the corpse with mnemonic references to the deceased in life. The smell of eternity, infusing the tomb, might have, in turn, evoked the incense of a religious festival, a high-​end perfume worn to a special feast, or a favourite ointment of the deceased person’s cosmetic regimen. These familiar smells would have taken on new meaning and resonance in the presence of the smells of decay, or the specific sequence of the stoking of a funeral pyre’s flames. Of all the senses, smell is most directly evocative of memory (Ritchie 2000: 65). The mortuary rites evinced in the Phoenician epigraphic, literary, and archaeological record discussed above were the product of collective remembering, generated through sensory interactions and embodied performances. As Hamilakis (2013b: 413) put it: “Through sensorial experiences, ‘mnemonic records’ are produced: Memories are generated in the bodies of the participants, creating complex and rather messy sensory stratigraphies. These memories are re-​collected through repetition and citation, but every such recollection reshuffles these messy mnemonic stratigraphies.” Each funeral was likely unique, fragranced by combinations of scents specific to that family, place, or ritual community, though drawing from a limited palate of appropriate and symbolic aromatic substances: myrrh, bdellium, cedar, sycamore, almond, terebinth, along with 442

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other woods, resins, incense, and perfumes lost to us today. Some families with lavish resources may have incorporated large quantities of myrrh (the most expensive of these options as far as we know), while others might have used valuable oleo-​resins more sparingly when they could get any at all. Whatever the final bouquet, the “boundary-​crossing nature of smell” (Classen et al. 1994: 123) in these various Levantine mortuary settings would have evoked at the same time the mortal and divine spheres, the living and deceased, and would have aided the transition into the permanent, undisturbed resting place of the ideal Phoenician tomb.

Appendix A.  Phoenician, Punic, and Neo-​Punic inscriptions containing the religious title mqm ’lm and variants

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16

Inscription number (current location) [Select bibliography]

Provenance; date (genre)

Attested title

CIS I 260 (Louvre) [Zamora 2017: 70] CIS I 261 (Avignon) [Zamora 2017: 70] CIS I 3351 [Zamora 2017: 70] CIS I 3352 [Zamora 2017: 71] CIS I 4864 [Zamora 2017: 71] CIS I 4865 [Zamora 2017: 72] CIS I 4866 [Zamora 2017: 72] CIS I 4867 [Zamora 2017: 72] CIS I 4868 [Zamora 2017: 72] CIS I 4869 [Zamora 2017: 72] CIS I 4870 [Zamora 2017: 72] CIS I 4871 [Zamora 2017: 72] CIS I 5903 [Zamora 2017: 73] CIS I 5950; RÉS 553; KAI 93 [Bénichou-​Safar 1982: 209, n. 12; Zamora 2017: 74] CIS I 5979; RÉS 554 [Bénichou-​Safar 1982: 214–​15, n. 41; Zamora 2017: 74–​75] KAI 44; TSSI 3 39 [Fraser 1970, 32–​34; Zamora 2017: 68]

Utica, Tunisia; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage, Tunisia; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Hill next to the necropolis of Santa Monica, Carthage; 4th–​2nd c. BCE? (funerary) Hill next to the necropolis of Santa Monica, Carthage; 4th–​2nd c. BCE ? (funerary) Rhodes; 2nd c. BCE (Greek bilingual; votive)

mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾ[l]‌m mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾ[lm] mtrḥ ʿšt[rn]y mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny

mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny

mqm ʾlm mtrḥ ʿštrny

(continued)

443

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17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24

25

26

27 28

29

Inscription number (current location) [Select bibliography]

Provenance; date (genre)

Attested title

Larnax tes Lapethou 3 [Honeyman 1938; Zamora 2017: 68] KAI 70 (Avignon) [Zamora 2017: 76] CIS I 227 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) [Zamora 2017: 69] CIS I 262 [Zamora 2017: 70] CIS I 377 [Zamora 2017: 70] CIS I 3788 [Zamora 2017: 71] CIS I 4863 [Zamora 2017: 71] CIS I 5953; RÉS 537; KAI 90 (Carthage National Museum) [Zamora 2017: 74] CIS I 6000 [Bénichou-​Safar 1982: 230–​231, n. 84; Zamora 2017: 75–​76] Tripolitana I = Gesenius 1837: 213– 217; IRT 349a, bilingual with CIL 8.7 (British Museum) [Lipinski 1970: 37; Zamora 2017: 76 n. 71] CIS I 4872 [Zamora 2017: 73 and n. 55] CIS I 5980 [Bénichou-​Safar 1982: 199ff., 215, n. 42; Zamora 2017: 75] KAI 161 [Zamora 2017: 76–​77]

Larnax tes Lapethou, Cyprus; 4th c. BCE (votive) Carthage; late 3rd c. BCE (funerary) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE (votive)

mqm ʾlm

Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Hill next to the necropolis of Santa Monica, Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (funerary) Hill next to the necropolis of Santa Monica, Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (funerary) Leptis Magna, Libya

mqm ʾlm

Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (votive) Likely from the secteur des rabs, Carthage; 3rd–​2nd c. BCE ? (funerary) Cherchel, Algeria; late 2nd c. BCE (votive/funerary)

mqm ʾlm bšʾrm

m̊q̊[m]‌ ʾl[m] mqm ʾlm

mqm ʾlm mqm ʾlm mqm ʾlm mqm ʾlm

mqm ʾlm

hmqm ʾlm [this may be a variant of the noun mqm, “place”]

mqm ʾlm mlt

myqm ʾlm skr kbd

Notes 1. Using the term “Phoenician” to describe the cultural affiliation of the peoples or city-​states of the central coastal Levant has long been recognised as an anachronistic application of a later Greek term to the heterogeneous Iron Age realities, and recent studies (most notably Quinn 2018) have further pressed this point, stressing the lack of any homogeneous emic identification among the populations of coastal Syria, Lebanon, and northern Israel until as late as the Roman period. While these critiques have been useful in encouraging re-​examination of the evidence and more careful scholarly characterisations, I stand with Sader (2019) in concluding that the term “Phoenician” is still useful as an etic cultural label where the Phoenician language and script are employed, specific ceramic and architectural technologies and choices are utilised, and a range of religious behaviours and beliefs (including a varied but relatively stable polytheistic pantheon) are evident in the material record. 444

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2. For instance, infants do not instinctively find the smell of human excrement repulsive and must be culturally conditioned to react with disgust. For an ancient example, see Draycott’s (2014: 68) analysis of Pliny’s anecdotal discussion of differences in scent-​cultivation between Roman and Sabaei customs. Additional examples in Classen et al. 1994: 124–​125. 3. The book of Exodus draws some interesting lines around the use of specific incense, however, limiting the use of certain incense only to worship in the temple (Exod. 30:37–​38), and carefully prescribing (or circumscribing) the type Yahweh prefers (Exod. 30:9; Houtman 1992: 462–​463), alongside a similarly restricted formula for anointing oil (Exod. 30.22–​33). These Yahwistic parameters around exclusivity in the olfactory realm seem unique in the wider Mediterranean world as far as I am aware. Ritchie suggests this might be connected to the fact that biblical authors stress the importance of remembering Yahweh (emphasising the connection between smell and memory), which is intriguing (Ritchie 2000: 62). The smell of Yahweh himself is explored in de Boer 1972. 4. Middeke-​Conlin (2014: 24) evokes this omnipresence in his excellent diachronic study of aromatics at Larsa: “We can say … that aromatics were present in all sectors of the economy and society of the Kingdom of Larsa … Lower qualities of perfumed oil and basic resins and incense were both available and were accessible to the average person, while higher qualities of perfumed oils were certainly used by the wealthier stratums of society, the temples, and the palace. They were used in food preparation, medicine, incense, and perfumes for conspicuous consumption by the elites and, at a lower quality, perhaps by the average individual. In the temple aromatics were used as incense and perfumed oils to anoint individuals and things, in sacrifices, libations, and on various feast days. Gifts or disbursements of perfumed oils were made by the temple and perhaps the palace to favoured functionaries and visiting dignitaries.” 5. Of course, epigraphic Phoenician, Punic, and Neo-​Punic are written continuously, with few examples containing any form of word divider, and those applied inconsistently. The very act of transcribing these inscriptions therefore involves a degree of interpretive parsing. 6. Appendix A, no. 26 is another possible variant, but may also represent a homonym for mqm; see Zamora 2017: 76, n. 71. 7. It is unclear whether the phrase mqm ’lm, when it appears in 11 instances without modification, should be understood as a complete religious title or an abbreviation of a fuller title. Given the broad geographical and chronological parameters of the epigraphic attestations, it is likely these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. 8. Zamora’s work is, as far as I am aware, the most recent study of this title. His publication does not acknowledge Krahmalkov’s interpretation, but otherwise offers a useful bibliography (see especially n. 11), to be used along with that in Hoftijzer and Jongeling 1995. 9. Ritchie (2000: 72) tracks this avoidance in other linguistic or literary realms as well: “In European languages there is considerable evidence that much olfactory language fell into disuse in the middle of the nineteenth century. The term ‘nosegay’ disappeared from English dictionaries at this time, as well as the term ‘to nose’ used as a verb with the meaning of ‘to discern’. It has been noted by Peter Gay that when Thomas Carlyle’s Journey to Germany, Autumn 1858 was edited by his nephew, the word ‘see’ was substituted for the word ‘smell’ in a phrase concerning the eagerness of a waiting crowd to ‘smell the Prince of Prussia’. English olfactory language has become impoverished in the modern era, while most other domains of the language, particularly those having to do with science and technology, have greatly increased in volume and complexity.” 10. Both interpretations are made on the basis of later comparanda: Krahmalkov (2000: 348) argues on the basis of Neo-​Hebrew usage, while the translation “to destroy” results from privileging later attestations of Syriac vocabulary related to the root SRḤ (Smith 1957 [1903]: 390–​391). 11. The inscription was dated on the basis of palaeographic comparanda and political context (see Cross 1979: 40, n. 1 for a brief history of the early analysis). 12. E.g., the Tabnit sarcophagus (Figure 20.2 and discussion below) includes the line: “do not, do not open my cover and disturb me, for no silver is gathered with me [and] no gold is gathered with me or any kind of riches. I alone am lying in this sarcophagus” (translation by the author). 13. There is intriguing evidence from later manuscript sources about the use of incense in medical recipes and procedures, beginning with Dioscorides’ De materia medica (c. 40–​90 CE ) and continuing throughout Late Antique and Medieval manuscript sources. See, e.g., Burridge 2020 (especially her summary of previous scholarship on medical applications of incense, perfume, and oils). 14. A surprisingly high proportion of the admittedly small number of Phoenician Levantine mortuary inscriptions describe the contents of the sarcophagus or adornment of the body. 445

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15. The Cadiz incense burner: “Located in a sand pit, a first layer of sand keeps the resin from sticking to the clay surface, and then there is a second layer of resin on the charcoal” (López-​Bertran 2019: 148, citing Gener Basallote et al. 2014: 144, fig. 20). 16. For an excellent discussion of these terms and their potential cultic context in the MT, see Rogland 2019: 110–​111 and notes. Most commentaries on Esther interpret this verse to mean the women were lotioned, rubbed, or anointed with myrrh oil, and then “fumigated” with scented oil, incense, or perfumes (see, e.g., Day 2005: 50–​51; Bechtel 2001: 32; Berlin 2001: 27, among many others). Many cite Albright’s (1974) work comparing archaeologically recovered incense burners with ethnographic practices involving women squatting over smoking aromatics, with a draped gown or robe containing the smoke, such that their skin and clothing absorbs the fragrant smell of the incense. 17. Pliny the Elder (c. 23–​79 CE ) gives the price of myrrh at the equivalent of 3–​50 dinar per libra (Historia Naturalis 12.70), while the Diocletian edict on maximum prices (301 CE ) gives a maximum price of 600 dinar per libra. Not all the aromatics listed in the Diocletian edict include explicit prices. For the full list of 20 aromatics, see Zohar and Lev 2013:16. 18. Potts et al. 1996 convincingly summarises the arguments for this identification. 19. Though the term does not appear in Greek until the third century BCE (van Alfen 2002: 41). 20. Bdellium was first associated with the species Commiphora wightii in Medieval Arabic treatises (see Dalby 2000: 109). This plant is sometimes called “Indian myrrh.” There are recurring attempts to rethink the identification of these resins in ancient sources; bdellium understood as bissabol or scented myrrh is discussed in Thulin and Claeson 1991: 488–​489. 21. Josephus Antiquitates 3.28 clarifies that the spice is intended in the passage in Numbers 11, though the LXX understands the term as a valuable stone (κρυστάλλου) (Feliks 2007). 22. While Egyptian and other Near Eastern texts celebrate the Levantine or Lebanese cedar by name, it is notable that another cedar species (Cedrus atlantica) still grows in hilly regions of North Africa and may well have been utilised in place of the more expensive import (Asensi Amorós and Vozenin-​Serra 1998: 231). 23. Note the following description of oleo-​resin harvesting published in 1969: “Cedrus libani is occasionally used as a source of resin in Lebanon. The stubs of the lower limbs are removed and placed on a flat rock cut with a channel. Another flat rock pierced with a series of holes is placed on the stubs and a fire is then placed on this. The heat penetrating through the perforated upper stone drives the resin from the wood and causes it to drip into the channels which lead it to a collecting vessel. Shepherds are said to add a few drops of this material to the drinking water of goats which stimulates their thirst and feeding” (C. George, in Brown 1969: 155). 24. Using the verb perfundo: hoc in Syria cedrium vocatur, cui tanta vis est, ut in Aegypto corpora hominum defunctorum perfusa eo serventur (Naturalis Historia 16.52). 25. Though observations that sawdust mixed with resin had been found in the abdominal cavities of Egyptian mummies had been made already in the early twentieth century, the species of the wood pieces was only confirmed in the 1990s (Asensi Amorós and Vozenin-​Serra 1998). 26. The Tabnit sarcophagus (Istanbul Archaeology Museum no. 800; RÉS 1202; KAI 13; TSSI 3 27) was found in 1887 by Osman Hamdy Bey during the excavation of a shaft tomb at the ‘Ayaa Necropolis near Sidon. It was probably originally made of amphibolite in Saqqara or Giza, Egypt. The dating of the burial of King Tabnit is debated, dated variously between 525 and 460 BCE . 27. Reportedly, an 1887 eyewitness to the opening of a sarcophagus from Sidon described it thus: “A plank of sycamore, the wood used in Egypt for the cases of mummies, covers the bottom of the sarcophagus. Small holes are bored all round it towards the edge, through which no doubt strings were passed to retain the body in its place upon the plank. To judge by what remains of the bandages and bones, the body must have been very imperfectly mummified” (Rawlinson 1889: 304; quoting an unnamed eyewitness from al-​Bachir, June 8, 1887, Beirut). 28. When last I visited, two of the wooden planks were on display at the Topkapı Palace Archaeological Museum in Istanbul without descriptive label. An additional board is still to be found under the mummy of King Tabnit, though no identification of the wood is made on the labels of that display either. As far as I am aware, no conservation work or study has been undertaken on the mummy of Tabnit since it was first installed in the gallery. Note that renovation in several gallery spaces was undertaken in 2019 and was not completed at the time of writing. 29. At the sixth–​fifth centuries BCE cemetery site at Monte Sirai, Sardinia, excavators have unearthed the ustrinum, where funeral pyres were supervised, not far from the grave area (Piga et al. 2010: 154). 30. In addition to the methyl dihydrojasmonate or hedione found in jasmine, caryophyllene was also detected. Caryophyllene is a molecule present in plants as diverse as Cinnamun tamala (cinnamon), Piper 446

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nigrum (pepper), Origanum dictanus (oregano), and Cannabis sativa (cannabis) (Domínguez Bella et al. 2011: 317). López-​Bertran notes that pepper and cinnamon both have preservative properties and are used in the anointing oil described in Exod. 30:20–​25 (López-​Bertran 2019: 148). 31. See Richter 2001 for an excellent analysis of Plutarch’s use of the myth, as well as bibliography on consensus opinion that it represents “a relatively accurate account of the cultic practices associated with Isis in the Pharaonic period” (Richter 2001: 192). 32. For discussion of possible cults of such sacred trees in Sidon and Tyre, see Na’aman 2006. 33. A particularly useful comparison for our purposes may be found in the analysis of the contents of the second-​century BCE Egyptian alabaster unguentarium found in an Etruscan burial in Chiusi (Colombini et al. 2008).

Bibliography Albright, W. F. 1974. “The Lachish Cosmetic Burner and Esther 2:12,” in H. N. Bream, R. D. Heim, and C. A. Moore, eds., Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 25–​32. Alfero Giner, C. 1983. “Fragmentos textiles del sarcofago atropomorfo feminino de Cadiz,” in Homenaje al Prof. Martin Almagro Basch II. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 281–​289. Asensi Amorós, V., and C. Vozenin-​Serra. 1998. “New Evidence for the Use of Cedar Sawdust for Embalming by Ancient Egyptians.” JEA 84: 228–​231. Assmann, J. 2005. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Ithaca. Trans. D. Lorton. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Aubet, M. E. 2004. “The Iron Age Cemetery.” Bulletin d’archéologie et d’architecture libanises (BAAL), Hors-​ Série I: The Phoenician Cemetery of Tyre al-​Bass: Excavations 1997–​1999: 9–​62. Avery, E. 2013. “A Whiff of Mortality: The Smells of Death in Roman and Byzantine Beth She’an-​ Scythopolis,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 266–​285. Bartosiewicz, L. 2003. “‘There’s Something Rotten in the State …’: Bad Smells in Antiquity.” European Journal of Archaeology 6 (2): 175–​195. Bechtel, C. M. 2001. Esther. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Bénichou-​ Safar, H. 1978. “Les ‘bains’ de résine dans les tombes Puniques de Carthage.” Karthago 18: 133–​138. Bénichou-​Safar, H. 1982. Les Tombes Puniques de Carthage. Topographie, Structures, Inscriptions et Rites Funéraires. Paris: C.N.R.S. Berger, P. 1912 “Le culte de Mithra a Carthage.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 65: 1–​15. Berlin, A. 2001. The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society. Blakely, S. 2017. “Object, Image, and Text: Materiality and Ritual Practice in the Ancient Mediterranean,” in S. Blakeley, ed., Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice. Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 1–​16. Brown, F. 1906. The Brown –​Driver –​Briggs –​Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, J. P. 1969. The Lebanon and Phoenicia: Ancient Texts Illustrating their Physical Geography and Native Industries. Vol. 1: The Physical Setting and the Forest. Beirut: American University of Beirut. Burridge, C. 2020. “Incense in Medicine: An Early Medieval Perspective.” Early Medieval Europe 28 (2): 219–​255. Carreras Rossell, T. 2010. “Ungüentos y perfumes en el mundo Fenicio y Púnico,” in J. Hernández and B. Costa, eds., Aspectos suntuarios del mundo Fenicio-​Púnico en la Península Ibérica, XXIV Jornadas de Arqueología Fenicio-​Púnica (Eivissa, 2009). Ibiza: Treballs del Museu Arqueològic d’Eivissa i Formentera, 9–​22. Chaney, W. R., and M. Basbous. 1978. “The Cedars of Lebanon: Witnesses of History.” Economic Botany 32 (2): 118–​123. Classen, C. 1993. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures. London: Routledge. Classen, C. 2006. “The Breath of God: Sacred Histories of Scent,” in J. Drobnick, ed., The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, 375–​390. Classen, C., D. Howes, and A. Synnott. 1994. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. London: Routledge. Clements, A. 2014. “Divine Scents and Presence,” in M. Bradley, ed., Smell and the Ancient Senses. New York: Routledge, 46–​59.

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Colombini, M. P., G. Giachi, M. Iozzo, and E. Ribechini. 2008. “An Etruscan Ointment from Chiusi (Tuscany, Italy): Its Chemical Characterization.” Journal of Archaeological Science 36: 1488–​1495. Cross, F. M. 1979. “A Recently Published Phoenician Inscription of the Persian Period from Byblos.” Israel Exploration Journal 29 (1): 40–​44. Dalby, A. 2000. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. Berkeley: University of California Press. Day, L. M. 2005. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Esther. Nashville: Abingdon Press. de Boer, P. A. H. 1972. “An Aspect of Sacrifice: II. God’s Fragrance,” in Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel. Vetus Testamentum Supplement Series 23. Leiden: Brill, 37–​47. de Zorzi, N. 2019. “‘Rude Remarks Not Fit to Smell’: Negative Value Judgments Relating to Sensory Perceptions in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press, 217–​252. Delcor, M. 1983. “A propos du sense de ṣpr dans le tarif sacrificiel de Marseille (CIS I, 165, 12): Parfum d’origine végétale ou parfum d’origine animale?” Semitica 33: 33–​39. Diodorus Siculus. 1933. Library of History, Volume I: Books 1–​2.34. Trans. C. H. Oldfather. LCL 279. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dixon, H. 2013. “Phoenician Mortuary Practice in the Iron Age I–​III (ca. 1200 –​ca. 300 B.C.E.) Central Coastal Levant.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan. Domínguez Bella, S., R. J. March, J. M. Gener, and J. Martínez. 2011. “Análisis de restos orgánicos de la tumba púnica de la Casa del Obispo, Cádiz. Reconstruyendo la memoria fenicia en el Occidente del Mediterráneo,” in J. C. Domínguez Perez, ed., Gadir y el Círculo del estrecho revisados. Propuestas de la arqueología desde un enfoque social. Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz, Monografías Historia y Arte, 307–​319. Draycott, J. 2014 “Smelling Trees, Flowers and Herbs in the Ancient World,” in M. Bradley, ed., Smell and the Ancient Senses. New York: Routledge, 60–​73. Elayi, J., and M. R. Haykal. 1996. Nouvelles découvertes sur les usages funéraires de Phéniciens d’Arwad. Paris: Gabalda. Feliks, J. 2007. “Bdellium,” in F. Skolnik, ed., Encyclopedia Judaica. Second Edition, Volume 3. New York: Macmillan Reference, 234. Février, J. G. 1955. “Le vocabulaire sacrificiel punique.” Journal Asiatique 243: 49–​63. Frangié-​Joly, D. 2016. “Perfumes, Aromatics, and Purple Dye: Phoenician Trade and Production in the Greco-​Roman Period.” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 4 (1): 36–​56. Fraser, P. M. 1970. “Greek-​Phoenician Bilingual Inscriptions from Rhodes.” The Annual of the British School at Athens 65: 31–​36. Garcia-​Ventura, A., and M. López-​Bertran. 2013. “Music and Death: Razors, Stelae and Divinities in the Punic Mediterranean,” in R. Jiménez, R. Till, and M. Howell, eds., Music & Ritual: Bridging Material & Living Cultures. Publications of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology 1. Berlin: Ekho Verlag, 93–​115. Gener Basallote, J.-​M., G. Jurado Fresnadillo, J.-​M. Pajuelo Sáez, and M. Torres Ortiz. 2014. “El proceso de sacralización del esapcio en Gadir: El yacimiento de la casa del obispo (Cádiz). Parte 1,” in M. Botto, ed., Los Fenicios en la Bahía de Cádiz: Nuevas investigaciones. Collezione di Studi Fenici 46. Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 123–​155. Genesius, G. 1837. Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae Monumenta, Pars Prima. Leipzig: Regiae Academiae Litterarum Borussicae et Regiae Societati Asiaticae Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae. Ghadban, C. 1998. “La nécropole d’époque perse de Magharat Tabloun à Sidon,” in V. Matoïan, ed., Liban, l’autre rive. Paris: Institut du monde arabe. Guirguis, M. 2011. “Gli spazi della morte a Monte Sirai (Carbonia –​Sardegna). Rituali e ideologie funerary nella necropolis fenicia e punica (scavi 2005–​2010).” The Journal of Fasti Online: 1–​32. www.fastionline. org/​docs/​FOLDER-​it-​2011-​230.pdf. Hamdy Bey, O., and T. Reinach. 1892. Une nécropole royale a Sidon. Fouilles de Hamdy Bey. Paris: Ernest Leroux. Hamilakis, Y. 1998. “Eating the Dead: Mortuary Feasting and the Politics of Memory in the Aegean Bronze Age Societies,” in K. Branigan, ed., Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 115–​132. Hamilakis, Y. 2013a. “Sensorial Necro-​Politics: The Mortuary Mnemoscapes of Bronze Age Crete,” in Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press, 129–​160. Hamilakis, Y. 2013b. “Afterword: Eleven Theses on the Archaeology of the Senses,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 409–​419. 448

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Hoftijzer, J., and K. Jongeling. 1995. Dictionary of the North-​ West Semitic Inscriptions. 2 Volumes. New York: Brill. Honeyman, A. M. 1938. “Larnax tēs Lapēthou: A Third Phoenician Inscription.” Le Muséon 51: 285–​298. Honeyman, A. M. 1940. “The Phoenician Title ‫ מתרח עשתרני‬.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 121: 5–​17. Houtman, C. 1992. “On the Function of the Holy Incense Exodus XXX 34–​8) and the Sacred Anointing Oil (Exodus XXX 22–​33).” Vetus Testamentum 42 (4): 458–​465. Jessup, H. H. 1910. Fifty-​Three Years in Syria, Volume 2. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. Jones, J., T. F. G. Higham, R. Oldfield, T. P. O’Connor, and S. A. Buckley. 2014. “Evidence for Prehistoric Origins of Egyptian Mummification in Late Neolithic Burials.” PLoS ONE 9 (8): e103608. https://​doi.org/​10.1371/​journal.pone.0103608. Krahmalkov, C. R. 2000. Phoenician-​Punic Dictionary. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 90; Studia Phoneicia XV. Leuven: Peeters. Lipinski, E. 1970. “Le fête de l’ensevelissement et de la resurrection de Melqart,” in A. Finet, ed., Actes de la XVIIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Université libre de Bruxelles, 30 juin –​4 juillet 1969. Ham-​ sur-​Heure, Belgium: Comité belge de recherches en Mésopotamie, 30–​58. López-​Bertran, M. 2019 “Sensing Death among the Phoenicians and the Punics (900–​200 BC),” in G. Papantoniou, C. Morris, and A. Vionis, eds., Unlocking Sacred Landscapes: Spatial Analysis of Ritual and Cult in the Mediterranean. Nicosia: Astrom Editions, 139–​153. Middeke-​Conlin, R. 2014. “The Scents of Larsa: A Study of the Aromatics Industry in an Old Babylonian Kingdom.” Université Paris Diderot. Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, March 24. Na’aman, N. 2006. “On Temples and Sacred Trees in Tyre and Sidon in the Late Eighth Century B.C.E.” Rivista di Studi Fenici 34 (1): 39–​47. Pérez-​Arantegui, J., J. Ángel Paz-​Peralta, and E. Ortiz-​Palomar. 1996. “Analysis of the Products Contained in Two Roman Glass Unguentaria from the Colony of Celsa (Spain).” Journal of Archaeological Sciences 23: 649–​655. Piga, G., M. Guirguis, P. Bartoloni. A. Malgosa, and S. Enzo. 2010. “A Funerary Rite Study of the Phoenician-​Punic Necropolis of Mount Sirai (Sardinia, Italy).” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 20: 144–​157. Pliny. 1945. Natural History, Volume IV: Books 12–​ 16. Trans. H. Rackham. LCL 370. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pliny. 1956. Natural History, Volume VII: Books 24–​27. Trans. W. H. S. Jones and A. C. Andrews. LCL 393. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plutarch. 1936. Moralia,Volume V: Isis and Osiris.The E at Delphi.The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse. The Obsolescence of Oracles. Trans. F. C. Babbitt. LCL 306. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Potts, D. T., A. Parpola, S. Parpola, and J. Tidmarsh. 1996. “Guḫlu and Guggulu,” in A. A. Ambros and M. Kohbach, eds., Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 86: 291–​305. Quinn, J. C. 2018. In Search of the Phoenicians. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rawlinson, G. 1889. Phoenicia: History of a Civilization. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ribechini, E., F. Modugno, M. Perla Colombini, and R. P. Evershed. 2008. “Gas Chromatographic and Mass Spectrometric Investigations of Organic Residues from Roman Glass Unguentaria.” Journal of Chromatography A 1183: 158–​169. Richter, D. S. 2001. “Plutarch on Isis and Osiris: Text, Cult, and Cultural Appropriation.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 131: 191–​216. Ritchie, I. D. 2000. “The Nose Knows: Bodily Knowing in Isaiah 11.3.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 87: 59–​73. Rogland, M. 2019 “The Cult of Esther: Temple and Priestly Imagery in the Book of Esther.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44 (1): 99–​114. Sader, H. 2019. The History and Archaeology of Phoenicia. Atlanta: SBL Press. Skeates, R. 2010. An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, J. P. 1957 [1903]. A Compendious Syriac Dictionary founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spatafora, F. 2010. “Ritualità e simbolismo nella necropoli punica di Palermo,” in R. Dolce, ed., Atti della Giornata di Studi in Onore di Antonella Spano, Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia 30 maggio 2008. Palermo: Università degli Studi di Palermo Dipartimento di Beni Culturali Storico-​Archeologici, Socio-​Antropologici e Geografici, 23–​31. Starcky, J. 1969. “Une inscription phénicienne de Byblos.” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-​Joseph 45 (15): 257–​73. 449

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Thulin, M., and P. Claeson. 1991. “The Botanical Origin of Scented Myrrh (Bissabol or Habak Hadi).” Economic Botany 45 (4): 487–​494. Tomback, R. S. 1978. A Comparative Semitic Lexicon of the Phoenician and Punic Languages. SBL Dissertation Series 32. Missoula: Scholars Press. Torrey, C. 1902. “A Phoenician Royal Inscription.” JAOS 23: 156–​173. van Alfen, P. G. 2002. “Pant’Agatha: Commodities in Levantine-​Aegean Trade during the Persian Period, 6–​4th c. B.C.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin. Zamora, J. 2017. “The Miqim Elim: Epigraphic Evidence for a Specialist in the Phoenician-​Punic Cult.” Rivista di Studi Fenici 45: 65–​85. Zohar, A., and E. Lev. 2013. “Trends in the Use of Perfumes and Incense in the Near East after the Muslim Conquests.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Special Issue on Perfumery and Ritual in Asia 23 (1): 11–​30.

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21 The sixth sense Multisensory encounters with the dead in Roman Egypt Lissette M. Jiménez

Introduction Death in Roman Egypt conjures up images of elaborately painted portraits crafted in encaustic and tempera paint that cover the faces of ornately shrouded or bandaged mummified bodies. A unique and often individualised character of the deceased is vividly captured in these ancient portraits, which were likely commissioned postmortem to commemorate the dead (see Borg 2010: 7–​8). The naturalistic representations of individuals in these portraits are visually arresting to the modern viewer on account of the overlarge eyes and stoic expressions of these ancient people. The portraits depicted on panels and shrouds appeal to Western aesthetic sensibilities, which see and perceive the subject’s personality through his or her physical appearance (Jiménez 2014: 70). It can be difficult to think outside of Western sensory conditioning and begin to address the multisensory nature of images and “appreciate that seeing involves more than just sight” (Hunter-​Crawley and O’Brien 2019: 1–​2). Seeing the mummified deceased in Roman Egypt was an embodied experience prompting sensory encounters that were not restricted to the ocular—​seeing the dead was a whole-​body multisensory experience. While contemplating the idea of multisensory experiences with the dead in Roman Egypt, it was difficult not to think of the 1999 film The Sixth Sense and ruminate on the iconic line where the young protagonist Cole Sear, played by Haley Joel Osment, whispers, “I see dead people.” In that moment Cole confesses that he is haunted by the spectres of the dead. While Cole’s admission privileges his visual senses, it is clear that his encounters with the dead are far more complex than what meets the eye. On the contrary, Cole’s extrasensory perception allows him to not just see dead people, but also to converse and physically interact with the deceased. In fact, his interactions with the dead even result in some instances of physical contact and abuse. While Cole may not realise it, his connections with the dead extend beyond the visual and allow him to interact with the deceased through personal multisensory experiences. Unlike the young Cole Sear, though, the inhabitants of Roman Egypt who commemorated their dead through the practice of mummification did not possess the extrasensory abilities to perceive subtle dimensions of the unseen world of ghosts. Rather, a combination of funerary practices enabled the living to commemorate, communicate, visualise, and encounter the dead through a variety of sensorial interactions. This study investigates the multisensory experience DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-22

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of funerary practices in Roman Egypt and explores the experiential encounters between the material and temporal realms of the living and the dead. Painted portraits and shrouds attached to the mummified remains of the deceased, magical texts, ritual offerings, and the landscape of the tomb reveal that the practices of commemorating the dead established participatory relationships where the living could experience the deceased through a variety of transcorporeal encounters between human bodies and objects, things, and environments (Hamilakis 2013a: 411). The catalyst for these multisensory experiences was the combination of the mummified body and the visual image of the deceased, and this study explores how portraits and shrouds were viewed and experienced through a variety of senses to provide a fuller understanding of how Egyptians in Roman Egypt commemorated their dead. First, I explore how naturalistic painted portraits and decorated shrouds created an intimate interface in which the deceased were reanimated and could interact with the living. Second, I examine how ritual offerings and celebrations enabled the living to physically interact with the deceased. Last, I discuss how these aforementioned elements, combined with the landscape of the tomb, produced an environment that facilitated magical multisensory experiences with the dead.

Seeing the dead: shrouds and portraits In ancient Egypt, the proper preservation of the body through mummification was a primary component necessary for an effective burial, which often included a coffin, mask, portrait, texts, and offerings that were meant to protect the deceased on his or her journey through the afterlife (Riggs 2005: 2). In particular, naturalistic portraits and shrouds characteristic of Roman period burials were used to commemorate and assist in the magical rebirth of the dead by presenting a realistic image of the deceased often in conjunction with traditional protective Egyptian funerary imagery decorating the rest of the body. The physical image of the deceased was a vital ingredient that represented the dead on a functional and symbolic level while, as Christina Riggs (2005: 245) suggests, “reflect[ing] eschatological concerns for preserving the corpse, commemorating the person who had died, and centring as much protection, power, and ritual as possible on the real or represented body.” Riggs (2005: 6–​14) also posits that the intrinsic value of funerary objects, particularly those that represented the image of the deceased, was not only in the aesthetic form but also in their functional form. These decorated portraits and full-​ length shrouds were placed over the mummified body and provided a naturalistic image of the deceased that included symbols and motifs drawn from Greek and Egyptian artistic traditions to create a meaningful decorative scheme coded with expressions of religious and cultural identity (Riggs 2005: 6–​14). The artistic rendering of the deceased’s portrait was an integral piece of the Roman period burial. Since Pharaonic times, idealised representations of the dead have consistently decorated the walls of tombs and coffins and have been modelled in funerary masks. Arguably one of the most significant innovations of Roman period burials was the illusionistic portraiture of the Greek and Roman artistic tradition. Imperial fashion, cosmopolitan hairstyles, and traditional images of Egyptian gods were seamlessly combined on the decorated mummified body to form a visual landscape celebrating the dead and reflecting religious beliefs. Given the importance of veristic portraiture in the Hellenistic world, Riggs (2005: 351) suggests that it would have been unusual for portraiture to not have been incorporated in the funerary art of Roman Egypt. Since display and memorialisation were central facets of both Egyptian and Roman eschatological beliefs, funerary portraiture became an ideal medium for the memorialisation of the dead. Consequently, the commemorative form of the shrouds and portraits appealed to the sensibilities of the multicultural population of Roman Egypt, who sought to project an identity 452

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that emphasised and appropriately captured age, gender, religion, cultural affiliation, and socio-​ economic status (Riggs 2005: 351). For the ancient Egyptians, objects possessed power on both functional and magical levels, which facilitated sensorial engagements between people and objects of the material world. For example, a painted funerary shroud of a deceased individual named Neferhotep, son of Herrotiou, depicts him in an idealised form while surrounded by images of apotropaic deities and provisions for the afterlife (Figure 21.1). On a functional level, this shroud of Neferhotep, discovered in Tomb 1447 at Deir el-​Medina (see Bruyère 1953: 107–​110), serves as an “active referent … bear[ing] the likeness of the individual’s identity, personality, and visual likeness” to be remembered by those who would continue to pay tribute to their ancestors long after their passing (Meskell 2005: 53). The shroud functioned on a magical level as a substitute for the deceased’s body in case his or her mummy was ever physically jeopardised. This traditional

Figure 21.1  Elaborately painted shroud of Neferhotep, son of Herrotiou, linen, pigment, 0.2 × 68.6 × 170.2 centimetres, 100–​225 CE . Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund (75.114). Source: Photo from Brooklyn Museum 75.114_​PS1.jpg; Creative Commons-​BY. 453

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Egyptian understanding of the importance of funerary assemblages and how these objects magically equipped the deceased for a successful afterlife illustrates the symbiotic relationship between people and funerary objects both in the realm of the living and the dead (Jiménez forthcoming). After death, the physical painted representation of the deceased became a surrogate for the individual, and provided an interface where performative ritual acts could take place (Jiménez forthcoming). Given the importance of the mummified body and the representational image of the dead, it becomes clear that visual senses played a seminal role in funerary rituals and encounters between the living and the dead. Funerary portraits were not merely visual representations of the deceased, but also objects meant to be further experienced across various sensory modalities. In an effort to understand the funerary significance of shrouds and portraits and their range of sensorial possibilities, one must contextualise the shrouds and portraits and visualise how they were meant to be viewed—​folded or placed on top of the body of the deceased instead of as a flat canvas ( Jiménez forthcoming). The majority of these portraits and shrouds were ripped from their accompanying mummified bodies upon their discovery in the 1800s and early 1900s (see Jiménez 2014: 58–​61; Bierbrier 2000: 32–​33). Considerable discoveries of Greco-​Roman burials by late nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century archaeologists sparked interest in portraits and shrouds and resulted in these objects being conveniently packaged, sold on the art market, and shipped to museums. Many of these funerary images are still exhibited as works of art in museums around the world. Displayed in this manner as “art,” the objects are no longer seen as they were meant to be experienced. The meaning and function of the imagery is lost when viewed outside of the original funerary context. Separated from the mummified bodies of those they represent, the portraits and shrouds now present the disembodied images of a deceased individual from the past. The true power of these portraits is in the proximity and physical relationship the image and preserved body had with one another, and they are not meant to be viewed in isolation. Two photographs of one shroud demonstrate how perceptions can change when the image of the deceased loses its connection with the mummified body and its original funerary context. This first image presents a shroud of a young child (Figure 21.2) dating to the third century CE from the site of Antinoe ( Jiménez 2014: 567; Parlasca 1977: 75, no. 424,Tav. 105, 4). The shroud has been removed from the child’s mummified body, conserved, flatly mounted, and exhibited at the Musée du Louvre. The portrait depicts an almost frontally facing child against a grey-​ blue background. Some scholars (see Guimet 1912: 37–​38; Parlasca 1977: 75; Ikram 2003: 250, n. 35) identify the child as a young boy on account of the cropped hairstyle and bulla necklace, which is commonly worn by young boys in painted portraits, yet the Musée du Louvre wall text accompanying the portrait refers to the deceased as a young girl. There is often gender ambiguity in representations of young children, but given certain attributes in this image, it is likely that the deceased was a young boy. He wears a black side-​lock of hair that falls behind his right ear, which is a traditional hairstyle for children with origins in Pharaonic Egyptian traditions. The boy wears a white long-​sleeved tunic with wide dark clavi and double cuffs of the same colour. A large necklace moulded in gesso encircles his neck, and from it hangs a bulla pendant, an apotropaic amulet often containing magical spells to ward off evil (see P. Tebt. II.275).1 In his left hand, the child holds a pomegranate, a fruit traditionally associated with the underworld in the Greek tradition. His right hand holds a dove and an ankh sign, an Egyptian symbol of eternal life, applied in gesso to the shroud (Jiménez 2014: 567). A geometric pattern adorns the perimeter of the shroud and below the deceased’s hands along his midsection is a winged scarab beetle. In this unfolded form, the image is presented as a canvas and the portrait along with the imagery that would have been obscured among the shroud’s folds can be appreciated by a modern viewer as a work of “art.” 454

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Figure 21.2  Painted shroud of a child on display, Antinoe, third century (AF 6488). Source: Photo by Kiersten Neumann.

CE .

Musée du Louvre

The second photo (Figure 21.3) presents the same shroud draped over the mummified body of the deceased when it was discovered during the 1908 excavations at the site of Antinoe by Albert Gayet, an archaeologist who acted on behalf of his patron Émile Guimet (see Gayet 1905; Guimet 1912). The decorated mummy of the child was displayed in the Musée Guimet along with other portrait and shrouded mummies discovered during the excavation. At some point, the shroud was removed from the body. It is unclear whether this detachment occurred before or after the Musée du Louvre acquired the shroud in 1953. The permanent removal of the painted shroud from the mummy has made it difficult to fully understand the relationship of the shroud to the body. Nevertheless, in this context when the shroud and mummified body are a bundled ensemble, the funerary shroud is no longer a “work of art” but a surrogate for the deceased individual. The painted shroud acts as a window, which offers the viewer a glimpse of what the deceased may have looked like during his lifetime. A connection is made between the image and the body—​one is able to see the likeness of the deceased despite the many layers of bandaging obscuring the physical body. Furthermore, the raised elements of the ankh and bulla pendant on the shroud invite the viewer to touch the modelled gesso and focus on these symbols of life and protection. These two images offer different perspectives of what we as modern-​day viewers see as a result of museum exhibits and what ancient viewers would have seen and understood within a funerary context. Perhaps a suitable modern-​day analogy would be seeing a photograph of a deceased relative hung in a home versus seeing a photograph of the same relative placed over a casket containing his or her body. In the first context, the image is commemorative, but 455

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Figure 21.3  Painted shroud of a child on mummified body, Antinoe, third century CE . Source: Guimet 1912: 362, pl. XLIV no. 71.

in the second context, the image is commemorative and connective—​visually connecting the living with the dead and providing a direct interface shared between both. Therefore, when the shrouds are considered in their original form and context of use, the posture of a represented individual takes on a more visceral and multi-​layered significance that is of particular interest (Monserrat 2000: 280–​281). The portrait, together with the mummified body of the deceased, becomes a doorway in which the living and the dead can see and interact with one another. The second-​to third-​century CE shroud of Neferhotep (Figure 21.1) also illustrates how social relationships are forged through visual representation and physical interaction. Viewed as an unwrapped and flat canvas, the shroud of Neferhotep depicts him with deep-​set, almond shaped eyes along with a prominent nose and eyebrows. The lack of facial hair contributes to his overall youthful appearance and signifies he was a younger male at the time of his death (Jiménez 2014: 540–​542). He dons a shortly cropped hairstyle, while a crown of gilded leaves frames his head. Neferhotep wears a white mantle and tunic with a gold clavus on his right shoulder. His right arm is bent upward and towards the centre of his chest. His left arm is outstretched and his hand cups an object or a patera, which would have likely been filled with incense used for religious purposes. The rich and detailed imagery on the shroud stimulates the viewers’ visual senses while triggering other sensory reactions. The depiction of incense arouses an olfactory response, or perhaps even a synaesthetic experience, where the aroma of incense conjures up emotions and memories associated with ritual funerary activities (Day 2013: 14–​16; also see Hamilakis 2013a: 413–​414; 2013b; Murphy 2013). When one compares the shroud of Neferhotep to other shrouds still wrapped around their mummies, one can see how the image of Neferhotep would have conformed to his mummified body and produced a compelling interface through which the living could visually, physically, and magically communicate with the deceased (Jiménez 2014: 188). Two late second-​ to early third-​century CE mummies in the British Museum (British Museum, EA 6709 and EA 6715) with their shrouds intact demonstrate how Neferhotep’s shroud would have related 456

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to his mummified human body. The painted image of the face would have conformed to the roundedness of the mummified head, and the feet would have sloped upwards following the shape of the deceased’s physical feet. Unwrapped and laid flat, the image of the deceased appears distorted, but wrapped around the body of a mummy, it is clear how the contours of the mummified body work together with the imagery on the shroud to add depth and dimension. The two-​dimensional image of the deceased takes on a three-​dimensional form through its attachment to the mummified body. Dominic Montserrat (2000: 280) argued that the presentation of shrouds as flat canvases ignores the original contouring of the shroud to the mummified body and makes it “more difficult for us to think about the shrouds in terms of their religious and emotional importance to the people who commissioned them and hoped to spend eternity being reborn among their protective folds.” The visual imagery on the shroud of Neferhotep invites the viewer to partake in an additional mingling of sensory experiences. As noted above, Neferhotep holds a small incense burner in his left hand, and his arm is extended in the direction of the viewer, while his right hand appears to be pinching incense and is in the process of performing a ritual offering associated with sacrifice. In this capacity, Neferhotep is engaging with the living and inviting the viewer to perform the ritual together. Neferhotep’s performance of this action serves two purposes: it magically ensures proper sacrifices will be made on his behalf even if his family or others are unable to perform the necessary ritual actions in perpetuity, and it delineates a sacred space where both the living and the dead can interact with one another (Jiménez forthcoming). Demotic sources record instances where the living engage in kinaesthetic interactions with the dead. A memorial in one of the stone quarries at Gebel es-​Silsila inscribed for a man named Pamonthes, son of Petisis, instructs the visitor to recite the name of the deceased, perform a ritual gesture of bending his or her arm, and dance in return for blessings and divine inspiration from the god Mont (see Preisigke and Spiegelberg 1915: 17, pl. 20, no. 282; Smith 2009: 25). Given the elaborately painted nature of the shrouds, vision is an important catalyst for a series of interactions between the living interlocutor and the deceased, but it is not the only means of interacting with the deceased. Visual senses enable the living to gaze upon the image of the dead, while reading the inscription encourages participation through bodily movement and the production of sounds through spoken word. Consequently, the deceased is magically reanimated through the verbal recitation of the spell and the physical movement reciprocated by the living. Sight, sound, hearing, and movement merge together to produce a participatory relationship between the living and the deceased. The shroud of Neferhotep and the Demotic inscription underscore the importance of ritual and social interactions—​both spoken and physical—​as a form of commemoration of the dead. The painted shrouds are more than a portrait of the deceased; they are facilitators of multisensory experiences that achieved their purpose through not only visual but also kinaesthetic and auditory inter-​animation exchanges with humans (Hamilakis 2013b: 15).

Sensing the dead: the mummified body The portrait of the deceased was important in the commemoration of the dead and much emphasis was placed on the decoration of the mummy in the Roman period, but the preservation of the body was still an essential element in the Egyptian construction of the afterlife. The Egyptians believed that the preserved body—​or mummy—​provided a home for the deceased’s mobile soul (the ba), could receive offerings of food and drink for nourishment (for the ka), and could be a vehicle for transformation into a divine being (the akh) (Corcoran and Svoboda 2010: 9). The artificial mummification of bodies was practised in Egypt for more than 457

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4,000 years, and by the Roman period, mummification techniques had been streamlined and refined (Gessler-​Löhr 2012: 669). What we know of embalming practices comes from archaeological and textual evidence. In particular, the fifth-​century BCE historian, Herodotus, describes in The Histories (II, 85–90) three types of embalming practices: the first was the best and most sacred process; the second was less perfect than the first; and the third was the least costly and for the poorer deceased (see Herodotus 2008: 126–​129). Most Roman period mummies would fall somewhere between the first and second categories (Gessler-​Löhr 2012). In both of these treatments, the body was washed with palm wine and Nile water. The brain and viscera were then removed, and the body was packed with natron until it was completely desiccated for about 40–​70 days. Afterwards, the body was washed and covered in oils to help the skin stay elastic. During this process, fragrant ingredients such as myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, beeswax, onions, sawdust, resin, fats, and oils were used to prepare the body (Smith 2009: 32–​33). Frankincense was also used to fumigate the corpse and was an important offering to the deceased and the gods. Although heavily wrapped under many layers of linen bandages, the body of the mummified individual would have emitted a pungent fragrance for all in his or her presence to smell. Even today, many mummified bodies—​some of which this author has personally smelled—​maintain their fragrant aroma. There are two mummified individuals that illustrate some of the best mummification techniques of the Roman period. Inside a unique second-​century CE Theban coffin (National Museum of Scotland, A. 1956.357 A–​B), lie the mummified bodies of two young boys. The inscriptions on the included hieratic papyri identify the boys as Hor-​pa-​bik and Pet-​amun (see Coenen 2003; Riggs 2005: 285, no. 89). Studies of the bodies revealed that the young children were elaborately embalmed. The unwrapped mummified body of Pet-​amun has a small incision on the side where the viscera were removed and the brain had been extracted through the left nostril. The heart was left in situ while the rest of the body was carefully brushed with a paste of resin and fat (Dawson 1927: 292–​293). Frankincense and myrrh steeped in oil were poured over the body, and the fragrance would have combined with the aromatic gums, resins, bitumen, and fragrant oils used throughout the embalming process. When one thinks of the smell of death, the putrid may come to mind. The ancient Egyptians, however, went to great lengths to avoid the decay of the body. A first-​century CE funerary text (P. Bibliothèque National 149)2 written for a man named Pamonthes underscores the importance of a perfectly preserved body by stating, “Your perfect mummification endured in your bones lasting in [your flesh without decay. You will remain] in your coffin” (Smith 2009: 445). The “Embalming Ritual” documented in P. Boulaq 33 dating to the end of the first and beginning of the second century CE (Töpfer 2017: 24) recounts the anointing of the deceased’s body with high quality frankincense and an unguent comprised of ten different oils consisting of vegetable and animal compounds (Smith 2009: 220; Töpfer 2017: 25). The papyrus recounts, “For you is the frankincense which has come forth from Punt, in order to render your odour as pleasing as the perfume of the god” (Smith 2009: 225). In his analysis of the text, Mark Smith (2009: 223) suggests that the actions and utterances attested in the papyrus “are intended not just to create a mummy, but to create a god as well, and it is precisely that term by which the deceased is designated throughout the ritual.” The smell of death for the Egyptians was transcendent and supernatural. “Smell is a peculiar sense” that invades the human body at will, and fragrant smells and perfumes draw associations with the magical and divine (Hamilakis 2011: 213). The ritual process of transforming the ephemeral body into an eternal vessel with the assistance of these aromatic substances emphasises the connection between the olfactory senses, death, and the divine (see also Chapters 19 and 20, this volume). The living, in close proximity to the mummified deceased, would have experienced a co-​mingling of smells that would have been 458

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odorous, powerful, and intoxicating (Hamilakis 2013b: 135) while elevating the deceased to the realm of the divine.

Engaging with the dead: ritual interactions Kinaesthetic and gustatory senses, combined with visual and olfactory senses, add to the multidimensional nature of commemorating the dead in Roman Egypt. Ritual interactions played an important role in remembering the deceased. It was customary Egyptian practice for families to bring food offerings and care for the dead. In some instances, where the family was economically privileged, a fee would be paid to priests or cult members to perform necessary ritual acts and maintenance of the tomb. As important as it was for descendants or cult members to interact with the deceased by providing offerings, it was equally crucial that the deceased be equipped with all the necessary spells, blessings, and funerary goods in perpetuity. Surviving Demotic papyri have preserved funerary rituals such as the “Opening of the Mouth,” the judgement from the “Book of the Dead,” and the glorification in the “Book of Breathing” and the “Book of Traversing Eternity” (Riggs 2010: 347). Such evidence dating to the Roman period emphasises the value in the performance of funerary rituals and their relevance in the revivification and sustained commemoration of the dead. Magical funerary spells served a specific function, but most importantly they helped reanimate the deceased and restore her sense of sight, sound, and smell; presented her with sustaining offerings; and reinstated her mobility (Smith 2009: 351). For example, a first-​century CE text (P. Louvre E 10607)4 written for a woman named Tatriphis known as the “Liturgy of Opening the Mouth for Breathing” recounts (Smith 2009: 375): You will live. You will be renewed. Your lord, he will repeat youthful vigour for you. You will awake at my voice. You will rise up at (what issues from) my head. You will rise up at (what issues from) my throat. Rise up at my speech. May you come at my utterance. Hathor of Tatriphis daughter of Kollouthes, I am your beloved son. You will be renewed and your ba will be renewed. Your ba will be renewed and you will be renewed. Your body will live, your bones will be soundly knit, your limbs will be firm, your vessels will be reinvigorated, and your spine will be enlivened. Your eyes will see for you, your feet will go for you, your ears will be open for you, your tongue will be open for you, your throat will be open for you, and your lips will be open for you. Your heart will create perfection for you similar to your own. You will awake together with Osiris. You will become as one in the presence of the lord of the gods. This funerary text served multiple purposes for Tatriphis. After the initial recitation, it was buried with the deceased so that she might obtain these outlined benefits in the afterlife. Perhaps most significant is that this text was used by both the living and the dead. In other words, the living initially recited the text for the benefit of the dead, and the dead continued to use the text for her benefit following burial. The effectiveness of the spell was “not limited to the initial performance, but continued on a permanent basis” in the afterlife (Smith 2009: 359). When performed and recited, these funerary texts invoked ritual protection and aided in the deceased’s rebirth. Together, the ritual performance, recitation, and reanimation of the deceased’s body ensured the deceased was capable of maintaining all of the physical senses she once possessed while alive. Since Roman period burial outfits had been scaled down from their Pharaonic predecessors, the mummified body, funerary rituals, feasts, and subsequent visitations were given more ideological weight (Riggs 2005: 34). For centuries, ancient Egyptians held feasts on a variety of 459

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occasions, and many of those banquets were connected to religious occasions and celebrations of the dead (see also Chapter 29, this volume). It was believed that the deceased could return to earth and attend these ritual festivals (see Smith 2009: 396; Assmann 2001: 297, 307–​315). The day of interment of the deceased was referred to as the “burial feast” in some Greco-​Roman period texts (see P. BM EA 10507).5 Banquets featured large gatherings of family members and close associates, who enjoyed music, dance, and copious amounts of food. Once the necessary funerary rites had taken place, those involved in the ceremony would partake in the funerary banquet. These types of feasting celebrations would also take place on special occasions such as birthdays, possibly on the anniversary of interment, and during religious observances (Smith 2009: 40). A late second-​century CE papyrus of funeral accounts from the site of Socnopaiou Nesus provides a remarkable tabulation of funeral expenditures for offerings of wreaths and pinecones for the dead, and food items such as honey, bread, barley, sweets, and high-​quality olive oil, which were presumably consumed at a meal during the funerary proceedings (Montserrat 1997: 40; also see Walker 2000: 159, no. 116). Additional private entries in household accounts from the sites of Tebtunis and Oxyrhynchus also detail the expenses incurred to provide incense at a funeral and record the importance of placing a wreath on the tomb of the deceased (Montserrat 1997: 40; also see Walker 2000: 159, no. 116). The use of incense for funerary rituals “with its smoke as well as the smell, provides a visual and olfactory bridge between the human and the divine worlds” (Hamilakis 2013b: 77). Bundled garlands, wreaths, and bouquets placed on top of the deceased were a multivalent symbol that visually indicated the transfiguration of the deceased into a divine being (Jiménez 2014: 107), while simultaneously emitting a fragrant scent meant to be inhaled by both the living and the deceased (see Smith 2005: 115–​116). A funerary wreath of immortelles (Helichrysum stoechas) (see British Museum, 1890,0519.7) excavated in a second-​to third-​century CE burial in Hawara reveals the types of smells that would have been encountered in the tomb. The aroma of a wreath of immortelles would have smelled “warm, pungent, slightly animalic with delicate hints of leather and tobacco” (Ascensão et al. 2001: 115). These flowers are commonly known as gold-​everlasting or eternal flowers and are popular in modern floral arrangements and potpourris because of their long-​lasting colour and aroma (Ascensão et al. 2001: 115), which would certainly not have gone unnoticed by the ancient Egyptians in a funerary context. The flowers frequently deposited in tombs were used to beautify the spaces and allow the deceased to enjoy their fragrance, engaging the visual and olfactory senses of both the deceased and the visitor.

Experiencing the dead: tombs and catacombs Returning to the burial of Neferhotep, his tomb, known as Theban Tomb 1447 located on the northern slope east of Qurnet Murai at the site of Deir el-​Medina, provides an idea of the location and type of space some tombs provided for the deceased. In his excavation reports, Bernard Bruyère described the tomb as a Hypogeum where mummified bodies were deposited at the bottom of a rough staircase (see Bruyère 1953). The overall plan of the tomb consisted of two large rooms: one room was 3.5 metres wide by 2.2 metres long, and the other was 2.6 metres wide by 3.05 metres long at a perpendicular angle with an east–​west orientation, a 2-​metre-​long corridor, a main room with a low-​ceiling of only 1.7 metres high, and side-​chambers also with low ceilings (Monserrat 2000: 283). Bruyère (1953: 103–​107) estimated that there were at least 60 bodies buried in the low side-​chambers in the tomb. Small, dark, and cramped tomb spaces such as those in the Roman necropolis at Deir el-​Medina limited what type of ritual activities could take place within the tomb, suggesting that certain funerary rituals would have taken place 460

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outside or elsewhere before the mummies were deposited in the interior of the tomb. Inside the constricted space of the tomb setting, mummified bodies, censed and perfumed with oils, produced a pungent aroma in the air that would have mingled with the smell of funerary wreaths and even perhaps the occasional whiff of must. Other monumental tomb complexes, however, such as those at the site of Marina el-​Alamein on the Mediterranean coast and Kom el-​Shogafa in Alexandria are examples of more elaborate tomb spaces that provided the living and the deceased with a rich landscape of architectural features that powerfully affected the sensorial encounter with the dead. At Marina el-​Alamein, the main necropolis of the settlement comprises tombs dating from the Ptolemaic period through the Roman period. Some of the tombs were grouped together and showed remarkable variation in their orientation and architectural structure (see Daszewski 1997). The most impressive tombs were the grand Hypogea, which were oriented north–​south and date between the middle of the first century CE to the middle of the second century CE (Daszewski 1997: 64). A standard tomb of this type consisted of a pavilion, or heroon, which had a banquet room with couches in the middle and storage rooms for food and beverages on the sides. It is also possible that some of these side rooms could have been used as temporary dormitories for visitors (Daszewski 1997: 60) of the cult of the dead who came to celebrate the deceased and provide offerings for the dead on the occasion of a festival or birthday. A staircase at the end of a corridor on the rear side of the banquet hall led to a 5 to 7-​metre-​deep open-​air court with an altar, and occasionally a water well, in the centre (Daszewski 1997: 60). Loculi, used to house the mummified bodies of the deceased, and the benches below them were hewn in the bedrock. Burial goods were limited to small glass bottles or unguentaria, sherds of ceramic cups, textile fragments, and partly burned pieces of wood (Daszewski 1997: 61). Excavators discovered 11 mummified individuals in a walled funerary chamber. Of the 11, five had very poorly preserved funerary portraits secured to their bandages. The majority of the bodies suffered from extensive decay due to the humidity and disintegrated when touched by archaeologists (Daszewski 1997: 62–​63; also see Daszewski et al. 2007). Weathered over the centuries, these mummies would have been large and sturdy in ancient times. When placed and removed from his or her loculus, the mummified individual would have been jostled and banged. Evidence of wear can be seen on many of the footcases of portrait mummies. Those tasked with transporting the mummified body would have felt the rough surface of the painted linen exterior. By nature, the bundled-​ness and portability of the mummy invited touch, and the ability to move the mummy from one location to another encouraged physical contact between the deceased and the living. It is perhaps only at this point in the interaction that the living interlocutor is made fully aware of the deceased’s mortality. Ancient writers who travelled and lived throughout Egypt during the Greco-​Roman period, such as Diodorus and Lucian, detail how the Egyptians dined with the dead as guests at their tables and how intriguing it was that mummified individuals participated in banquets (Borg 1997: 26). Archaeological evidence supports these types of observations. The ample space and architecture of the main necropolis at Marina el-​Alamein formed an area where the visitors could easily access and touch the deceased resting in their own loculi, view the image of the dead presented through funerary portraits secured to their mummy, and commemorate the deceased by feasting in banquet rooms and providing offerings. Like the Hypogea at Marina el-​Alamein, the catacombs of Kom el-​Shoqafa give further insight into the constructed architectural and ritual space for the dead (Jiménez 2014: 47). Kom el-​Shoqafa lies on the western necropolis of Alexandria, and comprises a series of catacombs consisting of three levels (Venit 2002: 26). This complex of burial chambers and banqueting halls is embellished—​both architecturally and artistically—​making it a hallmark of Alexandrian 461

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monumental funerary building. Marjorie Venit (2002: 125–126) describes the catacombs as “vast intricately decorated interior spaces cut so greatly into the rock [that they] present an enormity of experience outside the normal human realm and bespeak a level of technological expertise.” A large spiral staircase descends around a circular shaft providing air and light for visitors in the vestibule and first level of the structure. A rotunda, which originally only led to the left before the addition of more tombs, opens to a triclinium that provides space for visitors to celebrate meals in honour of the dead (Empereur 2003: 4–​5). Tableware and amphorae were discovered in the triclinium, which supports the idea that this space was used for feasting and celebrating with the dead. Given the small space (8.5 metres wide by 9 metres deep), it also appears that these meals were more intimate gatherings—​perhaps for only immediate family members (Empereur 2003: 4–​5). In these spaces, visitors could drink and dine with the dead at the funeral banquet and indulge in subsequent annual feasts in honour of their ancestors. The smell and taste of foods consumed on these rare occasions likely produced pleasure, intoxication, and emotions evoking past events, persons, and situations (Hamilakis 2013b: 50, 84). Eating, tasting, and food are intimately tied to memory (Day 2013: 14). Food is evocative, but when combined with smells, sounds, sights, and touch, communal banquets and celebrations become a shared mnemonic [practice] filled with “material sensorial interaction” (Day 2013: 14). The second level of the funerary complex is accessed by a staircase that leads into galleries of rock-​cut loculi where hundreds of deceased individuals were buried. Such a large-​scale facility suggests the involvement of a well-​organised business, and finds from other parts of the Roman Empire have confirmed that these types of funerary industries existed (Empereur 2003: 15–​16). Given the size of the loculi, it is possible that many of them ultimately held more than one body, and it is likely that over 300 individuals were laid to rest at Kom el-​Shoqafa (Empereur 2003: 15–​16). These large-​scale collective burial places provided ample space for communal interactions among living visitors and interactions between the living and the dead. In these instances, the monumentality of the tomb environment facilitated a multisensorial reality complete with sounds, smells, tastes, images, and textures relating to the celebration of the dead (Hamilakis 2013b: 44). Furthermore, the multisensory landscape of the tomb complex aided in remembering the deceased and partaking in commemorative social rituals. The multisensory experiences served not only to recall the past, but also to produce strong memories to be recalled on a later occasion in the future (Hamilakis 2013a: 416).

Death in a new light: portraits and torches Rituals involving torches are attested at all periods of Egyptian history and were important in funerary cult activities (Smith 2009: 389–​390). Torches were a substantial expense on funerary expenditure lists suggesting that the funeral rites may have taken place at night or that light was necessary to illuminate the interior of the tomb (Montserrat 1997: 40; see SPP XXII 56). Lighting and the interaction between light and certain pigments on the painted portraits enhanced the multisensory experience of the living during funerary rituals conducted within the tomb landscape. Recent studies on a corpus of 15 portraits dating to the second century CE and housed in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley have revealed the unique scientific properties of the pigments used to create the naturalistic portraits secured to the mummy (see Ganio et al. 2015). Scientific analysis of the portraits indicates that several were painted with an unusual amount of Egyptian blue pigment that was not outwardly visible to the viewer (Ganio et al. 2015: 820). Conservators and scientists used non-​invasive imaging techniques such as near-​ infrared (NIR) luminescence imaging (also often called 462

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visible-​induced luminescence, VIL) to identify pigments used on the portraits in a museum environment. NIR luminescence imaging detects the luminescence response of inorganic and organic compounds when excited by visible light (Ganio et al. 2015: 814). Due to the chemical properties of Egyptian blue and the sensitivity of NIR imaging, NIR is able to detect even the smallest traces of the pigment—​even in amounts too small to be observed by the naked eye (Ganio et al. 2015: 814). Imaging of the Hearst portraits revealed the presence of blue in areas that were not blue in appearance (Ganio et al. 2015: 813). Furthermore, the testing indicated that the blue pigment was used for preliminary sketches and colour modulation, meaning that it was mixed in with other pigments or hidden beneath other colours used later in the painting of the portraits (Ganio et al. 2015: 814; also see Thiboutot 2020). What is most significant about the use of Egyptian blue in the painting of the portraits is that the pigment luminesces. Therefore, when the portraits are viewed under the proper low-​ light conditions, the blue has a shiny quality that glistens when light hits the pigment in certain ways. It appears that ancient artists of the portraits were exploiting the properties of this synthetic blue pigment in a way that was not necessarily intuitive to the modern (and ancient) viewer (Ganio et al. 2015: 813–​814). The artists were not using the pigment for its visual blue appearance, but rather to enhance the under-​drawing or, as a shadowing pigment, to contour the face as seen in two second-​century CE portraits: one of a female (PAHMA 6-​21375) and the

Figure 21.4  Painted portraits exhibiting strong luminescence in the near infrared (850–​1100 nanometres): a. Visible light, b. Near IR. Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (Catalogue Nos.: 6-​21378b, 6-​21377, 6-​21379, 6-​21375). Source: Courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Regents of the University of California. 463

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other of young male (PAHMA 6-​21377) (Figure 21.4; Ganio et al. 2015: 814). The portrait of the female shows Egyptian blue used to highlight and contour her face, conveying volume and dimensionality while creating an ethereal glow (Dyer and Newman 2020: 59–​61), whereas the pigment on the male’s portrait was primarily applied to the background, producing an almost three-​dimensional silhouette of his image. In both instances, the artists were using Egyptian blue pigment in different ways to magnify the otherworldly qualities of the portraits and add a layer of “symbolic potency to the portraits” (Thiboutot 2020: 51). This phenomenon of exploiting the luminescent properties of Egyptian blue is not unique to Egypt and was also used to highlight facial features and garments of mythological and human figures throughout the Mediterranean and ancient Near Eastern worlds (see Neumann 2015: 90–​91; Thavapalan 2019). The widespread use of Egyptian blue in various media, over space and time, and in an array of contexts is not coincidental. Likewise, the manipulation of dimly lit viewing conditions also attests to how ancient artists recognised the sensorial-​enhancing possibilities of Egyptian blue and how ancient viewers may have anticipated multisensory experiences in sacred and ritual contexts. When one considers the original conditions in which these portraits were viewed within the tomb, one can begin to understand how ancient viewers experienced and interacted with painted objects. Ancient written sources indicate that torches were used, and the relatively low-​ light conditions of tombs support their necessity (Smith 1987: 22). Meghan Strong (2019: 363) suggests that “artificial lighting facilitated the visual navigation of these built environments, but also impacted the viewer’s perception of the space and objects within it.” Viewed under torchlight in a dark tomb, the Egyptian blue in the painted portraits would have produced an ethereal, life-​like effect. The flickering of torches within the dark tomb would have generated the impression of movement through shadows and caused the Egyptian blue pigment to glow, animating the already naturalistic portrait and enabling the deceased to be present and participate in the funerary celebrations. The sense of movement and animation through pigment and light renders these portraits dynamic and invites a tactile experience where the viewer can interact with the newly reanimated deceased (Hamilakis 2011: 212–​213). Further underscored by the recitation of spells reanimating the preserved body, the visual illusion of movement in the portrait securely fastened to the mummified body enhances the sacred experience with the dead and would have caused visitors and attendants in the tomb to interact differently with the deceased (Strong 2019: 376). The portrait mummy of the deceased within the tomb is seen “with the whole body, and this fully embodied seeing is informed by multisensory memory, experience, and the viewer’s cultural and social context” (Hunter-​Crawley and O’Brien 2019: 2). In other words, the image of the deceased viewed under these conditions becomes a multisensory object, comprising a complex network of senses, materiality, and culture (Hunter-​Crawley and O’Brien 2019: 3). The embodied image of the deceased carries a sense of “ ‘apparition,’ ‘likeness,’ ‘form,’ or sometimes ‘ghost’ ” (Hunter-​Crawley and O’Brien 2019: 3).

Conclusion By considering the range of sensory experiences that accompanied funerary rituals, including visual and auditory cues combined with olfactory, gustatory, and kinaesthetic modalities, we can construct a more provocative understanding of commemorative practices in Roman Egypt (Weddle 2013: 138). The physical and symbolic properties of funerary portraits and shrouds indicate that these objects were more than mere visual representations of the dead; they instead transformed into multisensory performative objects when ritual spells were recited in their presence, as they came to life under the glow of torchlight (Hamilakis 2011: 220). The interior space of tomb complexes facilitated special sensory encounters for visitors—​a place where 464

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the mummified remains of the dead could be accessed and touched within their loculi and where designated banqueting areas provided guests with the tastes and smells of food and wine associated with celebration. It becomes clear that while these tombs may have been occupied by the deceased, they were also inhabited by the living. The combination of these elements provided a multisensory bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead, allowing the living inhabitants of Roman Egypt not only to see but to experience dead people.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

P. Tebt. II.275 = Papyrus Tebtunis, Berkeley, Bancroft Library. P. Bibliothèque National 149 = Papyrus Bibliothèque National, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. P. Boulaq 3 = Papyrus Boulaq, Musée du Louvre, E 5158. P. Louvre E 10607 = Papyrus Louvre, Musée du Louvre, E 10607. P. BM EA 10507 = Papyrus British Museum, British Museum, EA 10507.

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Gessler-​Löhr, B. 2012. “Mummies and Mummification,” in C. Riggs, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 664–​683. Guimet, É. 1912. Les portraits d’Antinoé au Musée Guimet. Annales du Musée Guimet Bibliotheèque d’Art 5. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie. Hamilakis, Y. 2011. “Archaeologies of the Senses,” in T. Insoll, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 208–​225. Hamilakis, Y. 2013a. “Afterword: Eleven Theses on the Archaeology of the Senses,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 409–​419. Hamilakis, Y. 2013b. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press. Herodotus. 2008. The Histories. Trans. R. Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunter-​ Crawley, H., and E. O’Brien. 2019. “Introduction: The Image and the Senses,” in H. Hunter-​ Crawley and E. O’Brien, eds., The Multi-​ Sensory Image from Antiquity to the Renaissance. New York: Routledge, 1–​24. Ikram, S. 2003. “Barbering the Beardless: A Possible Explanation for the Tufted Hairstyle Depicted in the Fayum Portrait of a Young Boy (J. P. Getty 78.AP.262).” JEA 89: 247–​251. Jiménez, L. M. 2014. “Transfiguring the Dead: The Iconography, Commemorative Use, and Materiality of Mummy Shrouds from Roman Egypt.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Jiménez, L. M. Forthcoming. “A Modest Burial: A New Perspective on Mummy Shrouds and Burials from Deir el-​Medina,” in D. Kiser-​Go and C. A. Redmount, eds., Weseretkau “Mighty of Kas”: Papers Submitted in Memory of Cathleen A. Keller. Atlanta: Lockwood Press. Meskell, L. 2005. “Objects in the Mirror Appear Closer Than They Are,” in D. Miller, ed., Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 51–​71. Montserrat, D. 1997. “Death and Funerals in the Roman Fayum,” in M. L. Bierbrier, ed., Portraits and Masks: Burial Customs in Roman Egypt. London: British Museum Press, 33–​44. Montserrat, D. 2000. “Burial Practices at Third Century A.D. Deir el-​Medina as Evidenced from a Roman Painted Shroud in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden,” in R. J. Demarée and A. Egberts, eds., Deir el-​Medina in the Third Millennium A.D.: A Tribute to Jac. J. Janssen. Leiden: Peeters, 277–​286. Murphy, J. M. A. 2013. “The Scent of Status: Prestige and Perfume at the Bronze Age Palace at Pylos, Greece,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 243–​265. Neumann, K. A. 2015. “In the Eyes of the Other: The Mythological Wall Reliefs in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh,” in M. Dalton, G. Peters, and A. Tavares, eds., Archaeological Review from Cambridge, Special Issue Seen and Unseen Spaces 30: 85–​93. Parlasca, K. 1977. Reportorio d’arte dell’Egitto Greco-​Romano, B II: Ritratti di Mummie, ii Nos. 247–​496. Rome. Preisigke, F., and W. Spiegelberg. 1915. Ägyptische und griechische Inschriften und Graffiti aus den Steinbrüchen des Gebel Silsile (Oberägypten): nach den Zeichnungen von Georges Legrain. Strasbourg: Karl J. Trübner. Riggs, C. 2005. The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Riggs, C. 2010. “Tradition and Innovation in the Burial Practices in Roman Egypt,” in K. Lembke, M. Minas-​Nerpel, and S. Pfeiffer, eds., Tradition and Transformation: Egypt Under Roman Rule. Leiden: Brill, 343–​356. Smith, M. 1987. Catalogue of Demotic Papyri in the British Museum, Volume II: The Mortuary Texts of Papyrus BM 10507. London: British Museum Press. Smith, M. 2005. Papyrus Harkness (MMA 31.9.7). Oxford: Griffith Institute. Smith, M. 2009. Traversing Eternity: Texts for the Afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strong, M. E. 2019. “Smelling Fat and Hearing Flame: Sensory Experience of Artificial Light in Ancient Egypt,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press. Thavapalan, S. 2019. “A World in Color: Polychromy of Assyrian Sculpture,” in A. W. Lassen, K. Wagensonner, and E. Frahm, eds., Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: Highlights of the Yale Babylonian Collection. New Haven: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 193–​199.

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Thiboutot, G. 2020. “Egyptian Blue in Romano-​Egyptian Mummy Portraits,” in M. Svoboda and C. R. Cartwright, eds., Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt: Emerging Research from the APPEAR Project. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 46–​53. Töpfer, S. 2017. “Theory and Practice/​Text and Mummies: The Instructions of the ‘Embalming Ritual’ in the Light of Archaeological Evidence,” in K. A. Kóthay, ed., Burial and Mortuary Practices in Late Period and Graeco-​Roman Egypt, Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 17–​19 July 2014. Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts, 23–​34. Venit, M. S. 2002. The Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria: The Theater of the Dead. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Walker, S., ed. 2000. Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/​Routledge. Weddle, C. 2013. “The Sensory Experience of Blood Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult,” in J. Day, ed., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press, 137–​159.

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Part V

Science, medicine, and aesthetics

22 Seeing stars Knowing the sky in Mesopotamia M. Willis Monroe

Introduction In the midst of despair, the protagonist of the composition, The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, describes the maladies that have befallen his body: “My eyes stare, they cannot see /​My ears prick up, they cannot hear” (Foster 2005: 400). The description proceeds from head to toe following a well-​defined paradigm in medical literature (Heeßel 2000: 24), and first among the list is the inability for the sufferer’s eyes to perform the sense of sight.1 The eyes are followed by the ears which also do an action, “pricking up,” but cannot perform their sensory role of “hearing.” The focus on sense organs and their inability to function highlights the separation of the organ from the sense itself. A number of questions arise from this separation all of which will factor into the discussion that follows. Principally however, the separation allows for other aspects of the senses beyond the performance of the organ to factor into a discussion of how Mesopotamians sensed their world. This chapter will show how training, professional organisation, and even (in some cases) material tools could augment or even replace the sense of sight when looking at the sky. This combination turns the sense of sight into something new, that is to say, the practice of observation. Very few ancient observers left behind specific first-​person accounts of how they performed their craft and so much of the evidence has to be reconstructed from the (at times terse) records of observations. The source material for this chapter is drawn from the astronomical and astrological literature of the first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia.2 A close reading of the texts elucidates the role of observation, primarily characterised through the verbs of “seeing” associated with the sense organ, that is to say, the eye. The reports of observation derive from a variety of contexts including scholars in the royal court of the Neo-​Assyrian Empire and the complex astronomical literature written by Late Babylonian scribes. While different in themselves they form a coherent picture of how the act of observation, or a report of an observation, differs from the sense of sight at its most basic level. It is important to note at this point, however, that even at any level, the sense of sight is not devoid of culturally mediated influence and understanding. Of course, any “way” of seeing is not an objective representation of the world around us; the raw senses themselves are inaccessible and instead culturally mediated perception is reported in text (Howes and Classen 2014: 1).3 However, for the purposes of this chapter the DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-23

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interplay between sight and a range of other highly technical and specialised ways of thinking about the world show that observations made of objects in the sky were conditioned on much more than a sensory organ. The two major corpora that preserve evidence of celestial observation are the Neo-​Assyrian astrological reports (around 700–​650 BCE ) and the Astronomical Diaries which date roughly to the latter half of the first millennium BCE . The former consists of a few hundred letters written by professional diviners trained to watch for ominous events in the sky, who reported both their observations and interpretations to the kings of the Neo-​Assyrian Empire. These reports on divination were used by the king and his advisers in order to plan everything from military campaigns to the appointment of officials; the results of divination were thought to be the words or decisions of the gods. These were collected and published by Herman Hunger in Volume 8 (and a bit of Volume 10) in the State Archives of Assyria series (SAA) and are now available online through the ORACC project’s website.4 The latter group of observations, from the Late Babylonian period, make up a long and relatively continuous practice of recording events in the sky (and elsewhere) in the form of texts given the modern designation “Astronomical Diaries,” but referred to in Akkadian as “regular watching” (naṣāru ša ginê).5 In both of these corpora from the first millennium BCE , the Neo-​Assyrian reports and the Late Babylonian records, the language of observation serves as a way to interrogate the sensory experiences and theories that lie behind the practice. While there is not space here for a thorough study of this language, deeper analysis would elucidate patterns and put into sharper relief the various communities involved in this practice. Hints already exist, for instance, in the different language and techniques used by Assyrian and Babylonian scribes in the Neo-​Assyrian court (Worthington 2006), or formatting changes between Late Babylonian scholars in Uruk and Babylon (Monroe 2016). The goal of this chapter is to trace, through the text corpora mentioned above, the changing role of observation throughout astronomy and astrology. One of the primary cosmologies of the ancient Near East, the text known as the Enūma Eliš, establishes that the patterns of movement in the sky were placed there by the god Marduk during the process of world creation.6 This meant that observers of the heavens were seeing the divinely established order of the universe on display, and repeated observations and understanding could elucidate these patterns. As the theoretical knowledge of astronomy progressed, the need for direct sight fell away as scholars began to rely on theoretical predictive models to produce new “observations.” In fact, by the later periods the recorded observations were more accurate than any data produced by the scholars’ bodily senses. It was this interplay between seeing and theoretical understanding that changed over time and formed the practice of celestial observation in the first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. At each stage the interplay between the sense of sight and the theory of heavens made up a particular way of observing the world. This method of observation was particular to a group of scholars; to borrow a term from Ludwik Fleck (1979), they were a “thought collective.” Later in this chapter the nature and operation of these collectives and their “thought style(s)” will be examined in relation to the development of observational language and practice in Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology.

Astronomy and astrology in Mesopotamia The night sky in ancient Mesopotamia attracted the gaze of specialist and layperson alike. The lack of light pollution, the expense of night-​time artificial illumination, and the benefits of sleeping on a cooler roof during hot weather meant that the celestial landscape was a familiar

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scene. Acknowledging this simple fact leads to a number of questions about what exactly was being seen when observers looked to the heavens. For instance, were observers considering each observation as a novel look at the celestial bodies in the sky, or did they recognise that the movement of the eternal heavens took place regardless of their gaze? Was the record of an observation the establishment of parameters for celestial theory or merely a confirmation of the divinely ordered heavens (as established for instance in the Enūma Eliš)? As with any scientific practice, the motives and thoughts of the practitioners differ widely throughout time and between persons, but whether or not the observer was trained in the arts of astronomy and astrology had a large impact on how they observed the heavens. It is clear that the practice of observation was heavily dependent on theories about celestial movement. Celestial science in ancient Mesopotamia consisted of what we now differentiate as astronomy and astrology; however, both of these modern divisions of knowledge fell under the same ancient professional designation: ṭupšar Enūma Anu Enlil (“scribe of Enūma Anu Enlil,” the latter part of this title refers to the most popular series of astrological omens).7 It was a scientific practice wholly dependent on observations of celestial bodies and understanding their movement in the sky.8 These scribes mastered the astral significance of ominous signs as well as the mathematical models for predicting their movement and appearance. Its practitioners either conducted regular observations themselves or relied on reports or records of observations from other scholars. Seeing the sky was crucial to their practice of both divination and prediction, at least in its formative stages, for as the practice continued into the latter half of the first millennium BCE , the reliance on the sense of sight waned until many of the observations consisted solely of calculated data about movement in the heavens. For the scholars it was through the sense of “seeing” that the observable became observed. But even their sense of sight was highly conditioned on a theoretical understanding of the way in which the sky operated. It was one thing to notice a bright star on the horizon and another to know that it was the goddess Ishtar as the planet Venus who appeared at certain times on both horizons. Similarly, as the invention of the zodiac overtook other methods of determining the location of bodies in the sky, being able to “see” where a planet was in Leo or Virgo to a specific degree was a form of perception.9 For in fact there are no lines in the sky showing the boundaries between the signs. Rough locations could be determined through naked-​eye astronomy but precise locations within the invisible signs could only be computed. But even without sight, these records of events still constitute an observation because they reflect, just like the digits on a scale, a statement about the world conditioned on an underlying theory. Scholars have written previously about the intertwining of theory and observation in Mesopotamia. In particular, Francesca Rochberg (2011) clearly laid out the dense interrelationships within celestial science, and Mark van der Mieroop (2016: 113–​ 140) established records of observations as our main vantage point from which to study Mesopotamian ideas of theory. It has long been a frustration that within the preserved evidence of Mesopotamian science there is very little explicit theory as we have come to expect from later traditions, for instance the Greek scientific writers (Neugebauer 1975: 348). However, theory is present either in different forms, or reconstructed as van de Mieroop suggests through the data itself. The textual evidence of celestial observations is either singular or consists of a series of “observation-​statements,” a term borrowed from Otto Neurath via Rochberg. These statements are recorded by scribes and include information about what was seen in the sky by the observer (Rochberg 2011: 621). Importantly, because they are written down as observations they are “assayable,” that is to say, they can be verified or assessed by another observer. But, in order to properly assess these observations the other party has to share the same theoretical understanding of the world. 473

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Mesopotamian observation in later sources One reason that the observation of the heavens in Mesopotamia is a particularly good example of the interplay between theoretical observation and the senses is because their practice became a defining feature well after the active lives of the cuneiform scholars in Babylonia. Classical authors, Aristotle, Diodorus, Pliny, and others all made mention of the great accuracy and antiquity of “Assyrian” and “Chaldean” observations and observational practice (Stevens 2019: 34). As a matter of fact, they were most impressed not necessarily with the amount of data accrued in and of itself but rather the power this observational record could provide to the prediction of future events through astrology. Cicero (Div. 1.2) writes: “the Chaldeans … through long observation of the stars, are thought to have perfected an art by which it is possible to foretell what will happen to any man and for what fate he was born.” The connection between Mesopotamian astronomical science and the land of Babylon was so strong for the Greek and Roman authors that the term “Chaldean” became a synonym for an astrologer in the classical world (Misiewicz 2018). Through various means of transmission, the observational records from Mesopotamia went on to form some of the core data for much of the development of astronomy and astrology up until the premodern era. For instance, the famous Classical astronomer Ptolemy of Alexandria (second century CE ) relied heavily on Mesopotamian records of observation, in particular of eclipses; in his tabulation of records, the first ten eclipses all come from Babylonia (Steele 2000). This speaks not only to the antiquity of the observational record in Mesopotamia but also to the perceived accuracy of the observations made by the practitioners themselves. The Classical authors, the Roman author Cicero (first century BCE ) in particular, also had thoughts about how the Mesopotamian observers were able to reach such a degree of accuracy in their observations (Div. 1.2): The Assyrians, on account of the vast plains inhabited by them, and because of the open and unobstructed view of the heavens presented to them on every side, took observations of the paths and movements of the stars, and, having made note of them, transmitted to posterity what significance they had for each person.

The mechanics of observation Obviously, it was not just the wide, open space and unobstructed views that allowed scholars to make accurate observations. The practice of observation in cuneiform sources extends deep into Mesopotamian history. However, it is difficult to say anything about the actual practice of observation or in which contexts it occurred, until the first millennium BCE . Records before the heyday of the Neo-​Assyrian royal court give us only tantalising glimpses at possible celestial observations, and they must be heavily reconstructed from early divinatory texts. It is obvious that people did look to the sky and observed events, but whether they made “observations,” that is to say, the highly theory-​laden practice known later, is another matter. A crucial element of observation was theoretical knowledge combined with the sense of sight which allowed observers to recognise not only the object they were perceiving but also the appropriate context. This context might be a temporal one (is this the expected time to observe this object?) or spatial (is this the expected place to observe this object?). Outside of theoretical knowledge, a certain amount of practical knowledge was necessary for being able to conduct observations and measure the metrological units needed to accurately record them.

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One of the primary measurements required for astronomical observations was time.10 Celestial objects rose or set along the horizon at certain times of day or night and their movement across the sky could be tracked by the amount of time elapsed. One obvious example of this type of observation is the regular and frequent passage of the sun and moon. The astronomical handbook MUL.APIN preserves lengths of daylight and night-​time that were measured by means of a water clock (Hunger and Steele 2018: 200). The water clock, as an instrument, dates perhaps as far back as the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium bce). Evidence from texts suggest that gišDIB.DIB or maltaktum was the term used to refer to a conical or prismatic vessel where the outflow was measured and corresponded to standard units of time (Brown et al. 1999–​2000). While this device was not accurate enough for fine measurement, it could produce measurements needed for general observations like the lunar six11 or (as just mentioned) the length of periods of daylight or night-​time. Asger Aaboe (1980: 24) suggested that for most cases the water clock could be used and that for other less precise observations the naked eye was sufficient.12 In other circumstances another device might be needed and Lis Brack-​Bernsen (2005: 20) suggested that a device similar to a Jacob’s staff13 could be used to measure along the horizon, and the resulting measurement used to calibrate water clocks. Finally, one other method for measuring time and therefore distance during the night is through the passage of certain stars, which the Mesopotamians referred to as “ziqpu/​zenith.” These stars formed a band in the northern hemisphere of the sky which was located over the head of the observer (hence the name “zenith”); the first star in the standard listing is α Boötis (Arcturus). The usage of these ziqpu-​ stars dates to at least the early first millennium BCE and because of the stable distance between each other, they could be used as a regular method of time reckoning (Steele 2017: 13). Briefly, it is also worth commenting on the use of colour in the observation of the heavens. Bodies (usually planets) and the sky as whole could take on a colour, most often red. Records of colour observations are more common in the Neo-​Assyrian period where they are associated with specific omens that relate to the colour observed. Usage of colour words drops off in the later period as more and more results are calculated and no mathematical method had been developed for calculating the predicted colour of objects in the sky. Therefore observations which include colour terms should usually be considered to rely on the sense of sight rather than predictive theory; that is of course not to say that colour terms were objectively seen by observers but rather that they relate to the act of looking at the sky rather than predicting a phenomenon.14

The language of observation The terminology used to describe observation, found primarily in the Mesopotamian languages of Akkadian and Sumerian, provides important clues for the nature of observation and its relationship with the sense of sight. This terminology is found in reports of observation that both use explicit verbs of “seeing” and those that omit them. The most important semantic domain surrounds the verb amāru, “to see,” and its related terms. But it is not so simple as to say that the main verb amāru governs what one does with one’s eyes as there are different categories of actions. For instance, moving the eyes around is governed by dagālu. The verb naṣāru denotes an action of expectant waiting and watching. And perhaps most interestingly the noun tāmartu offers the closest parallel to the word “observation.” The semantic range of various verbs of “seeing” has received a boon of scholarship recently; a number of articles appeared in the edited volume Distant Impressions:The Senses in the Ancient Near East (Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019; see also Chapter 26, this volume). The contributions

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to that volume go into great detail and explain many other aspects of how this semantic domain operates in other genres of cuneiform culture. This section will only cover the words outlined below in the specific role within observational astronomy.

Amāru: “to see” The most common verb of “seeing” is amāru (CAD A/​2: 5). This verb has at its core the semantic meaning of to observe the physical appearance of something. The object of the verb either existed prior to its observance or has newly appeared. It is used frequently in reports of observation. In the Neo-​Assyrian period, it is one of the most commonly used verbs in the entire corpus of observational reports. Interestingly, it most often appears in the passive or N-​stem with the meaning “to appear.” It also can be combined with other verbs of observation like naṣāru, for instance here in a Neo-​Assyrian observational report: “We watched on the 30th day; we saw (nētamar) the Moon” (SAA 8: 120, r. 3).

Naṣāru: “to watch” In non-​celestial contexts, this verb has a clear meaning of “to guard,” but it is in its related meaning of “to watch” that it begins to overlap with the sense of sight (CAD N/​2: s.v. naṣāru 5). In particular, the usage of naṣāru in the phrase “naṣāru ša ginê” or “regular watching” was the name given to the Astronomical Diaries on which much of the evidence for observation rests. An administrative document from 118 BCE preserves evidence for salaries paid to highly trained scholars, who performed the “watching” for the Esangila, Marduk’s temple in Babylon (Rochberg 1993: 40–​42). But the usage of the verb extends back to the Neo-​Assyrian period and the observational reports of the court scribes. Its interaction with other verbs, like amāru above is interesting, for example this passage indicates that one could watch but still not see: “We kept watch (nittaṣar) on the 29th day, we did not see the Moon” (SAA 8: 130, 1–​3).

Tāmartu: “appearance” Finally, the noun tāmartu is traditionally translated as either “appearance” or “observation” (CAD T: s.v. tāmartu). It is worth mentioning of course that it is derived from the traditional verb of “seeing,” amāru. The difference between these two meanings is very ambiguous in most instances. Within the corpus of reports to the king from Neo-​Assyrian astronomers, it generally is either written with the compound logogram IGI.LAL or syllabically. The difference in translation comes down to whether the event described is attributed to the agency of the object under observation, that is to say, an object makes an “appearance,” or whether the event is attributed to the observer, that is to say, someone makes an “observation” of an object. One particular formulation which suggests that the sense of tāmartu should lean towards “appearance” over “observation” is the opening line of the first tablet in the exegetical series Sin ina tāmartišu: “(If) the Moon at its appearance (tāmartišu) is seen (ittanmar) at sunrise …” (Wainer 2016: 74). The coupling of tārmartu and amāru suggests that translating the former as “observation” would be redundant in this case, rather the agency here is placed with the moon (god) itself and not with the viewer. There is another possibility as well, whereby tāmartu means something like the expected time of observation, that is to say, given a theoretical model of the heavens an observation could be anticipated within certain parameters. However, it is important to note that this brief look at the semantic range of the noun tāmartu only applies to the celestial sciences. In other contexts, for instance in Ashurbanipal’s famous colophon added to ends of tablets in 476

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his royal collection, the word clearly means more than just “appearance,” the phrase used in the colophon is “ana tāmarti,” that is to say, “for the ‘looking’ ” (Hunger 1968: 97, n. 318).15

“Seeing” in mathematics The verb amāru also has a function within the genre of mathematics. This is found across nearly 2,000 years of textual history, from Old Babylonian school exercises all the way down to Late Babylonian astronomical procedures. In these contexts amāru can be translated as “to see” or “to find” (CAD A/​2: s.v. amāru 2c). It appears either at the end of calculations signalling the final result (in the second person indicative, that is to say, tammar, “you will see/​find”), or at the beginning to highlight what the objective of the calculation will be (in the infinitive with personal suffix, that is to say, aššum … amārika, “in order for you to see …”).16 There is some slight ambiguity as the traditional Sumerian equivalent logogram IGI has its own specific use in mathematical texts. It represents the reciprocal of a number; in this case IGI should be equated with the Akkadian word panu (CAD P: s.v. panu 7).17 Matthieu Ossendrijver (2012: 36) in his study of Late Babylonian astronomical procedure texts noted that “[t]here does not appear to be a difference between ‘constructing’ (epēšu) and ‘seeing’ (amāru) a quantity.” What follows is a typical example of a pedagogical Old Babylonian text using the second person of amāru with a similar meaning to the use of “equals” in English: “Multiply 24 by 0;10, you will see (tammar) 4” (Robson 1999: 219). The use of IGI or amāru in mathematics, whether in geometric texts from the Old Babylonian period or Late Babylonian astronomy, illustrates the expansion of the semantic range of verbs of seeing. The analogy with sight might explain early formulations of mathematical problems as physical geometric realities that can be manipulated during the procedure.18 The legacy of “sight” within mathematics, however, is important because it connects seeing with a domain of knowledge that is computed within the brain. The connection between sight and mathematics is found even outside explicitly pedagogical texts. A literary text from the early second millennium BCE records the daily life of a scribal student; in one section a teacher is praised for educating a pupil and for making him “see” mathematics (emphasis added; Robson 2002: 348): My little fellow has opened (wide) his hand, (and) you made wisdom enter there; you showed him all the fine points of the scribal art; you (even) made him see [Sumerian: igi si, “to fill the eyes”] the solutions of mathematical and arithmetical (problems).

Sources of observations After surveying the context, mechanics, and language of observation the examples laid out below should be somewhat clearer. They are divided into two major periods, reports from astronomers and astrologers to the kings of the Neo-​Assyrian period (principally Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal), and the reports on observation preserved in the texts from the Late Babylonian period. However, before diving into the sources, it is important to state from the outset that the majority of the evidence suggests that the methods of predictive astronomy were derived from very few actual observations. The idea that the cumulative centuries of observation were a necessary contingent for the development of accurate predictive methods is false; Rochberg-​Halton (1991: 107) puts it simply: “One can point to an observational basis of Mesopotamian science only in the loosest sense.” Albeit some observation was of course necessary because the predictive 477

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schema could not originate ex nihilo. But, in fact, very few observations were needed to design the predictive methods that functioned for centuries. Mesopotamian astronomers could perceive the positions of the planets without having to look at the sky; often cloudy weather precluded their sense of sight but (calculated) observations were still recorded. Observations recorded in the examples below should be considered to fulfil multiple aims and not just the recording of data for future calculation; Neo-​Assyrian scholars were recording observations for use by the king in decision making, and Late Babylonian scribes were using their observations to fix the slowly drifting calendar. To be sure, both groups also used observations for predictive purposes, but the observation of data in and of itself was an act taken on to fulfil a wide range purposes and institutional duties.

Neo-​Assyrian observational reports The reports to the Neo-​Assyrian kings mostly concern the interpretation of astronomical phenomena in light of omens contained with the astrological handbook Enūma Anu Enlil. As such, the vast majority of the reports only cite the omens and omit the corresponding observation. However, in some cases an observational statement is included. For instance the scholar Nabû-​ aḫḫe-​eriba reports to king Esarhaddon or Ashurbanipal: “Saturn stands in the halo of the Moon” (SAA 8: 41, 4). This statement is then followed by a quotation of an astrological omen: “If the moon is surrounded by a halo, and Mars stands in it: loss of cattle; the Westland will become smaller” (SAA 8: 41, 5–​7). Curiously, however, the quoted omen applies when another planet, Mars, stands in the halo of the Moon. In any case, this statement does not include any verbs of seeing and in fact does not reference the observer at all. It is merely a statement of the position of two objects in the sky, presumably derived from an observation by the writer (or at least communicated to the writer). Other texts preserve statements that we might recognise more as acts of observation using the reliance on the sense of sight. The scribe Nabû’a reports: “We kept watch; on the 29th we saw the Moon” (SAA 8: 126, 1–​2). Nabû’a was a scholar based in Assur, an important cultic centre in Assyria; he was in charge of a group of astronomers who observed the appearance of the moon and sun throughout the month in order to align the lunar and solar calendars. The entirety of his correspondence consists of either observations of the moon on the first day of the month (establishing the beginning of the month), around the 15th or middle of the month, or during an equinox. Interestingly, when reporting on the first two occurrences (the appearance of the moon on a particular day) the verbs of “watching” and “seeing” are always used; in contrast, the reports of the equinox are stated plainly without observational language: “On the 6th of Nisan, day and night were in balance: 6 ‘double-​hours’ of day, 6 ‘double-​hours’ of night” (SAA 8: 140, 1–​5). The lack of explicit observational language might indicate that the event was actually measured by means of a water clock (as mentioned above). The Babylonian scribe Nabû-​iqiša, wrote to the Neo-​Assyrian court from the southern city of Borsippa about celestial observations and their interpretation. For the most part his observations omit verbs of “seeing” and consist only of “observation statements.” However, in one extraordinary letter he not only describes the process of observation but crucially how he knows that an observation is in fact possible despite circumstances that might otherwise prevent his actual “seeing” of the object under observation (SAA 8: 293, r. 1–​9): The king my lord must not say as follows: “(There were) clouds; how did you see (tāmur) (anything?)” This night, when I saw (āmur) (the Moon’s) coming out, it came out when little 478

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of the day (was left), it reached the region where it will be seen (innammaru) (in opposition with the Sun). This is a sign that it is to be observed (amāru). In the morning, if the day is cloudless (lit. open), the king will see (immar): for one ‘double-​hour’ of daytime (the Moon) will stand there with the Sun. This passage is particularly interesting because Nabû-​iqiša anticipates the circumstances under which the observation is actually possible. He knows that if it is cloudy the objects under observation would be invisible to the senses and once the clouds clear they would become visible again. He is able to extrapolate lunar movement from an initial observation through a period of invisibility to a future time where the observation will again be possible. This speaks directly to the interplay of observation and theory. Nabû-​iqiša’s understanding of lunar theory means that he can anticipate the movement of the moon in the absence of directly viewing its progress. A similar theme is taken up in a letter by the Assyrian scholar Balasî (one of the most frequent writers to the kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal). Here he reports conveniently that there is nothing to report. But what is particularly interesting, and in line with what Nabû-​iqiša showed above, is that Balasî explains that not only has he been watching and seen nothing, but that he anticipates a particular period when the observation of the sun will be important (due to the possibility of a solar eclipse) (SAA 10: 45, r. 1–​11): Concerning the watch (maṣṣarti) of the Sun about which the king, my lord, wrote to me, it is (indeed) the month for a watch (maṣṣartu) of the Sun. We will keep the watch (ninaṣṣar) twice, on the 28th of Marchesvan (VIII) and the 28th of Kislev (IX). Thus we will keep the watch (ninaṣṣar) of the Sun for two months. Balasî anticipates an ominous event that might be observed in the future and explains the process by which the scholars in Nineveh will prepare the procedure for observation. This shows that observation was not merely a passive practice of waiting for things to occur. The scholars were informed by theory which let them perform the correct observations in order to see what they needed to see at certain times. Much like the catalogues of auspicious events enabled scholars to interpret what they saw, their theory of celestial movement also allowed them to predict what needed to be observed and how to observe it. The sense of sight embedded in the context of theory became the practice of observation. Whether it was a particular configuration of bodies that might result in a solar eclipse, or something as simple as movement behind clouds, a theoretical understanding of the heavens turned observation from just “seeing” things in the sky to a highly specialised sense. Another good example of the influence theory had on potential observation is the inclusion of “impossible” omens within the astrological handbook Enūma Anu Enlil. In particular it has been noted that omens that concern the planet Jupiter as it passed through various constellations often include references to stars that are far removed from Jupiter’s normal path along the ecliptic, that is to say, they are impossible within the normal course of Jupiter’s path through the sky. This means that these omens could have never been seen and therefore their inclusion is a matter of celestial theory rather than a record of appearance. Interestingly, Erica Reiner and David Pingree (2005: 27–​28) showed that very few of these omens concerning both Jupiter and a constellation were ever cited in the Neo-​Assyrian scholars’ reports to the king, perhaps because of their “unreality,” to borrow their term. The language within the Neo-​Assyrian reports is both explicitly observational, including the language of the act of observation, and factual, stating that the observed event occurred without using verbs of seeing. This suggests that observation in itself was not a passive act of 479

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merely seeing things in the sky as they appeared but rather a practice of “watching” that was informed by a certain level of skill available only to professions that had access to the appropriate training. Importantly, this level of training while similar to the interpretation of omens should be acknowledged as highly connected but still a separate mode of thinking. Scholars who watched the sky could both anticipate the need for observation and then interpret the results of those observations.

Late Babylonian astronomical records The shift from Neo-​Assyrian reports to astronomical texts in the latter half of the first millennium BCE marks a move from reports of ominous occurrences to what seems like a regular pattern of standardised celestial observation. The chief source for evidence of observation comes from the large number of Astronomical Diaries that are dated between the sixth and first centuries BCE (Haubold et al. 2019). These texts preserve regular “watching” (naṣāru) of the sky, consisting of a detailed record of a standard set of celestial occurrences (as well as records of economic prices, historical events, and the river level). But these are not the only observational texts from the period. There are other forms of celestial observation, that while closely related to the diaries record observations slightly differently. One of the key differentiating factors in the later period versus the early Neo-​Assyrian material is that observations with the Late Babylonian context, for the most part, exist in combination with other observations or have been transmitted outside of the texts (or media) on which they were originally recorded. Observations reported to the Assyrian kings were generally conducted by physical observers either in Assyria or Babylonia and either directly copied down by the observer or relayed to a scribe, who wrote down the observation. The report was then sent to the king along with any needed interpretation. Usually these only consisted of one or, in some cases, a small number of reports of observations. The Late Babylonian evidence, principally from the scholars based in Babylon, comprises reports in much greater number, either recorded in sequence during a period of observations or compiled into a large set of data. Some Astronomical Diaries were written more or less as they were observed, and the length of these diary texts can differ, from between a few days to an entire month (Haubold et al. 2019: 2). The shorter texts contained observations made at that time and recorded right away. They were then compiled into longer texts which might cover around half a year. The format and language differ between these texts, showing that the shorter texts were a more immediate recording of observational notes, whereas the longer compilations combine the observations into a coherent list of regular occurrences. Even in the compilations, the language of the Astronomical Diaries is very terse, written mostly in logograms with few phonetic complements. The texts take the form of a highly technical language of celestial science. A typical diary would contain lists of observation organised by day and by month where each observation would represent the celestial events on a single night: “Night of the 16th, last part of the night, the Moon was 1/​2 cubit below [Zeta Tauri]; last part of the night, Venus was 1 cubit 8 fingers above [Alpha Virginis]” (Hunger and Sachs 1989: 95, diary -​234, 5).19 All mentions of celestial events within the diaries were either observed and recorded or anticipated and not observed. Anticipated, or predicted events that were not observed were marked with the phrase NU PAP, “I did not watch.” These could include anything from measurements of the lunar six to appearances of planets in certain constellations: “Mercury’s last appearance in the west in Aquarius, I did not watch” (Hunger and Sachs 1988: 97, diary -​375 r. 3). This phrase is relatively common throughout the diaries and is often brought about by weather effects that would have impeded the observer’s ability to see accurately, but did not prevent 480

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the observer from noting the celestial occurrence (the last visibility of Mercury). However, in other cases the observer did not make an observation for unknown reasons; for instance in one diary from 347 BCE the scholar reports that “I did not watch the river level” (Hunger and Sachs 1988: 145, diary -​346). In this case there is no anticipated or predicted level stated before the non-​observation. The difference between these two statements makes a clear distinction in how celestial observation was treated. Observations of the sky at their core were a predictable and calculable science; however, a lack of observation did not equate to a lack of data. Records of celestial observation could be constructed without needing to rely on the observer’s sense of sight, whereas for other forms of observation (i.e., the river level noted above) the sense of sight was required to make the observation. Another form of observational record from the Late Babylonian period are the large tables of eclipse records (Steele 2001). These were compiled in Babylonia from many individual observations recorded over centuries. The largest example of these records could have covered six centuries of observation (747–​100 BCE ). The observations are both seen and predicted. In the case of eclipses that were seen by an observer, some extraneous details are given that could not have been calculated (such as the direction of the wind), whereas predicted eclipses are often terse and only include the date and time of the eclipse. The mixing of both types in one compilation shows that for the Late Babylonian scribes, all of the observations contained within the texts were useful regardless of whether they were seen with the eyes or not. Finally, a corpus of administrative texts specifies a group of scholars in the Esangila temple in Babylon who had responsibility for the “regular watching” (naṣāru ša ginê). A number of texts record economic contracts between the assembly (or the šatammu) of the temple and “astrologers” (ṭupšar Enūma Anu Enlil), who were paid for conducting their “observations” (naṣāru) (Spek 1985). Often in these contracts the astrologers had to prove that they were capable of making the proper observations. This was assessed by a committee, and if they passed, they were hired to do the work of the “regular watching” as well as other divinatory duties for the institution. These texts show that observing the sky was more than a passive act of recording anything seen by the eyes at night, and instead was a highly skilled practice requiring training and testing (as well as membership within a professional class) in order to pursue it as a worthwhile career. The testing and vetting of a scholar’s training is exemplified by the text CT 49: 144 (McEwan 1981: 18–​21) where the assembly of Marduk’s temple in Babylon assessed the capabilities of the son of an astrologer so that the son might take on the astronomical duties formerly performed by his father. In contrast with the Neo-​Assyrian period, the observational records from Late Babylonian texts show an increased level of detail and theoretical understanding. At the same time, the change in genre from letters to lists of observations meant that they eschew almost all interpretation of the phenomena under observation. More notable, however, is the rise in computed or calculated results showing the decline in reliance on the sense of sight for observation and the rise of theoretical understanding (and mathematical calculation) for the production of observational data. The scholars were no longer employed by a single individual to observe and interpret the sky; rather, now they worked for an institution as part of a team of highly skilled employees tasked with recording the results of their observations whether by direct perception or increasingly through the results of calculation.

Observation and thought collectives The brief survey of texts and language above has provided a wide range of “observational statements” from two distinct corpora. Some of the statements make explicit the role of the observer by including language related to the sense of sight, others only state what existed in the 481

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sky at a specific time. In all cases the end result is a statement about the occurrence of an event in the sky. These statements could then be interpreted later or combined to form larger contiguous records of observation over a longer period of time, sometimes hundreds of years. Observation, however, can be conceived of in various ways by the practitioners themselves. They might have considered each observation as a novel fact about the world around them, or as a revelation of the divinely created patterns of the heavens. While there is not a great deal of evidence of a Mesopotamian observer’s self-​conscious commentary on their practice in this regard, the belief that the gods themselves had set out the patterns of the heavens (as attested in cosmologies like the Enūma Eliš) suggests that observing occurrences in the sky revealed existing patterns of the movement of celestial bodies that were created by the gods. This belief is not only common throughout history but inherently logical for systems of thought that involve divine cosmologies. Even in the experimental circumstances of the early modern period and the discovery of air pressure by Robert Boyle, the knowledge revealed through these experiments was thought to be divine. Illustrations of the experimental observations themselves depicted cherubs operating the machinery in order to emphasise the invisible hand at work (Shapin and Schaffer 2011: 334–​335). The similarity between the observation of the air-​pump and the movement of celestial bodies is pertinent because in both cases the force of movement is invisible (the divine being), yet “observation statements” can be made based on the effects of the force, which are visible to the observer. Recording these effects amounts to revealing the hidden forces as work, which in these two cases, Mesopotamian celestial science and the seventeenth-​century air-​pump, are potentially invisible divine forces. Reflecting on the interaction between effect and force here should make clear the role that theoretical understanding plays in how observers throughout history have reasoned with their sense of sight. One other characteristic of observation is whether or not an observation represents a new piece of information or whether observation is used to confirm an existing pattern. It seems clear that Mesopotamian observers of the sky understood that what they saw and recognised were established patterns of the gods and that their observation revealed a section of that pattern to them. However, some observations might have been initial pieces of new information, and others were certainly confirming or checking expected occurrences. The astronomers of the Late Babylonian mathematical tradition were well versed in the latter form of observation, keeping watch for expected occurrences in the sky and verifying whether they were visible or not through sensory observation. The eclipse record texts make clear that observations over long periods of time could be conceived of as verifying much larger existing patterns of celestial movements rather than confirming a new occurrence. The important but still somewhat enigmatic text “A Babylonian Diviner’s Manual” sheds some light here on conceptions of observing omens (Oppenheim 1974). The entire text, dated to roughly the seventh century BCE from Nineveh, is quite interesting for how it links terrestrial and celestial omens and forms a continuous vision of divinatory theory. However, one phrase stands out as an important statement on the observation of new occurrences: “you will find in them every sign that has occurred (ibšû) in the sky (and) that has been observed (innamru) on earth” (Oppenheim 1974: 55–​56). This statement provides blanket support for the idea that, at least in the conception of diviners using this document, everything had been observed prior and any new observations were only confirming known occurrences. But more interestingly it also suggests that there is a difference in the observation of celestial and terrestrial occurrences. The signs in the sky “exist” (bašû) while the signs on earth are merely “seen” (amāru). This shows that celestial signs existed within a prior paradigm in line with what we would expect from cosmological texts like the Enūma Eliš, whereas terrestrial signs on the ground were seen as temporal occurrences that appeared and disappeared and could only be seen while they were present.20 482

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Essentially, the signs in the sky were manifestations of the patterns or will of the gods, while signs on the earth were temporary messages sent by the gods to be seen and then they would cease to exist. A letter from an astronomer to the Neo-​Assyrian king makes it clear that celestial signs were the result of action by the gods (in this case the moon god) (SAA 8: 21): (As to) what the king my lord wrote to me: “The clouds were dense, how did you observe that the gods saw each other (in opposition)?” (the clouds) dispersed before daybreak … [the Moon] revealed himself, we saw where the Moon was standing. It amounts to an actual observation (tāmartu). But the practice of observation was more than the actions of individual scholars acting in isolation across a wide expanse of time. Groups of scholars working together determined the manner in which observation was practised and how the records of that practice were interpreted. The physician and historian of science Ludwik Fleck offers a useful framework for thinking about how groups of scientists practised and developed their theoretical world view. Fleck used the term “thought collective” to describe a group of like-​minded scholars who collectively determined a shared framework, which he called a “thought style.” Fleck (1979: 39) argues that observations are made within the context of a group of practitioners who rely on previous forms of knowledge, and who then develop particular ways of seeing that form an internal ontology (emphasis original): If we define “thought collective” as a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas or maintaining intellectual interaction, we will find by implication that it also provides the special “carrier” for the historical development of any field of thought, as well as for the given stock of knowledge and level of culture. This we have designated thought style. This definition provides a ready-​made lens through which to view the communities of scholars operating at different points in Mesopotamia and how they developed the language, technology, and patterns of thought necessary for viewing the sky in ways that produced not just the “appearances” of objects, but also observations on which further interpretation or understanding could rest. As with any collective, these groups are made up of individuals who themselves are operating on the basis of training and understanding specific to their context. Fleck (1979: 92) addresses this by explaining that the deeply contextual nature of observation does not just pertain to its social and wide epistemological context, but also to the singular viewer and their perception: Direct perception of form [Gestaltsehen] requires being experienced in the relevant field of thought. The ability directly to perceive meaning, form, and self-​contained unity is acquired only after much experience, perhaps with preliminary training. Fleck continues to point out that this training has the effect of preventing the viewer from seeing something that contradicts the “form” contained within the “thought style.” Both of these ideas, the idea of a collective development of ways of seeing, and the change in perception of the viewer as they join the collective, pertain to how Mesopotamian astronomers and astrologers practised observation. It was only through extensive training in the ṭupšarrūtu Enūma Anu Enlil (or the “scribal learning” of the omen series Enūma Anu Enlil) that a scribe could learn to make observations and interpret them. This was the “thought collective” of a group

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of scribes working from the same principles and seeing the sky through similar patterns of knowing, a “thought style.”

Conclusion The history of observation in the first millennium BCE is rich and detailed. It consists of a large number of texts written by specialists involved in looking at the sky and thinking about how the celestial bodies moved over time. But it is clear that they were doing a lot more than just leveraging their sense of sight. The power of observation was based on the combination of their senses, extensive professional training, social context, and finally a mechanical tool-​set that most likely included a water clock. They belonged to groups of practice with a collective way of knowing the world that influenced how they saw the objects in the sky. A final text will help elucidate some of the major themes discussed above. Published by Walker (1999), this text represents probably one of the earliest compilations of planetary observations preserved from Mesopotamia.21 The fragmentary text contains observations of the planet Saturn over at least 14 years of the reign of King Kandalanu in Babylon (647–​627 BCE ). The text seems to represent a midpoint between the observational reports of the Neo-​Assyrian scholars, and the records of observation from the Late Babylonian period. Each entry contains the record of the first or last appearance of the planet Saturn dated to a year, month, and day. At first glance this is already a development from the Neo-​Assyrian period where observations were generally reported as singular “observation statements.” But the tablet offers more hints at a shift between two forms of observation. Like the Neo-​Assyrian reports, meteorological events like clouds are noted as impeding the ability to observe: “[Year] ⸢4⸣, at the end of the month 4, last appearance; (because of) cloud not observed” (Walker 1999: 7′). When Saturn can be observed, the locations are given as “behind,” “in the middle of,” or “in front of ” constellations (or specific stars within constellations).22 Finally, two observations on the back of the tablet present, for this period, a novel detail for an observational record. The first of these mentions that Saturn was observed a certain number of uš above a star (r. 5). This unit is a time measurement but can also be understood as a distance measure within the context of celestial movement. This would represent one of the earliest observations of a celestial object that included its precise (more or less) location within the sky. The second line contains an interesting detail, line six of the reverse states this observation: “[Year 12], month 8, day 5, last appearance; ⸢because of⸣ cloud computed” (emphasis added; r. 6′). The term for computed here is muššuḫ, from mašāḫu “to measure/​compute” (CAD M: s.v. mašāḫu 2). The fact that the observation could not be seen because of cloud cover means that it had to be computed from some theoretical model of planetary motion. This hints at the highly mathematical texts of the Late Babylonian period, where the majority of observations were in fact calculated from procedural models (or prior observations) not actual sightings of the planets. But the idea that a theoretical model could influence observation is not novel to this text, as the Neo-​Assyrian scholars mentioned above who wrote the observational reports themselves knew that even behind the clouds the celestial bodies were still moving and could be seen again in expected locations when the clouds parted. The difference here is that this scribe specifically highlighted confidence in his ability to compute an observation, rather than anticipate a future time when the object would become visible to the eyes. As astronomical observation continued from the Neo-​Assyrian down through the Late Babylonian periods, the actual connection to a physical act of seeing the sky becomes more difficult to detect. The detailed measurements that are preserved in the observations of the late period suggest that few actual physical measurements were taking place when astronomers 484

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looked at the sky. Gradually the scholars were moving away from the bodily senses—​sight, sound, and touch—​and relying more on their theoretical knowledge in order to perform their duties. Instead, most of the late observations were highly detailed records of computed events that could be checked by astronomers verifying that objects, weather permitting, were where they should be. These techniques were formed by communities of scholars who were building on previous knowledge and data; they were in Fleck’s term “thought collectives.” It was through the history of their scholarship and their identities that they adopted and refined “thought styles” which permitted them to observe the sky in certain ways producing knowledge that was intelligible to their colleagues, and relevant to their employers. Two more recent historians of science, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison (2007: 369) write in their treatment of scientific objectivity that “Ways of scientific seeing are where body and mind, pedagogy and research, knower and known intersect.” They continue by observing that these ways of seeing are created by “scientific collective[s]‌” and become so embedded in their technique of observation that they actually define the nature of the evidence itself. As we progress from the observational reports of the Neo-​Assyrian scholars who were trying to see the meaning in the heavens to the regular and terse language of the observational records of the Late Babylonian period, the theoretical understanding of the heavens becomes more deeply embedded in the practice of observation itself until we are far removed from the sense of sight. The end result was tables of numbers more accurate than possible to measure with the naked eye, yet these were observations on the movement of bodies within the celestial sphere, a way of scientific seeing that reflected a long history of development.

Notes 1. The two Akkadian verbs used here are respectively palāsu, “to look or stare at” (CAD P: s.v. palāsu), and naṭālu, “to look or witness” (CAD N: s.v. naṭālu). 2. There are two main groups of texts relevant for this discussion. The first is the so-​called “Ashurbanipal’s library” in the seventh century BCE at Nineveh. A recent overview and critique of the applicability of Ashurbanipal’s library can be found in Robson (2019: 12–​23). The second is a set of diverse contexts, mostly lacking any archaeological context, dating to the fourth through first centuries BCE in Babylon and Uruk. 3. Ainsley Hawthorn (2019) has shown very clearly how the verbs of seeing within Neo-​Assyrian royal inscriptions are used to perpetuate ideas about kingship and the relationship between ruler and deity. 4. http://​oracc.org/​saao/​saa08/​. 5. These texts have been mostly edited also by Herman Hunger (with earlier contributions from Abe Sachs) and are now the subject of another ORACC project: Astronomical Diaries Digital. Hunger’s editions are found in the book series Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts, and the ORACC project can be found online: http://​oracc.org/​adsd/.​ 6. The most recent edition of the text is found in Lambert 2013. In tablet five the god Marduk sets the stars in their paths, the sun and moon in their stations, and gives roles to all celestial bodies so that they establish correct times and patterns in the sky. 7. Much work has gone into understanding this professional identity. Escobar and Pearce (2018) recently studied a prototypical scribe who claimed this identity in Hellenistic Uruk. Robson in her recently publish Ancient Knowledge Networks (2019) showed how the professional designations of scribes, including ṭupšar Enūma Anu Enlil, were combined and contrasted at different points throughout the first millennium BCE . 8. The early debate around the application of the term “science” to certain genres of Mesopotamian scholarship is well accounted for in Rochberg (2016: 17–​58). The texts under consideration in this chapter are scientific in that they observe, predict, and analyse discrete points of data using a tool-​set subject to critique and improvement by a community of practitioners. 9. The signs of the zodiac were first codified in the current form around the end of the fifth century BCE . From Mesopotamia they were borrowed by astronomers and astrologers in the Hellenistic world and eventually became the signs still in use in modern Western astrology. 485

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10. In fact the expectation of a correct time for an appearance in the sky could be considered a “sense” practised by the astronomers; Neumann (2019) has written about the sense of time in Mesopotamia. Recognising the capacity for more “senses” helps to dissolve the five sense canonised in the Western tradition (Howes and Classen 1991: 257–​259). 11. The “lunar six” are a set of six relatively precise time measurements between the rising and setting of the sun and moon throughout the lunar month. They were used for a variety of astronomical calculations. 12. One could imagine an astronomer listening for the dripping of a water clock while making regular glances at the sky observing the passing of two celestial objects. 13. A “Jacob’s staff ” is a pole used for measuring celestial angles; the user holds it up to their eye and sights an object down it using a cross bar placed along the staff to provide a reading. 14. A full treatment of the emic understanding of colour in Mesopotamia is found in Thavapalan (2020: especially 20–​166). 15. The full context for this section of the colophon is as follows: “As per the tablets and writing boards, copies (from) the land of Assur, Sumer, and Akkad (i.e. Assyria and Babylonia), this tablet in the gathering of scholars I wrote, checked, and collated, for the looking of my kingship I set it in my palace.” 16. For a discussion of the use of amāru in mathematical texts, and the historical problem of translation in mathematics, see Høyrup 2002: 40. 17. This is a later interpretation; however, Høyrup (2010: 402, n. 38) provides a good summary of the origin of the use of IGI with reciprocal. 18. Høyrup (1990) has argued that behind algebraic calculations lay a sort of “naive geometry” by which problems were thought in spatial terms. 19. The terms cubit and finger are common measurements in astronomical texts. A cubit (kuš₃) was approximately 2° of the celestial sphere, while a finger (šu.si) was approximately 1/​12°. 20. The role that near and far time play in the construction of temples is elucidated in Neumann 2019. It is also clear that terrestrial signs were considered significant in a smaller area from where they were first seen. Unlike celestial omens that could be seen (essentially) everywhere, terrestrial omens applied to a reduced radius, and only were elevated to a national concern depending on their significance or anomalous nature (Maul 2007: 364). 21. Another text that presents early planetary observations was published by Pingree and Reiner (1975). For both of these texts the possibility remains that they were later calculations of an earlier time. 22. These positional descriptors refer to the two-​dimensional plane of the heavens. A planet which is “behind” a star was to the east of that star; “in front of ” was to the west.

Bibliography Aaboe, A. 1980. “Observation and Theory in Babylonian Astronomy.” Centaurus 24: 14–​35. Brack-​Bernsen, L. 2005. “The ‘Days in Excess’ from MUL.APIN: On the ‘First Intercalation’ and ‘Water Clock’ Schemes from MUL.APIN.” Centaurus 47 (1): 1–​29. Brown, D., J. Fermor, and C. Walker. 1999–​2000. “The Water Clock in Mesopotamia.” AfO 46–​ 47: 130–​148. Daston, L., and P. Galison. 2007. Objectivity. Boston: Zone Books and MIT Press. Escobar, E. A., and L. E. Pearce. 2018. “Bricoleurs in Babylonia: The Scribes of Enūma Anu Enlil,” in C. J. Crisostomo, E. A. Escobar, T. Tanaka, and N. Veldhuis, eds., The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg. Leiden: Brill, 264–​286. Fleck, L. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foster, B. R., ed. 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Third Edition. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. Haubold, J., J. M. Steele, and K. Stevens, eds. 2019. Keeping Watch in Babylon: The Astronomical Diaries in Context. CHANE 100. Leiden: Brill. Hawthorn, A. 2019. “The Shifting Gaze: Looking and Seeing in the Neo-​Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 105–​24. Hawthorn, A., and A. C. Rendu Loisel, eds. 2019. Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns.

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Heeßel, N. 2000. Babylonisch-​assyrische Diagnostik. AOAT 43. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag. Howes, D., and C. Classen. 1991. “Sounding Sensory Profiles,” in D. Howes, ed., The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 257–​288. Howes, D., and C. Classen, 2014. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London: Routledge. Høyrup, J. 1990. “Algebra and Naive Geometry: An Investigation of Some Basic Aspects of Babylonian Mathematical Thought I.” Altorientalische Forschungen 17 (1): 27–​69. Høyrup, J. 2002. Lengths, Widths, Surfaces: A Portrait of Old Babylonian Algebra and Its Kin. New York: Springer. Høyrup, J. 2010. “How to Transfer the Conceptual Structure of Old Babylonian Mathematics: Solutions and Inherent Problems. With an Italian Parallel,” in A. Imhausen and T. Pommerening, eds., Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece and Rome: Translating Ancient Scientific Texts. Berlin: De Gruyter, 385–​417. Hunger, H. 1968. Babylonische und assyrische Kolophone. AOAT 2. Kevelaer, Neukirchen-​Vloyn: Butzon u. Bercker; Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins. Hunger, H., and A. Sachs. 1988. Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia: Volume I Diaries from 652 B.C. to 262 B.C. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hunger, H., and A. Sachs. 1989. Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia: Volume II Diaries from 261 B.C. to 165 B.C. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hunger, H., and J. Steele. 2018. The Babylonian Astronomical Compendium MUL.APIN. Scientific Writings from the Ancient and Medieval World. London: Routledge. Lambert, W. G. 2013. Babylonian Creation Myths. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. Maul, S. 2007. “Divination Culture and the Handling of the Future,” in G. Leick, ed., The Babylonian World. New York and London: Routledge, 361–​372. McEwan, G. J. P. 1981. Priest and Temple in Hellenistic Babylonia. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Misiewicz, Z. 2018. “The Importance of Experts: Agents in the Transfer of Astral Knowledge Between Hellenistic Mesopotamia and the Greekspeaking World,” in C. J. Crisostomo, E. A. Escobar, T. Tanaka, and N. Veldhuis, eds., The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts. Leiden: Brill, 317–​332. Monroe, M. W. 2016. “The Micro-​Zodiac in Babylon and Uruk: Seleucid Zodiacal Astrology,” in J. Steele, ed., The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient World. Time, Astronomy, and Calendars 6. Leiden: Brill, 119–​138. Neugebauer, O. 1975. A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy. Berlin: Springer. Neumann, L. 2019. “Laying Foundations for Eternity: Timing Temple Construction in Assyria,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 253–​278. Oppenheim, A. 1974. “A Babylonian Diviner’s Manual.” JNES 33 (2): 197–​220. Ossendrijver, M. 2012. Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy: Procedure Texts. Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences. New York: Springer. Pingree, D., and E. Reiner. 1975. “Observational Texts Concerning the Planet Mercury.” Revue d’Assyriologie 69: 175–​180. Reiner, E., and D. Pingree. 2005. Babylonian Planetary Omens. Leiden: Brill. Robson, E. 1999. Mesopotamian Mathematics, 2100–​ 1600 BC: Technical Constants in Bureaucracy and Education. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Robson, E. 2002. “More Than Metrology: Mathematics Education in an Old Babylonian Scribal School,” in J. Steele and A. Imhausen, eds., Under One Sky: Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near East. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag, 325–​365. Robson, E. 2019. Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-​Millennium Assyria and Babylonia. London: University College London Press. Rochberg, F. 1993. “The Cultural Locus of Astronomy in Late Babylonia,” in H. D. Galter, ed., Die Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulturen Mesopotamiens: Beiträge zum 3. Grazer Morgenländischen Symposion (23.–​27. September 1991). Graz: Graz Kult, 31–​45. Rochberg, F. 2011. “Observing and Describing the World Through Divination and Astronomy,” in K. Radner and E. Robson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 618–​636. Rochberg, F. 2016. Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rochberg-​Halton, F. 1991. “Between Observation and Theory in Babylonian Astronomical Texts.” JNES 50 (2): 107–​120. 487

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Shapin, S., and S. Schaffer. 2011. Leviathan and the Air-​Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Spek, R. J. van der. 1985. “The Babylonian Temple During the Macedonian and Parthian Domination.” Bibliotheca Orientalis 42 (5/​6): 541–​62. Steele, J. 2000. “A Re-​ Analysis of the Eclipse Observations in Ptolemy’s Almagest.” Centaurus 42 (2): 89–​108. Steele, J. 2001. “Appendix: The Eclipse Texts,” in H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia: Volume V Lunar and Planetary Texts. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Steele, J. 2017. Rising Time Schemes in Babylonian Astronomy. Briefs in History of Science and Technology. New York: Springer. Stevens, K. 2019. Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-​Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thavapalan, S. 2020. The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia. Leiden and Boston: Brill. van de Mieroop, M. 2016. Philosophy Before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wainer, Z. M. 2016. “The Series If the Moon at Its Appearance and Mesopotamian Scholarship of the First Millennium BCE.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Brown University. Walker, C. B. F. 1999. “Babylonian Observations of Saturn During the Reign of Kandalanu,” in N. M. Swerdlow, ed., Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination. Boston: MIT Press, 61–​76. Worthington, M. 2006. “Dialect Admixture of Babylonian and Assyrian in SAA VIII, X, XII, XVII and XVIII.” Iraq 68: 59–​84.

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23 Sensory experience in ancient Mesopotamian medicine Ulrike Steinert

Introduction Within social sciences and historical disciplines, the last decades since the 1980s have been characterised by a “sensory turn,” witnessed in a burgeoning number of studies, monographs, and volumes on the senses published in recent years.1 A few edited volumes concerned with the senses in Greco-​Roman and Talmudic sources reflect a growing interest in the topic in research fields dedicated to ancient cultures.2 In this wake, sensory experience has started to attract the attention of the ancient Near Eastern scholars and Assyriologists.3 These studies from different fields offer key insights and approaches that are relevant for an investigation of the senses in ancient Mesopotamian medicine. A major insight emphasised by anthropologists is that the senses are not naturally given, but socialised and conditioned in culture-​specific ways. Bridging the body, the mind, and the social, sensory experience is not only culturally mediated; sensory perception itself is a learned skill and an active bodily engagement with the world (e.g., Hsu 2008). Second, social and cultural codes which are prone to historical change exert an influence on the use, elaboration, and evaluation of the senses.4 Third, the various sensory modes (such as vision, touch, smell, etc.) are emphasised to differing extent across cultures. Within a given culture, each sensory mode can be connected to multiple meanings, values, and symbolisms, constituting multiple “sensory codes,” that is to say “ways of seeing” or “perspectives” (Ingold 2000; Stroeken 2008). Connected to this cross-​cultural and intra-​cultural diversity in encoding and elaborating the senses are variations in the differentiation of linguistic categories, of different words for “seeing,” “hearing,” “tasting,” and so forth (e.g., Goody 2002; Stroeken 2008; see also Part IV, this volume). Although research often focuses on the classic five senses (smell, taste, touch, sight, and hearing), other sensory processes such as kinaesthesia, synaesthesia, and especially interoception (or “gut feelings”) and embodied emotions likewise constitute important sensory channels. Anthropological approaches to the senses have also challenged the ocularcentrism inherited by Western traditions of science, starting with the ancient Greeks, who valued vision as intrinsically rational and objectified and ranked it above all other senses in a hierarchy of epistemological reliability, while touch was traditionally regarded as the lowest of the senses, associated with

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the body and sensuality (Bynum and Porter 1993; Classen 2012; Howes 1991b; Ingold 2000; Stroeken 2008). These insights raise questions concerning the extent of cross-​cultural differences as well as historical continuities and discontinuities in the ways the senses were used and elaborated in ancient medical cultures. No doubt, sight has been of central importance in medical diagnosis and in scientific research throughout history, as is seen in Mesopotamian, Greek, or Rabbinic scholarly traditions that all seem to emphasise vision as the major sensory channel, especially in connection with terms like “observation” and “examination” (e.g., Nutton 1993; Neis 2013; Rochberg 2016; Squire 2016). But it is equally important to investigate the role of other sensory modes and the ways in which these modes complement and interact with each other within Mesopotamian medical texts and practices. Thus, research on the senses in healing contexts emphasises that healers and doctors generally use(d) various sensory channels in diagnosis, albeit in culture-​specific ways that reflect historical differences in viewing and “reading” the body (e.g., Bynum and Porter 1993; Hsu 2005; Kuriyama 1999; Nutton 1993; King and Toner 2014). Studies of sensory and performative aspects of healing practices further highlight that therapies including magic and ritual operate on synaesthetics or the interrelations between different senses, by using objects, words, gestures, and so on to stimulate shifts in sensory codes and in how the patient’s body and senses are oriented towards the environment (e.g., Laderman and Roseman 1996; Stroeken 2008). Within his phenomenological approach to perception, Merleau-​Ponty (1962) wrote both of a unity and a diversity of the senses, such that we have the capacity to focus on one specific sense (such as sight) and specific sensible qualities of objects in the world, but that usually perception is synaesthetic and our senses interact with each other. In this vein, studies on the history of the senses highlight this interaction of different sensory modes (e.g., Caballero and Díaz Vera 2013; Suárez-​Toste 2013; Rendu Loisel 2019; 2020); and the following pages will aim at tracing both inter-​sensorial aspects of Mesopotamian medicine as well as specific aspects linked to the diverse sensory channels.

Cuneiform medical texts and the art of diagnosis: perception and interpretation Current knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian medicine and healing practitioners is based on textual (as well as iconographical and archaeological) evidence, including—​beside the corpus of medical texts themselves—​also other textual sources, for example letters written by or addressed to healing practitioners as well as literary, administrative, or legal texts mentioning medical topics or specialists.5 The corpus of medical texts itself can be divided into different genres and types. Diagnostic texts (attested from the second and first millennia BCE ) focus on the description of symptoms, the identification of the patient’s illness, and on a prognosis for recovery but usually omit instructions for treatment (Heeßel 2000; 2004; 2010; Koch 2015: 273–​282; Scurlock 2014: 13–​271). Therapeutic texts (known from the third to the first millennia BCE ) contain treatments for indicated symptoms or diseases, which can be divided into medical prescriptions/​ remedies (Akkadian bulṭu), incantations/​healing spells or prayers (often recited in the course of treatment), and ritual instructions.6 In addition, knowledge on materia medica was collected in list compendia and practical handbooks on drug lore (e.g., plant and stone description texts, or compendia listing drug names and their uses), the earliest examples of which already date to the mid-​third millennium BCE .7 The Mesopotamian healing texts at our disposal vary in format, reflecting different contexts of use: some of them are extended collections of material often belonging to medical compendia which served as scholarly reference works or as manuals for teaching and study. Shorter texts can 490

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be identified as excerpts or extracts, some of which served as school texts (written by students or apprentices) or as notes by the specialist excerpted for practical application.8 The majority of the texts with known provenance were recovered at palace or temple libraries (such as the famous library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh dating to the seventh century BCE ), or they stem from the libraries/​archives of healing practitioners excavated at their houses.9 The two principal healing professions attested in the Mesopotamian sources are the ritual healer (or “exorcist, conjurer,” Akkadian āšipu; mašmaššu) and the physician (Akkadian asû), whose disciplinary profiles differed to some extent (including their association with different divine patrons). But both ritual healers and physicians were regarded as experts of relatively high standing who went through formal training (including the study of texts and practical instruction), were often employed at royal courts (among other scholarly professions such as diviners) or held positions in temples, while others offered their services to local communities as independent craftsmen.10 Both exorcists and physicians employed partially overlapping healing techniques (such as spells and drug-​based treatments), but the traditional focus of the physician’s expertise was built on their intimate knowledge of medical substances, their use in practical remedies (bulṭu), and on surgical interventions, while the ritual healers traditionally dealt with mediating relationships between the human and divine realm with the help of various ritual procedures performed either in a temple context, for benefit of the ruler, or for private individuals/​households. At least by the end of the second millennium, ritual healers were experts in various forms of divination, magic, and healing versed in a wide range of texts (including omen compendia, incantation/​r itual series, diagnostic and therapeutic texts, drug lore, commentaries). The conceptions of well-​being, illness, and healing gleaned from Mesopotamian medical literature can be described as complex and multifaceted, differentiating a multitude of diseases, afflictions, and causes of ill health. The aetiological models encountered in healing texts are based to some extent on empirical observation, analogical reasoning, as well as on religious and cosmological beliefs. Both diagnostic and therapeutic texts (such as incantations) can be shown to use two basic models of illness, one of which describes suffering as caused by an agent or person, while the other model describes it as an impersonal, anomalous process in the body (Steinert 2020a). The personalising model ascribes illness to the anger or aggression of powerful beings (often designated as the “Hand” of deities, demons, ghosts, or witchcraft); but diseases themselves or body parts could likewise be described as quasi-​agents “seizing” or “touching” the patient (Heeßel 2000; Salin 2015). In general terms, any kind of physical and psychological suffering as well as socio-​economic misfortune could be interpreted as signs of divine punishment and disapproval. Healers thus often linked the causes of an illness to actions of the patient, including moral transgressions, crimes, or neglected religious duties. Beside the agency of superhuman agents, Mesopotamian medicine also recognised animals, natural forces, climatic influences, and heavenly bodies as causes of illness, as well as transmission through contact with infected persons or impure (“bewitched”) substances. Within the cuneiform medical texts, especially diagnostic and therapeutic texts provide insights into the modes of sensory perception that guided Mesopotamian healers in the process of diagnosis. Around the end of the second millennium BCE , collections of diagnostic materials were assembled in a long compendium, the so-​called Diagnostic Handbook (with the ancient title sa.gig/​Sakikkû “Symptoms”), a work which is known to have belonged to the corpus of texts used and studied by the āšipu (“exorcist; ritual healer”).11 In the therapeutic texts, medical remedies (often combined with healing spells or rituals) are regularly introduced by diagnostic passages describing symptoms in ways quite similar to the diagnostic material (see below). Yet the therapeutic texts also differ from the material in the Diagnostic Handbook: while the diagnostic texts focus on establishing the identity and cause of a patient’s illness (which is attributed in most 491

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cases to the influence of a human or superhuman agent), the therapeutic texts focus on linking sets of symptoms and diagnoses to appropriate treatments (cf. Geller 2018). The Mesopotamian physiognomic omen texts—​which interpret the form and characteristic features of a human person’s body (parts) as indications for that person’s character traits and future life-​course—​can be regarded as a close counterpart to the Diagnostic Handbook, together forming a corpus of scholarly lore that the Mesopotamians themselves viewed as two intimately related strands of knowledge, as is revealed by a scholarly catalogue commemorating the redaction of the Diagnostic Handbook and the compendium of physiognomic omens Alamdimmû.12 The two compendia are concerned with interpreting signs or symptoms that are communicated by the healthy and diseased body, respectively, and thus represent complementary perspectives on the perception of bodily phenomena. While in the Diagnostic Handbook the symptoms are indicative of a patient’s condition and chances of recovery, in the physiognomic omens a person’s bodily features or behaviour are used to draw conclusions about his or her character and future life-​course (regarded as “destiny”). The similarities in form and differences in detail between entries in the Diagnostic Handbook, in the physiognomic omen compendium Alamdimmû, and in therapeutic texts can be illustrated by the following examples: From Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 14, 175′–176′ (Scurlock 2014: 124, 133): [If the right side of his abdomen] hurts him: (it is due to) the Hand of his (personal) god; he will get well. [If the left side of his abdomen] hurts him: (it is due to) the Hand of his (personal) goddess; he will get well. From Diagnostic Handbook,Tablet 22, 14–​15 (Heeßel 2000: 252, 259; Scurlock 2014: 186, 189): If a man’s penis or epigastrium hold burning fever, the “pouch of his belly” (takalti libbi) hurts him and his belly raves, his arms, his feet, and his belly are hot: that man is sick with a disease of sexual intercourse; (it is due to the) Hand of the goddess Ištar (the goddess of sexuality and war). From a compendium on therapies for ailments of the ears (BAM 503, i, 30′; Scurlock 2014: 370, 380): If due to affliction by the Hand of a ghost, a man’s ears roar, you fumigate the inside of his ears with root of e’ru-​tree, nikiptu-​plant, and “soiled rag” over charcoals. From a remedy collection (BAM 159, v, 48–​50; Scurlock 2014: 499–​501): If a man’s intestines are continually bloated, his bowels rumble, his bowels continually make a loud noise, “wind” groans in his belly and buts into his anus: that man is sick with pent-​up (wind). To cure him: … (remedy follows). From Alamdimmû, Tablet 2, 33, 92, 96 (Böck 2000: 74–​75, 80–​81): If a man has (only) sparse (hair) on his head, he will become poor … If the hair of (a man’s) head is strong, he will be killed with a weapon. If the hair of (a man’s) head is thick, he will experience joy of the heart. 492

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As can be seen from these extracts, the entries of both physiognomic omens and diagnostic texts share the same casuistic structure linking a protasis (i.e., descriptions of symptoms/​bodily signs) with an apodosis (i.e., diagnosis/​prognosis/​interpretation). Thematic sections in therapeutic texts also usually begin with a diagnostic section in casuistic form followed by a treatment instruction. Sometimes this diagnostic section can be telegraphic, merely consisting of a short phrase that identifies the medical problem or ailment treated with the following remedy, but in other cases, detailed lists of symptoms are given. The descriptions (of medical “signs” and bodily features) in diagnostic, physiognomic, and therapeutic texts are presumably based to some degree on the practice and observations of healing specialists, since texts such as the Diagnostic Handbook and medical remedies served as technical literature for the training and practice of medical specialists.13 That diagnostic and therapeutic compendia were viewed as guides for medical practice is also signalled by certain phrases in the texts referring to a specific setting, in which medical practice took place. For example, the opening words of the first Tablet of the Diagnostic Handbook, “when the conjurer goes to the house of a sick person” (enūma ana bīt marṣi āšipu illaku), describes the typical setting for the diagnostic procedure taking place in the course of a healer’s visit to the patient (George 1991: 142–​143, l. 1; cf. Schmidtchen 2018b: 313, 321, l. 2). On the other hand, passages in diagnostic texts also reflect processes of textual compilation, elaboration, and edition as well as the embeddedness of the described ominous phenomena into certain epistemological frameworks, witnessed in the application of paradigmatic sequences and standardised schemata. Thus, there are several passages in the Diagnostic Handbook where we find alternative cases in sequence that involve a relatively fixed row of colour terms or properties of diseased body parts, which may integrate potentially observable phenomena and speculative imagination (cf. Heeßel 2000: 37–​40; Böck 2009).14 The application of general organising principles and schemata in diagnostic entries (including symmetries, opposites, and other relations) shows that the art of prognostication and diagnosis was a theory-​laden activity, a culturally mediated interpretation of observed or perceived reality, similar in principle to the relationship between empirical and theoretical elements seen in Mesopotamian divination and omen texts (see Rochberg 1999; 2016: 193–​230).15 In their linking of protases and apodoses, diagnostic entries apply explanatory models of body and disease processes, as well as interpretive frameworks, cultural codes, and evaluations of potentially observable phenomena and sensory data that are partially akin to those encountered in other omen compendia (Koch 2015).16 Some of the hermeneutical “rules,” in their simplest form are the polar opposition between directions (e.g., [often] right = positive; left = negative) as well as other more complex value ascriptions found, for example, with colours (as a tendency, red/white = positive, green-​yellow = ambivalent, black = negative, dark red = ambivalent or negative) (cf. Heeßel 2000; 2004; Thavapalan 2020): From Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 12, 113′–​117′ (Scurlock 2014: 96, 101): If his pelvis is red: he will live. If his pelvis is yellow: his illness will change. If his pelvis is black: he will die. If his pelvis is dark: he is worrisome. If his pelvis is dark-​red: his illness will change. The underlying models of disease reflected in Mesopotamian medical texts and applied by the healer in his diagnostic procedure rely on skills stemming from the combination of bodily experience, sensory perception, and rich cultural codes. According to the prominent model,

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illness is viewed as caused by a personalised, external agent (e.g., deity, demon, ghost, or witch), while in the second model sickness is described as an “impersonal process.” The latter model is often based on analogies to similar processes in the natural or human environment and can be described as “environmental,” “technologic,” or “naturalistic” (cf. Steinert 2016; 2017; 2020a). One important means of establishing links between symptoms and diagnosis in applying these models is via analogy or association. Environmental analogies for disease causation can be spoken of as “inductive” or “empirical,” in so far as they rely on sensory phenomena and draw links between similar or comparable domains of experience (BAM 409, o. 33′–​36′; cf. Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 33, 31–​31a; Heeßel 2000: 354–​355, 360; Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 73, sub 3.226): If the appearance of the sore is hard like stone, (either) growing bigger internally (or) moving (around) internally, it feels swollen/​tense to him (i.e. the patient), (and) he is not able to stand up, walk or stand: its (the disease’s) name is šadânu (lit. mountain-​like); (it is due to the) touch of the god Marduk (or) Ninurta. In this example, the key symptom (“it is hard like stone”) picked up by the healer’s senses of touch and sight offered an environmental simile that underlines the diagnosis šadânu,“mountain-​ like,” which inspired a further aetiology through mythological association with the “Hand of Ninurta” (Ninurta is a god known for his victory over the rebellious stones of the mountains and, like Marduk, is a monster slayer). Besides analogical and associative techniques, diagnostic texts use wordplay or puns connecting certain symptoms perceived by the diagnostician’s senses with a specific diagnosis. In the following extract, swollen or bloated (napāḫu) body parts are associated with the similar-​sounding diagnosis nappaḫtu (possibly referring to the bladder), and with the Sun God, because the Akkadian verb napāḫu was also used in the meaning “to rise; to light up” in reference to sunrise: Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 9, 68 (cf. Scurlock 2014: 69, 72): If his face, his innards, his hands and his feet are constantly swollen (napāḫu): he suffers from the bladder (?) (nappaḫtu); (it is due to the) Hand of (the sun-​god) Šamaš. While on the surface these texts seem to depend on the senses of the healer alone, a significant feature of symptom descriptions in diagnostic and therapeutic texts is their integration of patients’ sensations and healers’ perceptions. Thus, diagnostic descriptions allude to what Thomas Csordas (1993) has described as “somatic modes of attention,” constituting “culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body,” including an intersubjective attention to the bodies of others (Csordas 1993: 138–​139). In extension, attending to and with the body in the context of healing also involves what Marcel Mauss (1973: 73) termed “techniques of the body,” that is to say, acquired and socially mediated practical skills, in our case, of perceiving, interpreting, and treating patients’ bodily symptoms and conditions.17

Modes of sensory perception in Mesopotamian medical diagnosis Vision The majority of the symptoms in Mesopotamian medical texts can be attributed to visual perception.18 The importance of this sensory mode in medical diagnosis is highlighted by a passage from the catalogue of the series Sakikkû and Alamdimmû, situating knowledge about diagnosis 494

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and physiognomic interpretation in the context of textual learning and practical experience, constituted by sensory engagement and cognitive reflection. After the assertion that the series Sakikkû had been compiled by the Babylonian scholar Esagil-​kīn-​apli “for knowledge/​learning” (ana iḫzi ukīn), the reader is addressed as follows: Pay attention! Take [care]! Do not neglect your knowledge (iḫzu)! One who has not obtained knowledge, shall not speak about Sakikkû [and] tell about Alamdimmû (i.e. shall not engage in diagnosis or physiognomic reading of the body)! Sakikkû is the compilation concerning disease, depression, and distress; Alamdimmû (concerns) the (external) bodily features and shape, (reflecting) the destiny of humankind which the gods Ea and Marduk established. … [The āšipu(?)] who makes decisions, who watches over people’s life, who knows Sakikkû and Alamdimmû in its entirety, (he) shall inspect (lihīṭ), check (libri), [ponder] (in his) heart (libbi [lištābil]), and then offer (his) diagnosis (qību) to the king!19 Interestingly, the process of diagnosis described here seems to involve examination of the patient, followed by a process of ascertaining and inner reflection, leading to the utterance of an interpretation of observed reality (a diagnosis and prognosis). The activities of examining and ascertaining are each expressed with a verb of visual perception, ḫiāṭu/​ḫâṭu, “to watch; to check; investigate; examine; to seek out; inspect” and barû, “to look at (intentionally); to read (a tablet); to check through,” the latter of which is also used for performing a divinatory act and may involve the identification of a diagnosis by consulting relevant entries within the Diagnostic Handbook.20 Likewise, the phrase characterising the healer as someone “who determines decisions” (pāris purussê) relates to divinatory predictions and prognostications.21 Examples of visual information within diagnostic texts include, for instance, descriptions of different colours of bodily substances or parts of the body, a great number of abnormal bodily states and processes (e.g., swelling/​contraction of body parts; emitting of body substances), positions of body parts, gestures, and movements, as well as other aspects of the patient’s behaviour (including mood, involuntary actions as well as cognitive and mental conditions).22 Most of the time these observations are not explicitly marked as visual (BAM 114 and duplicate, 1–​8; Geller 2005: no. 5): [If] his urine is (white/​light) like donkey urine, that man suffers from discharge (mūṣu).[If] his urine is like beer dregs, that man suffers from discharge. [If] his urine is like wine dregs, that man suffers from discharge. [If] his urine is like clear/​shining glue, that man suffers from discharge. If his urine is like kasû (tamarind?)-​juice, that man is overcome by “sun-​light”-​fever (ṣētu). If his urine is yellow-​green, that man [suffers] from stricture of the groin. If his urine is white and thick, that man [suffers] from a dissolving calculus (abnu šaḫḫiḫu). If his urine is (yellowish?) like dušû-​stone (calcite), that man [suffers] from a calculus (abnu “stone”).23 Compare the following entries from the Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 14, 124–​ 125 (Geller 2005: no. 49, ii, 21′–​22′; Scurlock 2014: 123, 131): If you examine (IGI, amāru) his urine and it produces a fleshy membrane (lipištu), he was “touched” in the steppe. If you examine (IGI, amāru) his urine and it produces (bits of) his flesh, he was “touched” in the steppe. 495

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The first passage from a therapeutic text illustrates that characteristic colours of the patient’s urine signalled specific conditions the patient suffered from, drawing on comparisons with the colours of different liquids and concrete objects encountered in daily life. The second passage comments on solid particles in the patient’s urine as indicators for disease aetiology (here, the patient was attacked by a demon in the steppe). In addition to examining the patient’s external body and excreted body substances, Mesopotamian healers frequently also picked up other visual signs from the environment aiding in diagnosis, for example on their way to the patient’s house. This can be grasped from the first section of the Diagnostic Handbook comprising Tablets 1 and 2 (Labat 1951; George 1991). Interestingly, most of the entries in Tablet 1 are described explicitly as visual perceptions of the healer, expressed with the verb amāru “to see; experience; to catch sight of something; to discover”:24 If he (the āšipu) sees a potsherd standing upright in the street: that patient is dangerously sick; one must not go near him … If he sees a kiln-​fired brick: that patient will die … If he sees a black pig: that patient will die; (or) he will experience a crisis and then recover. If he sees a white pig: that patient will recover; (or) he will experience hardship. If he sees a red pig: that patient will die within three months; (or) within three days. If he sees a dappled pig: that patient is sick with dropsy … If he sees a dappled ox: that patient is afflicted by (the demoness) Lamaštu (or) a curse; he will die soon. … If he sees a corpse: that patient will recover.25 As these examples show, animals, persons or inanimate objects observed by the healer on his way to the patient were understood as signals for the nature of the patient’s condition, the agent causing the illness, or for the patient’s chances of recovery. Scholarly commentaries on Diagnostic Handbook Tablet 1 preserved from the Neo-​or Late Babylonian period sometimes provide associative interpretations through philological hermeneutics that explain why a specific observation has a particular meaning in the corresponding omen apodosis. For example, commentaries on the sign of a potsherd standing upright in the street draw a metaphorical connection between the patient being dangerously sick and a broken pot, since in Babylonian creation myths human beings were shaped from clay, and the body is thus seen as comparable to a clay vessel.26 By contrast, seeing a corpse was interpreted as a positive sign for the patient’s recovery, because the corpse was perceived as a substitute for the patient, signalling that the patient would not die because the gods had taken another person’s life instead.27 The other entries indicate that animals and colours could carry positive or negative values, or could be associated with specific disease agents such as the demoness Lamaštu who is elsewhere linked with the yellow colour of jaundice (Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 9, 11 [Scurlock 2014: 67]:28 “If his face is yellow, Lamaštu afflicts him”). Beside symptoms that were likely observed by the healer during examination, some symptoms encountered in diagnostic and therapeutic texts apparently concern distorted or impaired visual perceptions, dreams or even hallucinations (especially visions of ghosts or demons) of the patient reported to the healer: From SpTU 2: no. 50, 15, 18, 20; BAM 159, iv, 12′–​13′ (Scurlock 2014: 361–​367; Geller and Panayotov 2020: 123, 58′; 189, 9′–​10′): If a person’s eyes are flickering und contain tears … If a person’s eyes have been blown into by the wind so that they are blurred, cloudy, and constantly shedding tears … 496

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From Scurlock 2006: 8–​10, no. 17, 1; no. 30, 1; no. 54, 1: If a man continually sees dead persons in his dreams, to cure him … If a gh[ost afflicts] a man so that he continually sees dead persons (when he is) in his bed … And from Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 26, 11′–​13′ (Heeßel 2000: 179, 287; Scurlock 2014: 196, 200–​201): If (something) keeps “falling” on him like a falling spell (and then) his eyes are full of blood (variant: he opens and closes his eyes), his cheeks (variant: jaws) shake, his hands and feet are stretched out, he collapses at the conjurer’s approach (and) he can see (inaṭṭal) the one that afflicts him, (then the illness is due to the) Hand of a murderer’s ghost.29 In addition, a number of diagnostic passages remark on the patient’s abnormal reaction to a stimulus, such as repulsion towards food (despite appetite) or not becoming aroused when seeing a woman (despite desire for intercourse).30 Moreover, in connection with health problems caused by witchcraft, the texts also report the incidence of the patient having seen or “having been shown”31 certain objects in his/​her environment, which were interpreted as evil-​portending signs or messages sent by sorcerers and witches, in order to bewitch the patient (Abusch and Schwemer 2011: text 10.3, 20′–​21′): If “cutting-​of-​the-​throat”-​magic using an arrabu-​mouse [has been performed] against a man, and a slaughtered arrabu-​mouse has been seen in the man’s house …32 Likewise associated with sorcery, the “evil eye,” representing the hateful or envious looks of other human beings, was countered in incantations as a force of evil or an agent that could cause illness and misfortune.33 The force or impact of the evil eye is described as an outward-​going gaze likened to the radiance emanating from powerful beings (especially deities, demons) which physically touches its object, thereby being able to exert physical impact on the object of its gaze.34 The impact of the evil eye thus seems to be conceptualised as a sort of “haptic vision,” a merging of gaze and touch. It is further worth noting that Mesopotamian healers sometimes used the sensory faculties of animals in order to gain insights into the cause or nature of the human patient’s condition. Such testing procedures involved checking whether an animal approached bodily emissions or other substances that have been in contact with the patient. For example, one text concerned with treating the loss of male sexual desire recommends making figurines of a man and a woman from a dough of emmer and clay, which were first placed at the head of the patient’s bed and then presented to a pig. If the pig “approached” (qerēbu) the figurines (probably with the intention to devour them), the patient’s ailment was attributed to the goddess Ištar (responsible for matters of love and sex); if it did not “approach” them, the illness was believed to be caused by sorcery (kišpū).35

Auditory perception Acoustic perceptions also play an important role in symptom descriptions in Mesopotamian medical texts. These include the verbal utterances of the person being examined, inability or unwillingness to speak, or peculiar manners of speaking (see also Chapter 24, this volume). Moreover, unusual sounds and noises produced or perceived by the patient voluntarily (such as screams or moans) or involuntarily (e.g., roaring ears, abnormal noises during breathing, coughing or 497

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growling noises in the belly/​digestive tract) are also prominent (Heeßel 2000: 44–​45; Scurlock and Andersen 2005; Scurlock 2014). Although the practice of auscultation (listening to the sounds coming from inner organs, in modern medicine with the help of a stethoscope) or percussion is never directly expressed in the texts, the recommendation,“If a man’s lungs are sick, …, you inspect (lit. search) his chest” (irassu teše’i), in a therapeutic text on lung diseases, may possibly indicate auscultation of the patient, expressed via a verb of visual perception.36

Touch Alongside vision, the sense of touch features prominently in medical contexts. Descriptions of tactile information imply that healers often palpated the patient’s body or affected body parts, to pick up information concerning properties such as temperature, hardness/​softness, or tenseness/​ looseness. Many of the verbs denoting tenseness (kaṣāru “to become hard/​cramped” [literally, to knot], danānu), stiffness (wašāṭu, šamāmu, šadādu), and looseness (ramû, paṭāru, parāru, tabāku) are semantically ambiguous to some degree, and it has still to be investigated in which contexts they refer to tactile sensations (or to a combination of visual and tactile information), and to which degree their usage in the medical texts may reflect the healer’s sensory activity or the patient’s sensations. This ambiguity may be linked to the particularity of touch as a sensory modality, namely that “the distinction between touching subject and touched object blurs” (Mazis 1971, cited in Hsu 2000: 320). Occasionally, touching the patient’s body is explicitly recommended as a diagnostic tool in Mesopotamian diagnostic and therapeutic texts: From Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 33, 29 (Heeßel 2000: 354): If the appearance of the sore is (that it is) hard to the touch (and) it is full of red spots: it is called šadânu. From Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 33, 59 (Heeßel 2000: 356): [If the appearance of the sore (skin condition) is white (or) red, it] hurts him, but does not contain a fluid, (and) it grows larger when touched: it is called “ox fat.” 37 And from BAM 480, iii, 57–​58 (Worthington 2005: 13, 21, 190′–​191′; Scurlock 2014: 441): If a man’s skull contains fluid (water), you palpate (tulappat) the spot that is full of fluid with your thumb. If his ear stinks, [liquid] has descended from his skull. Mesopotamian healers’ tactile abilities were also cultivated to a high degree with regard to the perception of temperatures, linked to the recognition of different fever patterns.38 For example, changes of body temperature, movements of heat, and differentiated perceptions of temperature with regard to physical locations were noted, some of which may also record perceptions of patients. Mesopotamian healers also drew inferences about fever lingering in specific locations inside the body (in the following case, in the bones) on the basis of other reported symptoms (SAA 10: 242):39 As to what the king, my lord, said: “My arms and legs are without strength!” and “I cannot open my eyes; I am scratched and lie prostrate”—​this is because that fever has lingered inside the bones. It is not serious (literally, there is no wrongdoing involved).

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Another aspect of tactile sensations in Mesopotamian diagnostics are descriptions of pulsating blood vessels (Akkadian šer’ānu, Sumerian sa) which can be compared with the importance of pulse diagnosis in Chinese and Greek medicine.40 Although the terms above can refer to several anatomical structures (tendons, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries), and although some of the expressions referring to the movements of these structures can be ambiguous, at least a number of references are indicative that Mesopotamian healers examined the patient’s pulse in the hands, feet, temples, and sometimes in the groin or umbilical area, noting degrees of intensity and speed (the blood vessels are said “to go,” alāku [du]; “to jump,” šaḫāṭu [gu₄.ud]; “to be calm (slow?),” [nâḫu], and often “to rise, pulsate,” tebû [zi]). However, the verb that is most commonly used to describe the pulsating of blood vessels, “to rise” (tebû), sometimes refers to the patient’s own bodily sensations, as in a migraine or fever.41 The patient’s pain sensations are often expressed with the verb lapātu, “to touch,” in a specific construction, in which a body part is described as the agent “touching” the patient.42 Moreover, touch appears to be a key concept in Mesopotamian medicine with regard to notions of disease and infection.43 The concept of sickness as touch afflicting the patient is enshrined in several diagnoses, referring to an affliction as the “Hand” of a deity, or as the “touch” (liptu) of demons, as well as in symptom descriptions describing the disease (agent) “touching,” “hitting,” “seizing,” “reaching,” or “overwhelming” the patient (Couto-​Ferreira 2007; Geller 2009; Salin 2015). Sometimes touch can also imply a notion of infection, of having been in contact with something unclean or bewitched, or of having done something forbidden (Geller 2009: 67–​68, 70–​71). For example, one finds an association of the lavatory with a specific demon Šulak, “whose touch is death,” and who is linked with the notion of contagion via unwashed hands, as a medical commentary explains (SpTU 1: no. 47, o. 3–​5; Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 16, sub 2.5):44 He shall not enter the lavatory (or) Šulak will strike him. Šulak, as they say (means): Šu “hand,” la “not,” kÙ “clean.” (Thus,) if he enters the lavatory, his hands will not be clean. (This) is said about it. A more positive notion of touch can be grasped in relation to the healing actions of medical experts and healing deities (see below).

Smell and taste Similar to Greco-​Roman medicine, smell and taste appear to be the least represented sensory modes in Mesopotamian diagnostics (cf. Nutton 1993; Totelin 2015). According to Heeßel (2000: 72–​73), olfactory information is only attested in the symptom descriptions of therapeutic cuneiform texts, but not in the Diagnostic Handbook. In general, smells are not differentiated, and only offensive body odours are noted, usually expressed through the verbs eṣēnu “to smell” and ba’āšu “to stink” (BAM 396, ii, 19′–​22′; Geller 2005: no. 1): Prescription No. 5: and his urine smells, crush murru-​aromatic, mix it with kurunnu-​beer, billatu-​beer, and warm milk, anoint its (the penis’) “lips” and bandage (it), and the (kidney) stone will dissolve. And the following (BAM 480, iii, 47–​48, 64; Worthington 2005: 13, 21, 190′–​191′, 197′; Scurlock 2014: 441–​442): 499

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If a man’s skull contains fluid (water), you palpate (tulappat) the spot that contains the fluid with your thumb. If (then) his ear stinks, [liquid] has descended from his skull. … (If) you palpate (the spot that contains the fluid) and his ear does not stink, you put hot stones around his head (in order to ripen the abscess). Nipšu “stink, smell” and bu’šānu “stench” are two exceptional disease terms referring to bad odour as a characteristic symptom of the conditions in question:45 From SpTU 1: no. 44, 29, 32 (Scurlock 2014: 391–​392): If bu’šānu seizes a man’s nose/​mouth so that his nostrils hurt him all the time and are full of sores … If (a bad smell) can be smelled (inneṣṣin) inside his nostrils … And from SpTU 1: no. 44, 69–​74 and duplicates (Farber 1990: 312–​314; Scurlock 2014: 394, 397–​398): Spell: Bu’šānu looks like a lion, bu’šānu’s grip is mightier than all but a lion. It seized the uvula (var. mouth) like a wolf, then seized the jaws like a tiger. It set up its seat in the hard and soft palates. Whom shall I send to the heavenly daughters of Anu, (so that) they may lift up their buckets of silver and their vases of gold? May they draw water from the Ayabba (cosmic ocean), the wide sea, a place where a “dirty” woman has not washed her hands, where an impure woman has not washed her clothes … May they pour (the water) into his mouth, so that fever, sikkatu, lubāṭu, and bu’šānu-​disease be removed from his mouth! Incantation formula. In many cultures, smells are evaluated in an ambivalent fashion, and putrid smells in particular are often associated with dirt, decay, and infectious diseases (as in the term malaria, literally “bad air,” going back to ancient concepts of disease spreading via air or vapours corrupted by miasmata).46 The properties of smells, the fact that they can cross boundaries and cling to objects, also render them suitable for expressing notions of contagion (e.g., Howes 1991a). While Mesopotamian medical texts do not seem to emphasise links between smell and contagion, the spell against bu’šānu cited above may allude to an association between the stench of bu’šānu and body substances associated with dirt or impurity (such as female genital discharges), transmitted via wash water.47 The sense of taste is even less represented in the symptom descriptions. Thus, in contrast to Greek physicians, Mesopotamian healers do not seem to have tasted patients’ body substances such as urine or sweat. One hint to the use of this sensory mode may be implied in the description of certain skin sores (simmu) as “sweet” (matqu). This attribute refers to a specific property of the discharge emitted by the sore, but which sensory channel is implied in this context is unclear (“sweet” may not necessarily relate to taste, but also to smell, or to being sticky like sweet syrup or fruits).48

Kinaesthesia and interoception Sensory information communicated in medical texts is not restricted to the classic five senses. In particular, movements played an important role both in Mesopotamian diagnostics and therapeutics, which can be connected with the sense of kinaesthesia or proprioception (referring to the awareness of our body’s motion and the awareness of the posture and position of

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our limbs, respectively). Diagnostic passages often pay attention to unusual or conspicuous body movements of the patient and to impairments of movement: Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 9, 57–​58, 72–​73 (Scurlock 2014: 68–​69, 71–​72): If his face is continually spinning (and) his head, his hands and his feet tremble: Hand of Lugalgirra and Meslamtaea. If his face twitches(?), his torso is lame, he lets the affected hand drop and cannot lift (it up) (and) he drags his foot: Hand of a stroke. His days may be long, but he will not get normal (again). Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 11, 17–​19 (Scurlock 2014: 83, 87): If his hands tremble: Hand of the god; he will get well. If his hands become constantly paralysed and continually contorted: Hand of the goddess Ištar; […]. If he cannot bring his hands close to his body: Hand of (the sun god) Šamaš on account of silver [for a tithe]. In the following example, the patient’s awareness of his movements is disturbed following trauma or injury, which the text attributes to the patient’s inability to “grasp his mind” (ṭēmšu lā ṣabit), rendered here in the sense of “not being in full possession of his (mental) faculties” (Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 12, 84′; Scurlock 2014: 95, 100): If he was injured (lit. hit) on his right kidney, he is not in full possession of his faculties (and) he wanders about without knowing it: Hand of the Twin gods; he will die. Moreover, numerous text passages note movements of organs and body fluids, or emissions of body substances: Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 12, 85′ (Scurlock 2014: 95, 100): If he was injured on his left kidney, he is not in full possession of his faculties, (and) he vomits blood: Hand of the Sibitti; he will die. Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 16, 7, 10 (Heeßel 2000: 187; Scurlock 2014: 151, 156): If ditto (i.e. if it is the first day he is sick), and he urinates blood with his urine: he is in an acute stage of the illness; he will die. If ditto (i.e. if it is the first day he is sick), and he excretes dark blood: he will die; (var.) he has been entrusted to a gallû-​demon of death; he will die. In a number of cases, in which diagnostic passages speak of movements of internal organs, these may refer to the patient’s interoception (sensations, emotions, or “gut feelings”), or to inferences drawn by the healer about internal body processes on the basis of externally visible symptoms (BAM 578, i, 27–​30; Scurlock 2014: 507, 519):49 If, (although) not having eaten, a person’s stomach continually rises up to vomit, he continually produces a lot of phlegm, liquid continually flows from his mouth, his face continually (looks/​feels as if it is) spinning, his insides are continually bloated, his hips (and) his 501

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shins always hurt him intensely, he is hot and then cold, he continually has sweat, his appetite for beer and bread is diminished, he drinks a lot of cold water (, and then) vomits, he pours out yellow-​green (matter) from his anus (and) his penis, his appearance continually changes (for the worse), his body (lit. flesh) is poured out, whatever he eats does not agree with him: (concerning) that person, the gall-​bladder has turned over (saḫāpu) on him. Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 3, 12 (Scurlock 2014: 13, 19): [If] the top of his head continually feels crushed/​split in half, his head burns him, his inside/​ belly continually rises up (to vomit), like one who lies down on top of a woman he gets rising of the heart (i.e. is sexually aroused): Hand of the ardat lilî-​demon (“Wind maiden”). On yet another level, movement was also described in the form of temporal and dynamic changes in the patient’s state, reporting on recurring patterns, developments or stages of disease processes, often in connection with fevers (see especially Diagnostic Handbook Tablets 15–​20, 28): Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 16, 16, 19–​20, 47’ (Heeßel 2000: 173–​176, 181–​183; Scurlock 2014: 152–​153, 156–​158): If (his illness) afflicts him for one day and then he is well for one day: the ghost of his father or mother afflicts him. If he is sick for one, two (or) three days and then the burning fever lets off from his body, but after it has let up, the burning fever does not let up from his head (continuing this way) for three days (or) six days, he will die. If he has been sick for five days and (then) his body (flesh) becomes unevenly coloured yellow and his eyes are full of blood, he will die. Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 17, 61, 76, 78, (Heeßel 2000: 201–​202, 209–​210; Scurlock 2014: 165, 169–​170): If after falling ill, he gets up for one or two days and walks about, if he (then) has a return of his illness, he will die. If he is cold all day and hot all night, (and) he has been sick (for) seven days, he will get well. If he is sick in the night and well in the morning and stays awake all night: (it is due to) the Hand of the lilû (“wind”)-​demon.

The senses and Mesopotamian therapeutics Anthropologists have noted that healing procedures and rituals are multisensorial experiences that activate and alert the senses, to stimulate shifts in sensory codes, and to induce a change in the patient’s state (e.g., Howes 1991b; Stroeken 2008). Comparable phenomena are also apparent in Mesopotamian healing rituals. For example, in the performance of the exorcistic ritual Udug-​ hul to expel evil sickness demons (Geller 2016), the patient would witness the healer dressed up in red garments and operating with various paraphernalia, objects, and substances. These paraphernalia can be understood as “tool-​signs” communicating with the disease demons, while at the same time signalling divine power, protection, and positive change for the patient.50 In ritual performances such as Udug-​hul, conjurers would not only recite incantations, but also use a ritual bell or a bull hide drum to scare off disease demons. They would sprinkle holy water on 502

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the patient, cleanse and fumigate him with censer and torch, apply fragrant and cleansing plants such as tamarisk, cedar, soapwort, and perfumed oils; they would scatter magic flour circles, and wield a wooden staff or whip, to drive off evil forces and to protect the patient (Geller 2016: 21–​ 26 passim). Different sensorial qualities are also involved in the various medical substances (plants, minerals, substances of animal/​human origin) employed by Mesopotamian healers. Pharmaceutical compendia such as the plant description texts Šammu šikinšu (“the plant/​drug—​its appearance”) show that healing plants were classified and differentiated primarily on the basis of their characteristic external properties, which involved especially visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory information, in addition to their pharmaceutical properties, all of which contributed to their usefulness for specific medical problems.51 In a few instances in Šammu šikinšu, it may be suggested that Mesopotamian healers drew connections between specific physical properties of plants and the characteristics of the conditions treated with them, which may have influenced their choice of certain drugs. That is, not only pharmaceutical, but also external properties of healing substances played a role in their selection for treating certain conditions. For example, the use of the ēdu-​ plant to stop nosebleed may have been linked with the fact that its root is red; similar colour associations may have been involved in the following examples: Stadhouders 2011: 6; 2012: 1, Text I §§ 2 and 3: The plant whose appearance [is like …], …, whose root is as red as (that of) the murrānu-​ plant, whose seed is as dark and bitter as [the seed of the …]-​plant, that plant is called ēdu-​ ferula. … It is good for stopping [no]sebl[eed]; you wrap it in a wad of wool, place it on his neck, and he will get better. Stadhouders 2012: 7, Text I § 46′: [The plant whose appearance is like] that of ḫašû-​thyme, [whose] fru[it is … and] red—​that plant is called “flute-​plant”; [it is go]od against itching redness (rišûtu) of the skin. Stadhouders 2012: 9, Text II § 24′: The plant whose appearance is like (that of) the sun (god)-​plant (i.e. having a bright or glimmering appearance?), whose fruit is like the fruit of ašāgu-​thorn –​it is called barīrātu-​ ferula (variant: sikillu-​plant). It is a plant for purification. You [clean]se the patient with it. In the first two examples, a red plant part corresponds with an aspect of the treated illness (the colour of blood and the reddened skin), while in the third extract, the bright appearance of the plants in question (which are compared with “sun god-​plant,” šammi Šamaš) rendered these drugs suitable for use in ritual purification: the plant sikillu occurring as a textual variant is actually designated in other pharmaceutical texts as “pure plant” and “plant of purification,” due to its name derived from Sumerian sikil “(to be) pure.” Other properties of materia medica linked to sensory experience played a role in the use and selection of particular substances or materials for specific purposes and complaints. For example, the choice of desiccated or charred materials to stop haemorrhage or the use of a potsherd from an oven to treat fever function as “signature elements” operating on the principle that certain properties of materia medica can affect or balance a contrasting or corresponding physical state.52 Besides visual qualities of healing substances such as colour, Mesopotamian healing rituals provided a multitude of other visual cues, in the form of ritual actions witnessed by the patient 503

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(e.g., setting up a lamp at the bedside, the fabrication, and manipulation of figurines representing demons or witches in apotropaic rituals). Moreover, visual signals were entailed in the localities (e.g., the roof or bedroom of the patient’s house, river, garden, street, or steppe) and in the temporal staging of rituals. For example, the anti-​witchcraft ritual Maqlû lasted through the night until the next morning, signalling a transition from affliction and impurity to health, release, and purity, which was further supported by ritual actions such as washing or looking at the reflection of one’s face on the surface of water in a bowl.53 Healing rituals would often be staged at propitious moments, e.g., at sunrise or sunset, on the days of the new or full moon, when the sun and moon stood in conjunction/opposition, or at night when certain celestial bodies or constellations were visible, in order to invoke their divine power and influence. Moreover, healing substances were left to stand outside overnight under the stars (and administered in the morning), in order to activate or intensify their healing effects.54 The positive effects of music are recognised in healing practices cross-​culturally, for example in shamanistic performances, trance and ecstatic healing (e.g., Boddy 1989; Friedson 1996; Roseman 1992; Koen 2008). While music played an important role in cultic contexts in Mesopotamia, it is, surprisingly, rarely mentioned in contexts of healing. Notably, in the ritual series Udug-​hul, the conjurer employed a copper bell (“Mighty [or: hardened] copper”) and a bull’s hide drum as power instruments to scare away evil demons.55 The focus of acoustic cues in Mesopotamian healing rested foremost of all on the power of the human voice, on recitations of incantations or prayers recited by the healer or uttered by patient, either as part of rituals or for the magic activation of prescribed materia medica (Schwemer 2011; Rendu Loisel 2016: 200–​216). Interestingly, incantations were not only perceived as acoustic phenomena, but as something material having a physical effect on the target (they are not only “recited,” but literally “thrown,” Akkadian nadû). In this vein, the positive notion of touch appears to have been particularly significant in Mesopotamian healing practices, where it can be seen as the counterpart to the negative notion of sickness as the touch of an agent. Thus, healing deities such as the goddess Gula are said to provide health through their touch in hymns or incantations, serving as references to the healing techniques they are said to perform, and which healers as their human counterparts emulated. Thereby medical and ritual practices with their multisensorial properties became imbued with divine power (cf. Geller 2016: 34–​35 passim): Finkel 2000: 201–​202 (BM 42454+ and duplicates, 1–​3): Oh Gula, physician of the people! Your incantation is a cure, your touch is healing, and wherever I place my hands, you grant well-​being. Geller 2016: 112–​113, Udug-​hul, Tablet 3, 108–​112 (also Tablet 3, 129–​137): With (the sun god) Šamaš in front of me and (the moon god) Sîn behind me, with Nergal on my right, and with Ninurta on my left, when I approach the patient, lay my hand on the patient’s head, may the good šēdu-​spirit and good lamassu-​genius be present at my side!56 In therapeutic instructions, the verb lapātu, “to touch” can assume the meaning “to smear,” referring to anointing or rubbing the patient’s body with a (usually fat or oil-​based) substance, which is found beside the terms pašāšu, “to anoint,” eqû, “to daub” (especially the eyes, with the fingers or with a spatula), and muššu’u, “to rub; to massage” (Goltz 1974: 65–​70). These procedures not only allowed medical substances to reach the inside of the body via the skin, but also served to

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relieve painful, tense, or paralysed limbs or body parts, to stimulate sexual desire, to purify, and to speed up a protracted delivery.57 In therapeutic or apotropaic rituals, the patient is often either touched by the healer himself or with a magic object,58 or the patient has to actively touch specific objects, either with the intention to remove illness, or to transfer a positive power or property to the patient. For example, a number of Namburbi rituals, which aimed at removing (literally “loosening, untying”) the impending evil of a negative ominous sign, conclude with the patient visiting a pub and touching the brewing vessel (namzītu) and its stand.59 A mutual transfer of properties between the patient and a ritual object was intended in a Late Babylonian ritual for a woman who cannot bring pregnancies to term. In a part of the ritual, the woman embraces a pottery oven, in order to receive from it the ability to produce something intact and to transfer it to her womb:60 She comes up from the river and goes to a potter’s oven. She embraces the oven and speaks as follows: “Oh pure oven, great daughter of Anu, in whose inside the fire of battle is burning, in whose inside the heroic fire god set up his residence. You are intact, and your products are perfect. Year after year you become full and you become empty. But I, I become pregnant, yet then I cannot bring to term what is in my belly. Give me your perfection and take away (my) imperfection! A sound pot shall not emerge from your belly, (but as for) me –​what is in my belly, shall be in good health! May I see prosperity! In the house where I live, let it be pleasing for me!” Incantation formula. Similar to touch, smell and taste served as important sensory channels in Mesopotamian healing practices. Thus, the application of fragrant or odorous substances (aromatic herbs, trees, resins, perfumed oils) via ointments or fumigation as well as the ingestion of substances (either through eating or drinking) comprised the most frequent therapeutic actions (Goltz 1974; Böck 2011). It is worth noting that a variety of foodstuffs, beverages, herbs, and spices that formed part of the Mesopotamian diet and cuisine are encountered in medical remedies. Besides their nutritional and pharmaceutical properties, as well as symbolic values, the different taste qualities (sweet, sour, bitter, salty) of materia medica may have been a significant component of remedies and therapy. With regard to the vocabulary for taste it is also interesting that the plant description text Šammu šikinšu refers to the taste of certain plants with the word ṭēmu, which usually means “mind; reason; intelligence; plan; instructions,” but is etymologically related to words meaning “(to) taste” in other Semitic languages.61 However, the characterisation of medical plants as “sweet” (ṭābu) in this context may often refer to their fragrant smell rather than to their taste, which is a remarkable feature since the senses of smell and taste are in fact physically and perceptively co-​dependent.62 Likewise, some “metaphorical” plant names referring to animal or human body parts probably evoke sensory qualities of healing substances, including their colour, shape, and odour. For example, drug names referring to certain bodily excretions, for example, “sailor’s faeces,” “dove excrement” may have signalled pungent plants.63 Scents appear to be cross-​culturally linked to transition and liminality; smells therefore play eminent roles as signs in magic, liminal rituals, and healing.64 In Mesopotamian healing traditions, the common differentiation of pleasant and repelling odours likewise appears to mirror a fundamental contrast between the concepts health/​life/​purity versus sickness/​infection/​death/​dirt (de Zorzi 2019; Steinert forthcoming). In therapy, fragrant substances were frequently employed both externally and internally, especially in ointments, baths, and fumigations. In their application, aromatics linked to perfumery were widely used for cleansing, purifying purposes, while pungent substances such as animal hair, fish oil, stag horn, bitumen, and sulphur are often linked 505

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to sickness demons and ghosts, and were thus employed for exorcistic and apotropaic purposes, for example, in connection with epilepsy and related conditions (Scurlock 2006: no. 287):65 If a ghost afflicts a man, in order to cure him: you fumigate him with “pig dung,” “dog dung,” “wolf dung,” “fox dung,” “gazelle dung,” nīnû plant (mint?), horned alkali, stag horn, sulphur, bitumen, “human bone,” and “soiled rag” (burned) over embers. Underlining the apotropaic use of drugs with bizarre names such as “wolf dung” (some of which may have denoted strongly smelling plants), instructions for the conjurer from first millennium BCE Assur and Nineveh show that he anointed himself with a protective salve containing the pungent nikiptu-​plant (which also had a red or yellowish colour), before he visited a patient.66 In addition to stimulating the senses via the channels of vision, sound, touch, taste, and smell, therapeutic procedures in cuneiform healing texts reveal a keenness to induce change or enable improvement by using movement (kinaesthesia) as a key strategy. For example, inducing the excretion of body (or pathogenic) substances with purgatives and emetics formed a popular therapeutic technique (e.g., against respiratory and digestive ailments connected to blockage or pathogenic matter in the body).67 Rarely, bloodletting (by making an incision on the skin to draw blood, rather than opening veins) was practised, as a strategy to treat pain (migraine) and other symptoms attributed to the “Hand” of ghosts (Scurlock 2006: no. 91, 1–​7). Other symptoms, however, necessitated the stopping of movement, as in treatments against bleeding or diarrhoea. Moreover, movement and change are also interlinked in many healing rituals: body movements of the patient (e.g., bowing down, lying down, getting up), actions of the healer/​ patient (e.g., drawing a flour circle, setting up and removing offerings, changes of clothing), and changes of place or setting give structure to these rituals, often signalling successive ritual stages and changes in the patient’s situation (Sallaberger 2006–​2008; Schwemer 2011). One remarkable difference in comparison with medical traditions that foreground humoral theories and concepts of bodily balance (such as Greco-​Roman or Chinese medicine), in which physical exercise and the cultivation of body techniques such as gymnastics or breathing exercises together with dietetics play a central role in therapy, we have no indications from Mesopotamian medical texts that medical practitioners prescribed or used physical exercise as a strategy to help restore or improve the health of patients. The absence of such practices in Mesopotamia may be linked to the absence of humoral theories in Mesopotamian medical thought, and may be due to differences in Mesopotamian concepts of health and healing. Thus, Mesopotamian medical texts do not so much emphasise the notion of balance, but more the idea of regulating and normalising the patient and his/​her body through the healer’s interventions, which focused on a range of prescriptions, bodily manipulations of the patient, purifying treatments, and surgery, but also included the performance of rituals mediating with superhuman beings and focused on the patient’s relations to the social world.

Conclusion This overview has underlined the role of the senses as a key resource in Mesopotamian medicine, not only as primary diagnostic instruments that enabled healers to make diagnoses, but also in connection with choosing therapeutic strategies and medical substances. Diagnostic texts are replete with sensory information stemming from observations, patients’ sensations, speculative imagination, as well as from textual elaboration of paradigmatic schemata. Mesopotamian healers’ senses were cultivated in specific ways to perceive and evaluate pathological processes, although there are also several similarities with other ancient medical cultures, for example with 506

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regard to the ranking and focus on specific sensory modes. In Mesopotamian medical texts (as in Greco-​Roman medicine) the sense of sight has a privileged position, although it is clear that healers used all available sensory channels in order to identify diagnostic signs and to influence the patient’s state. The high relevance of vision and its semantic extension can be witnessed in the use of verbs of visual perception in the general sense of “to examine,” while characterisations of materia medica and symptom descriptions can sometimes be ambiguous with regard to the involved sensory mode (e.g., in the case of smell and taste), alluding to the multisensorial qualities of healing substances. The present discussion has also highlighted the interaction of different sensory codes with a particular sensory mode. Often these sensory codes are based on a differentiation between positive and negative values: the negative evil eye of witchcraft contrasts with the positive gaze of healing deities and practitioners; the negative touch of disease agents stands in opposition to the positive touch of healing hands. The interrelations of sensory experiences in Mesopotamian medical practices need to be investigated in more depth by future research. This survey has argued that materia medica as well as magic/​r itual objects can be seen as “tool-​signs” that were selected due to their inherent sensible properties. Thus, medical substances triggered a change in the patient’s state exactly because their properties were seen in some way to correlate with those of the treated ailment. In their function as “tool-​signs” or signature elements, therapeutic substances and ritual objects served as means of communication with disease agents, and as things imbued with healing powers due to their connections with the divine world and due to their magical activation.

Notes 1. This chapter was written during my employment in the Research Training Group “Early Concepts of Humans and Nature” (GRK 1876), which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation; Project No. 215342465).   See, e.g., Bynum and Porter 1993; King and Toner 2014 for the senses in the history of medicine; Classen 1993; Goody 2002; Howes 1991b; 2005; 2013; 2019; Howes and Classen 2019 for an overview of anthropological approaches. 2. See, e.g., Bradley 2015; Butler and Purves 2013; Toner 2014; Squire 2016; for biblical and Rabbinic sources see Avrahami 2012; Gracer 2011; Green 2011; 2015; Neis 2013. 3. See, especially, Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019; Rendu Loisel 2016; 2019; 2020; Schellenberg and Krüger 2019; Nadali and Pinnock 2020. 4. See, e.g., Howes 2013, for changes in the relative emphasis on, and social significance of, different senses in Europe in the modern period, as described by sociologists such as Georg Simmel, Norbert Elias, and Lucien Febvre. 5. For discussions of Mesopotamian medicine and surveys of cuneiform medical texts, see, e.g., Attinger 2008; Biggs 1990; 1995; Fales 2019; Geller 2010; 2018; Janowski and Schwemer 2010; Scurlock 2014; Scurlock and Andersen 2005; Steinert 2020a. 6. For an overview of medical prescriptions, healing incantations, and rituals, see Böck 2014: 77–​128; Collins 1999; Cunningham 1997; Geller 2016; George 2016; Janowski and Schwemer 2010: 1–​176; Janowski and Wilhelm 2008: 1–​15, 61–​186; Scurlock 2014; 2017; Schwemer 2011; 2019. 7. See, e.g., Attia and Buisson 2012; Böck 2011; 2015; Powell 1993; Schuster-​Brandis 2008; Scurlock 2014: 273–​293; 2017: 277–​280; Stadhouders 2011; 2012. In addition, scholarly commentaries on medical texts (diagnostic and therapeutic) are attested from the first millennium BCE , which served as tools for explanation and interpretation (see, e.g., Frahm 2011; Geller 2010: 141–​160; Scurlock 2014: 337–​358; Wee 2019a; 2019b. 8. There are also objects reflecting applied healing practice, such as protective amulets inscribed with a healing spell, which were hung up in the patient’s house (Heeßel 2014). 9. See, e.g., Clancier 2009; Fincke 2003–​2004; Maul 2010; Pedersén 1985–​1986; 1998; Robson 2013; 2019. 10. For surveys of Mesopotamian medical specialists, see, e.g., Arbøll 2020; Attinger 2008: 71–​77; Devecchi and Sibbing-​Plantholt 2020; Geller 2010: 43–​88; 2018; Jean 2006; Maul 2010; May 2018; Ritter 1965; 507

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Scurlock 1999; Steinert 2018. Exorcists and physicians were predominantly male specialists (a number of female physicians are attested in the third and second millennia BCE ) whose profession was often transmitted within the family. Beside these two professions, other types of healers/​magico-​medical practitioners are attested, for example midwives (Stol 2016: 375–​381), but the latter did not belong to the male scholarly circles that collected and transmitted their knowledge in textual form. 11. Heeßel 2000; Labat 1951; Scurlock 2014: 13–​270. 12. Schmidtchen 2018a; 2018b with previous literature. For the Mesopotamian physiognomic and behavioural omens, see Böck 2000; Koch 2015: 282–​291; Johnson and Stavru 2019. 13. For the empirical underpinnings of Mesopotamian medicine, see, e.g., Scurlock and Andersen 2005, with critical comments in Böck 2009. Johnson (2015; 2018) speaks of detailed diagnostic entries in therapeutic texts (listing several distinctive symptoms) as “depersonalized case histories,” since the texts generally do not describe cases of individual patients, but refer to a generalised male or female (or infant) patient, thereby marking the general validity of the described phenomena. 14. For example, entries in the Diagnostic Handbook commenting on the colour or visual appearance of internal organs are likely a product of theoretical reasoning inspired by observations of animal entrails in extispicy rather than based on actual medical practice (see, e.g., Tablet 13, 93–​99; cf. Geller 2007: 192–​193). 15. Rochberg’s (1999: 568) observations on the role of the empirical in Mesopotamian celestial divination and omen texts can be extended to the realm of medical diagnostic texts: phenomena described in the omen texts are “loaded with cultural content” and are not limited to phenomena that could be observed or perceived with the senses, but include the unobservable and impossible (such as the sun rising at midnight), showing that both kinds of phenomena were considered as potentially observable and meaningful for making inferences about future events. That is, recorded omens are “inductive (empirical) generalizations” or “extrapolations” that are based equally on empirical (e.g., the perceived phenomena patterns, regularities, irregularities) as well as on theoretical foundations applying schematic structures in order to make correlations between protases and apodoses (Rochberg 1999: 566; 2016: 196). 16. Similar to medical diagnosis and the practice of healing, the various forms of divination practised and documented in ancient Mesopotamian sources were intimately concerned with picking up sensory cues and phenomena from the environment. Visual and to a lesser extent auditory perception were the most important channels of accessing valuable information (signs/​omens/​oracles), from celestial divination (astrology), to extispicy (observing the entrails of animals), to the visions and messages received in dreams (which are usually “seen”) or by prophets, some of whom are known as ecstatics who went into trance through techniques that fostered alterations of consciousness and perception (e.g., Koch 2015; Rochberg 2016: 196; Stökl 2012). Accordingly, it is not surprising that visual perception verbs such as amāru “to see” are often found in omen contexts, and that we find terms such as “seer” (bārû) as designations for diviners. Terrestrial omens (drawn from various events in the environment) often involve visual or auditory phenomena, but on occasion also refer to smelled phenomena, such as the bad odour of river water (see Rendu Loisel 2019: 190). In a recent study, Rendu Loisel (2019) also notes instances of “multisensoriality” in omen literature (especially in terrestrial and weather/​astrological omens), seen in an interaction, equation or simultaneous evocation of different sensory cues through the use of synaesthetic metaphors/​similes. 17. For the “habit-​body” in the sense of embodied skills bridging motor faculties and perception (such as knowing how to dance, knowing how to play the piano) which are acquired ways of “living one’s body and the world,” see also Merleau-​Ponty 1962; Morris 2012: 67. 18. For visual perception in Mesopotamian texts, see also Fincke 2000; Dicks 2012; Manasterska 2019; Hawthorn 2019; Friedrich 2019; for Hittite texts, see Mouton 2019. 19. For the latest edition and discussion, see Schmidtchen 2018a; 2018b: 318, 62–​71. 20. Medical experts in their letters to the Neo-​Assyrian kings similarly use the verb amāru, “to see,” when referring to patient examination (see SAA 10: 202, 3′–​15′; 222; 230). 21. See Schmidtchen 2018a: 147–​150; 2018b: 326–​327 for discussion. 22. See Heeßel 2000: 43–​47 for an overview. For colours in medical texts, see also Thavapalan 2020. 23. See also Diagnostic Handbook, Tablet 14, 111–​123; Geller 2005: no. 49, ii, 14′–​20′; Scurlock 2014: 123, 131. For kasû as tamarind, see Eypper 2019; for du(ḫ)šû-​stone and colours of urine see also Thavapalan 2020: 51, 120, 139, 244–​264. 24. Tablet 2 of the Diagnostic Handbook deals with ominous signs observed mostly by the patient him-​or herself, in his/​her house or on the street. The incipit speaks of an anonymous observer on his way 508

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to the patient (“If a person goes to a sick man’s house and a falcon passes him on the right”), but then switches to the patient perspective (cf. Labat 1951: 6–​7, 1; George 1991: 144–​145 catchline; Schmidtchen 2018b: 313, 321, 3). 25. George 1991: 142–​145, 2, 4, 6–​9, 15, 35. 26. George 1991: 146–​147, 2a–​b, and 152–​154 (notes). 27. George 1991: 150–​151, 35c, and 161. 28. For discussion, see George 1991: 146–​149, 155–​157; Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 483–​485; Thavapalan 2020: 69–​70. 29. See also Tablet 26, 66′–​68′, 73′–​74′; Tablet 27, 4. Compare also Tablet 28, 21–​43, in which visions of different animals and objects during a protracted illness are used for prognostic purposes. 30. See, e.g., AMT 76/​1: 5–​6, see Scurlock 2014: 490–​491; 2006: no. 200. 31. See Reiner 1959–​1960: 150b; Farber 1989: 23; Steinert et al. 2018: 272, commenting on the text LKA 9, r. iii, 2′–​3′, which prescribes “a leather bag (charm) to release a pregnant woman or a woman in confinement to whom (something evil) has been shown” (mêlu ša erīti u ḫarišti ša kullumatu pašāri), so that “(if ) they show her (something), it will not come near her.” Apparently, it was believed that seeing the objects of sorcerous machinations would affect the perceiving person physically (in the case of a pregnant woman, bewitchment could lead to miscarriage). 32. See also Abusch and Schwemer 2011: texts 10.1–​10.5, 12.1; Abusch and Schwemer 2016: texts 10.6–​ 10.13, 11.5. 33. See, e.g., Thomsen 1992; Geller 2003; 2004; Dicks 2012: 330–​341 for discussion. 34. See Geller 2004: 54, 1–​2: “[Incantation: … the eye is evil, the eye is hostile! … the eye that emerge[s is the eye] of the radiance (namrīrū) of an enemy!” The evil eye, when looking is “roving about” (parāru) (Dicks 2012: 334) and is compared with a wind (Dicks 2012: 338). By looking, the eye “touches” the object of its gaze (lapātu; de Zorzi 2019: 221); similarly, the evil look of the witch can rob its victim of his/​her physical attractiveness, strength, and protective deities (Abusch 2016: 241, 305,Tablet III, 8–​12). For the gaze and divine radiance, the latter of which is not restricted to the eyes/​face but emanates from the whole body, and is a force having profound effects on the world and perceiver, standing in a complex relationship with sight, see also Dicks 2012: 381–​391. 35. KAR 70, 6–​10, see Biggs 1967: 46–​47; Scurlock 2014: 692. The Diagnostic Handbook contains a few entries, in which the observation that flies do not come near the patient’s vomit, is used for a lethal prognosis of the patient’s condition (see Tablet 17, 60; Tablet 23, 5; Heeßel 2000: 172, 174–​175; Scurlock 2014: 165, 169). 36. Stadhouders and Johnson 2018: 575, 595, BM 78963, § 7, 36–​37. Cf. Heeßel 2000: 73. 37. Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 85, sub 3.276; Scurlock 2014: 232–​233. 38. Stol 2007; Bácskay 2017; 2018; Diagnostic Handbook, Tablets 16–​20 and 31. 39. See also Bácskay 2017: 46–​47; 2018: 181–​186, no. 61 (BAM 146 and duplicates), 34–​35. In the cited letter SAA 10: 242, the king’s symptoms of weakness and exhaustion are linked with the after-​effects of a febrile condition. The therapeutic text BAM 146 and so forth describes a contrast between the patient’s “flesh/​body” being cold “above” (elēnu) and his bones being hot “below” (šaplānu), which could refer either to conflicting symptoms in the trunk and legs or to a contrast between symptoms felt on the surface and interior of the patient’s body. 40. For feeling the heartbeat to determine whether a person is alive or dead, cf. Gilgamesh Epic,Tablet VIII, 58 (George 2003: 655–​656). 41. For example, BAM 480, i, 1, “he experiences (lit. has) pulsating of the temporal blood vessels,” sa zi sag.ki tuku (Worthington 2005: 7, 15; Scurlock 2014: 307, 318; for discussion, see Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 172–​176, 535–​536 passim). 42. See Salin 2015: 321–​323. 43. For infection, epidemics, and contagion in Mesopotamian texts, and relations to touch, see e.g., Attia 2020; Farber 2004; Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 17–​20 passim; Feder 2013: 158; 2016; Heeßel 2009–​2011. 44. See CAD L: 201; Geller 2009: 67. 45. For discussion of these ailments, see, e.g., Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 40–​42, 413–​414, 504, 511–​512 passim; Steinert et al. 2018: 218, 274–​275, 117. 46. See, e.g., Totelin 2015: 18. 47. For notions of impurity in the ancient Near East as linked to disgust and contagion, see Feder 2013; 2016; for negative evaluations of smells and their moral and social implications, see also de Zorzi 2019.

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48. For simmu matqu, see Fincke (2011: 169–​172), proposing that the attribute “sweet” could refer to a sweet odour emitted by these types of simmu-​lesions (due to the activity of certain bacteria), similarly Scurlock and Andersen (2005: 240) speculating that Mesopotamian healers may have classified “uninfected … serum coming from a wound as ‘sweet’ ” (in contrast to foul-​smelling serum). Cf. Fincke 2011: 184–​187 for a related condition named kalmatu matuqtu “sweet kalmatu-​vermin,” referring most likely to lice. 49. Stroeken 2008. For a study of Akkadian collocations referring to normal and abnormal movements of internal organs, often involving embodied feelings, see Zisa 2019. 50. For the analytical concept of “tool-​sign,” see Novellino 2009: 760, defined as “any natural or man-​ made object, word, sound, gesture, or bodily movement that is perceived to be an essential vehicle of cross-​ontological communication and action on the material world.” Tool-​signs are selected because of the qualities they are thought to embody, thus making them suitable to achieve certain goals and objectives. 51. See Stadhouders 2011; 2012; Böck 2011. 52. See Steinert 2020b for discussion. 53. Abusch 2016: xiv–​xv, 367–​378, with instructions of the Ritual Tablet. 54. Reiner 1995: 47–​79, 133–​138; Geller 2014; Heeßel 2008. 55. Geller 2016: 24–​26, Tablet 7, 15–​22, 47–​48, 87–​88; Tablet 9, 48′; Tablet 12, 83–​85; Tablet 16, 120′–​ 121′; Rendu Loisel 2015; 2016: 181–​199. For an archaeological example of such a ritual bell, see Reiner 1995: 80, fig. 10. 56. See also Geller 2016: 129–​130, Udug-​hul, Tablet 3, 187–​188. 57. See, Biggs 1967; Böck 2003; 2007; Scurlock 2014, 595–​604; BAM 248, i, 53, 69; iii, 9, 53; iv, 17, 20. 58. See Geller 2009: 69; 2016: 21–​26, 268, 92, 455–​457; 460, 94, 472–​473, 477 for examples of ritual touching and placing of objects such as a sceptre of e’ru-​wood near the patient. 59. Maul 1994: 101–​106, texts A–​H, 1–​6. The omen series Šumma ālu recommends touching a “dog of Gula” (probably referring to a figurine at a temple entrance) before entering the temple of one’s god, in order to bestow purity (CT 39, pl. 38, r. 8: diŠ ki.min [i.e., na ana É dingir-​šú zi] ur.gi₇ šá dGu-​la tag-​ma el “If ditto [i.e., a man is up (to go) to the temple of his god], [if] he touches a dog of Gula, he is pure”). See also Böck 2014 for the dog as animal of the healing goddess. 60. SpTU 5: no. 248, 26–​32; see Scurlock 2002; 2014: 684–​691; Couto-​Ferreira 2013; Steinert 2017: 320–​ 322; Abusch et al. 2020: text 5.5, sub 1, 26–32. 61. Stadhouders 2012: 3 § 16′ with n. 16, also 4 § 22, noting cognate Semitic words with this semantic profile. 62. For references, see CAD E: 280, s.v. erešu sub b and c; CAD Ṭ: 22–​23, s.v. ṭābu sub b and c. In connection with foodstuff, matqu denotes sweetness, while the word ṭābu can mean “fresh” or “sweet” (i.e., literally sweet or good-​tasting). 63. For drugs of animal/​human origin in the Mesopotamian materia medica and examples of alias plant names, see e.g., Biggs 2006: 47–​49; Böck 2011; Rumor 2017; 2020. 64. See Classen et al. 1994; Howes 1991a; Palmer 1993; Parkin 2007. 65. Other uses of fumigations included infections, fever, depression, and women’s disorders (Stol 1993: 104, 106–​107, 132; Geller 2010: 168–​176; Scurlock 2006; 2014: 339–​346; Steinert 2014). A special therapeutic compendium entitled Qutāru “Fumigation” is attested in the first millennium BCE (Finkel 1991). For inscribed vessels which contained fumigants, see Walker 1980. 66. KAR 31 and duplicates; Geller 2016: 38–​41; Maul 2018: esp. 181–​182, lines 31–​33. 67. See Cadelli 2000; Geller 2005; Stadhouders and Johnson 2018. For purging as positive, see also SAA 10: 326.

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Powell, M. A. 1993. “Drugs and Pharmaceuticals in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in I. Jacob and W. Jacob, eds., The Healing Past: Pharmaceuticals in the Biblical and Rabbinic World. Leiden: Brill, 47–​68. Reiner, E. 1959–​1960. “ME.UGU = mēlu.” AfO 19: 150–​151. Reiner, E. 1995. Astral Magic in Babylonia (= Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 85 (4)). Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2015. “The Voice of Mighty Copper in an Exorcistic Ritual,” in B. Pongratz-​Leisten and K. Sonik, eds., The Materiality of Divine Agency. Berlin: De Gruyter, 211–​227. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2016. Les chants du monde: Le paysage sonore de l’ancienne Mésopotamie. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Midi. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2019. “The Doors of Perception: Senses and Their Variations in Akkadian Texts,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press, 279–​291. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2020. “Beyond the Five Senses: Human Senses According to Akkadian Cuneiform Texts (2nd to 1st Millennium BCE),” in A. Mouton, ed., Flesh and Bone: The Individual and His Body in the Ancient Mediterranean Basin. Turnhout: Brepols, 89–​102. Ritter, E. 1965. “Magical Expert (= āšipu) and Physician (= asû): Notes on Two Complementary Professions in Babylonian Medicine,” in H. Guterböck and T. Jakobsen, eds., Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger on His Seventy-​Fifth Birthday, April 21, 1965. Assyriological Studies 16. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 299–​321. Robson, E. 2013. “Reading the Libraries of Assyria and Babylonia,” in J. König, K. Oikonomopolou, and G. Woolf, eds., Ancient Libraries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 38–​56. Robson, E. 2019. Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-​Millennium Assyria and Babylonia. London: UCL Press. Rochberg, F. 1999. “Empiricism in Babylonian Omen Texts and the Classification of Mesopotamian Divination as Science.” JAOS 119: 559–​569. Rochberg, F. 2016. Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roseman, M. 1992. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rumor, M. 2017. “The ‘AŠ-​section’ of Uruanna III in Partitur.” JMC 29: 1–​34. Rumor, M. 2020. “Dreck-, Deck-, or What the Heck?” JMC 36: 37–53. Salin, F. 2015. “When Disease ‘Touches’, ‘Hits,’ or ‘Seizes’ in Assyro-​Babylonian Medicine.” KASKAL –​ Rivista di storia, ambienti e culture del Vicino Oriente Antico 12: 319–​336. Sallaberger, W. 2006–​2008. “Ritual. A. In Mesopotamien,” in M. P. Streck et al., eds., RlA 11. Berlin: De Gruyter, 421–​430. Schellenberg, A., and T. Krüger, eds. 2019. Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: SBL Press. Schmidtchen, E. 2018a. “Esagil-​kīn-​apli’s Catalogue of Sakikkû and Alamdimmû,” in U. Steinert, ed., Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues: Medicine, Magic and Divination. Babylonisch-​Assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen 9. Berlin: De Gruyter, 137–​157. Schmidtchen, E. 2018b. “The Edition of Esagil-​kīn-​apli’s Catalogue of the Series Sakikkû (SA.GIG) and Alamdimmû,” in U. Steinert, ed., Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues: Medicine, Magic and Divination. Babylonisch-​ Assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen 9. Berlin: De Gruyter, 313–​333. Schuster-​ Brandis, A. 2008. Steine als Schutz-​und Heilmittel: Untersuchung zu ihrer Verwendung in der Beschwörungskunst Mesopotamiens im 1. Jt. v. Chr. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag. Schwemer, D. 2011. “Magic Rituals: Conceptualization and Performance,” in K. Radner and E. Robson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 418–​442. Schwemer, D. 2019. “Mesopotamia,” in D. Frankfurter, ed., Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic. Leiden: Brill, 36–​64. Scurlock, J. 1999. “Physician, Exorcist, Conjurer, Magician: A Tale of Two Healing Professionals,” in T. Abusch and K. van der Toorn, eds., Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretative Perspectives. Groningen: Styx, 69–​79. Scurlock, J. 2002. “Translating Transfers in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in P. Mirecki and M. Meyer, eds., Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, 209–​223. Scurlock, J. 2006. Magico-​Medical Means of Treating Ghost-​Induced Illnesses in Ancient Mesopotamia. AMD 3. Leiden: Brill. Scurlock, J. 2014. Sourcebook for Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine. Atlanta: SBL Press. 515

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Scurlock, J. 2017. “Medical Texts,” in K. Lawson Younger Jr., ed., The Context of Scripture. Volume 4: Supplements. Leiden: Brill, 277–​312. Scurlock, J., and B. R. Andersen 2005. Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine: Ancient Sources, Translations, and Modern Analysis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Squire, M. 2016. Sight and the Ancient Senses. New York: Routledge. Stadhouders, H. 2011. “The Pharmacopoeial Handbook Šammu šikinšu –​An Edition.” JMC 18: 3–​51. Stadhouders, H. 2012. “The Pharmacopoeial Handbook Šammu šikinšu –​A Translation.” JMC 19: 1–​21. Stadhouders, H., and J. C. Johnson. 2018. “A Time to Extract and a Time to Compile: The Therapeutic Compendium Tablet BM 78963,” in S. V. Panayotov and L. Vacín, eds., Mesopotamian Magic and Medicine: Studies in Honor of Markham J. Geller. Leiden: Brill, 556–​622. Steinert, U. 2014. “I Smell a Rat! Fumigation in Mesopotamian and Hippocratic Recipes for Women’s Ailments –​Part 1 and 2.” The Recipes Project: Food, Magic, Art, Science and Medicine. http://​recipes. hypotheses.org/​3278 and http://​recipes.hypotheses.org/​3284. Steinert, U. 2016. “Körperwissen, Tradition und Innovation in der babylonischen Medizin,” in A.-​B. Renger and C. Wulf, eds., Körperwissen: Transfer und Innovation. Paragrana. Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie 25 (1). Berlin: De Gruyter, 195–​254. Steinert, U. 2017. “Concepts of the Female Body in Mesopotamian Gynecological Texts,” in J. Z. Wee, ed., The Comparable Body: Analogy and Metaphor in Ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-​Roman Medicine. Studies in Ancient Medicine. Leiden: Brill, 275–​357. Steinert, U. 2018. “Catalogues, Texts and Specialists: Some Thoughts on the Assur Medical Catalogue, Mesopotamian Medical Texts and Healing Professions,” in U. Steinert, ed., Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues: Medicine, Magic and Divination. BAM 9. Berlin: De Gruyter, 158–​200. Steinert, U. 2020a. “Disease Concepts and Classifications in Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine,” in U. Steinert, ed., Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures. London: Routledge, 140–​194. Steinert, U. 2020b. “Healing Substances in Mesopotamian Women’s Health Care Texts: Properties, Effects and Cultural Meanings.” JMC 36: 54–72. Steinert, U. Forthcoming. “Created to Bleed: Blood, Women’s Bodies and Gender in Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine,” in L. Lehmhaus and C. F. Salazar, eds., Female Bodies and Female Practitioners in the Medical Traditions of the Late Antique Mediterranean World. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Steinert, U., S. V. Panayotov, M. J. Geller, E. Schmidtchen, and J. C. Johnson. 2018. “The Assur Medical Catalogue (AMC),” in U. Steinert, ed., Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues: Medicine, Magic and Divination. Babylonisch-​Assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen 9. Berlin: De Gruyter, 203–​291. Stökl, J. 2012. Prophecy in the Ancient Near East: A Philological and Sociological Comparison. Leiden: Brill. Stol, M. 1993. Epilepsy in Babylonia. Groningen: Styx Publications. Stol, M. 2007. “Fevers in Babylonia,” in I. L. Finkel and M. J. Geller, eds., Disease in Babylonia. Leiden: Brill, 1–​39. Stol, M. 2016. Women in the Ancient Near East. Berlin: De Gruyter. Stroeken, K. 2008. “Sensory Shifts and ‘Synaesthetics’ in Sukuma Healing,” in E. Hsu, ed., The Senses and the Social. Special Issue. Ethnos 73 (4): 466–​484. Suárez-​Toste, E. 2013. “One Man’s Cheese Is Another Man’s Music: Synaesthesia and the Bridging of Cultural Differences in the Language of Sensory Perception,” in R. Caballero and J. E. Díaz Vera, eds., Sensuous Cognition: Explorations into Human Sentience. Imagination, (E)motion and Perception. Berlin: De Gruyter, 169–​191. Thavapalan, S. 2020. The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Thomsen, M.-​L. 1992. “The Evil Eye in Mesopotamia.” JNES 51: 19–​32. Toner, J., ed. 2014. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Totelin, L. 2015. “Smell as Sign and Cure in Ancient Medicine,” in M. Bradley, ed., Smell and the Ancient Senses. New York: Routledge, 17–​29. Walker, C. B. F. 1980. “Some Mesopotamian Inscribed Vessels.” Iraq 42: 84–​86. Wee, J. Z. 2019a. Knowledge and Rhetoric in Medical Commentary: Ancient Mesopotamian Commentaries on a Handbook of Medical Diagnosis (Sa-​gig). Leiden: Brill. Wee, J. Z. 2019b. Mesopotamian Commentaries on the Diagnostic Handbook Sa-​gig: Edition and Notes on Medical Lexicography. Leiden: Brill. Worthington, M. 2005. “Edition of UGU 1 (= BAM 480 etc.).” JMC 5: 6–​43. Zisa, G. 2019. “Going, Returning, Rising: The Movement of the Organs in the Mesopotamian Anatomy.” KASKAL –​Rivista di storia, ambienti e culture del Vicino Oriente Antico 16: 453–​476. 516

24 The understanding of intellectual and sensorial impairment in the Hebrew Bible Edgar Kellenberger

Introduction This chapter studies the conceptions of intellectual disability in the Hebrew Bible and how they relate to an understanding of sensory experiences (or an inability to sense) in that and important related texts. This study is based on the assumption that observations of people with intellectual disabilities are helpful in gaining basic knowledge about being human at all, a general aim of sensory studies. This chapter only mentions other (physical) disabilities when they occur in combination with intellectual disability, and indeed, such cases of multiple impairments are frequent. Overall, the Hebrew Bible offers only scant information on this topic. There is therefore a heuristic need to include Mesopotamia, whose texts offer a wider range of information for the sake of comparison, while also acknowledging that major cultural differences existed in the past.1 The fields of both sensory studies and disability studies and their approaches are difficult to reconcile with the ancient biblical texts. Therefore, it is first necessary to clarify the relationship between sensory studies and disability, then discuss their different views of intellect, and finally to explore other aspects of impaired senses. After these methodological discussions, more concrete examples follow. These more focused examples to explore disability with the context of multisensorial are Israelite festivals, which appealed to all senses, and selected examples of disability related to individual senses, especially touch.

Links between sensory studies and disabilities If scholars of sensory studies are interested in disability, it is based on the observation that people with a cognitive disability have deficits in their sensory perception. Their lack of sensory awareness and/​or the perceptual differences inspire researchers to expect new insights into the meaning and function of the senses.2 In today’s disability studies it is taken for granted that the understanding of disability is culturally conditioned (see for example Goodey and Rose 2013). But before we can easily talk about a social construct of earlier societies, we require self-​critical

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-25

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questioning of the social construct of today’s society, since it involuntarily influences historical research. It is not surprising that a medical model of disability, one based on the study of anatomical or physiological deficits, continues to hold its own against the social and cultural models, which rely on societal perceptions of such deficits. The fact that the complex perceptions of disability cannot be mastered is shown by the fact that in both the ancient and modern languages there are surprisingly numerous, almost synonymously used terms for people with intellectual or sensorial impairments. The complex world of disability can be captured neither in a single model nor in a mix of different models.

Evaluations of the intellect Since modern times, the inadequate ability to think has increasingly come under scrutiny. The early Enlightenment philosopher John Locke was particularly influential. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) fundamentally promoted the (largely modern) concentration on the intellect. He rejects Aristotelian Hylomorphism, that is to say the importance of the bodily form as a criterion of being human (Frost 2020).3 Locke thus distinguishes himself from medieval theologians such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, who classified disabled people as “monsters” who, like other people, had a soul and were therefore to be baptised. But Locke denies that there is any evidence that idiots have souls as typical human beings do. Whoever is outside of a rational creature is as soulless as a corpse.4 Those who cannot “distinguish, compare, and abstract”5 are called “idiots” or “changelings” by Locke. These differ in their permanent defect of the intellectual faculties fundamentally from the mad men, who have in no way lost the “faculty of reasoning,” but “err as men do, that argue right from wrong principles” (Locke 1690: 2:11:13). Thus the mad men are a variant of being human; however, the idiots are neither humans nor animals, but despite their human form a species in between (Locke 1690: 3:6:22–​ 23).6 They have senses, like children and animals, but have not the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction (Locke 1690: 2:11:11). The situation in the ancient Near East cannot be perceived by Locke’s modern glasses. The Mesopotamian and biblical texts that are extant, preserve human experiences that can serve as helpful corrections of the modern separation between the senses and an intellect being able to abstract. Contrary, the Akkadian lexeme lillu (fool, moron) as well as the Hebrew lexemes pætî (simpleton) and kěsîl (fool) show a significantly larger scope of meaning;7 they can describe either a person who lives with an intellectual disability or a mental illness according to today’s definition, or a normally gifted person with momentarily inappropriate behaviour. Sometimes a differentiation becomes clear by the formulation that someone was “born” as a lillu or a kěsîl. However, this precision is not always present in the texts. The fact that our current differentiations are not paralleled in ancient ones can be seen in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where there is a detailed and standardised portrait of an anonymous lillu in contrast to the privileged King Gilgamesh (X, 270–​278; George 2003, with English translation). The lillu is incapable of earning his bread, which is why he lives from the waste and poor clothing he receives from his fellow human beings. Unlike Gilgamesh, the lillu has neither a counsellor nor can he give advice himself. Gilgamesh actually has the royal duty to care for such people;8 but instead he wanders the world in search of eternal life so that he himself behaves like a helpless lillu. In an earlier episode of the epic, Gilgamesh is called a lillu explicitly by his monstrous foil, Humbaba, who mocks him during an emotional dispute that precedes a lethal scuffle (V, 86; see Streck 2007: 414).9 In a similar manner, for the Hebrew Bible, today’s differentiation between a natural-​born fool and an occasional idiot with average intelligence does not apply. This becomes particularly clear 518

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in the book of Proverbs, which as a form of wisdom literature is rich in aphorisms (in poetic form) reflecting on human life: “The simpleton (pætî) believes everything,10 but the shrewd man (ʿārûm) measures his steps” (Prov. 14:15). Also Proverbs 22:3 does not distinguish between momentary or lifelong misconduct: “A prudent man (ʿārûm) sees danger, and hides himself; but the simpletons go on, and suffer the consequences.” These proverbs and the Gilgamesh passage describe people who do not coordinate their senses in the same way as abled persons. Just as with the intellect, the use of the senses needs to be critically scrutinised in order not to appear as a (permanent or occasional) simpleton. Stupid and inadequate intellectual behaviours belong to general human characteristics. Mesopotamian people could confess before their fellow men that at a certain moment they have acted as a lillu.11 However, this did not prevent a lifelong lillu from the social situation of falling under distress (as we see in the Epic of Gilgamesh). This happened primarily because of an individual’s social and economic vulnerability and not because of a fundamental devaluation of reasoning such that integration into working society was hindered. The same is true for sensorial impairments. In fact, in Mesopotamian society, a sensorial deficit such as a hearing impairment could not be distinguished from an intellectual disability; indeed, the former often inevitably led to and could be conflated with the latter. Characteristic in Akkadian literature is the broad spectrum of meaning of the lexeme sakku (or sukkuku), meaning “blocked, hearing impaired, [and in consequence] stupid” (CAD S: 77–​78, 362–​363). This may be a multiple disability, as is often the case in reality (by nature or due to lack of educational support), or an intellectual weakness may have been falsely asserted when a hearing disability appeared.

Aspects of sensorial deficits beyond intellectual impairment The patriarchal figures Jacob, Moses, and the prophet Isaiah are part of Israel’s salvation history. In this respect, these texts have a polemical character: they challenge a conventional view of disability as deficitary, and they demonstrate that Yahweh can use disabilities of the human senses for salvation and for judgement. Moses, who rejects God’s commission exclaims, “I am not a man of words […], my mouth and my tongue are heavy (kābēd)” (Exod. 4:10). But Yahweh insists on this commission for Moses and responds: “ ‘Who gives one man speech and makes another deaf and dumb? Or who gives sight to one and makes another blind? Is it not I, Yahweh?’ ” (4:11). In this way, Yahweh’s sovereignty creates people who are less than perfect in abilities, but also gives them special powers through divine commission. This is further exemplified in one of the most mysterious texts of the Hebrew Bible, the poem about the “Suffering Servant of the Lord” (Isa. 52:13–​53:12). The occasion of this text and its integration into the context of the book remain much debated.12 It is even controversial whether the Servant is a single person or a collective. The poem focuses on the physical disfigurement, and alleged moral deficits of the Servant. In this poem, the Servant is “beaten” (Hebrew n-​g-​‘, “to touch, to strike”) by Yahweh and by the guilt of the people (Isa. 53:4, 8). Although it does not specifically mention sensorial deficits, certainly the idea of a dangerous and intense experience of touch and injury to the body—​even pain—​through Yahweh is present. In fact, the poem of the Suffering Servant uses numerous terms of illness and disability (Schipper 2011) in describing the Servant: he was “disfigured” (mišḥat) and “not of human appearance”; he had “neither form nor appearance that we might have liked him”; he was “a man of pain and familiar with disease”; considered “beaten and humiliated by Yahweh”; and “it pleased Yahweh to crush him with sickness.” Paradoxically,Yahweh also used the Servant as a guilt-​offering (‘āšām).13 This Servant (an honorific title in Hebrew!) with his physical and presumably sensorial impairments 519

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due to bodily injury is thus in complete contradiction to Israel’s expectations and emotions, which is why the people could only “be horrified” by him and gave him a “grave in the midst of sinners.” The challenge of accepting the paradox of a fruitful disability (Isa. 52:13; 53:11–12) was too steep. Other texts from the Hebrew Bible refer to the destructive power of Yahweh’s touch, using the Hebrew root n-​g-​‘ (“to touch, to strike”). Jacob, who is afraid of the imminent collision with his betrayed and vengeful twin brother Esau, struggles for the blessing of Yahweh for a night before he meets Esau; during this struggle he is beaten on the hip by Yahweh, which causes him to limp. As a man with a limp who is also blessed, he confesses: ‟I have seen Yahweh face to face, yet my life has been spared” (Gen. 32:31). Thus due to his physical suffering, experience of pain and disability, Jacob became the ancestor of Israel and received from Yahweh the new, honorary name “Israel” (Gen. 32:29). The prophet Isaiah has a similar situation. In a vision he sees Yahweh’s robe filling the whole temple, surrounded by the calls of the seraphs “holy, holy, holy is Yahweh Zebaot” (Isa. 6). On his shock that he lives with “unclean lips among a people with unclean lips”, a seraph comes and touches (n-​g-​ʿ) Isaiah’s lips with a fiery coal: “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” Through this painful act where his ability to speak or taste is possibly compromised, Isaiah becomes ready for a divine commission. Whether symbolically or physically challenged, Isaiah receives the order to preach to a people who will not listen to his message: “Go and say to this people: ‘Listen carefully, but you shall not understand! Look intently, but you shall know nothing!’ You are to make the heart of this people full of oil (otherwise always associated with positive associations!), to make their ears heavy (kābēd) and close (?) their eyes; so that their eyes will not see, their ears not hear, nor their heart understand.” This prophetic text, addressed to an “abled” audience, is full of ambiguities, without the contradictions being resolved.14 Though Yahweh is punishing, the social vulnerability of hearing and visually impaired people, with or without visible disfigurement and/​or the sensorial experience of painful touch, can be seen in the Old Testament protective and legalistic provisions: “You shall not curse a hearing-​ impaired person, and you shall not put an obstacle in the way of a visually impaired person” (Lev. 19:14). Those who are unable to hear cannot defend themselves against a curse whose infallible effect was believed in Israel. For the protection of the visually impaired there is a further provision in Deuteronomy 27:18: “Cursed is he who leads a visually impaired person astray.” This curse provision—​one in a series of twelve—​refers to offences that are committed secretly so that the senses of the controlling community are consequently switched off. Therefore, the evildoers cannot be detected and punished by society; only God will punish them effectively and protect the impaired individuals from the threat of disability. For apotropaic reasons the community must hear these curses regularly and respond aloud with “Amen.” Among the twelve misdemeanours that cannot be seen by witnesses, other socially vulnerable groups of people are also represented, including: elderly parents, widows and orphans, strangers (presumably as day labourers), and female relatives who have been sexually abused. In all these provisions, social and economic vulnerability due to contact with these dangers is more threatening than due to any actual sensorial disability.15 It can be assumed that disabilities in the ancient world were more common than they are today, or at least had greater effect on lifelong existence (see, e.g., Pudsey 2017). Even a bone fracture caused by an accident could lead to a lifelong incapacity for work due to a lack of therapeutic treatment options; similar consequences could also be caused by illnesses (for example, damage to the intellect after an infection such as meningitis). The well-​documented Mesopotamian medical corpora show differentiated responses to this reality (see also Chapter 23, this volume). The detailed Diagnostic and Prognostic Series distinguishes between three main types of prognosis 520

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due to sensorial injury: the patient will die or he will recover/​receive the hand of a (concrete) deity or a ghost, who can be summoned by incantations or other magical and medical activities (Scurlock 2014: 13–​271).16 At least in the case of sensory or intellectual impairment (blindness, deafness, lillu) it is noticeable that the medical texts do not mention any therapeutic measures, although the phenomena were of course known to them.17 Apparently the professionals knew from experience about their lack of success with extreme sensory and cognitive dysfunctions and therefore did not consider themselves to be responsible (Scurlock and Andersen 2005: 550–​ 551). They also refrained from magic-​therapeutic practices for such individuals.18 On the other hand, we find magical actions against demons whose malicious activities could be prevented by making the demons blind (or paralysed or stupid) (see also Chapter 23, this volume). Strikingly, the demons—​and not the humans—​became non-​functional due to magical practices.19 Birth anomalies are very often associated with multiple physical and mental impairments at all times. Even today, a crystal-​clear distinction cannot be made between intellectual disability due to genetic or congenital defect, and mental illness. In this respect, earlier cultures with their polyvalent terminology are quite flexible and fluid in their understanding of disability or sensory deprivation, and their texts emphasise more the consequences of a disability. In the case of multiple impairments, it is noticeable that the texts primarily mention visible physical abnormalities (blind, lame, epileptic, etc.), but rarely the intellectual aspects that often go hand in hand with them.20 In Mesopotamia, blind people were employed as agricultural workers, reed weavers, grain grinders, musicians, and singers (Kellenberger 2017: 52, with further literature). Three Neo-​Assyrian letters mention the right of nameless deaf persons to receive bread rations in the name of the king (Reynolds 2003: 121–​123). It is not clear whether we are dealing here with alms or whether they were able to work and the rations comprised their pay. A thousand years earlier, lists from Mari mention royal personnel who receive garments as a sort of salary. Among them are two nameless deaf individuals (ARM 18: 74–​75), but also a woman named Jadida who is given the label lillatu (fem. of lillu) (ARM 21: 333 and 23: 446).21 Likewise, the economically strong temples in Mesopotamia, which owned many estates, employed many such people. Sumerian administrative lists from the end of the third millennium BCE inform us about blind and other socially disadvantaged people, who were donated by family members as workers or slaves to the temple and worked in estates of the institutional textile industry (Gelb 1972: 10).22 The integration of people with disabilities into community life is an issue in the Sumerian myth Enki and Ninmaḫ as well.23 Here two drunken deities compete with each other through a bet: will one deity be capable of integrating into society disabled people whom the other deity will create? Of the seven people whom the goddess Ninmaḫ created as handicapped, four are sent by Enki into the service of the king: a man who could not bend his outstretched weak hands, a man with visual problems, a lillu (lu.lil), and a person without a penis or vagina. However, this Sumerian text probably by no means describes an ideal and successful integration, but rather was composed as a farce, produced by the scribal school and caricaturing a partly incompetent royal administration (Kellenberger 2011: 146–​147; cf. Ceccarelli 2016). Two Hebrew proverbs shed light on the problems faced by the parents of people with cognitive disabilities who could not be integrated into working society: “Fathering a fool (kěsîl) brings grief; the father of an aggressive fool (nābāl) has no joy” (Prov. 17:21). And with regard to father and mother: “A foolish son is vexation to his father, and bitter sorrow to her who bore him” (Prov. 17:25). These proverbs are unique within the ancient Near East.24 Strikingly, any reproach is missing, but empathy towards the family becomes clear. This leads us to assume that the sufferings described here arose within the intellectual class, which composed Proverbs (see, e.g., Clifford 2001). Because of the hereditary nature of court offices and professions in the ancient Near East, an intellectually handicapped son potentially meant an economic and perhaps 521

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social catastrophe for the family. Again, the fluidity of the terms used to connote foolishness is to be noted; there is no clear differentiation between intellectual, behavioural, and psychic impairments. In all three cases the senses are affected in one way or another; but a social and economic integration is equally difficult, such devastation rendered it unnecessary to differentiate between these impairments in courtly or priestly texts.

Multisensorial festivals: chances for repetition Just as the lack of the ability to sense had social implications, so did the abundance and multiplicity of sensorial experiences, which therefore became more important to those individuals with a deficit in one or more senses. The importance of festivities that appeal to all senses should not be underestimated. Even people with limited senses or cognitive impairments could participate and understand essential things. Biblical texts clearly mention the active participation of ordinary people in important commensural and ceremonial feasts, whereas Mesopotamian texts focus their interest more on the elites (but cf. Zgoll 2006: 66–​67). Deuteronomy 16:11–​15 emphasises the cheerful character of both the Feast of Weeks (at the time of the grain harvest) and the autumn Feast of Tabernacles/​Sukkôt (after all the harvesting has been completed). The text programmatically names members of the community who should participate in these feasts: sons and daughters; servants and maids; as well as strangers, widows, and orphans. It is particularly noteworthy that landless persons (also the individual classified as the Levite in Deut. 16:11) cannot bring to the sanctuary any harvest gifts provided for in Deuteronomy 16:10; however, such disadvantaged individuals are not excluded from the festive commensality in general, merely from bringing voluntary gifts.25 The biblical festival descriptions are formulated in the Torah by two diverging traditions: the Deuteronomic texts and the Priestly Code.26 Both traditions regarding the Passover rituals allow participants to touch children and adults with a sensory or intellectual impairment. The priestly traditions (see Exod. 12) involving the senses include: the father as the leader of the ritual, the solemn atmosphere among the members of the family present, the special food as a reminder of the departure from Egypt, shoes on the feet and walking stick as a sign of an imagined departure, the bright full moon night. At the same time, those who could not intellectually understand all the details still were allowed a strong impression of belonging due to the multisensorial nature of the rituals. Even a hearing-​impaired person could still experience many special features of the rituals because there was much to see, to taste, and to smell (although meat was rarely consumed, but particularly at festivals). The later Passover Haggadah, a Jewish liturgy formulated in post-​biblical times, explicitly mentions the instruction of four typical sons: the intelligent, the wrongdoer (the unbeliever), the simple-​minded,27 and the one who does not know how to ask questions. This is a concretisation of emphasis in the Hebrew Bible on passing on familial and cultural memories to the next generation (“if your son asks you … you shall explain to him …”) (Exod. 12:26–​27; 13:8,14; Deut. 6:20–​25; 4:9; 6:7; 11:19; Jos. 4:6). This also assumes the possibility that while some members of the next generation will be able to properly comprehend cognitively the memories and educational lessons of the traditions and rituals, other members may not due to their cognitive disabilities. Still, these intellectually impaired sons cannot be ignored and left out of community practices. In addition to containing ritualised meals and discussions, Israel’s three main festivals (Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and autumnal Sukkôt) involved pilgrimages to a sanctuary.28 For a long time this was a small, local or regional shrine easily accessible within a day’s journey. But with the concentration on the journey to the single temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem, which scholars 522

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postulate occurred after the Deuteronomic reform of the biblical texts in the seventh century BCE (2 Kgs. 23:21–​23), the pilgrimage required several days of travel by pack animal or by foot.29 The Hebrew Bible does not mention whether people with a disability participated in the festivals outside the family home or on the pilgrimage journeys. But possibly these socially vulnerable people were protected and included by other family members, or under the sometimes-​protected social groups such as widows and orphans. In any case, for several reasons, celebrations offered great opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities. Regularly recurring events must have helped them to orient themselves within the community, whereas if alone, they could be quickly overwhelmed by new, unexpected situations (cf. Prov. 22:3, “A prudent man sees danger, and hides himself; but the simpletons go on, and suffer the consequences”). Traditional multisensory festivals, which occurred on a regular basis, must have been particularly favourable for the inclusion of individuals with cognitive disabilities.30 Through their archaic character as well as through their clear structuring,31 they enabled the imitation of the other participants (by seeing and hearing) and at the same time strengthened the social belonging and sense of identity of such people. As just one example, repeated listening to the same liturgical texts and refrains (e.g., Ps. 136) is helpful to those without hearing deficits. People with an intellectual impairment may have been particularly dependent on the repetitiveness of festivals in order to orient themselves in a world that they experienced as largely chaotic. Even if someone understood the agrarian elements of the festival, but was less able to absorb the theological explanations concerning the history of Israelite salvation, the community experience was strong. Significantly, the texts take this reality into account by not limiting themselves to theological explanations, but several times emphasise the cheerful atmosphere with the sensual pleasures of eating and drinking, linking memories of these commensal festivals for sensorially abled and disabled alike.32 In addition, the annual repetition of the festival also made joyful anticipation possible. Those who took part in the efforts of the harvesting work—​and here we can suppose also people with an intellectual impairment—​were able to continue their hard labour thanks to the anticipation of the upcoming festival.33

Ambiguous aspects of the sense of touch In contrast to the multisensory festivals, which also lead to better orientation due to their repetitions, everyday life is more difficult for people with cognitive impairments. Especially when one or more senses are impaired, the other non-​impaired senses are all the more necessary for orientation. Modern experience demonstrates that the sense of touch is essential for people with an intellectual disability, which often involves a visual or oral (or processing) deficit. This portion of the chapter therefore concentrates on the sense of touch.34 People with an intellectual impairment are often unable to correctly assess and react to singular situations (cf. above Prov. 22:3) that do not involve repetition, and in many everyday situations only one sense is required and indispensable. At best, they can infer from the annoying reaction of their counterparts that they did not adequately react in a situation. However, they are often overwhelmed and try to draw the right conclusions and then make it better. They also fear that the relationship with their counterparts could suffer or end. In modern life, it is important for people with intellectual or physical disabilities to make sure that they have physical contact with others. The sense of touch, in its active as well as passive aspect, is a particularly diverse sense with strong responses and therefore deserves special consideration related to understanding sensorial or cognitive disability in the ancient Near East.35 This is also reflected in the languages of the region: the lexemes for “touch,” Akkadian lapātu36 and Hebrew n-​g-​ʿ, have a broad semantic 523

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spectrum. They denote more firm grabbing gestures, as well as tender touches, and include those with both ominous/​injurious and healing consequences. This broad semantic spectrum shows that contact itself is more important than the method of contact. A tender touch can be equally as intense as a firm one.37 The analogous Hebrew root for touch, n-​g-​ʿ, shows an equally broad degree of intensity. It is noticeable that divine n-​g-​ʿ usually has negative consequences,38 or at least is ambiguous.39 The noun nægaʿ denotes a divine plague or a physical anomaly; in Psalms 39:11 a sufferer interprets his contact-​induced disaster as a punishment by God; and physical anomalies like the skin diseases described in Leviticus 13–​14 are also designated as nægaʿ.40 Gentle touches are rare.41 Rather, God’s way of intense “touching” with wind is potentially dangerous: in Job 1:19, a storm wind shatters the house. How gently or massively a messenger of God touches the sleeping Elijah (1 Kgs. 19:3–​7) or touches Daniel, who is frightened by a vision, and then stands on his feet (Dan. 8:8 etc.), remains unclear. On the other hand, Jacob’s wrestling with the enigmatic Elohim, who hits him on the hip, is ambiguous or dual in nature, since Jacob will end up disabled and limping his entire life, yet at the same time he has been blessed (Gen. 32:26–​30). A similar paradox is experienced by the prophet Isaiah, who is touched by a seraph with fiery charcoal and thus freed from his guilt (Isa. 6:5–​7). This procedure is therefore painful and healing at the same time. There are also other formulations and contexts of the semantic range for words related to the sense of touch, where Yahweh’s messengers enact healing through touch. As one example, Elisha awakens a boy from death by lying down on the child who is in bed, places his mouth on the boy’s mouth, fixes his eyes on the boy’s eyes, and places his palms on the boy’s palms. As Elisha bends over (g-​h-​r) the boy, this extreme physical contact causes the boy’s body to warm up again; and after an interruption Elijah bends (g-​h-​r) over the boy again until the boy sneezes seven times and opens his eyes (2 Kgs. 4:32–​35). The detailed narrative as well as the rare Hebrew form of the root, g-​h-​r (cf. also 1 Kgs. 18:42) suggest that a special technique of touch and healing is taught here that can also be applied in other situations by the successors of Elisha.42 Today, such activities are mostly considered irrational “magic,” which often involved touching materia medica onto bodily surfaces. But this modern notion excludes the possibility that such modes of touching were different in the reality of experience in ancient Israel and many related ancient cultures. In fact, intense physical contact related to ideas of healing is important to many other people, both in ancient cultures and in today’s “rational”/​scientific world. In the biblical world, the prophet Isaiah orders a recipe of rubbing a fig extract into the ulcer of King Hezekiah to heal him (Isa. 38:21).43 In Mesopotamia, the detailed manual Muššu’u (“Rubbings”) is an important text (Böck 2007), and other texts also mention massage therapies.44 The fact that such massages are often associated with incantations should not guide our gaze one-​sidedly to the magical aspect, but must also take into account the therapeutic effect of physical communication and the multisensorial nature of healing activities beyond touch.45

Conclusion: power and disability This chapter attempted to combine sensory studies with the perception of intellectual and sensorial disabilities. This experimental attempt resulted in several interactions between the two states of human-​ness. However, no systematic representation is yet possible as long as the historical research related to intellectual disability is still in its infancy (and presumably we may never be able to systematise medically and rationally the real complexity of disability). In general, the Hebrew Bible demonstrates an ambivalence or ambiguity towards intellectual and physical disabilities, in its descriptions and attitudes towards intellectually, physically, or sensorially disabled

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individuals. There seems to be a general assumption by biblical writers that their audience was normatively “abled” in their descriptions of events, rituals, and important landscapes. Conversely, some important figures are made disabled by Yahweh in order to fulfil their tasks for the community. They stand out in their disabilities and therefore were made exceptional. Those members of the community who had intellectual or physical disabilities in particular required special protection and were not necessarily excluded from communal events. The potential of these biblical concepts has not been fully recognised yet, either for today’s disability and sensory studies, or for thinking about the essence of humankind in general.46

Notes 1. Another heuristic instrument that is indispensable for me are my biographical experiences, particularly with our son (born 1970, adopted) who lives with considerable cognitive, intellectual, and physical impairments. As an exegete of biblical texts, I learned much by relating his elementary reactions critically to the ancient texts. Many results of actual disability studies are linked to experiences with physical impairments and cannot be transferred to intellectual impairment. For a more appropriate view see Swinton 2012 (with literature). 2. The question of what resources these people use to shape their lives is particularly fruitful. Considering the aspect of the senses is an important corrective to the restrictive aspect of (deficient) intelligence. 3. For precursors of such ideas see Daston and Park 1998: 220–​253. 4. Locke 1690: 4:4:15; Kant 1798: 49 also discusses “stupidity” as “soullessness.” 5. “Those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on. Those who cannot distinguish, compare, and abstract, would hardly be able to understand and make use of language, or judge or reason to any tolerable degree; but only a little and imperfectly about things present, and very familiar to their senses. And indeed any of the forementioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce suitable defects in men’s understandings and knowledge” (Locke 1690: 2:11:12). 6. The consequences of Locke’s criterion of reasoning show up among others in the nineteenth century, when one began to measure intelligence by means of an intelligence quotient and to divide the handicapped into several classes. While in modern society all disabled people are considered to be entitled to educational advancement, this right must always be fought for. 7. The etymological derivation of the lexemes lillu (AHw 2:553 supposes an onomatopoeic word for “babbling”), pætî (“seducible”), and kěsîl (“sluggish”) is uncertain; cf. Gesenius 2013: 1089–​ 1090, 561. 8. “Have thought for him, Gilgamesh! […]” (278). The whole passage is a speech by Utanapishtim, the sole survivor of the Flood, who is questioned by Gilgamesh about the possibility of achieving eternal life. 9. The most recent study about lillu is Kağnici 2018a. 10. The complex semantics of pætî is manifested in the Greek translation of the Ancient Testament, the Septuagint, which uses three lexemes for this purpose, each illuminating one aspect of pætî: his childishness (nēpios), his naivety or innocence (akakos), as well as his silly behaviour (aphrōn). The Babylonian inscriptions on land ownership documents (kudurru) with their prophylactic curses against people who incite a blind, deaf, or intellectually disabled person to destroy the documentary stone or carry it away, show a parallel in kind. Significantly, the curse formulas are directed exclusively against the unscrupulous instigators, but not against the unsuspecting executors (Kellenberger 2017: 49). 11. So e.g., Eidem 2001: 4 and 70. 12. For an overview of the main interpretation problems, see, e.g., Goldingay and Payne 2007: 275–​284. 13. Although the Hebrew Bible, with its long redactive history, is not consistent with respect to disfigurement, according to Lev. 22:25 and Mal. 1:14; no sacrificial animal that is “disfigured” (mišḥat) or “sick” may be sacrificed, because Yahweh would not be pleased with such an unworthy sacrifice. 14. For discussion of these ambiguities, see Kellenberger 1992. 15. Analogous Mesopotamian provisions are unknown to me. But there are prayers with hymnic formulations of a divine protection of the feeble (le’û), the lillu (or the nearly synonymous ulālu), and, in analogy, the pætî in the Hebrew Bible (Ps. 116:6); see Kellenberger 2011: 128–​129.

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16. The prognosis of death is more frequent for the neurological disorders (Tablets 26–​29), “an apparent subspecialty of the āšipu’s craft” (Scurlock 2014: 9). 17. See, e.g., Scurlock 2014: 250 (Tablet 36: 61–​62) for birth of a deaf child (sukkuku). Also the collections of omina regularly mention people with bodily and cognitive impairments (Kellenberger 2017: 48). 18. My review of the numerous texts produced a negative result. I do not know any scholarly comment on this question. 19. For examples, see Kellenberger 2013: 457; and Abusch and Schwemer 2011: 143, 186. 20. This may be related to the fact that pre-​industrial societies are more quickly overtaxed to integrate physically disabled people into the work process, whereas intellectually disabled people are more likely to be employed in agriculture, as can be observed until today in peripheral rural societies, but is hardly mentioned in ancient texts (perhaps because this integration by simple and repetitive work was considered problem-​free). 21. After the lillatu are mentioned: an ecstatic (prophetess?) and a singer. 22. There is no certainty whether these people were donated for religious reasons or because of their low work performance. 23. See Lambert 2013: 336–​342; Ceccarelli 2016; Kağnici 2018b. 24. Instead the Babylonian Theodicy (lines 262–​263) brings a problematic consolation: “The first son will be born as a lillu, the second one will be a (successful) hero.” 25. For the Deuteronomic emphasis on the joy of worship see Braulik 1988. For the integration of marginal groups see also the story of the widow Ruth from the non-​Israelite land of Moab (the Book of Ruth is recited regularly during the annual Festival of Weeks). 26. In the traditional literature we can define generally the scribal-​Deuteronomic or priestly milieus of the texts, but the exact time of the composition and writing of each text is difficult to determine. The Priestly version of the Passover order in Exodus 12 presupposes the situation of exile and the destroyed temple, which is why the Passover festival is described as a purely domestic celebration in which the whole household takes part with a long-​lasting meal (and this form will become the only possible one after the destruction of the second temple by the Romans). 27. Sources (with textual variants) are presented by Kulp (2009: 205–​210, with English translation and commentary). 28. The complex background of the fusion of the Passover festival (originating from the pastoral culture) with the Mazzot festival (concerning agriculture) cannot be considered here. Berlejung (2003) gives a good overview of the festivals of Israel and their presumable functions. 29. The best-​known participant of the Passover festival is actually known from the New Testament text, a useful comparandum, when the 12-​year-​old Jesus from northern Nazareth (who has just come of age), attends the Passover festival in Jerusalem with other members of his community. 30. However, this does not apply to all disabilities. People with autism observed today cannot tolerate sensory overload. 31. For a modern (rather secular) example, I mention that in our former place of residence there was an annual walking around the city boundaries, which was celebrated with archaic rites. Only men were allowed; all wore hats decorated with flowers. Rifle salvos testified to the fortifiability of this purely male society. Although our son was repeatedly frightened by this sudden noise, and despite certain restrictions on his mobility, he enthusiastically took on the strains of the march of several hours. When I asked him who he was, he answered spontaneously (identifying himself with his father and his profession): “Now I am the pastor.” 32. “Since YHWH your god has blessed you in all your crops and in all work of your hands, you shall do nought but make merry” (Deut. 16:15). Happy moments also arose in two further celebrations, which, however, only become tangible from the Hellenistic age onwards and should only be briefly mentioned here: Purim and Hanukkah. The multisensory Purim feast is attractive, among other things, because of the custom that relatives give each other food and that poor people are given gifts (Est. 9:19–​22). The biblical book Esther shows caricature-​like and carnivalesque features. Also the Hanukkah feast was celebrated at home, with solemn impressions of the ritual lighting of the lights during the festive week (2 Makk. 10:5–​8 and Josephus Antiquit. 12: 323–​325). The Sabbath can only briefly be mentioned because the texts unfortunately give such an incomplete picture that the consequences for people with a disability are not clear enough. The rest from work could also have negative consequences for economically weak day labourers suffering unemployment on Sabbath during harvest. For the legal situation of the day labourer (śākîr) see Exod. 22:14; Lev. 19:13; Deut. 15:18; 24:14. Among the day labourers we can assume impoverished farmers and also people with cognitive impairments. 526

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33. While the Deuteronomic theologians saw the autumnal Sukkôt festival above all as a celebration of thanksgiving, priestly circles associated it with the memory of living in tabernacles during Israel’s migration through the desert. This also made strong impressions possible: the seven times staying overnight in tabernacles, the palm fronds and branches, the cheerful atmosphere (Lev. 23:39–​43; Neh. 8:14–​17). 34. An overview of what biblical texts say about the senses is given by Avrahami 2012, but without reflecting on the problems of impairment. 35. Many fundamental aspects are vividly described in Grunwald 2017. 36. I limit this discussion to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which uses this lexeme about 20 times. In 8:58 Gilgamesh palpates the heart of his friend Enkidu, but it no longer beats. Only four lines earlier he boasted of the common annihilation of their opponent Humbaba. During the boat trip to Utanapishti, the waters of death must not touch Gilgamesh’s hand (10:175). Seemingly more massive was Utanapishti’s shaking the sleeping Gilgamesh (11:216, 233). Also with divine subjects the activities can diverge very much. Gilgamesh’s mother complains to Šamaš that this induced her son to undertake the long journey to the dangerous Humbaba (3:47). On the other hand, we hear of Enlil standing between Utanapishti and his wife after the Flood and touching her forehead for blessing them (11:202). For other Akkadian texts, see CAD L: 82–​94 (a dozen derivatives of the same word stem must also be considered). The many sinister touches, among others, stand out, and the adjective laptu becomes the term for damaged objects or an anomaly of the intestines examined as omens. More rarely, lapātu also refers to therapeutic contact with oil and other substances. 37. This corresponds to the (sometimes irritating) physical contact of people with an intellectual disability; possible forms for this are (often prophylactic) impetuous hugs or long (sometimes convulsive) holding of a hand. 38. For ­example 2 Kgs. 15:5; Lam. 2:2; Job 19:21; Ps. 144:5; Ezek. 13:14; Isa. 25:12. 39. For example Gen. 32:26 and Isa. 6:7 (see below). Most positive is 1 Sam. 10:26 and Jer. 1:9. 40. Further examples: Gen. 12:17; Exod. 11:1; 2 Sam. 7:14. 41. When the wings of the two cherubs in the sanctuary touch one the other (1 Kgs. 6:27), n-​g-​ʿ here (as at other passages) means “to reach towards” in a weakened local meaning. 42. Such techniques are reminiscent of shamanic activities (Gerstenberger 2014: 173–​175). Body contact is important for shamans and for people with an intellectual disability. Both sometimes show a similar above-​average intuition, whereby the former do not reveal any consciousness of a technique. The topic of impaired shamans needs further research. See, e.g., Knüsel 2002: 294 about an excavated grave from France (Iron Age). 43. For the meaning of m-​r-​ḥ see Gesenius 2013 and bŠabbat 75b (Babylonian Talmud). In contrast, the parallel passage 2 Kgs. 20:7 uses ś-​j-​m “to put” instead and apparently thinks of putting on a bandage or a plaster. 44. In addition to muššu’u (CAD M/​2: 282) see also kadādu (CAD K: 29–​30), kâru (CAD K: 239–​240), pašāšu (AHw 2: 843) and eqû (AHw 1: 332), where CAD translates the latter two with “to smear, daub, anoint.” See also ṭerû (AHw 3: 1389 “einmassieren,” but CAD Ṭ: 103, 4 “to beat”). 45. In general, the technically oriented incantation texts remain silent about this haptic aspect. People who we might describe as suffering from a chronic disease or a disability long for physical contact. Its extent is most clearly shown by the ancient literature that comes closest to ordinary and to impaired people: the New Testament gospels, which remain outside the scope of this chapter. A woman who has been suffering from permanent blood flow for 12 years comes to Jesus and secretly touches his garment; and Jesus immediately feels that a power has departed from him (Mark 5:20–​21). Other sick people also at least want to touch Jesus’ garment (Matt. 14:36 etc.); they rush to Jesus for a touch (Mark 3:10). For they know that a healing power emanates from Jesus (Luke 6:19). Accordingly, Jesus communicates by the blind person’s sense of touch and hearing and often heals with a touch: He lays on his hands (Luke 4:40; 13:13). He touches the hand of the unclean leper (Mark 1:41) and the eyes of the blind (Matt 9:29 etc.). He puts his fingers in the deaf man’s ears, touches his tongue with his saliva and sighs (Mark 7:33–​34); so Jesus allows sensory experiences to those with disabilities by means of his fingers and the breath of his sigh. Another time he spits into the eyes of a blind man and lays his hands on him (Mark 8:23 and cf. John 9:6). Again, the rating of saliva is highly ambivalent. Spitting is usually something contemptible (Job 30:10; Isa. 50:6), also in Ugarit (KTU 1.4, 3, 13) and in the Aramaic Aḥiqar-​Proverbs (133). On the other hand, saliva can be used for therapeutic purposes in many cultures, including Mesopotamia. Is this therapeutic effect to be explained exclusively as magic, as, by the way, Jesus was also accused of magic by some contemporaries (e.g., Mark 3:12)? But the fact 527

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that in Mark 7:33 and 8:23 Jesus first takes the handicapped person away from his fellow people before healing shows the intimacy of this physical contact. 46. Also in the ancient Near East there are connections between deities and impairment. The deities Lillu and Sukkukutu (“deafness”) are mentioned several times (see CAD), unfortunately without their active functions becoming clear to us. More concrete is the information about the Egyptian Beš (Kellenberger 2013: 458; 2019; forthcoming).

Bibliography Abusch, Z., and D. Schwemer. 2011. Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-​Witchcraft Rituals. Volume 1. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Avrahami, Y. 2012. The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible. Library of Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Studies 545. New York: T&T Clark. The Babylonian Talmud. 1935–​1948. Trans. I. Epstein et. al. London: Soncino Press. Berlejung, A. 2003. “Heilige Zeiten. Ein Forschungsbericht,” in M. Ebner, ed., Das Fest: Jenseits des Alltags. Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 18. Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 3–​61. Böck, B. 2007. Das Handbuch Muššu’u “Einreibung”: eine Serie sumerischer und akkadischer Beschwörungen aus dem 1. Jt. vor Chr. Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones cientificas. Braulik, G. 1988. Studien zur Theologie des Deuteronomiums. Stuttgarter biblische Aufsatzbände 2. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk. Ceccarelli, M. 2016. Enki und Ninmaḫ. Eine mythologische Erzählung in sumerischer Sprache. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Clifford, R. 2001. Proverbs: A Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Daston, L., and K. Park. 1998. Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–​1750. New York: Zone Books. Eidem, J. 2001. The Shemshara Archive I. The Letters. Copenhagen: Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Frost, G. 2020. “Medieval Aristotelians on Congenital Disabilities and their Early Modern Critics,” in S. Williams, ed., Disability in Medieval Philosophy and Theology. New York: Routledge, 51–​79. Gelb, I. J. 1972. “The Arua Institution.” RA 66: 1–​32. George, A. R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gerstenberger, E. 2014 “Healing Rituals at the Intersection of Family and Society,” in R. Albertz and R. Schmitt, eds., Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant: Toward a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 165–​182. Gesenius, W. 2013. Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament.18. Auflage. Berlin: Springer. Goldingay, J., and D. Payne. 2007. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary to Isaiah 40–​55. Volume 2. London: T&T Clark. Goodey, C. F., and M. L. Rose. 2013. “Mental States, Bodily Dispositions and Table Manners: A Guide to Reading ‘Intellectual’ Disability from Homer to Late Antiquity,” in C. Laes, C. F. Goodey, and M. L. Rose, eds., Disabilities in Roman Antiquity. Leiden: Brill, 17–​44. Grunwald, M. 2017. Homo hapticus. Warum wir ohne Tastsinn nicht leben können. München: Droemer. Josephus, Flavius. 1930. The Jewish Antiquities. Trans. H. S. J. Thackeray. LCL 242. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kağnici, G. 2018a. “Mental Disability (?): On the Akkadian Word lillu.” Archivum Anatolicum 12: 49–​70. Kağnici, G. 2018b. “Insights from Sumerian Mythology: The Myth of Enki and Ninmaḫ and the History of Disability.” Tarik Incelimeleri 33 (2): 429–​450. Kant, I. 1798. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. Königsberg: Fr. Nicolovius. Kellenberger, E. 1992. “Heil und Verstockung. Zu Jes 6,9f. bei Jesaja und im Neuen Testament.” Theologische Zeitschrift 48: 268–​275. Kellenberger, E. 2011. Der Schutz der Einfältigen. Menschen mit einer geistigen Behinderung in der Bibel und in weiteren Quellen. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag. Kellenberger, E. 2013. “Children and Adults with Intellectual Disability in Antiquity and Modernity: Towards a Biblical and Sociological Model.” CrossCurrents 63: 449–​472. Kellenberger, E. 2017. “Mesopotamia and Israel,” in C. Laes, ed., Disability in Antiquity. New York: Routledge, 47–​60.

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Kellenberger, E. 2019. “Learning Difficulties: Intellectual Disability in the Ancient Near East, Classical and Late Antiquity,” in C. Laes, ed., The Cultural History of Disability, Volume 1: Antiquity. London: Bloomsbury, 117–​136. Kellenberger, E. Forthcoming. “The Quest for Down Syndrome (and Other Symptoms) in Antiquity,” in Natural Fools in Antiquity. Turnhout: Brepols. Knüsel, C. J. 2002. “More Circe Than Cassandra: The Princess of Vix in Ritualised Context.” European Journal of Archaeology 5: 275–​308. Kulp, J. 2009. The Schechter Haggadah: Art, History and Commentary in the Thorah. Jerusalem: Schechter Institute. Lambert, W. G. 2013. Babylonian Creation Myths. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Locke, J. 1690/​1714 (1997). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Critical edition by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pudsey, A. 2017. “Disability and Infirmitas in the Ancient World: Demographic and Biological Facts in the Longue Durée,” in C. Laes, ed., Disability in Antiquity. New York: Routledge, 22–​34. Reynolds, F. 2003. The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon and Letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-​šarru-​iškun from Northern and Central Babylonia. SAA 18. Helsinki: Neo-​Assyrian Text Corpus. Schipper, J. 2011. Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scurlock, J. 2014. Sourcebook for Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press. Scurlock, J., and B. R. Andersen. 2005. Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine: Ancient Sources, Translations, and Modern Medical Analyses. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Streck, M. 2007. “Beiträge zum akkadischen Gilgamešepos.” Orientalia 76: 404–​423. Swinton, J. 2012. “From Inclusion to Belonging: A Practical Theology of Community, Disability and Humanness.” Journal of Religion, Disability, and Health 16: 172–​190. Zgoll, A. 2006. “Königslauf und Götterrat. Struktur und Deutung des babylonischen Neujahrsfestes,” in E. Blum and R. Lux, eds., Festtraditionen in Israel und im Alten Orient. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 11–​80.

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25 The distant eye and the ekphrastic image Thinking through aesthetics and art for the senses (Western/​non-​Western) Karen Sonik

Introduction During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, the ideal of (fine) art as the non-​ utilitarian object of disinterested contemplation developed. Concomitantly, new sites of encounter with art, in the form of public museums and galleries, proliferated. And new ideas of how one ought properly to engage with or attend to art—​emerging from flourishing discourses on aesthetics, cognition, and the senses—​arose. Two interrelated notions emerging out of these developments, which continue to shape our contemporary modes of engaging with artworks, are particularly pertinent to this study: (1) the conception of artworks as objects rather than things; and (2) the privileging of viewing as the chief means by which we engage with art and, more broadly, aesthetic objects. Both of these ideas are confounded by ancient and non-​ Western arts (Sonik 2021a) and sensorial systems and experiences (Howes and Classen 2014: 3) that were constituted and regarded within very different ontological, ideological, and material frameworks.1 The designation of artworks as (our) objects establishes them as belonging to and dependent on us; things, in contrast, may not only be acted upon but also act in and on the world as agents in their own right.2 The objectification of artworks (transformed into art objects) was further established by the valorisation of viewing as the dominant mode of interaction with art:3 viewing is a distance sense distinct from seeing,4 one rendered further remote by an attitude of disinterested interest, a deliberately distant and disembodied form of attention (Guyer 1996).5 In its exploration of the senses in relation to aesthetics and art, this chapter begins by exploring the foundations of contemporary Western approaches to these: the intention is to render visible and explicit the ways in which these approaches, some of which seem natural and thus universal, are actually as culturally specific, mediated, contingent, and inculcated as those of other cultures (e.g., Howes and Classen 2014).6 They were constructed within the framework of the very specific social, economic,7 religious,8 scientific,9 gendered,10 and other developments of eighteenth-​ and nineteenth-​century Europe.11 530

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Of particular interest is the manner in which the senses and corporeality were diminished and subjugated (cf. Hogarth’s 1753 “hedonistic aesthetics”12)—​tightly controlled and constrained—​ through the developing discourses of the science of sensuous cognition. The eye was singled out for particular attention as the noblest organ of sense, in part because sight (and, to a lesser extent, hearing) was regarded as a distance sense. It was capable of being both physically remote from and “least affected” by what it regarded (Kant 2006 [1798]: 4, § 19). This discussion lays the groundwork for the latter part of the chapter, a consideration of aesthetics and senses that emphasises alternative (e.g., ancient and non-​Western) conceptions of the eye and seeing, with a case study from ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia occupied the region of ancient Iraq and northeast Syria. From the late fourth millennium BCE , the world’s first urban civilisation arose here, one that has, since its rediscovery by Europe in the mid-​nineteenth century, straddled (albeit uneasily) the line between Western and non-​Western. Though it was rapidly appropriated into the “story of art”13 (de facto Western art), Mesopotamia nevertheless occupied, and continues to occupy, an uneasy and marginal(ised) position within this narrative.14 Its material remains little conform to European conceptions of how art looks and how it should work (or, preferably, not work) in the world. At the same time, Mesopotamia cannot be wholly severed from the Western world or resituated exclusively among non-​Western civilisations.15 Standing in the way are almost two centuries of historiography treating Mesopotamia as Western (or Western enough) and Mesopotamia’s own historical connections to Greece and, later, Rome—​which, even where they are not themselves characterised as Western, continue to be cast as the foundations of Western civilisation. In acknowledgement of Mesopotamia’s historically and historiographically equivocal position, this chapter does two things: (1) it deliberately examines Mesopotamia’s arts and senses within the framework of the Western systems into which they have been appropriated; (2) it casts into high relief the very strangeness, artifice, and incongruity of these same Western systems for the analysis of Mesopotamia’s—​and other ancient and non-​Western—​arts and senses.16 The specific case study from Mesopotamia examined here takes the form of a striking ekphrasis, a vivid written description of a masterwork—​in this case the (divinely perfected) body of the king Gilgamesh—​that illuminates the culturally specific systems of art and aesthetics at work.17 The ekphrasis is selected in preference to any extant visual arts because the latter have frequently been not only fragmented and isolated (decontextualised) from their original cultural frameworks but also appropriated as Western art objects and recontextualised within Western systems of value. The ekphrasis, in contrast, offers a vital glimpse into how the inhabitants of Mesopotamia themselves engaged—​ a strikingly corporeal and sensual engagement—​ with masterworks and other aesthetic objects.

Confronting the legacy of fine art and disinterested aesthetics The distant object: constructing the modern system of the arts The “modern system of the arts,” which is rooted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, came to regard (fine) art as an end in itself.18 Art, according to this view, was created by original and creative genius (Kristeller 1951; 1952; also Abrams 1985a; 1985b). And it existed “simply in order to be looked at or read or listened to with an absorbed, exclusive, and disinterested attention” (Abrams 1985a: 8). The arts created within this system, variously characterised as art by destination or art by intention (Malraux 1954: 65, 127; Maquet 1986: 18–​23; 1979; Errington 1994: 203),19 were explicitly destined to be displayed in museums and galleries where they could be properly viewed and appreciated. But this system of the arts also came to encompass many 531

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ancient and non-​Western (and other) things that were never intended to be art-​as-​such (Abrams 1985a).20 The “modern system of the arts,” importantly, did not accommodate non-​Western or ancient things on their own terms.21 Instead, these were assimilated through diverse means that included their display as objects (suitably neutered), allowing them to be viewed with distanced and disinterested attention within institutional contexts like museums and galleries. Such objects have been termed art by metamorphosis or, more apt, art by appropriation (Errington 1994: 203). But the non-​Western and ancient things so assimilated were rarely intended as (passive) objects to be (distantly) viewed. Their recontextualisation as objects negates their original roles as agents acting in and on the world. The process of appropriating, displaying, and regarding ancient and non-​Western things as Western-​style art objects (by us, the contemporary art-​loving public22) has also changed the things themselves, in ways that range from subtle to savage (Sonik 2021a). These changes encompass (1) physical metamorphoses; (2) transformations in state and transfixions of time and motion; and (3) alterations in context and frame.23 Physical changes inflicted on ancient and non-​Western things to heighten their capacity to serve as collectible and display-​worthy art objects include fragmentation or even amputation, of the type undertaken by 1920s dealers of African things, who stripped the latter’s “soft and fibrous parts rendering them starkly ‘modern’ looking and preserving or creating a particular aesthetic” (Errington 1994: 204); the addition of material, as on “restored” or even combined Classical sculptures;24 and the alteration of material properties to lengthen a work’s lifespan, as through the gluing to canvas of (ephemeral) Navajo sand paintings to create Western-​style paintings (Foster 1963; Classen and Howes 2006: 214). Ancient and non-​Western things may face, too, changes in state or in their relationships to time and motion: things may, for example, be precluded from showing damage, decay, or visible traces of refurbishment, or they may be materially altered or “restored” to preserve a seemingly changeless form.25 They generally undergo also significant alterations in frame, not only through their alienation from their original contexts (in which they may have formed part of larger wholes), but also through their recontextualisations, often as isolated and autonomous objects, in very different types of physical (e.g., carefully designed museums and galleries)26 and psychological space (Solso 1994: 101). Once inside the institutions maintained for the purposes of selecting, displaying, and engaging with art objects, moreover, one is generally limited in one’s sensorial exercise to viewing the objects on display. This is a significant alteration from the types of engagement that occurred in seventeenth-​and early eighteenth-​century collections, in which touch was a vital part of the encounter with the object. It is an even further alteration from the types of (multi)sensorial engagements that occurred in the original cultural contexts of many ancient and non-​Western things (e.g., Pongratz-​Leisten and Sonik 2015: 13–​14, passim).27 Touch as a means of engagement appears gradually to have declined when museums opened up to “the masses” rather than being restricted to elite audiences (see Chapter 4, this volume). The general public, encompassing diverse social classes and manners, was regarded as a threat to collections due to their (feared) rough handling or propensity to theft (Classen 2005b: 275–​ 281). Increased public access was thus associated with the diminution of intimate tactile access and the privileging of (remote) viewing.28 In his brilliant 1957 work of speculative fiction, The Naked Sun, Isaac Asimov drew a compelling distinction between viewing and seeing. Viewing was elucidated as a detached, unidirectional, and long-​distance act. Seeing, in contrast, emerged as a mutual and interactive engagement replete with rich sensual and material possibilities (Asimov 1957: 63):

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“You’re viewing me right now. You can’t touch me, can you, or smell me, or anything like that. You could if you were seeing me. Right now, I’m two hundred miles away from you at least. So how can it be the same thing?” Baley grew interested. “But I see you with my eyes.” “No, you don’t see me. You see my image. You’re viewing me.” This was not to belie the seductiveness of viewing: indeed, the potency of the imagined access that viewing granted to the object viewed was one of the central conceits of the novel. But Asimov (1957: 260) recognised and asserted the poverty of viewing as a substitute for actual seeing, given the latter’s attendant material and multisensorial possibilities for interaction: “Without the interplay of human against human, the chief interest in life is gone; most of the intellectual values are gone; most of the reason for living is gone. Viewing is no substitute for seeing … viewing is a long-​distance sense.” This is as true for our engagement with things as it is for our engagement with persons (Sonik 2021a). It is interesting, in light of the above elucidation, to find that it is precisely because of its remote nature that the eye (viewing)—​and, to a lesser extent, the ear (hearing)—​is most highly valued in some of the seminal works of Western aesthetics.29 More interesting is the degree to which the eye continues to dominate our engagement with institutionalised art. Even when objects in museum and gallery contexts are viewed up close (though the digitisation of collections enables a much greater distance), engagement is deliberately distanced in other ways, as by placing objects behind glass. Distanced (and disinterested) viewing is permitted; other types of physical and sensorial encounter are not (Sonik 2021a). To understand how the distant (and, more, disinterested) eye gained its prominent place in Western approaches to art and nature, we need to look briefly at key developments in Western aesthetics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—​in no little part because they have ineluctably shaped the public institutions where we continue to house, display, and encounter ancient and non-​Western things.30

The distant eye: disembodied aesthetics and the denigration of sensual pleasure Ideas and ideals that developed and circulated in eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century Europe have indelibly shaped our contemporary (Western) understanding of aesthetics and related concepts like the “aesthetic attitude” and “aesthetic experience”—​particularly in relation to the developing modern system of the arts. It is useful, consequently, to briefly interrogate and render explicit some of the ideas we might regard as natural and universal, having been thus culturally inculcated, before engaging with artworks and systems of aesthetics that diverge significantly from our own with respect to the roles and value of the senses, cognition, and corporeality. Concomitant with the rise of the modern system of the arts was the establishment of aesthetics as a significant (Western) philosophical discipline.31 The naming of the discipline (in 1735) by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–​1762) is often characterised as “an adult baptism,” a nod to the fact that vigorous aesthetic discourse in practice even if not in name significantly precedes Baumgarten’s work, traceable at least as far back as to Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics (Guyer 2007: 353). In his Aesthetica (1750–​1758), Baumgarten defined “aesthetics” as a combination of two things: (1) the science of sensuous cognition, which ought to be utilised to establish (2) a theory of art.32 But what, precisely, should we understand by “sensuous cognition”—​within its original framework and otherwise? This question is inextricably entwined with several others: what specific cultural developments shaped aesthetics as the discipline emerged and developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What is (and was)

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the relationship between aesthetics and the senses? And how might we effectively examine these questions in cultural contexts which neither participate in the philosophical discourses that gave rise to Baumgarten’s aesthetics—​and, by extension, our own—​nor supply their own explicit written discourses on the topic for us to mine?33 As a starting point, it is important to emphasise the significance of Baumgarten’s work, which laid new emphasis on the cognitive value of the senses. This challenged the prevailing Enlightenment era suspicion and denigration of the senses,34 as well as its valorisation of rational cognition. This is not to say that Baumgarten’s emphasis on the senses was unprecedented. In France during the preceding seventeenth century, for example, aesthetic formulations of taste “frequently all[ied] it with corporeality and sensibility … offer[ing] an embodied experience of taste: the sense of beauty and propriety that taste afford[ed], far from surpassing sensuous experience, [wa]s firmly rooted in it” (Koch 2008: 180–​181).35 Nor did Baumgarten regard his work as a complete break with the prevailing rationalist system: rather, he regarded the methodical study of the acquisition and expression of sensory knowledge as advancing the cause of rational cognition (Moore 2006: 4; Hammermeister 2002: 3, 7).36 If Baumgarten named the philosophical discipline of aesthetics, it was Immanuel Kant (1724–​ 1804) who firmly established its significance in his Critique of Judgment (1790)37—​and who shaped in vital ways the directions the discipline would subsequently take. But, prior to examining Kant’s aesthetics, it is worth observing his assessment of the corporeal senses, as elucidated in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798).38 Kant (1974 [1798]: 46, § 16) divided the five senses on cognitive grounds. Sight, hearing, and touch were ranked as higher senses because he understood them as objective, contributing “more to the cognition of the external object than they stir up the consciousness of the affected organ.” And of these three, sight was deemed to be the noblest: “it not only has the widest sphere of perception in space, but also its organ feels least affected … Thus sight comes nearer to being a pure intuition (the immediate representation of the given object, without admixture of noticeable sensation)” (Kant 2006 [1798]: 46, § 19). This left taste and smell as the lower subjective senses, contributing “more a representation of enjoyment than of cognition of the external object” (Kant 2006 [1798]: 46, § 16). These latter, tellingly, were further diminished as merely of “organic sensation … like so many external entrances prepared by nature so that the animal can distinguish objects” (Kant 1974 [1798]: 46, § 16; also Kovach 1970).39 This type of diminution of the corporeal and of sensation itself—​in favour of the cognitive and spiritual—​is evident throughout much of Kant’s aesthetics. Aesthetic judgement, for Kant, was not solely or even primarily concerned with art (though it has played a significant and longstanding role in this sphere) but was focused, rather, on nature (Hammermeister 2002: 21ff.).40 It was also to be distinguished from rational judgement, with which it had little in common: Kant regarded aesthetic pleasure, the pleasure we take in beauty (whether in art or nature), as unrelated to insight and cognition (Hammermeister 2002: 28). The universal judgement of taste and the beautiful was indeed contrasted by Kant with the mere “corporal sensibility and the aesthetic body that supply the gratification and enjoyment of the agreeable” (Koch 2008: 185).41 Kant further distinguished the pleasure we take in beauty from two additional types of pleasure: (1) the pleasure of the agreeable, and (2) the pleasure we take in the good. Both of these latter are characterised by what might be called “interested interest” in the existence of their object. The (wholly subjective) pleasure in the agreeable is associated with a strong interest in the existence of the object because one intends to use the object to satiate one’s own desires. Pleasure in the good arguably impels similar interest in the existence of the object because one cannot imagine something good without desiring its existence (Hammermeister 2002: 28–​29). Aesthetic pleasure, in contrast, was characterised by “disinterested interest,” an absence of desire for the existence of the object, which serves no function—​being, rather, an end in 534

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itself: “the pleasure of beauty frees us from all such longings and strivings” (Hammermeister 2002: 29).42 In addition to its severance from base human appetites and desires, aesthetic pleasure was also dissociated from mere agreeable sensation: it was regarded as ennobling the mind and elevating “above the mere receptivity to pleasure from sense perceptions” (Kant 1790: § 59; translation from Hammermeister 2002: 38). The idea of disinterested interest was bound up, in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the conceptualisation of an aesthetic attitude, “a psychologically distinctive state of distanced contemplation” (Davies 2000: 201).43 It denotes a particular state of mind adopted when one contemplates an (art or aesthetic) object, one unmotivated by self-​interest, appetites, or desires. The object of one’s disinterested interest, according to this concept, does not serve the viewer’s ends: it is neither instrumental nor an object of desire. Instead, one attends to the object wholly for its own sake: it is an end in itself. The viewer in this scenario is distanced from his or her base appetites and corporeality, while the thing regarded is stripped of agency and use: it exists to be contemplated as an object—​a diminution imperfectly masked by the idea that this is for its own sake.44 This idea is both sufficiently striking and sufficiently pervasive in its effects on how we have learned to engage with art that its roots are worth examining more closely. For these, it is worth briefly looking to the works of Anthony Ashley-​Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–​1713), which have been attributed with introducing the concept of disinterestedness into modern moral and aesthetic discourses (Cassirer 1903: 186, 196; Stolnitz 1961: 132; Guyer 2007: 360).45 In the early eighteenth century, interest was closely associated with the possession of wealth and a type of mercenary and motivated self-​love, which, taken to an extreme, might lead to avarice (Mortensen 1994: 633–​634; Cassirer 1903: 195–​196). Disinterested action, by way of contrast, was action absent a regard for one’s personal benefit—​whether in this world or any other (Mortensen 1994: 634). Applied to religion, Shaftesbury wrote that disinterestedness is “teaching the love of God or virtue for God or virtue’s sake,” uncompelled by servile or mercenary motive (Shaftesbury 1900b: 55).46 Elsewhere, in a discussion of nature, Shaftesbury repudiated “covetous fancy,” advocating instead a type of “pure contemplation of nature … an ‘amor non mercenarius’ (nonmercenary love)” (Cassirer 1903: 195–​196). In other words, Shaftesbury was arguing that a distinction could be drawn between the sensually gratifying desire to possess and the non-​ sensuous and rational appreciation of beauty (Mortensen 1994: 638). It is the capacity for the latter that would come to be regarded as a defining feature of human beings; this is in opposition to the appetites and instincts driving (non-​human) animals (von Mücke 2015: 3, 27–​28). The religious aspects of disinterested interest as it emerged in Shaftesbury’s work are clearly intimated here. Within the realm of everyday life and popular religion, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were also witness to the rise of specific practices of attention and observation. Aimed at training the mental and emotional faculties, with the goal of achieving the spiritual development of the believer, such practices rendered this period fertile ground for the establishment of disinterested interest in philosophical aesthetics. In particular, von Mücke (2015: 6) has argued persuasively for the cultural influence of Johann Arndt’s popular devotional guide on True Christianity, first published in 1605 and followed by multiple editions in different languages throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.47 She sees the influence of this illustrated guide as encouraging “the actual practice of attending to the human capacity of pleasurably experiencing a disinterested interest … a particular kind of pleasure that is different from the gratification of the senses” (von Mücke 2015: 6). In undertaking the spiritual and meditational exercises in the guide, Arndt’s many readers were trained in the type of observational and contemplative practice that would come to be bound up in aesthetic experience, attitude, and practice in the later 535

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eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (von Mücke 2015: 10–​11, 19–​20). These practices and ideas would prove foundational in the shaping of public museums and galleries in their contemporary and culturally specific form as sites for the distanced viewing, disinterested aesthetic contemplation, and even “worship” (Gell 1998: 97) of the objects therein. Such objects, from the beginning, included things appropriated from ancient and non-​Western contexts. The foundations of (Western) aesthetics are by no means limited to the contributions briefly considered here.48 But the above discussion illuminates the degree to which the “science of sensuous cognition,” while foregrounding some of the senses in some ways (e.g., sight), has also explicitly derogated other sensory and corporeal experiences (i.e., interest, feeling, passion, desire). Moreover, it reveals the culturally and temporally specific social and religious developments that impelled this diminution. And yet many of these ideas continue to pervade our contemporary Western engagement with art, as well as our broader understanding of aesthetics in relation to the body and the senses: as Paige (2014: 170) has observed, “since Kant and Hegel, aesthetic appreciation, disinterested and spiritualised, has been construed as the very opposite of bodily experience; art for the senses might as well be pornography.” It is important to render the above-​outlined ideas and their roots visible—​so that we may be aware of our own pre-​and misconceptions. But this exercise also makes clear that there is no reason we should understand these ideas as natural or universal—​or inherently applicable or appropriate to any other cultural context. The discussion below turns to a non-​Western case study from ancient Mesopotamia to examine alternative but equally legitimate ways in which the senses (with an emphasis on seeing), aesthetics, and art might interact.

Ancient and non-​Western art and aesthetics: other ways of sensing and seeing The study of non-​Western arts and aesthetics is by now a well-​established one with a deep body of scholarship, though much of its academic containment lies not within art history or the philosophical discipline of aesthetics, but within anthropology. Exceptions to this primarily comprise large and literate civilisations like Egypt, which has long been detached from Africa and appropriated into the story of “Western” art and civilisation (O’Connor and Reid 2003), and India, which has a long-​established aesthetic discourse of its own (Chaudhury 1965; Pollock 2016; Chakrabarti 2016). Otherwise, much of the vital work of elucidating art that does (e.g., Gell 1992; 1998) rather than art that is, as well on cross-​cultural aesthetics (e.g., Ingold 1996; Morphy 1989; 1992; Coote 1992; Winter 2000, 2002), continues to be based in anthropology. If this state of affairs continues to marginalise the arts and aesthetics of significant parts of the non-​Western world, ancient and modern, it has at least permitted the development of vital new approaches to art and aesthetics—​and their relationships to the senses—​that are less constrained or directed by the assumptions and priorities of Western tradition (e.g., Morphy 1989). The discussion and case study presented below takes as its focus ancient Mesopotamia, which straddles (as outlined above) the various lines drawn between Western and non-​Western and which represents, consequently, a particularly interesting case study through which to explore other ways of looking at and thinking about art and aesthetics and the (embodied) senses.

The intimate eye: aesthetics and art for the senses in Mesopotamia Mesopotamia, as the first known urban civilisation, has been integrated into the narrative of Western civilisation (with particular respect to history and art history) since the mid-​ nineteenth-​century European (re)discovery and excavation of its remarkable material remains 536

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(e.g., Sonik and Kertai forthcoming). And yet, its position within this narrative is both marginal and strained because it is still, in many respects, alien and unfamiliar. Its material remains, no matter how visually striking, were neither constructed within nor participated in the shaping of “the modern system of the arts,”49 and they rarely conform to European conceptions of what great art looks like or how it works (or does not) in the world.50 To a great extent, the status of Mesopotamia’s material remains as art—​rather than mere artifacts—​has relied on their transformation into Western-​style art objects, neutered and stripped of agency and functionality, and displayed for the viewer’s disinterested aesthetic contemplation in museums (e.g., Sonik 2021a; 2021b). Fortunately, this has not precluded significant work by Near Eastern scholars themselves to re-​situate and analyse such things within their original cultural frameworks (e.g., Bahrani 2003; 2008; 2014) or to reconstruct a system of Mesopotamian aesthetics (e.g., Winter 1995; 2000; 2002; 2003; 2012; Selz 2018). While it is beyond the scope of this study to detail in full the Mesopotamian system of aesthetics,51 I want to highlight and contextualise certain of its aspects as they relate (or do not) to Western aesthetics, to the senses (specifically seeing), and to corporeality. In an important article on Yolngu aesthetics that laid groundwork for the study of non-​ Western aesthetics more broadly,52 the anthropologist Howard Morphy (1989: 21) confronted the difficulty of defining aesthetics outside of a Western philosophical framework and asserted that “aesthetics is concerned with how something appeals to the senses … the visual effect [things] have on the person looking at them.” The specific aesthetic effect at issue was that intended by the artist for the original audience. In taking up the topic of aesthetics in Mesopotamia, the art historian Irene Winter (1995; 2002) preferred to speak of “visual affect,” which might be loosely characterised as the capacity to exert force on or elicit a powerful response in the viewer (see further below),53 but similarly explored the ways in which things—​masterworks of art, certainly, though this category might include also temples and other buildings, gods, and the bodies of kings (Winter 1996)—​appealed to or made a potent impression on the senses. Saliently, Winter engaged with both traditional Western philosophical discourses on aesthetics and anthropological theory focusing on non-​Western art and aesthetics, thus reflecting the equivocal status of Mesopotamia itself with respect to the narratives of Western art and civilisation (see also Chapter 10, this volume). Several points are worth highlighting prior to examining the concluding case study: (1) the (unfortunately marginalised) embodied and sensual aesthetics of the English painter and critic William Hogarth actually offered space within which to accommodate Mesopotamian aesthetics (e.g., Winter 2002: 18–​19 passim); (2) the extant written sources from Mesopotamia reflect the “necessary role of judgment in aesthetic experience, implying thereby an awareness of the inseparability of cognition from sensation” (Winter 2002: 18); and (3) the extant sources from Mesopotamia also reflect an emphasis on vision, which was associated not only with a “subsequent process of assessment through focused viewing” (Winter 2000: 26–​27, emphasis added; Sonik forthcoming a), but also with cathexion, an “investment of emotional energy” in the object viewed (Winter 1995: 2577; also 2000: 24). The eye, in this case, is neither distanced nor disinterested. It is intimate, engaged, even interested, and the act of seeing something satisfying results in sensory and emotional satisfaction (Winter 2000: 29; 1995: 2577; Sonik 2015: 179–​ 180). In some cases, too, seeing may be synaesthetic. Certain types of looking, for example, possess a haptic aspect:54 they have potent material and/​or supernatural force. Images of en face monsters with frontal gazes, a common pictorial motif in Mesopotamia, possess a powerful capacity to arrest the attention of (as well as to be alert against and challenge) both human and supernatural threats (Sonik 2013). And some entities in Sumerian literary narratives—​like the monster Huwawa in Gilgamesh and Huwawa A (GHA 123) 537

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Figure 25.1  William Hogarth, The Battle of the Pictures, 1745. Etching and engraving; only state (20.8 × 21.2 centimetres). Commentary on art and aesthetic values, art market and (unethical) auction houses of the age. Hogarth’s own paintings emerge from his studio (right) and are attacked and outnumbered by the Old Master paintings it is in fashion to collect. The auction house on the left has a cracked façade; the rows of identical pictures in front represent copies or forgeries. Source: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

or the Anunna gods and the goddess Inana in Inana’s Descent to the Netherworld (ID 168, 354)—​are capable of levying the “look of death,” igi mu-ši-in-bar (Sonik 2013: 299–​300).55 The discussion above has highlighted the degree to which Western philosophical aesthetics fail to accommodate ancient and non-​Western systems such as those of Mesopotamia. Hogarth’s (1753) volume The Analysis of Beauty represents an exception to this rule (e.g., Winter 2002). It challenged key ideas, including that of “disinterested interest,” that would come to dominate Western philosophical aesthetics (Figures 25.1–​25.3). It also offered an unabashedly sensual and embodied aesthetics: Hogarth (1753: 66), in a cheeky tweak of lofty (and purportedly disinterested) philosophical sensibilities, demanded, “Who but a bigot, even to the antiques, will say that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms in living women, that even the Grecian Venus doth coarsely imitate?”56 Hogarth’s work, moreover, offered examples that heavily emphasised not only aspects of human bodies but also mundane objects like corsets and candleholders. The privileging of the 538

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Figure 25.2  William Hogarth, Time Smoking a Picture, 1761. Etching and aquatint; third state of three (23.5 × 18.4 centimetres; plate line trimmed away at bottom). Skewers contemporary connoisseurs and the fashion for collecting (“venerable”) Old Masters, regardless of quality. Winged figure of Time sits on broken sculpture whose mutilated head looks out at viewer, and whose severed hand points to Time’s darkening varnish. Time himself blows obscuring pipe smoke onto canvas pierced by his scythe. The Greek text above the canvas reads “Time is not a great artist but weakens all he touches.” The text below the broken sculpture reads “As statues moulder into Worth.” Script underlying image reads “To Nature and your Self appeal, /​Nor learn of others, what to feel.” Source: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

human body “as a key site for the communication of meaning” is reflected also in Hogarth’s prints and paintings (Figures 25.4 and 25.5), in which the body appears in such diverse roles as bearer of aesthetic and erotic expression and desire; iconic reference to an individual; and “articulation of diverse sexual, social, and cultural identities” (Fort and Rosenthal 2001a: 5). This represented a direct further challenge to prevailing aesthetic thought in that it presented the perception of beauty—​residing in diverse and everyday bodies and things—​as accessible to the ordinary (untrained) eye (Shiner 2001: 158–​159; Erwin 2001: 387). Hogarth’s aesthetics were rapidly marginalised and have not been significantly integrated into the dominant strands of Western philosophical thought.57 Nevertheless, they (already in the mid-​eighteenth century) reveal the constructed and contingent nature of some of the key tenets of Western philosophical aesthetics. They also force us to confront our own culturally 539

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Figure 25.3  William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, plate 1, March 5, 1753. Etching and engraving; third state of three (39 × 50.5 centimetres). Sculptor’s yard, possibly inspired by John Cheere’s sculpture yard at Hyde Park Corner, containing varied copies of famous Classical “masterpieces,” some mutilated, some whole, juxtaposed with contemporary figures and things: a dancing master (no. 7) propositions the statue of Antinous (no. 6), a boot (no. 68). The overall effect is part grotesque and part absurd, far from the purported dignity and edifying effects of Classical art. Source: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

inculcated discomfort with sensuality and corporeality. This is a vital step before engaging with Mesopotamian aesthetics, within the framework of which things like the sensual and even explicitly sexualised body—​as the perfect(ed) royal body (Winter 1996; Selz 2018)—​may represent wholly legitimate, pleasing, and significant aesthetic objects. In the concluding section below, a dramatic case study elucidating Mesopotamia’s sensual and embodied aesthetics is presented. It centres on an ekphrasis, a vivid word picture of the body of the legendary king and culture hero, Gilgamesh. The royal body is here illuminated as an aesthetic object or masterwork—​even a “made thing” as the king is described in various periods and contexts as physically and otherwise shaped or perfected by the gods (e.g., Winter 1989: 578; 1996: 93; George 1999: xlii; Pongratz-​Leisten 2015: 220). But also, and fascinatingly, the royal body’s aesthetic and affective properties are deliberately exploited to wage psychological warfare against the enemies of the king and his people. The ekphrasis offers, in other words, a vital glimpse into the primary and entangled subjects of this chapter: aesthetics, the senses, and cognition. 540

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Figure 25.4  William Hogarth, The Laughing Audience, December 1733. Etching; fourth state of four (22.2 × 18.8 centimetres). Hogarth turns our gaze away from the performers and out to the diverse audience of a theatre production. At the bottom is a row of orchestra performers; behind is the pit, filled with commoners delighting in the performance (one sour-​faced fellow in the back may be a critic); above is a private box where two upper-​class fops attempt seduction and ignore the performance. The features of individual figures are cannily picked out and the marvellous variety of life in London is set on display. Source: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The intimate image: ekphrasis and the sensuous (and affective) body Ekphrasis is, at its most basic level, characterised as the written description of a work of visual art.58 But studies of ekphrasis in recent decades have significantly expanded the scope of, as well as the array of approaches to, this complex concept,59 and ekphrasis is here defined more broadly as “speech that brings the subject matter vividly before the eyes” (Webb 2009: 1) in a sophisticated interplay of verbal with visual representation (Francis 2009: 11).60 To the study of aesthetics and the senses, ekphrasis offers,“even at its most visual—​when words grope to represent images … evocative resonances of the other senses: sound, smell, taste, and touch” (Bartsch and Elsner 2007: ii). Unlike a stilled and institutionalised art object (e.g., Sonik 2021a), the referent in an ekphrasis may reveal something of its movement, agency, and interaction. 541

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Figure 25.5  William Hogarth, Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn, 1738. Etching and engraving; second state of four (40.3 × 57 centimetres). Protests Walpole’s Licensing Act of 1737, which sought to whitewash and censor British theatre. Actresses dressing as Classical goddesses prepare for a performance in a ramshackle setting: the tumultuous circumstances of the actresses are juxtaposed with the notion of the idealised goddesses they are meant to portray. Source: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The specific ekphrasis selected for exploration comes from an early second-​millennium BCE narrative, Gilgamesh and Akka (GA).61 This is one of five extant Sumerian narratives, all dating from the Old Babylonian period (c. 2000–​1600 BCE ), recounting exploits of the Mesopotamian culture hero Gilgamesh, legendary ruler of Uruk.62 It describes a conflict between the ancient cities of Kish and Uruk and their respective kings, Akka and Gilgamesh. The framework within which the conflict is analysed yields a new analysis of the nature of the action taking place in the narrative and the means by which the action is driven. The narrative is a seemingly straightforward one (insofar as any Sumerian narrative may be regarded as straightforward)63 and lacks the explicit mythological elements incorporated into other Gilgamesh narratives.64 It opens with the dispatch of envoys from Akka, king of Kish, to Gilgamesh, king of Uruk: Akka demands that Uruk submit to the powerful city of Kish and that Uruk’s inhabitants supply Kish with perpetual labour.65 Gilgamesh, selecting his words carefully (GA 4), presents Akka’s demands to Uruk’ elders while indicating that he would strongly prefer battle to quiet submission (GA 8). The elders, with typical caution and, perhaps, an unwillingness to face the harsh ordeals of war, counsel Gilgamesh to accede to Akka’s demands.66 But Gilgamesh, youthful and vigorous, recoils at this counsel. He seeks out—​and finds—​the 542

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company of likeminded young men who are as determined as he is to fight rather than submit (GA 18–​29). Rejoicing in this likeminded company, Gilgamesh plans for battle (GA 41–​47) as Akka marches towards and ultimately besieges Uruk (GA 49). At this critical juncture, as his city of Uruk is under siege by a presumably superior and dangerous force, Gilgamesh evolves a crafty scheme, one incorporating psychological and aesthetic warfare as well as force of arms (GA 45–​46), to defeat the enemy forces of Kish. Gathering his warriors, Gilgamesh lays out his plan to sow fear and confusion among the enemy (GA 43–​47). He begins by enlisting an intrepid volunteer (GA 53–​57), a royal guard named Birhurturra, to go forth from the city and face abuse and capture by the besieging soldiers in order to be taken before the enemy king, Akka (GA 58).67 Gilgamesh’s strategy seems to turn, in other words, on Birhurturra’s deliberate capture by the enemy, which is soon achieved as the latter sallies forth from the city gate (GA 60): Birhurturra is caught by the forces of Kish (GA 61), beaten for his trouble (GA 62), and taken before the enemy king, Akka (GA 63). The second phase of Gilgamesh’s plan is then set in motion. Back inside the walls of Uruk, an anonymous official (zabardab) climbs up the city’s ramparts and draws Akka’s eye (GA 65–​67). Akka demands of Birhurturra, whose capture appears to have been planned by Gilgamesh for this purpose, “Slave, is that man not your king?” (GA 69; George 1999: 147). Birhurturra scoffs in response, “That man is not my king!” (GA 70; George 1999: 147). Then Birhurturra launches, unprompted, into a remarkable and anticipatory ekphrasis (GA 71–​81; George 1999: 147): Were that man my king, were that his fearsome brow, were those his bison eyes, were that his beard of lapis lazuli, were those his fingers fine, would a myriad not fall, a myriad not rise, would a myriad thereby not roll in the dust, would all the nations thereby not be overwhelmed, would the mouths of the land thereby not be filled with dust, would he not cut down the horns of the boat, would he not make Akka, king of Kish, a prisoner in the heart of his army? Birhurturra’s vivid and dramatic representation of Gilgamesh is critical to the narrative action: it is the point, indeed, on which the action turns. The ekphrasis works on several levels. It encompasses a vivid verbal representation of the body of Gilgamesh that evokes not only the body’s sensational nature and aesthetic appeal but also its affective power: Gilgamesh’s “fearsome brow,” “bison eyes,”68 “beard of lapis lazuli,”69 and elegant fingers70 are bound up with the dread-​inspiring aura or melim that emanates from him (discussed below). The convergence of aesthetic and affective features is such that the act of looking upon Gilgamesh—​to some degree combined with the vigorous fighting of the brave young men of Uruk—​will lead the enemy forces to fall, to roll in the dust, to be utterly overwhelmed. Affects have been cogently characterised by O’Sullivan (2001: 126; 2006: 41–​53), drawing on the works of Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari, as: Extra-​discursive and extra-​textual … moments of intensity, a reaction in/​on the body at the level of matter. We might even say that affects are immanent to matter. They are 543

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certainly immanent to experience. (Following Spinoza, we might define affect as the effect another body, for example an art object, has upon my own body and my body’s duration.) As such, affects are not to do with knowledge or meaning; indeed, they occur on a different, asignifying register.71 The (affective) body of Gilgamesh viscerally works upon the audience—​here both the forces of Kish and us—​physically and sensorially and emotionally.72 It also, and crucially, works psychologically to create fear and confusion in the enemy. Birhurturra, by verbally drawing the body of Gilgamesh before the eyes of the enemy through his ekphrasis, gives them something to dread (anticipatory anxiety and fear). The soldiers of Kish respond by beating the insolent Birhurturra a second time (GA 82–​83)—​ but then the forces of Uruk begin to mobilise. Gilgamesh himself now climbs upon the wall and his melim (Akkadian melammu) or “terrifying splendour” (GA 84; Katz 1993: 45) envelops his own people, young and old: the able-​bodied men are impelled to seize their weapons (GA 84–​86) as Gilgamesh’s companion, Enkidu, goes fearlessly forth from the gates of Uruk to meet the enemy (GA 88). And Gilgamesh, who stands on the rampart, raises his head. Akka catches sight of him and asks a second time of Birhurturra (this time, one imagines, in trepidation rather than anticipation): “Slave, is that man your king?” (GA 91; George 1999: 148).73 As the answer is returned in the affirmative, Birhurturra’s full prediction comes to pass: the enemy forces of Kish are cast into the dust and Akka himself is mortifyingly taken prisoner in the midst of his own army (GA 93–​99). Victory belongs to Uruk and the narrative ends with Gilgamesh magnanimously freeing Akka in gracious acknowledgement of the latter’s prior generosity towards him (GA 100–​111).74 Within this short and seemingly straightforward narrative, there are a number of interrelated forces at play. There is the aesthetically striking and affective body of Gilgamesh (GA 72–​ 75), which is vividly and deliberately represented by Birhurturra both for Akka and for the composition’s audience prior to its actual appearance to the soldiers of Kish. Related, though distinct, is Gilgamesh’s melim/​melammu, his awe-​inspiring or terrifying splendour (GA 85).75 This melammu is a type of radiance in all of the latter term’s dimensions.76 It is an overwhelming aura that envelops and emanates from (especially) gods and kings77—​and that is both a source and signifier of their material, affective, and other powers. Aster (2012: 22, 30, 32), who has undertaken extensive study of the concept, describes it in more detail both as an alienable physical object or covering and as a visual and material means of representing abstract concepts like superhuman strength and power. It is capable, moreover, of generating significant psychological and emotional effects, in addition to physical ones, for those who look upon it—​it has a haptic aspect.78 Radiance generally, and melammu more specifically, were taken up by Winter (1995: 2575) in her discussion of Mesopotamian aesthetics: she observed that while “light and luster were viewed as integral components of visual effect, and as such provoked a positive aesthetic response,” additional qualities could also manifest as light but with “such an intensification of brilliance or radiance that the emanation has the power to provoke awe, dread, or terror,” presumably depending on the audience. Within the narrative, Gilgamesh’s possession of melim/melammu seems to vitalise his soldiers (GA 85) even as it overwhelms both the young and elders of his own city (GA 84) and the enemy soldiers of Kish at his city gates (GA 90–​97). In addition to Birhurturra’s vivid representation of Gilgamesh’s body for Akka and Gilgamesh’s own deployment of his body and melim/melammu, there is Gilgamesh’s underlying strategy, which utilises these to their most potent (and ultimately successful) effect to first demoralise and then devastate the enemy forces of Kish. He first uses misdirection to evoke dread in and 544

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confound the reason and judgement of Akka (GA 55–​81), and then he uses his own body and aura to instil overwhelming fear in the enemy (GA 89–​99).79 Gilgamesh’s battle strategy in Gilgamesh and Akka reflects a nuanced grasp of the psychological and emotional effects of ekphrasis, as well as the sensorial, aesthetic, and affective properties of his own body and melammu.

Conclusion There does not survive from Mesopotamia the sort of explicitly reflective philosophical discourse on aesthetics or the body or the senses such as is extant from eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​ century Europe or, for that matter, from ancient Greece. But this is hardly evidence—​in the case of Mesopotamia or any other civilisation lacking such written discourses—​for a failure to reflect. Indeed, Gilgamesh and Akka reveals something not only of a complex embodied and sensual aesthetics but also of a sophisticated understanding of its cognitive and physical effects and implications. It also highlights the proximity of the thing viewed—​the masterwork of art, the divinely perfected royal body, the temple, the cult statue presencing the god—​to the viewer in Mesopotamia: there are no long-​distant or distanced or disinterested viewings or contemplations here. The senses (especially sight), emotions, judgement and cognition, and bodily effects and affects are all intimately entangled. One’s own intense looking at a person/​thing may, for example, combine with (often very positive) assessment and evoke potent emotional and physical experiences in one’s own person. Equally one’s looking at a person/​thing may also render one defenceless against the aesthetic, affective, and other potent features of that thing. In Gilgamesh and Akka, Akka and the enemy soldiers of Kish lay themselves open to the aesthetic and affective power of Gilgamesh (his body plus melim/melammu) merely by looking upon him—​and the experience is utterly devastating (physically, sensorially, and emotionally): “a myriad did fall, a myriad did rise, /​ a myriad did thereby roll in the dust, /​all the nations were thereby overwhelmed, /​the mouths of the land were thereby filled with dust, /​he cut down the horns of the boat, / in the midst of his army he [Gilgamesh] took prisoner Akka, king of Kish” (GA 94–​99; George 1999: 148).

Notes 1. Though non-​Western is used here in the absence of a better term, its shortcomings are numerous: it implies a false homogeneity of the very diverse cultures and things grouped under its rubric; it establishes a false diametric opposition with cultures and things Western; and it asserts the primacy of Western-​ ness as the standard against which all other cultures/​persons/​things are judged. There is indeed little to recommend it except that it is less pejorative a term than others (e.g., primitive) that have been applied to things failing to conform to our contemporary (Western) expectations. 2. The corpus of scholarship on object and thing theory is large and growing, and the diverse definitions of object and thing are growing apace. I have discussed my own position on and definition of these terms extensively elsewhere (e.g., Sonik 2021a; 2021b; also, less programmatically, Pongratz-​Leisten and Sonik 2015) and so will not elucidate these terms further here. 3. See, further, on objectification generally, Nussbaum 1995; on objectification with respect to ancient and non-​Western things, see Sonik 2021a; 2021b. 4. “Viewing” is here distinguished from “seeing” in the manner articulated by Asimov (1957: 260) more than 60 years ago. His acute consideration of the sensual and sensorial, social, and other implications of remote viewing are particularly apposite to our current age, as we grapple on a worldwide scale not only with a pandemic but also with the consequences of remote viewing, social distancing, and (the attendant) sensory deprivation. See, further, main text below; Sonik 2021a. 5. The concept of disinterestedness, for example, as promoted by Anthony Ashley-​Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, made virtue, as removed from considerations of profit or interest, the province of the elite, while leaving to the lower orders a religion of interest, that is, of rewards and punishments (Paulson 545

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1995: 24): “Shaftesbury replaced God with beauty, religion with aesthetics, and … [showed] that one way of dealing with the God of rewards and punishments was an evacuation of religion and a reconstitution of it as art and, covertly, politics. A consequence was the rise of the new philosophy of aesthetics, which replaced worship of the deity with appreciation of beauty.” 6. See, also, the numerous studies on culturally, temporally, and place-​and other-​specific ways of sensing (with an emphasis on seeing) that have been published over recent decades: for example, as just a small selection, Alpers 1991; Bynum 2006; Eck 1998; Kulvicki 2009; and, particularly relevant to this study, Winter’s (2000) seminal study on cathected viewing in Mesopotamia. 7. See, e.g., the discussion of taste, the virtuoso, and connoisseurship in Abrams 1985a: 15; the common role of works of fine art as “objects of connoisseurship” within the philosophy of aesthetics (Abrams 1985a: 26). 8. See, e.g., the discussions by von Mücke (2015) of the (religious) contemplative and devotional exercises in which the general public was trained (from the seventeenth century especially), which laid a firm foundation for the types of contemplation bound up in the aesthetic experience and attitude. 9. See, e.g., Carlson (2000: 3) for the role of British empirical thinkers like Addison and Hutcheson—​ who, like Kant, regarded nature rather than art as the object of (disinterested) aesthetic experience—​in shaping a “mode of aesthetic appreciation that looked upon the natural world with an eye not unlike the distancing, objectifying eye of science.” 10. Classen (2005a: 228) observed that, “no matter how refined ladies’ work might be thought … it never rose above its shared sensory basis with housework. Both were linked with the supposedly lower, feminine senses of touch, taste and smell, rather than with the ‘higher,’ ‘masculine’ senses of sight and hearing.” See, further, Messer-​Davidow 1988; Howes and Classen 2014: 6–​7; also Bohls’ (1995) important work on women who challenged the founding assumptions of modern aesthetics, e.g., the generic perceiver, disinterested contemplation, and the autonomy of the aesthetic domain, Bohls 1995: 7. 11. Abrams (1985b: 19), for example, emphasised the recent and radical nature of the ideas of attending to a work of human art “with a ‘contemplation’ that is ‘disinterested,’ and ‘for its own sake alone’; or to identify the work as an object ‘framed apart by itself ’ and regarded ‘as being itself, as end not means’ ”; see also Stolnitz 1961: 131. 12. This pejorative-​sounding designation, appended by Paulson (1995: 178) to describe Hogarth’s sensuous and corporeal aesthetics, may be technically accurate (see, e.g., Hogarth 1772: 66) but indicates the degree to which Hogarth lost the aesthetics (and culture) wars. 13. For the integration of Mesopotamia (Assyria) into nineteenth-​century ideas of the great “chain of art” and into Western museums, see Sonik and Kertai forthcoming; Jenkins 1992. 14. This marginalisation is shared (albeit to a much lesser degree) by Egypt, which was similarly but much more successfully appropriated into the story of Western art. 15. See, further, Sonik 2021b. 16. Mesopotamia is both ancient and non-​Western, though it is frequently situated as neither: the term “ancient” continues to be used to refer exclusively to the Greco-​Roman world and the term “non-​ Western” sits only uneasily on Mesopotamia’s co-​opted shoulders. See, further, Sonik 2021b. 17. Narrative compositions are rarely recognisably depicted in Mesopotamia’s visual arts, though scenes of Gilgamesh and Enkidu slaying Humbaba are known; for the relationship (and mismatch) between text and image in Mesopotamia, see Sonik 2013; 2014. 18. For the confrontation of the modern system of the arts with non-​Western and ancient art, see, e.g., Errington 1994; 1998; Sonik 2021a. 19. Fisher (1991: 88) described things made before the invention of the museum—​but then appropriated into it—​as naïve about the fate that post-​museum (self-​conscious) works explicitly address: “The work of the museum—​effacing, aggregating, juxtaposing—​already goes on inside the work itself. The act of seeing that will make up the consumption of the work by the public is already designed into the work itself … it is aware of the community of objects and the system of access for which it is intended.” 20. Many Western things (e.g., tea services, furniture) on display in museums as art objects were also (in part because they were functional) not—​in their original contexts—​made to be or understood as fine art. 21. The conjunction of non-​Western and ancient here does not imply any equivalency between the two terms, and should emphatically not be regarded as implying that the non-​Western is fundamentally “primitive”; see, e.g., Layton 1991: 1. Rather, the two categories of arts are discussed together because they address similar problems in their confrontation with the “modern (Western) system of 546

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the arts”—​and because Near Eastern art specifically may be characterised as both ancient and non-​ Western; see, further, Sonik 2021a; Sonik and Kertai forthcoming. 22. See, further, Sonik 2021a; Gell 1992: 40, 42. 23. Such changes and their implications are extensively examined in Sonik 2021a. 24. In some cases, such “restoration” was followed by de-​restoration in places like post-​Second World War Munich and Copenhagen, revealing “surfaces where natural breaks in the ancient marble had been cut smooth in order to accommodate the additions” (Daehner 2011: 47). 25. E.g., Alpers’ (1991: 25) account of a crab as natural history (museum) specimen or “Operation Night Watch” at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum (begun July 8, 2019), the large-​scale, technologically supported, and publicly displayed restoration of Rembrandt’s 1642 painting, The Night Watch (Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq); further, Sonik 2021a. 26. For the perception of museums and galleries as temples of art, see, e.g.,Wackenroder (1984 [1797]: 201), quoted in Ziolkowski 1987: 373. For the establishment of the rules of museum behaviour, including the most prominent “touch nothing!” and “do not talk loud,” see The Penny Magazine, April 7, 1832. 27. Research into the senses in Mesopotamia especially is burgeoning; among recent studies, see Nadali and Pinnock 2020; Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019; McMahon 2013; 2019; Rendu Loisel 2016. 28. Increasingly, moreover, diverse sensorial modes of engagement, as well as multisensorial simulations, are being provided in the modern museum (e.g., Dudley 2012: 9–​10; Classen 2017; also, for historical views and roles of the senses beyond sight, Howes and Classen 2014; the contributions in Pye 2007). 29. Moore (2006: 13) observes that “sight has always seemed self-​evidently the most important and refined” sense in the philosophical history of the senses, and that this was “especially true in the age of reason”; see, further, Howes and Classen 2014: 1–​4 passim. 30. For the rise and establishment of the large public and national museums of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the vigorous debates over their forms, organisations, and social and scientific purposes, see, e.g., Sonik and Kertai, forthcoming; Whitehead 2005; McClellan 1994; Jenkins 1992. 31. The Greek term aisthanesthai, from which aesthetics is derived, means “to perceive, sense, feel.” Baumgarten named the philosophical discipline “aesthetics” on the first page of his 1735 master’s thesis at Halle, Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus; see, further, for the framework within which Baumgarten’s theory was developed, Grote 2017: 72, 102–​146; Moore 2006: 1–​2. 32. The prolegomena to the volume opens with Baumgarten’s (1750: § 1) definition of aesthetics: aesthetica (theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars analogi rationis) est scientia cognitionis sensitivae, “Aesthetics (as the theory of the liberal arts, as inferior cognition, as the art of beautiful thinking and as the art of thinking analogous to reason) is the science of sensual [variously rendered also as sensuous or sensory] cognition”; see Hammermeister 2002: 7; see also Moore 2006: 3, n. 5. 33. Mesopotamia represents a particularly interesting case in this regard. It lacks the sort of explicit written philosophical discourse on aesthetics that may be attributed to ancient Greece and there are no living representatives of Mesopotamia from whom one might gain insight (e.g., Morphy 1989) in place of these written discourses. But Mesopotamia has left behind an enormous number of written texts of every other sort from which a system of aesthetics may be gleaned; see, e.g., Winter 1995; 2002; Selz 2018. 34. The denigration of the senses represented another tradition in Western thought reaching back to Plato (Moore 2006: 3). But while this denigration might have a long-​running presence in Western thought, it is by no means ubiquitous or unbroken. There is no singular tradition of Western thought stretching from the Classical world to Enlightenment Europe; see, e.g., Koch 2008: 180. 35. While acknowledging that this stance diverges from formulations like those of Cassirer, Ferry, and Barnouw, which present seventeenth-​century French discourses on taste as merely anticipatory to Kantian and post-​Kantian aesthetics, Koch (2008: 179–​180) argues persuasively that the development of taste is better understood as “a movement from literal taste as a corporal matter, a matter of sensation and correlative affect according to the valence of pleasure and pain, on the one hand, and metaphoric taste, which necessitates normative standards based on qualities of the object of delectation and the disposition of the subject.” This transformation pits the corporeal (sensation and affect) against the mind (or spirit), and witnesses the rise of taste as a “normative matter … that which is verifiable by norms” (Koch 2008: 181). 36. But see also Gregor (1983: 358–​360), who noted that traditional accounts presumed Baumgarten valued aesthetics as chiefly instrumental, a type of handmaiden to logic, while ignoring Baumgarten’s own “assertion that his new logic of sense perception has as its end the perfection of sense knowledge as such” (Gregor 1983: 360; see also Moore 2006: 4; Herder 2006: 41–​50). 547

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37. Many of the notions pertaining to aesthetics disseminated and adapted by Kant did not originate with him; they drew rather on contemporary philosophical and intellectual discourses and ideas. 38. See, further, on the purpose of this work as offering “elements of empirical psychology in the service of pragmatic ends, including living an effective life domestically and in society,” Hatfield 2014: 38. For an explication of Kant’s discussion of the senses, see, e.g., Branco 2017. 39. Though see, among recent reconsiderations of smell and taste in Western aesthetics, Sibley 2001; Brady 2012; also Shiner and Kriskovets 2007. 40. This was likely due in part to Kant’s limited familiarity with the arts; Hammermeister 2002: 24. This limitation is rather striking given his significance to the field of art history; see note 9 above. 41. The comparative denigration of the corporeal as low(er) and primitive, associated with the (non-​ human) animal, with consumption/​appetite, and of pleasures that are “agreeable to the senses” as merely agreeable, is a common theme in these early discourses on aesthetics; see also the discussion of Shaftesbury in the main text and notes. This is not to say that counters to these ideas did not exist. Herder, for example, argued that aesthetic response is “the heightened response of various of our senses to their appropriate objects … [he] reject[ed] the traditional distinction between mind and body, arguing that mind is essentially connected to the bodily organs of sense, as well as rejecting any suggestion that aesthetic pleasures are essentially distinct from the other sources of our happiness and unhappiness” (Guyer 2007: 4), while the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–​1797) developed a distinctly embodied aesthetics “affirm[ing] the intimate union of mind and body while claiming that mental contents are ultimately the product of sensations involving bodily effects” (Shusterman 2012: 148). See also recent work on Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–​1768) and somaesthetics; see, e.g., Shusterman 2018. 42. In his 1785 Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften unter dem Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten, the German writer Karl Philipp Moritz (1756–​1793) had introduced already the idea of beauty as predicated on non-​utilitarianism: “The truly beautiful consists in a thing signifying itself alone, designating itself alone, containing itself alone, in its being a whole accomplished in itself ” (Moritz 1962: 113; Todorov 1990: 5). He also articulated the idea of the autonomy of the art object, i.e., art as a self-​sufficient totality, an end in itself to be contemplated disinterestedly for its own sake: “If a work of art has as its only reason for being the indication of something external to it, it would become by that very token an accessory; whereas in the case of the beautiful, the work of art is always primary” (Moritz 1962: 113; Todorov 1990: 5); see also Woodmansee 1994: 11. Moritz’ aesthetics have been described as sacralising art and as “displaced theology” (Erlin 2014: 140). Abrams, for example, observes that “Moritz has “translocated into discourse about art the religious terminology of the Quietist creed in which he had been brought up” (1985b: 23; concurring on this point with Woodmansee but cf. Erlin 2014: 140 for a somewhat different view). 43. The aesthetic attitude as a philosophical concept today is limited—​it has been described as having “little role in philosophy other than as a dummy set up in aesthetics courses to be knocked down by the onslaughts of George Dickie” (Rind 2002: 68)—​but it retains a place in art historical discourse and, arguably, in ongoing approaches to artworks. See, further, on the aesthetic attitude, Langfeld 1920: 44–​108; Osborne 1970; Schapiro 1977; Saxena 1978; Stolnitz 1961; 1978; 1984; Kemp 1999; cf. Dickie 1964; Coleman 1979; Snoeyenbos 1979; Carroll 2001: 5–​19; Rind 2002. For the aesthetic attitude as a cross-​cultural concept (or not), see Hungerland 1957; Bourdieu 1987; Ingold 1996; Gell 1998: 97; Coleman 2005. It is interesting, in light of the very specific economic, religious, gendered, and cultural framework within which the idea of the aesthetic attitude was developed, to see neuroscientists like Chatterjee (2011: 399) explore it as a potentially universal human capacity with “a self-​contained reward system” as its neural basis. Chatterjee observes that a distinction has been drawn between liking and wanting (desire) in humans and (other) animals—​e.g., Berridge and Kringelbach (2008: 458) have examined liking, “the actual pleasure component or hedonic impact of a reward,” as opposed to wanting, characterised as “motivation for reward, which includes both (1) incentive salience ‘wanting’ processes that are not necessarily conscious and (2) conscious desires for incentives or cognitive goals”—​and suggests that the neural circuitry for liking is “co-​opted within our reward systems, cleaved off related reward systems with clear utilitarian designs of satisfying appetitive desires. Perhaps it developed to allow humans to maintain some distance from the objects of desire and has now come to serve the aesthetic attitude” (Chatterjee 2011: 399). The ongoing entanglement of Western philosophical and art historical notions (which were constructed within particular historical frameworks) with neuroscience within the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics is striking—​and, I think, in need of careful (re-​)consideration. 548

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44. This seems to put paid to the ideal of the object “as an end in itself ”: such an object demands a subject to attend to it, a point apparent in Ernst Gombrich’s concept of the “beholder’s share,” developing Alois Riegl’s idea of the “beholder’s involvement” (Gombrich 1960); see, further, Kemp 1999: 11. Kant (1790: 90, § 17) himself resolved the (seeming) contradiction of his idea of beautiful objects as an end in themselves with the idea of beautiful objects seeming to be designed for a particular function, namely, to incite pleasure in the viewer, by arguing that “beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as this is perceived in it without any representation of a purpose.” In other words, though the beautiful object may seem to exist for our (the viewer’s) pleasure, this perception is only a seeming: “the beautiful object does not exist on behalf of its viewer; it is truly independent” (Hammermeister 2002: 32). I am not persuaded this reconciles the contradiction that emerges here. 45. On disinterestedness in Shaftesbury, albeit with particular attention to disengaging Shaftesbury from the concept of the “aesthetic attitude,” see Mortensen 1994: 633; see also Townsend 1982: 206; Rind 2002. 46. Shaftesbury (1900b: 55), writing of disinterested love of God as the “most excellent Principle,” acknowledged that, by “the indiscreet zeal of some devout, well-​meaning people it had been stretched too far, perhaps even to extravagance and enthusiasm”; on the other hand, there were those who “had left so little of zeal, affection, or warmth, in what they call their rational religion, as to make them much suspected of their sincerity.” 47. By 1610, Arndt’s work would constitute not one but Vier Bücher vom Wahren Christentum (Four Books on True Christianity). 48. E.g., Johann Gottfried Herder’s (1744–​1803) critiques of Kant and reconsideration of touch (Guyer 2007; Moore 2006: 14) or Hogarth’s (1697–​1764) corporeal and sensual aesthetic theory (see Hogarth 1772; Paulson 1995; Richardson 2003; Costelloe 2013: 63). 49. The arts of Greece (and Rome), of course, did participate in the rise of this system and continue to be valorised for their role in the foundation of Western civilisation—​but it is worth observing that the vision of the Classical world that prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bore a limited relationship to reality. One need only look to the controversy over Owen Jones’ infamous colouring of the Greek court at the Sydenham Crystal Palace (a colouring that was fully justified by the evidence extant even then, as Jones (1854) makes clear in his almost-​as-​famous “apology”) to get a sense of the degree to which false ideas of ancient Greek art and culture prevailed and, in some quarters, continue to prevail (e.g., Talbot 2018); see, further, Tanner 2006: 15. 50. This is not to diminish the role of Mesopotamian things in inspiring modern artists including Giacometti, Henry Moore, and Picasso (e.g., Evans 2012: 46–​75; 2020; Seymour 2020) or its re-​ envisioning in Victorian Britain (e.g., Kertai 2021; McGeough 2021). 51. For short but foundational studies on Mesopotamian aesthetics, see Winter 1995; 2000; Selz 2018. Numerous other works have touched on or elucidated important related issues (e.g., Thavapalan 2020; Benzel 2015; among many others), such that the task of writing a new Mesopotamian aesthetics will be a book-​length project. 52. For a useful review of social anthropological approaches to aesthetics, see Layton 2011. 53. The concept of visual and aesthetic affect in Winter’s work is rather more complex than this brief definition can convey (see, e.g.,Winter 2010: xi, as well as Winter 1995; 2000; 2002; 2007), but suffices for the purposes of this study. 54. It may be helpful, as Neis (2013: 134) has done, to distinguish between intromission and extramission (terms drawn from theories of vision) for analyses of seeing in specific cultural frameworks: in the former, the gaze is receptive of visual objects; in the latter, the gaze transmits (e.g., what has been seen) to its object (and potentially changes it thereby). Neis’ particular case study deals with the assumed alteration or shaping of the foetus in response to the forms the mother has gazed upon or imagined in her mind’s eye, theorising impelled by the birth of so-​called monstrosities, or at least of children that do not resemble one or both of their parents; for the attribution of this idea back to the Greek philosopher Empedocles (c. 494–​434 BCE ) and its occurrences into the Renaissance, see, e.g., Huet (1993: 4–​6). 55. See GHA 123 (igi mu-ši-in-bar igi uš2-a-kam) and ID 168 (igi mu-ši-in-bar i-bi2 uš2-akam), 354 (igi mu-un-ši-in-bar igi uš2-a-ka); ETCSL. In both cases in ID, the “look of death” is accompanied by “the speech of anger”: looking and speaking together seem to accomplish the goal of terminating the object of the viewing/​speaking. The line in GHA is constructed slightly differently: Enkidu describes Huwawa as possessing the “look of death” but Huwawa is not shown using it. 56. This is a direct response to Shaftesbury’s (1900a: 96) doctrine that “the best artists are said to have been indefatigable in studying the best statues: as esteeming them a better rule than the perfectest human bodies could afford”; see, further, Paulson 1995: 29. 549

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57. This is perhaps unsurprising as Hogarth’s aesthetics have been characterised as “anticlerical, iconoclastic, empiricist,” and as culminating in an aesthetics “not of the ideal but of the flaw or blemish” (Paulson 2003: 173). This accounts, perhaps, for their striking humanity—​which is strongly reflected also in Hogarth’s artistic works; see, e.g., the contributions in Fort and Rosenthal 2001b. 58. Heffernan’s (1991: 299) critical analysis of ekphrasis, for example, hews more closely to this definition than recent studies, though it refines it slightly to “the verbal representation of graphic representation.” 59. For general studies on ekphrasis, see, e.g., Elsner 2007; Goldhill 2007; Francis 2009; Webb 2009; Zeitlin 2013, among many other works. With specific respect to ekphrasis in Mesopotamia, see Bahrani 2008: 143–​145; Thomason 2004; Winter 2000. More recently, the volume by Johnson and Stavru (2019) offers important new perspectives on Mesopotamian rhetorical practices but also amalgamates (Johnson 2019) ekphrasis with concepts encompassed elsewhere by manifestation (e.g., Winter 1992) and presencing (e.g., Pongratz-​Leisten and Sonik 2015). 60. This follows the definition taught to students studying rhetoric in the Greek schools of the Roman Empire. Quintilian, citing Cicero, describes it as sub oculos subiectio, “laying out the subject before the eyes” (Francis 2009: 2). 61. Editions of GA used include Cooper 1981; Katz 1993; ETCSL; also the translation in George 1999 and brief commentary in George 2003: 8–​9. 62. These five compositions are Gilgamesh and Akka (GA); Gilgamesh and Huwawa A (GHA) and Gilgamesh and Huwawa B (GHB); Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven (GBH); Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld; and the Death of Gilgamesh (DG). As GHA and GHB address the same exploit, Gilgamesh’s encounter with the guardian (Huwawa) of the cedar forest, they are counted together. 63. For the history of the translation of this particular narrative, see Cooper 1981: 224–​232; Katz 1993: 4–​ 11. For issues in Sumerian “literature” more generally, see, e.g., Rubio 2009. More recently, see Delnero (2020: 21–31), who explicitly queries the degree to which Sumerian literary texts can be effectively analysed as literature. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to address these issues in detail but I concur that the Sumerian literary compositions cannot be reduced to their formal features and/​ or stylistic devices even as I would argue for the ongoing analysis of these, alongside Akkadian literary compositions, as narratives and as literature; see Sonik, forthcoming a; forthcoming b. 64. This led at one time to the understanding of GA as a legitimate historical source for the study of Early Dynastic period (mid-​third millennium BCE ) Sumerian history (an issue discussed in Katz 1993: 11); such literary narratives are no longer accepted as historical documents (in any period). 65. The text specifically and repeatedly references the finishing of wells, a phrase that has been variously read: Lambert (1980) suggested Kish was demanding not only the submission of Uruk but also (perpetual) servile labour by its inhabitants. Within the context of the composition, this seems a likely interpretation but see, further, Katz 1993: 4; George 1999: 143. 66. The caution of the elders, as well as Gilgamesh’s refusal to heed their advice, appears elsewhere in the Gilgamesh narratives as in the Old Babylonian epic (e.g., OB Yale 189–​192). 67. George (2003: 8) suggests a different interpretation, namely, that Gilgamesh is asking for a volunteer to challenge Akka to single combat. Given that Gilgamesh and even Enkidu (who is less servant in this narrative than companion) are more likely candidates to be taken seriously as challengers to the king of Kish, such an interpretation seems unlikely unless it is a feint from the beginning—​and unless the outcome, Birhurturra’s capture and participation in the psychological attack on Akka and his forces, is both foreseen and deliberately intended. GA 57–​58, in which Birhurturra volunteers to “go to Akka, /​so his good sense is confounded and his judgement undone!” (George 1999: 147), seems to support this latter reading. 68. See note 69 below on bison and bulls. Sensational is here used to evoke both sensation as “embodied feeling” and as dramatic (media) event; Jervis 2015: 3. 69. Winter’s (1995: 2574) study on Mesopotamian aesthetics discusses the use of the term for lapis lazuli to denote not the actual stone but rather its “dark luster,” which is associated with the stone as a positive attribute. The lapis lazuli beard, moreover, is present in the visual arts from Mesopotamia; the famous Bull’s Head Lyre of Ur (c. 2550–​2450 BCE ), currently in the Penn Museum (B17694B), includes a gold bull’s (bison’s?) head with a lapis lazuli beard. The designation of bull vs. bison remains somewhat confused and inconsistent in Mesopotamian scholarship: Robson (1999: 39, n. 46) notes the beards on such bull’s heads may identify them as “artistic survivals of … the (by then extinct) bison. Bison bulls are bearded; wild bulls (aurochs), like domestic bulls, are not”; also see Wiggermann 1992: 174–​175. 70. ETCSL 1.8.1.1 reads “elegant” rather than “fine” fingers (šu-​si sag9-​ga-​ni), emphasising the role of this passage as aesthetic assessment. Cooper (1981: 237) prefers “beneficient fingers.” 550

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71. Affect, in the theory of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), is not synonymous with personal sentiment or (socially constructed, at least partially) emotion. In his translator’s note to the volume, Brian Massumi writes of affect that it does not denote “a personal feeling (sentiment in Deleuze and Guattari). L’affect (Spinoza’s affectus) is an ability to affect and be affected. It is a prepositional intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: xvi). 72. See, by way of comparison, Francis’ (2009: 16) analysis of the ekphrasis of Pandora in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days. 73. Katz (1993: 45) and Cooper (1981: 237) suggest Akka’s second question is posed to Enkidu, who has just emerged from the city gates as Birhurturra did before him. While this is possible, it seems unnecessary; George (1999: 148) and ETCSL 1.8.1.1 leave it ambiguous, although George (2003: 9) attributes the affirmative response to Birhurturra. In terms of the dramatic effect of this second question and its affirmative answer, it does not matter whether Birhurturra or Enkidu responds. 74. This may be a matter, if not quite of justice, perhaps of expected fairness under the eye of the Utu, the Sun God (and god of justice). Gilgamesh acknowledges a debt owed to Akka for the latter’s provision of refuge and nourishment and, to Akka’s request, “[Repay me m]y favour!” formally responds, “By Utu, I now repay you the former favour” as he sets Akka free (110–​111; Katz 1993: 45). 75. See Aster (2012: 32) on these as equivalent. 76. McMahon (2019: 397), for example, discusses melammu within the framework of the propensity in Mesopotamian texts to directly present “cross-​connections of aesthetic stimuli. For instance, light and heat merged into ‘radiance’ (Akkadian melammu), too painful to touch and too awesome for direct observation.” 77. For its application to other things like temples and cult objects; some monsters; illnesses; weapons; etc., see Aster 2012: 59; also Winter 1994: 126–​127. 78. See, further, Aster 2012: 60, 83 for the effects of seeing the melammu of a powerful figure. 79. That battle generally is antithetical to reasoned judgement is suggested in this narrative, as good sense in Uruk is immediately, if temporarily, confounded upon Akka’s besieging of the city (GA 50).

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Evans, J. 2020. “Case Studies in the Popular Reception of the Tell Asmar Sculpture Hoard,” in L. Verderame and A. Garcia-​Ventura, eds., Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond. Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 33–​48. Fisher, P. 1991. Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fort, B., and A. Rosenthal. 2001a. “The Analysis of Difference,” in B. Fort and A. Rosenthal, eds., The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 3–​13. Fort, B., and A. Rosenthal, eds. 2001b. The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Foster, K. E. 1963. “45. Navajo Sand Paintings.” Man 63: 43–​44. Francis, J. A. 2009. “Metal Maidens, Achilles’ Shield, and Pandora: The Beginnings of ‘Ekphrasis.’” American Journal of Philology 130 (1): 1–​23. Gell, A. 1992. “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology,” in J. Coote and A. Shelton, eds., Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 40–​63. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. George, A. R. 1999. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. London: Penguin. George, A. R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. 2 Volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldhill, S. 2007. “What Is Ekphrasis For?” Classical Philology 102 (1) (Special Issue on Ekphrasis): 1–​19. Gombrich, E. H. 1960. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon. Gregor, M. J. 1983. “Baumgarten’s ‘Aesthetica.’ ” The Review of Metaphysics 37 (2): 357–​385. Grote, S. 2017. The Emergence of Modern Aesthetic Theory: Religion and Morality in Enlightenment Germany and Scotland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guyer, P. 1996. “The Dialectic of Disinterestedness: I. Eighteenth-​Century Aesthetics,” in P. Guyer, ed., Kant and the Experience of Freedom: Essays on Aesthetics and Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 48–​93. Guyer, P. 2007. “Free Play and True Well-​Being: Herder’s Critique of Kant’s Aesthetics.” JAAC 65 (4): 353–​368. Hammermeister, K. 2002. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hatfield, G. 2014. “Kant on the Phenomenology of Touch and Vision,” in A. Cohen, ed., Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 38–​56. Hawthorn, A., and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds. 2019. Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. Heffernan, J. A. W. 1991. “Ekphrasis and Representation.” New Literary History 22 (2): 297–​316. Herder, J. G. 2006. Selected Writings on Aesthetics. Trans. G. Moore. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hogarth, W. 1772 [1753]. The Analysis of Beauty. New Edition. London: W. Strahan. Howes, D., and C. Classen. 2014. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London: Routledge. Huet, M.-​H. 1993. Monstrous Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hungerland, H. 1957. “The Aesthetic Response Re-​considered.” JAAC 16 (1): 32–​43. Ingold, T., ed. 1996. “1993 Debate: Aesthetics Is a Cross-​Cultural Category,” in T. Ingold, ed., Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge, 201–​236. Jenkins, I. 1992. Archaeologists & Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum, 1800–​1939. London: British Museum Press. Jervis, J. 2015. Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Johnson, J. C. 2019. “Demarcating Ekphrasis in Mesopotamia,” in J. C. Johnson and A. Stavru, eds., Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World. Berlin: De Gruyter, 11–​40. Johnson, J. C., and A. Stavru, eds. 2019. Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World. Berlin: De Gruyter. Jones, O. 1854. An Apology for the Colouring of the Greek Court in the Crystal Palace. London: Bradbury & Evans. Kant, I. 1790. Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Trans. J. H. Bernard, Second Edition, Revised (1914). London: Macmillan and Co. Kant, I. 1974 [1798]. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Trans. M. J. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 553

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Kant, I. 2006 [1798]. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Trans. R. B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katz, D. 1993. Gilgamesh and Akka. Groningen: Styx. Kemp, W. 1999. “Introduction,” in The Group Portraiture of Holland by Alois Riegl. Trans. E. M. Kain and D. Britt. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1–​60. Kertai, D. 2021. “The News from the East: Assyrian Archaeology, International Politics, and the British Press in the Victorian Age,” in K. Sonik, ed., Art/​ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 367–​413. Koch, E. R. 2008. The Aesthetic Body: Passion, Sensibility, and Corporeality in Seventeenth-​Century France. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Kovach, F. J. 1970. “The Role of the Senses in the Aesthetic Experience.” The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 1 (3): 91–​102. Kristeller, P. O. 1951. “The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics Part I.” Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (4): 496–​527. Kristeller, P. O. 1952. “The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics (II).” Journal of the History of Ideas 13 (1): 17–​46. Kulvicki, J. 2009. “Heavenly Sight and the Nature of Seeing-​In.” JAAC 67 (4): 387–​397. Lambert, W. G. 1980. “Akka’s Threat.” Orientalia N.S. 49: 339–​340. Langfeld, H. S. 1920. The Aesthetic Attitude. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Layton, R. H. 1991 [1981]. The Anthropology of Art. Second Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Layton, R. H. 2011. “Aesthetics: The Approach from Social Anthropology,” in E. Schellekens and P. Goldie, eds., The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 208–​222. Malraux, A. 1954 [1949]. “Museum Without Walls,” in The Voices of Silence. Trans. S. Gilbert. London: Secker and Warburg, 13–​128. Maquet, J. J. P. 1979 [1971]. Introduction to Aesthetic Anthropology. Second Edition. Malibu: Undena Publications. Maquet, J. J. P. 1986. The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts. New Haven: Yale University Press. McClellan, A. 1994. Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-​ Century Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press. McGeough, K. 2021. “Assyrian Style and Victorian Materiality: Mesopotamia in British Souvenirs, Political Caricatures, Theatrical Productions, and the Sydenham Crystal Palace,” in K. Sonik, ed., Art/​ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 415–​446. McMahon, A. 2013. “Space, Sound, and Light: Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monumental Architecture.” AJA 117 (2): 163–​179. McMahon, A. 2019. “The Sensory World of Mesopotamia,” in R. Skeates and J. Day, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. London: Routledge, 396–​412. Messer-​ Davidow, E. 1988. “‘For Softness She’: Gender Ideology and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-​ Century England,” in F. M. Keener and S. E. Lorsch, eds., Eighteenth-​Century Women and the Arts. Westport: Greenwood Press, 45–​55. Moore, G. 2006. “Introduction,” in Selected Writings on Aesthetics by Johann Gottfried Herder. Ed. G. Moore. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1–​30. Moritz, K. P. 1962 [1785]. Schriften zur Ästhetik und Poetik. Ed. H. J. Schrimpf. Tübingen: Max Niemayer Verlag. Morphy, H. 1989. “From Dull to Brilliant: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Power Among the Yolngu.” Man N.S. 24 (1): 21–​40. Morphy, H. 1992. “Aesthetics in a Cross-​Cultural Perspective: Some Reflections on Native American Basketry.” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 23 (1): 1–​16. Mortensen, P. 1994. “Shaftesbury and the Morality of Art Appreciation.” Journal of the History of Ideas 55 (4): 631–​650. Nadali, D., and F. Pinnock, eds. 2020. Sensing the Past: Detecting the Use of the Five Senses in Ancient Near Eastern Contexts. Proceedings of the Conference Held in Rome, Sapienza University June 4th, 2018. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag. Neis, R. 2013. The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. 1995. “Objectification.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 24 (4): 249–​291. O’Connor, D., and A. Reid, eds. 2003. Ancient Egypt in Africa. London: UCL Press. 554

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O’Sullivan, S. 2001. “The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking Art Beyond Representation.” Angelaki 6 (3): 125–​135. O’Sullivan, S. 2006. Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Osborne, H. 1970. The Art of Appreciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paige, N. 2014. “Review of The Aesthetic Body: Passion, Sensibility, and Corporeality in Seventeenth-​Century France, by Erec R. Koch.” Romanic Review 104 (1–​2): 170–​172. Paulson, R. 1995. The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange: Aesthetics and Heterodoxy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Paulson, R. 2003. Hogarth’s Harlot: Sacred Parody in Enlightenment England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pollock, S., ed. 2016. A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics. New York: Columbia University Press. Pongratz-​Leisten, B. 2015. Religion and Ideology in Assyria. Berlin: De Gruyter. Pongratz-​Leisten, B., and K. Sonik. 2015. “Between Cognition and Culture: The Materiality of Divine Agency in Cross-​Cultural Perspective,” in B. Pongratz-​Leisten and K. Sonik, eds., The Materiality of Divine Agency. Berlin: De Gruyter, 3–​69. Pye, E., ed. 2007. The Power of Touch: Handling Objects in Museum and Heritage Contexts. London: Routledge. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2016. Les Chants du Monde: Le Paysage Sonore de l’ancienne Mésopotamie. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Midi. Richardson, A. 2003. “From the Moral Mound to the Material Maze: Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty,” in M. Berg and E. Eger, eds., Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 119–​134. Rind, M. 2002. “The Concept of Disinterestedness in Eighteenth-​Century British Aesthetics.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (1): 67–​87. Robson, E. 1999. Mesopotamian Mathematics, 2100–​ 1600 BC: Technical Constants in Bureaucracy and Education. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rubio, G. 2009. “Sumerian Literature,” in C. S. Ehrlich, ed., From an Antique Land: An Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 11–​76. Saxena, S. K. 1978. “The Aesthetic Attitude.” Philosophy East and West 28: 81–​90. Schapiro, M. 1977. “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art,” in K. B. Iyer, ed., Art and Thought: Issued in Honor of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday. London: Luzac and Co., 130–​150. Selz, G. J. 2018. “Aesthetics,” in A. C. Gunter, ed., A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 359–​381. Seymour, M. 2020. “Ancient Mesopotamia in Modern Culture,” in A. Thomas and T. Potts, eds., Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 20–​29. Shaftesbury, A. A.-​C. 1900a [1711]. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Etc. Volume 1. Ed. J. M. Robertson. London: Grant Richards. Shaftesbury, A. A.-​C. 1900b [1711]. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Etc. Volume 2. Ed. J. M. Robertson. London: Grant Richards. Shiner, L. 2001. The Invention of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shiner, L., and Y. Kriskovets. 2007. “The Aesthetics of Smelly Art.” JAAC 65 (3): 273–​286. Shusterman, R. 2012. Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shusterman, R. 2018. “Winckelmann on Taste: A Somaesthetic Perspective.” JAAC 76 (2): 175–​186. Sibley, F. 2001. “Tastes, Smells, and Aesthetics,” in J. Benson, B. Redfern, and J. R. Cox, eds., Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 207–​255. Snoeyenbos, M. H. 1979. “Saxena on the Aesthetic Attitude.” Philosophy East and West 29: 99–​101. Solso, R. L. 1994. Cognition and the Visual Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sonik, K. 2013. “The Monster’s Gaze: Vision as Mediator between Time and Space in the Art of Mesopotamia,” in L. Feliu, J. Llop, A. M. Albà, and J. Sanmartín, eds., Time and History in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Barcelona. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 285–​300. Sonik, K. 2014. “Pictorial Mythology and Narrative in the Ancient Near East,” in M. H. Feldman and B. Brown, eds., Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art. Berlin: De Gruyter, 265–​293. Sonik, K. 2015. “Divine (Re-​)Presentation: Authoritative Image and a Pictorial Stream of Tradition in Mesopotamia,” in B. Pongratz-​Leisten and K. Sonik, eds., The Materiality of Divine Agency. Berlin: De Gruyter, 142–​196. 555

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Part VI

Languages and semantic fields

26 Language technology approach to “seeing” in Akkadian Aleksi Sahala and Saana Svärd

Introduction In this chapter we discuss Akkadian verbs that connote “seeing”—​more specifically, amāru, naṭālu, palāsu, dagālu, barû, ḫiāṭu, and ṣubbû.1 The theoretical framework for our analysis is based on cognitive linguistics. The basic idea is that one of the few ways we can attempt to understand the perspective of ancient people (emic approach) is by analysing the vocabulary they used. This perspective is based on the work done in cognitive linguistics, which has demonstrated that native speakers of different languages (with differing conceptual categories) can have marked differences in how they see the world.2 Our research data was collected in August 2018 from the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (ORACC), one of the largest digital corpora of Akkadian and Sumerian texts (see further below). In total, our collection of data consisted of 9,086 lemmatised Akkadian texts comprising about a million words. In this study, we decided to use all of the lemmatised Akkadian language data that was available to us via ORACC for two reasons. First, some of the seeing verbs were too rarely attested in any one sub-​corpus to be statistically analysed. Additionally, the usefulness of the method for analysing rarely occurring words is limited, simply because rarely occurring words can be analysed with qualitative methods just as easily. Second, using all of the data from ORACC helped us identify period-​specific and genre-​specific uses of words. For the statistical analysis we applied a word association measure called Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI), which is a well-​established method for studying distributional semantics and one of the most important concepts in Natural Language processing (Jurafsky and Martin 2019: 108). Our aim was twofold. First, to establish a semantic field for “seeing” and second, to demonstrate that PMI is a useful tool for analysing Akkadian texts. This second aim was achieved by comparing our results with the results reached by Ainsley Dicks in her 2012 dissertation, “Catching the Eye of the Gods: The Gaze in Mesopotamian Literature.” Our results indicate that not only is the proposed methodology viable, but it can also open up new avenues of inquiry for the study of senses in Mesopotamia. Specifically, the results show that PMI was able to highlight several semantic aspects of the verbs of seeing that Dicks (2012) had also observed. The method can be utilised on two levels. First, it can be used to acquire an overall picture of typical collocates and their genre/​period distributions. Second, it can be used to sample a small, yet DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-27

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statistically significant selection of co-​occurrences for close-​reading that often reveal the most typical semantic aspects of a word. Here, we begin by briefly discussing the question of semantic fields, then proceed to our data set and the nature of our method. The actual analysis is presented in the last section, followed by a short conclusion.

Semantic fields In our previous work, we have emphasised the importance of emic research approaches that aim to understand the meanings of words and cultural concepts from an insider’s perspective, in other words, from the point of view of the social group that is being studied (Svärd et al. 2018: 226, 229–​230). For us, the group being studied is the people who used the Akkadian language. Naturally, the fragmented cuneiform texts preserved from Mesopotamia do not reflect the full complexities of this living language: few people knew how to read and write in Mesopotamia and writing mostly documented elite concerns. Nonetheless, we posit that “behind” the textual evidence there existed a section of the population that used Akkadian as a means of building a common world view and understanding of the world. This hypothesis is based on cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics is a field of study that encompasses varied approaches, yet the different forms of cognitive linguistics share the hypothesis that our understanding of the world as human beings is mediated by language. In other words, we only make sense of the world through the linguistic categories that we use: “Language, then, is seen as a repository of world knowledge, a structured collection of meaningful categories that help us deal with new experiences and store information about old ones” (Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2010: 5). This perspective is useful for ancient Near Eastern studies. Although we have a variety of archaeological evidence from ancient Mesopotamia, it is its rich corpus of textual evidence that sets it apart from many other historical periods. We maintain that analysing individual lexemes will help us to better understand the cognitive categories of the people using the ancient language (see also Chapter 28, this volume). Although lexemes do not define such semantic fields comprehensively, we can still use the statistical information regarding individual lexemes and the relationships between them to explore these fields. The concrete methods of how to map semantic fields for individual lexemes originate from the fields of language technology and corpus linguistics. In general, language technological methods have been rarely applied in the field of ancient Near Eastern Studies, especially in terms of text analysis.3 For us, these quantitative methods open up new avenues of inquiry that complement the more traditional philological work. The method chosen for this study is based on our previous work. In our previous research (Alstola et al. 2019; Svärd et al. 2021), we have used three well-​established language technological methods for calculating word association measures and word embeddings: Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI) (Church and Hanks 1989), Word2vec (Mikolov et al. 2013), and fastText (Bojanowski et al. 2017).4 As the work of our research group progressed, however, we realised that these methods produce quite similar results with the Akkadian data set (Svärd et al 2018; 2021). Accordingly, for this study we chose to only use PMI as it is easy to implement and understand, and it produces consistently good results that can be tracked back in the primary sources by using bigram searches.5 Also, as this study focuses on verbs, PMI provided a way to study their meaning on the basis of their typical arguments (especially subjects and objects). In a nutshell, PMI is based on the old idea from linguistics, that a word’s meaning can be better understood by identifying the company that it keeps (Firth 1957). 562

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Researching lexical semantics is of course a topic of research that has been advanced in Assyriology—​usually via dictionary work. One of the aims of the most extensive current dictionary—​The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD)—​is to catalogue all of the nuances and possible meanings of a given word, in order to facilitate the task of translating new cuneiform texts. What is more, by providing the reader with the original contexts of a given word (sometimes very extensively), the dictionary implicitly subscribes to the idea that the meaning of the word is created in its association with other words. What PMI does, then, is an extension of this goal: PMI provides a complete statistical analysis of these contexts. This provides us with a more complete picture of the semantic field of a word, and enables us to launch studies that engage with linguistics as a field (including translation studies as well as sociolinguistic studies). In the current study, we use the results regarding “seeing” by Dicks (2012) as a point of comparison for our statistical analysis. Her comprehensive analysis made the use of CAD superfluous for these particular verbs.

Data and preparations As noted in the introduction, our data was collected in August 2018 from ORACC.6 We used only the lemmatised segments of the Akkadian corpus, because our method was unable to produce meaningful results directly from transliteration due to spelling variation and morphological complexity of the Akkadian language. In total, our collection of data consisted of 9,086 Akkadian texts comprising about a million words. These texts come from all available time periods and genres, excluding those tagged as lexical lists (see Table 26.1). Although the lexical lists would have significantly contributed to the mass of our corpus (over 10,000 texts and 550,000 words), we were more interested in the use of verbs within the language’s syntactic constraints. About 58 per cent of our texts dated to the Neo-​Assyrian period, and nearly half of the remaining texts dated to the Seleucid and Hellenistic periods. The Neo-​Assyrian texts consisted mostly of administrative letters, royal inscriptions, and legal transactions. In turn, the majority of the texts from the Hellenistic period consisted of legal texts, and the Seleucid texts were mostly omens and incantations. Coincidentally, our data consisted of very few literary texts (43,000 words and 202 texts in total), which makes our data set very different from the data that Dicks (2012) used in her study. Overall, Dicks (2012: 2–​3) examined both the Sumerian and Akkadian literary corpus, and the main part of her Akkadian material included Benjamin Foster’s volume Before the Muses (2005), Andrew George’s comprehensive Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (2003), and most of the royal inscriptions from Mesopotamia, including volumes from the series Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (RIMB 2; RIME 1; RIME 2; RIME 3/​1; RIME 3/​2; RIME 4; RIMA 1; RIMA 2; RIMA 3) and from the series Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-​Assyrian Period (RINAP 4). Table 26.1  Most prominent time periods, their word counts, and most common genres in our data for “seeing” in Akkadian Neo-​Assyrian (565k) Hellenistic (111k) Seleucid (60k) Achaemenid (49k) Old Babylonian (45k)

Admin. letter (31%) Legal (93%) Omen (34%) Legal (40%) Administrative (38%)

Royal inscription (19%) Unspecified (3%) Incantation-​ritual (30%) Omen (26%) Mathematical (36%)

Legal transactions (11%) Literary (2%) Astrological (14%) Mathematical (11%) School (16%)

Note: More comprehensive tables can be found in our Zenodo repository.

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We pre-​processed the data to increase its usability for the collocation analysis. We filtered out all of the words that had been tagged as pronouns, prepositions, numerals, and different particles directly from our data set. This way, we were left with a text corpus where the remaining words carried more semantic weight. The filtered words, as well as lacunae, were replaced with an underscore to preserve their original positions in the texts. We also normalised all proper names by grouping them into categories (royal, divinity, person) according to ORACC’s internal metadata. This allowed us to see a more general picture of the verbs’ collocates and prevented different proper nouns from overcrowding our results. The pre-​processed data set is available in our Zenodo repository, along with the scripts and results.7

Methods In every natural language, individual words can be combined into phrases and sentences only by following a rather complex set of syntactic and semantic rules. Syntactic rules dictate the constraints for order and form of the words, while semantic rules designate which individual words can be used in given positions in order to create understandable and meaningful expressions. When syntactic and semantic rules are applied in practice, they tend to create patterns. The verb “to hit” is typically accompanied by an object that receives the impact, and an instrument or a subject that physically touches the object. Countless different options are possible, but to give a few, we could expect, (A) a man and a car, (B) a nail and a hammer, or even, (C) a bear and a steam locomotive. It is quite obvious to expect that in any real-​world corpus of news reports, the option A would be the most frequently attested one, while B would be significantly rarer and C almost certainly unique. Now, if we count how many times the words of each option are attested close to each other, and we know the size of our corpus, we can calculate the probabilities of their co-​occurrence. This probability is called a joint distribution p(a,b), where a and b stand for the co-​occurring words. As we speculated already by their assumed frequencies, the joint distribution p(man, car) would be significantly higher than p(bear, steam locomotive). The information these probabilities alone give us is not that interesting, unless we also know how likely it would be for the words to co-​occur if all the syntactic and semantic information were the same, and all of the words just co-​occurred independently. This probability, or rather the chance of independent co-​occurrence, can be expressed as the product of the words’ marginal probabilities (in other words, the probability that a given word occurs in the corpus). Thus, the chance of man and car co-​occurring independently would be p(man)p(car). When we divide the joint distribution of our words by the chance of their independent co-​occurrence, the quotient of this calculation can be used as an association score, which reveals if the words’ co-​occurrence is statistically significant or not. If the words co-​occur more often than it would be reasonable to expect by chance, the words can be considered as collocates. If the collocates are ordered by their association score, their order will most likely be quite different to the order of their joint distributions. As the words man and car are likely a lot more frequent than hammer and nail, the association score for pair B would be higher than that of pair A. In the case of bear and steam locomotive, it is possible that these words would be attested very rarely in the corpus. In the extreme case, only once as this very expression. This would mean that this pair would get a perfect association score, because in the context of our corpus, the words would only appear together and never independently. The statistical measure of association described above is called Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI) in modern literature. By formal definition, it is the logarithmic ratio of the joint 564

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distribution of two words to the probability of their co-​occurrence under the assumption of independence (Church and Hanks 1989): PMI (a, b ) = log 2

p (a, b ) p ( a ) p (b )

To prevent hapaxes similar to our bear and steam locomotive example rising to the top ranks of our association scores, it is usually wise to define a frequency threshold that prevents any collocates from having a score unless they are attested at least a certain number of times in the corpus. Additionally, the joint distribution can be squared to reduce the impact of this low-​frequency bias even further (Daille 1994). This improvement of PMI is called PMI2, and it is formally defined as follows: PMI 2 (a, b ) = log 2

p (a, b ) p ( a ) p (b ) 2

In PMI2, the maximum score that a collocate can get is 0, which means that the collocate is only attested close to our keyword, that is, the word for which we are interested in finding collocates. The minimum score is -​∞, which in turn means that the words are in a complementary distribution and never attested close to each other.8 The maximum allowed distance between the keyword and its collocates is referred to as a window. Small window sizes are useful for finding words that occur in fixed expressions or form compound words or idioms, whereas larger ones can be used to detect semantic dependencies. For this study we chose to use PMI2 with a symmetric window of seven words, which meant that the collocates could co-​occur at a maximum of seven words before or after our keyword (the keyword and the collocate were included in this count). This choice was based purely on trial and error with the Akkadian data: very small windows seemed to leave out interesting collocates, and very large windows tended to overcrowd the results with words from long formulaic expressions and repeating content.9 The frequency threshold was set to three, and thus all collocates that did not co-​occur with our keywords at least three times were discarded. Much higher frequency thresholds were not convenient to use, as the median word frequency in our data set was only four. We took into account the top 50 collocates for each keyword. Naturally, for some rare verbs a top list of 50 collocates entailed searching all occurrences of the verb and examining its use by close-​reading. However, we preferred using the same amount of top collocates for all verbs for the sake of consistency. The full lists of collocates, as well as statistics on our data set can be found in our Zenodo repository (see note 7).

Analysing the collocates We observed semantic relations between words on two levels. At first, the results were examined just as a list of collocates. This high-​level analysis provided a quick oversight on the use of certain verbs. For example, the collocate list of amāru consisted of several astronomical objects, whereas such objects were completely absent in the results of several other verbs of seeing. Similarly, the collocate list of barû contained a lot of scribal terminology, something that the other verbs of seeing did not have. This information alone told us something about the semantic distribution and general usage of the verbs. Second, a lower-​level analysis involved actually looking at the contexts where the keyword-​collocate pairs were attested. This could be considered as a kind of 565

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selective close-​reading, where the PMI guided us only to the statistically most relevant contexts where certain words were used. Although the results sometimes comprised dozens or even several hundreds of examples for a given keyword-​collocate pair, we found that usually a superficial close-​reading of two to five contexts was enough to understand the general connection between the words—​if such a connection existed. In several cases the collocate lists included words that did not necessarily give us any information on the semantic domain of our keyword. Typical cases included segmentation errors in bilingual texts, which caused a few Sumerian words to appear in our results. Problematic collocates also emerged from formulaic and repeating expressions. As the PMI works by counting words inside a given window, it was not uncommon for several adjacent words of a repeated passage to be present in the collocate list concurrently. To ease the interpretation process of our PMI results, our collocation extraction script generated a search link of every keyword-​collocate pair to Korp, which housed “ORACC in Korp” ( Jauhiainen et al. 2019).10 Korp is an online service provided by the Language Bank of Finland that supports complex multi-​word search queries and represents data in keyword in context (KWIC) view.11 From Korp, the search results could be further backtracked to original publications and images of the tablets (if available) through line-​by-​line aligned links to ORACC. Here, we discuss our results for each verb of interest. We begin by presenting our observations on the Akkadian verbs of seeing and comparing them with Dicks’ (2012) philological study.

amāru With a frequency of 2,769, amāru was the most well-​attested verb of “seeing” in our data set. It was also the most prominent verb of “seeing” by both absolute and relative frequency in every genre except for treaties. The semantic field of amāru is rather wide and it apparently does not have as specific a function as other verbs of seeing. It can refer to being visible or seeing something concretely or in a more abstract sense. Many of its best ranked collocates came from Neo-​Assyrian royal inscriptions, Seleucid and Neo-​Assyrian omens and astrological texts/​reports, as well as Old Babylonian mathematical problem texts. In royal inscriptions, the highest ranked collocate mušarû,“royal inscription,” indicated that the verb is occasionally used to mean “to read,” literally “to see an inscription.” In omens, amāru was most commonly associated with seeing or observing various things that might be interpreted as ominous signs. In several contexts the verb was in the passive voice and referred to something being or becoming visible. Typical collocates included words for different celestial objects and phenomena such as bibbu, “planet”; ṣīt šamši, “sunrise”; Šihṭu, “Mercury”; Dilbat, “Venus”; Makru, “Mars”; or kakkabu, “star”; but also (ominous) animals like muraššû, “wild-​cat,” and azaru, “lynx, wild-​cat,” were found. Some uses of amāru indicated that the verb has a connection to understanding and experience. About one fifth of the collocates came from (especially Old Babylonian) mathematical texts, in which the verb’s several collocates consisted of geometrical and mathematical terminology (igû, “reciprocal”; eperu, “volume”; šiddu, “length”; and mēlû, “height”). Here, the verb amāru seems to have been used as a verb of understanding by seeing. Use as a verb of experiencing emerged from the first millennium omen texts, where someone is expected to see, that is, to personally experience, a financial loss (ibissû). Although not all of the characteristics of amāru discussed by Dicks were represented in our results, the general description of the verb seemed to be in line with her findings. Dicks (2012: 115) associated amāru with vision as perception instead of action. In our results the 566

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perceptual nature of the verb was present in its use in the N-​stem, especially in astronomical texts. According to Dicks (2012: 120, 128), amāru also has a relation to experience and knowledge, and it can connote a higher degree of cognitive participation. Both of these aspects were also represented in our results: the aspect of knowledge or comprehension was present in mathematical texts and the relationship with experience came from the collocate ibissû. However, our results lacked two central characteristics of amāru mentioned by Dicks: first, the use of amāru as a verb of “seeing” dreams (Dicks 2012: 115), and second, the need for light in order to amāru. The words šuttu, “dream,” and nūru, “light,” did both appear on the collocate list, but only if we extended it beyond the top 50 results.

naṭālu In our results, naṭālu was used almost exclusively in text types that connect with the highest possible scribal education. A majority of the collocates emerged from the first-​millennium omens and literary texts, although texts from the latter genre were underrepresented in our data set. Also, in general, 70 per cent of the occurrences of naṭālu emerged from these two genres of texts. The semantics of naṭālu seem to be close to amāru: they both can take tangible or intangible objects and be used in semantically similar contexts such as seeing or becoming visible. Onefourth of the collocates came from texts regarding extispicy, which at first glance suggested that naṭālu was used when omens were interpreted from intestines. However, a closer look revealed that in these contexts naṭālu was merely used to indicate different parts of intestines “looking at” or “facing” each other, rather than the diviner interpreting the ominous marks in them. In ritual texts and hymns of the Neo-​Assyrian, Seleucid, and Achaemenid periods one of the statistically most relevant uses of naṭālu was dreaming, or literally “seeing dreams (šuttu).” This suggested that the verb denotes vision as perception similarly to amāru. Some celestial phenomena such as qarnu, “horns of the Moon,” and antallû, “eclipse,” co-​occur with naṭālu in very similar contexts where amāru is used with planets and stars.12 There is no obvious explanation or pattern why naṭālu is sometimes preferred. Additionally, a few collocates of naṭālu came from rather dramatic passages in literary texts and Neo-​Babylonian royal inscriptions. In these passages seen objects are the cut off (ruʾʾumu) wings (kappu) of Anzu,13 someone dying (dâku), and a pile of bodies (pagru) visible for the birds of prey. The examples were too few to make any serious conclusions, if the dramatic character of the observed event is connected to the choice of the verb. Dicks (2012: 179) categorises naṭālu generally as a verb of vision as perception, but with a higher degree of intellectual involvement than with amāru. In our results, only the perceptive aspect as dreaming is clearly represented. Dicks (2012: 185) also mentions the previously discussed use of naṭālu as a verb of “facing towards something” in extispicy reports and states that the meaning is purely directional and does not involve a visual component. The speculated use of naṭālu in dramatic contexts is not discussed by Dicks (2012: 177), although she mentions that the verb may involve an emotional component.

palāsu The collocates of palāsu (or rather naplusu, as it usually is attested in the N-​stem) came mostly from Neo-​Assyrian royal inscriptions, but a few were also found in ritual texts and incantations of the same period. In total, 55 per cent of the attestations of palāsu came from these three genres of texts. Most of the collocates were related to higher beings, especially deities, looking at royal persons and their deeds. Some examples included epištu, “deed”; ilu, “god”; bēltu, “lady”; šarratu, 567

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“queen”; and paššuru, “offering table”; as well as several names of individual deities, which in our data were merged into one categorical keyword. In the royal inscriptions, the action of palāsu was always favourable and beneficial to the person being looked at, as seen from collocates such as balāṭu, “life”; damqu, “good”; šarāku, “to grant something”; and kūnu,“firmness.” In several contexts, the verb was also modified by adverbial ḫadîš, “joyfully,” although the word did not directly show up in our results. In ritual texts the look could also be malevolent, as in the case of “the evil eye looking into hiding places (šaḫātu) in order to empty them.” Thus, the beneficial aspect of the action did not inherently come from the verb, but rather from the subject’s intentions. In seven instances, palāsu described in rituals and incantations was performed through a window (aptu) or into a hiding place (šaḫātu). Thus, the verb can also have a meaning “to peek in.” In addition to “looking at/​being looked at” and “peeking in,” palāsu was also used as a verb of examination in Seleucid ritual-​incantations. The examples were limited to one collocate, zumru, “body (of an animal),” which acted as the object of palāsu. There was also one collocate, bakû, “to weep,” that added a sad, emotional aspect to the action of palāsu in the Neo-​Assyrian period. However, the examples were too few to draw any further conclusions. Dicks’ (2012: 146) interpretation of palāsu as a verb of active vision or gaze agrees with our results. The verb was used only with tangible objects and there was no inherent benevolence or malevolence involved, despite the fact that the verb was often found in such contexts (2012: 154). The aspect of joyfulness (2012: 162) was only indirectly discernible in our results as an adverbial modifier hadîš. Dicks does not mention the use of palāsu as a verb of peeking in, but rather associates a similar function with another verb, ḫ iāṭu (2012: 213). Some uses of the verb were not represented in our results, namely discovering temple foundations, scrutinising, and looking upwards (2012: 154, 168). We also could not find examples of palāsu being used as a verb of active vision (2012: 154–​158).

dagālu Instances of dagālu came mostly from royal inscriptions and letters, which constituted about 74 per cent of the verb’s total occurrences. It was also the most common seeing verb in treaties, although with only 14 attestations. Most of the collocates in the Š-​stem came from Neo-​ Assyrian royal inscriptions, where waterways (miṭirtu), meadows (tawwertu), regions (nagû), lands (mātu), and power (bēlūtu, šarrūtu) are transferred and entrusted, that is, given to be looked after, to the local people and their leaders. This use of the verb appeared in the expression pānu + šudgulu. The verb also appeared with pānu in the G-​stem: pānu + dagālu, where its meaning seemed to be more of an abstract kind of looking, namely “looking forward to,” that is, waiting for something to happen. In four instances it was used synonymously with its collocate waqû, “to wait.” Another commonly found collocate zāqipu, “stake,” referred to people being forced to watch public impalements of the king’s enemies. Because the verb was not often attested in the G-​ stem in our results, its meaning was difficult to separate from that of palāsu. Nonetheless, one could speculate that dagālu involves “looking at/​watching” or “looking after” something for a longer period of time and with a higher focus than palāsu, which seems to refer more generally to looking at something. Our results agree to a great extent with Dicks’ (2012: 194–​195, 198) observations. She describes dagālu as a verb of gaze connoting fixed attention and prolonged duration, and associates it with waiting. In the Š-​stem, she describes the meaning as “forcing someone to watch something (often repellent),” which also matches with our example of watching executions.

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Additional meanings of the Š-​stem—​“to be subject to,” “to attend to,” and “to belong to”—​in expressions with pānu (2012: 195) corresponded to our interpretation of the verb as meaning “to entrust something to someone.”14 A very rare instance of dagālu taking an intangible object was not present in our result; only one example of this is given in Dicks (2012: 163).

barû, ḫiāṭu, and ṣubbû The verbs barû, ḫiāṭu, and ṣubbû can be summarised as “verbs of examination.” They form a well-​formed hierarchical semantic range and are connected by contexts where the quality or quantity of something is being monitored visually. Such contexts include, but are not limited to, surveying structures, checking the correctness of written documents, or visually confirming that a certain quantity of valuable resources is present. In addition to the qualitative versus quantitative examination, another key difference observed between these verbs appears to be related to the distance of observation. The verb barû seems to be a verb of close qualitative examination, perhaps in a more profound way than any other verb of seeing. Most of its prominent collocates came from Neo-​Assyrian and later periods, where barû was often attested in quality assuring formulaic expressions like GIM SUMUN -​šú SAR -​ma ba-​rì up-​puš4 ṭup-​pi, “written, checked and properly executed according to its original.” The collocates consisted mostly of scribal terminology, including different types of tablets and inscriptions, as well as other terminology related to the scribal profession and the writing system itself: šaṭru, “written”; gabarû, “copy”; ṭuppu, “tablet”; giṭṭu, “oblong tablet”; lēʾu, “writing board”; and ṭupšarru, “scribe.” Closely associated actions related to barû include ṣaṭāru, “to write”; sanāqu, “to check”; kunnu, “to deposit (a tablet) permanently”; and šeʾû, “to seek”; as well as the verb of examination, ḫiāṭu. When it comes to reading inscriptions and tablets, barû seems to have been used when the action is executed very carefully and with a high degree of intellectual involvement. This type of reading is distinct from that of amāru in royal inscriptions, perhaps because royal inscriptions were meant to be seen in public places and were not meant to be scrutinised and read, or thoroughly examined and checked, as with other types of text. Ḫiāṭu shared characteristics of the other two verbs of examination, barû and ṣubbû, in our data set and can be considered to lie somewhere in the middle of their semantic range. It often referred to distant qualitative examination, but it could also be used for close quantitative examination in the sense of weighing something, that is, visually confirming the amount of siparru, “bronze”; ḫurāṣu, “gold”; or kaspu, “silver”; by placing it on a scale. However, in our results, such usage was restricted to Neo-​Assyrian letters. In the sense of distant qualitative examination, ḫiaṭu was found in a few Neo-​Assyrian royal inscriptions, where typical collocates included such words as temmēnu, “foundation,” and libittu, “mudbrick.” Another, albeit semantically rather obscure usage, was found in Neo-​Assyrian and later omen texts, where ḫiāṭu refer to demons examining or fixing their eyes upon their unfortunate victims. Collocates indicating this included designations related to demons (ḫayattu, “terror”; lilû, “Lilu-​ demon”), body parts (limittu, “limbs”; qātu, “hand”; šēpu, “foot”), diseases (miqit šamê, “falling-​ sickness, epilepsy”), and their symptoms (ruʾtu, “flowing saliva”; emēmu, “to become feverish”; zūtu, “sweat”), as well as verbs of catching diseases and succumbing to them (ṣabātu, “to seize”; and mâtu, “to die”) (see also Chapter 23, this volume). In the sense of demons fixing their eyes on someone, ḫiāṭu seemed to have something in common with palāsu. The verb palāsu did not, however, appear on its collocate list. Instead, the most closely associated verbs to ḫiāṭu statistically were barû and šeʾû, “to seek.”

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When ḫiāṭu was used in the same expression as barû, the order of the verbs was fixed. First, the object was examined with the verb ḫiāṭu, and then a closer examination was performed with barû. The reversed order was not attested in our data set. The collocates of ṣubbû were dominated by formulaic expressions in royal inscriptions from the Neo-​Assyrian period, where the verb exclusively referred to distant qualitative examination. The collocates included words denoting parts of structures and their condition or description, as well as tearing down and erecting buildings: maqittu, “dilapidation”; lābiru, “old”; temmēnu, “foundation”; simtu, “specifications (of a building)”; bītu, “temple”; raṣāpu, “to erect”; and nasāḫu, “to tear down.” Any uses of the verb outside this context were not present in our results. Although Dicks (2012) does not differentiate between qualitative and quantitative examination, her analysis of these three verbs is very much in agreement with our results. She recognises a similar semantic continuum from barû to ḫiāṭu, and from ḫiāṭu to ṣubbû as is suggested by our results (2012: 214, 217), and that each of these actions indicates a high degree of intellectual participation, barû requiring the most effort. She also notes that ṣubbû denotes a visual supervision or a survey performed from a superior vantage point and from a greater distance (2012: 221). Dicks (2012: 208) presents barû as a verb that denotes “a visual search for an object within an object,” while ḫiāṭu denotes a close examination of the object itself. Although such a fine nuance escaped us during our initial analysis, a more thorough and careful analysis would have revealed it. In our results, barû was extensively used to examine writing or signs on tablets, literally an object within an object. In turn, ḫiāṭu was used for visually confirming a given amount of valuables and surveying structures, that is, by definition examining the properties of the object itself. Dicks (2012: 211) also mentions the fixed order of ḫiāṭu and barû, which she explains by the fact that barû connotes more detailed examination than ḫiāṭu. Some uses and properties of barû were not represented in our results, namely the cases where deities watch over something or humans observe deities (2012: 202–​203). We were also unable to find examples of barû as a verb of transferring dreams in the Š-​stem (2012: 205). Regarding ḫiāṭu, our results did not indicate that the vision expressed by this verb may penetrate barriers (2012: 212–​213).

Discussion of the results Table 26.2 provides a summary of the semantic aspects of the Akkadian verbs of seeing. The column AD represents the observations made by Dicks (2012) and the column PMI describes the various meanings of each verb represented in our statistical analysis within the stated parameters. Generally, PMI was able to give a good overall picture of the semantic nuances of different verbs of seeing. The results were particularly good in the case of barû, ḫiāṭu, and ṣubbû, where the method clearly highlighted the semantic continuum from close examination to long distance observation. The most difficult verb to analyse was naṭālu. Although its use as a verb of dreaming and pointing direction was apparent from the results, its general meaning and exact semantic difference from amāru remained tentative. Overall, our results provided less information about the semantics of the seeing verbs than Dicks’ philological work, but in one case, PMI was able to highlight the use of palāsu as a verb of “peeking in,” even though such a meaning was not mentioned by Dicks. Although we superficially examined the top 50 collocates for each verb, just analysing the top 15–​20 collocates would have yielded very similar results regardless of the verb’s frequency. This naturally means that, even though PMI highlights relevant collocates that improve our understanding of the meaning of seeing verbs, a large portion of the collocate lists contain uninformative statistical noise (whose quantity usually increases toward the lower ranks in the 570

Language technology approach to “seeing” Table 26.2  Summary of the semantic aspects of the Akkadian verbs, comparing Dicks (AD) and PMI amāru dreaming impossible in darkness intangible objects associated with knowledge stimulates emotional response (happiness, sadness) experiencing visiting finding, discovering reading (N) becoming visible

AD X X X X X X X X X X

PMI

palāsu looking at looking after no intangible objects favourable looking unfavourable looking discovery of temple foundations looking over, scrutinising (Ntn) looking upwards emotion: weep emotion: joyfulness peeking through windows or into cavities

AD X X X X X X X X

PMI X

nat.ālu requires light dreaming associated with knowledge high degree of intellectual involvement (watching) denotes vision, no object pointing towards (direction) (N) being visible

AD X X X X X X X

PMI

dagālu fixed focus waiting (looking forward to) intangible object (only one instance mentioned by Dicks) (Š) being subject to, belonging to (or to entrust to, to make look after) (Š) forcing to watch (Š) frightening to see

AD X X X X X X

PMI X X

barû intangible objects examining scanning an object within an object surveillance in order to protect highly engaged visual perception (Š) transferring dreams

AD X X X X X X

PMI

X X X

X X

X X X

X X X

X

X X

X X X

X X X (continued)

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Aleksi Sahala and Saana Svärd Table 26.2  Cont. ḫiāt.u close to barû always precedes barû if the verbs are found in same expression higher intellectual involvement than amāru or naṭālu examining object watchfulness with mischief or care can penetrate barriers (peering in) weighing (in our view: quantitative visual examination)

AD X X X X X X X

PMI X X X X X

s.ubbû surveying structures long distance of observation /​superior vantage point

AD X X

PMI X X

X

rankings). Sometimes this noise also appears quite high in the rankings; for example, dagālu has a third ranking collocate ḫamšu, “fifth,” which comes from a repeating passage in Sennacherib’s inscriptions. The words do fit into the same window, but in fact ḫamšu begins a new paragraph in the original inscription while dagālu occurs at the end of the previous paragraph. Thus, these words have nothing to do with each other, despite PMI seeing them as closely associated. There are some ways to reduce the amount of noise. At first, the co-​occurrences can be weighted by their contextual similarity, meaning that if words co-​occur in partially or fully duplicated contexts, their statistical significance is reduced proportionally to the amount of duplication (Sahala and Lindén 2020). This approach, however, was not yet discovered when this study was carried out, but it was successfully applied in Svärd et al. (2021). Secondly, the texts should be pre-​processed in a way that the chance of unassociated words co-​occurring within a set window would be minimised. Instead of splitting the corpus into texts and using them as the input for PMI, we should split the texts further into paragraphs according to the translation units given in ORACC (as far as they exist). This would ensure that, at least in most cases, words belonging to completely different but still adjacent parts of the texts would never co-​occur within the same window. Another interesting way of improving the results would be to apply morphological constraints to the PMI results by using a morphological analyser, BabyFST, developed by our team (Sahala et al. 2020).15 For instance, this would allow us to automatically compare uses of different verbal stems (for example G versus Š), as well as to restrict collocates to certain morphological forms with relevant syntactic function in the sentence (such as subject and object). Such features would bring the statistical approach closer to the philological methodology of Dicks. Naturally, this task may not be as simple as it seems on paper, as case markings in the later stages of the Akkadian language are very inconsistent.

Conclusions As can be seen from the analysis above, overall the results gained with the PMI method matched the conclusions reached by Dicks in her dissertation, despite the genre differences of our data sets. This confirms that PMI is an interesting approach that makes quantitative analysis of texts quite viable. While statistical, quantitative methods can never replace the traditional methods of philological analysis, they can open up new research avenues and make the research more efficient and reproducible. First of all, instead of analysing every occurrence of a word by hand, 572

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PMI can help researchers focus on the most relevant contexts of a word’s use: first, by providing an overall image of the semantic field before having to dive into the minute details; and second, the semantic domains created with the help of PMI may provide new philological and technical questions for researchers. For example: why exactly is naṭālu preferred instead of amāru in certain contexts? How can we improve this method in order to tackle the problem with formulaic expressions? Finally, the use of PMI and statistical measures provides information on the usage of words in a way that previous dictionaries have not. Instead of providing an analysis of every possible nuance of a given word of interest, language technological applications provide information on when, where, and in which genres the word was used and in which contexts it typically occurs. Although PMI is not technologically a very novel method for semantic analysis, it does have some advantages over the state-​of-​the-​art neural methods. First, PMI does not suffer from having a small corpus size in the same way that many neural network-​based methods do. Second, PMI is mathematically very transparent and easy to understand. Also, all word associations detected with PMI can be tracked back to the original text and verified by traditional philological methods, whereas more complex neural models are often black boxes for which the underlying mechanisms and reasoning may be difficult to comprehend at times. Nonetheless, as discussed above, using PMI on small corpora also requires wariness and careful pre-​processing of the text material. The results are typically noisy, and it is often crucial to examine the contexts of the collocates in order to avoid false associations. Additionally, the parameter selection has a major impact on the results. Often setting more constraints and restrictions, like narrowing the window size and increasing the frequency threshold, provide cleaner results, but on the downside such results may be too obvious and thus uninteresting. Less restrictive settings on the other hand tend to produce more noise, but also capture a more vivid selection of associated words. We hope that the results presented in this chapter, as well as the openly available tools developed by our team, will spark interest in Assyriologists to experiment with the presented methodology to complement and aid their own research.

Notes 1. This chapter is based on the work of a larger research group in Helsinki that focuses on researching semantic domains in Akkadian texts with the help of language technological methods. In addition to the authors, members of this group are Krister Lindén, Heidi Jauhiainen, and Tero Alstola. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the group. Furthermore, the research of this group has been made possible by the financial support from the Academy of Finland and the University of Helsinki. The chapter has been a joint research project between the authors, but the idea for the chapter was conceived by Svärd whereas the data-​driven analysis was conducted by Sahala. In terms of writing, Svärd wrote sections one and two, Sahala sections three and four and most of sections five and six. Preliminary results using an earlier data set were presented at the ASOR Annual Meeting, November 17, 2017 in Boston, MA. 2. The relationship between language and thought has been an important topic in many different fields of study yet there is no firm consensus on the issue to date. For a good introduction to the topic, see Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2010. This chapter was influenced by the work of Levinson (2003: 14–​16) and Fleisch (2007: 41–​43, 46–​47), which inspired in us a desire to examine the Mesopotamian world through nebulous lexical meanings in Akkadian (see also Svärd et al. 2018: 229–​230). 3. For an overview, see Svärd et al. 2018: 227, and the other contributions in the volume. 4. Word2vec-​compatible word embeddings can be produced from PMI results through matrix factorisation methods such as truncated Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) (Levy and Goldberg 2014). Our team has experimented on factorising PMI-​based term-​to-​term matrices by SVD with promising results (Sahala 2019). 573

Aleksi Sahala and Saana Svärd

5. Locating results gained from Word2vec or fastText from primary sources is not straightforward, which makes interpretation of the results more challenging. 6. ORACC can be accessed at http://​oracc.org. We thank the ORACC steering committee, in particular Niek Veldhuis, who provided access to all of the ORACC data in JSON format. We are indebted to everyone who has been involved in making this research data available, including the authors of the original publications, but also the people who have made the data ORACC-​compatible and enriched it through lemmatisations and by adding other metadata. As the total number of people involved would amount to hundreds (the current number of individual subprojects in ORACC is approximately 70), it would be impractical to list them all individually. However, as can be seen from Table 26.1, much of our data is Neo-​Assyrian, and much of the Neo-​Assyrian linguistic data was created in the State Archives of Assyria (SAA) project. We gratefully acknowledge SAA, created by Simo Parpola and his team and later developed into the State Archives of Assyria online (http://​oracc.museum.upenn.edu/​saao) by Karen Radner and her team. Finally, we also thank Heidi Jauhiainen, who converted the JSON into Korp compatible format. 7. Our Zenodo repository can be accessed at https://​doi.org/​10.5281/​zenodo.4424188. 8. Note that PMI2 does not explicitly show if the co-​occurrence is independent or not. The score that indicates independent co-​occurrence equals log2 p(a,b), which means that this value is not fixed and depends on the co-​occurrence frequency of the words. We chose not to normalise the scores here, because our normalisation method was not yet published at the time of writing this chapter and it was safer to use a well-​established measure instead. For normalised PMI2, see Sahala and Lindén 2020. 9. We also used a window size of seven words in our previous article (Svärd et al. 2018). 10. The current version (May 2019) of ORACC can be visited at www.kielipankki.fi/​corpora/​oracc/​. Please note that at the time of writing this chapter, Korp contained an earlier version of ORACC. This data set is downloadable from our Zenodo repository (see note 7) to make this study reproducible. Due to a major version change and related fixes to the ORACC in Korp, some search links may yield a different number of hits than is indicated in the results. 11. Korp can be viewed at http://​korp.csc.fi. 12. In most instances amāru is written logographically IGI or IGI -​ma. The interpretation as amāru comes from ORACC’s transcription. 13. Anzu was a monstrous mythological bird, half-​lion, half-​eagle. 14. This is a matter of translation: “he made the Y belong to X” versus “he entrusted the Y to X.” 15. The morphological analyser is already fully functional, but at the time of writing this chapter it was not possible to disambiguate the morphology reliably due to the lack of a gold standard for Akkadian morphology. Such a gold standard was, however, developed while this volume was being edited (see Luukko et al. 2020). The morphological disambiguation is currently being developed.

Bibliography Alstola, T., S. Zaia, A. Sahala, H. Jauhiainen, S. Svärd, and K. Lindén. 2019. “Aššur and His Friends: A Statistical Analysis of Neo-​Assyrian Texts.” JCS 71: 159–​180. Bojanowski, R., E. Grave, A. Joulin, and T. Milokolov. 2017. “Enriching Word Vectors with Subword Information.” Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 5: 135–​146. Church, K., and P. Hanks. 1989. “Word Association Norms, Mutual Information, and Lexicography,” in Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Association for Computational Linguistics, 76–​83. Daille, B. 1994. “Approche mixte pour l’extraction automatique de terminologie: statistiques lexicales et filtres linguistiques.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Université Paris 7. Dicks, A. A. 2012. “Catching the Eye of the Gods: The Gaze in Mesopotamian Literature.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University. Firth, J. R. 1957. Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Fleisch, A. 2007. “How Cognitive Semantics Relate to Comparative Linguistics: A Case Study from Nguni,” in T. Machalík and J. Záhořík, eds., Viva Africa 2007: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on African Studies. Pilsen: University of West Bohemia, 39–​53. Foster, B. R. 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Third Edition. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press.

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Geeraerts, D., and H. Cuyckens. 2010. “Introducing Cognitive Linguistics,” in D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3–​22. George, A. R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jauhiainen, H., T. Alstola, and A. Sahala. 2019. Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, Korp Version, May. Kielipankki. www.kielipankki.fi/​corpora/​oracc/​. Jurafsky, M., and J. H. Martin. 2019. Speech and Language Processing. Third Edition draft of October 2. https://​web.stanford.edu/​~jurafsky/​slp3. Levinson, S. 2003. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Language, Culture, and Cognition 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levy, O., and Y. Goldberg. 2014. “Neural Word Embedding as Implicit Matrix Factorization,” in Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, and C. Cortes, eds., NIPS ’14: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems –​Volume 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2177–​2185. Luukko, M., A. Sahala, S. Hardwick, and K. Lindén. 2020. “Akkadian Treebank for Early Neo-​Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,” in K. Evang, L. Kallmeyer, R. Ehren, S. Petitjean, E. Seyffarth, and D. Seddah, eds., Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories. Stroudsburg, PA: The Association for Computational Linguistics, 124–​134. Mikolov, T., K. Chen, G. Corrado, and J. Dean. 2013. “Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space.” arXiv:1301.3781. Sahala, A. 2019. “PMI+SVD and Semantic Fields in Akkadian Texts.” Poster at HELSLANG Summer Conference in Helsinki, May 27. https://github.com/asahala/pmi-embeddings. Sahala, A., and K. Lindén. 2020. “Improving Word Association Measures in Repetitive Corpora with Context Similarity Weighting,” in A. Fred and J. Filipe, eds., Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management –​Volume 1. SCITEPRESS, 48–​58. Sahala, A., M. Silfverberg, A. Arppe, and K. Lindén. 2020. “BabyFST: Towards a Finite-​State Based Computational Model of Ancient Babylonian,” in N. Calzolari, F. Béchet, P. Blache, K. Choukri, C. Cieri, T. Declerck, S. Goggi, H. Isahara, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, Hélène Mazo, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, and S. Piperidis, eds., Proceedings of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference. Paris: European Language Resources Association, 3886–​3894. Svärd, S., T. Alstola, H. Jauhiainen, A. Sahala, and K. Lindén. 2021. “Fear in Akkadian Texts: New Digital Perspectives on Lexical Semantics,” in S.-​W. Hsu and J. Llop-​Raduà, eds., The Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. CHANE 116. Leiden: Brill, 470–​502. Svärd, S., H. Jauhiainen, A. Sahala, and K. Lindén. 2018. “Semantic Domains in Akkadian Texts,” in V. Juloux, A. Gansell, and A. di Ludovico, eds., Cyber Research on the Ancient Near East and Neighboring Regions: Case Studies on Archaeological Data, Objects, Texts, and Digital Archiving. Digital Biblical Studies 2. Leiden: Brill, 224–​256.

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27 Metaphors of perception verbs in ancient Egyptian The proximal senses Elisabeth Steinbach-​Eicke

Introduction and preliminary considerations The sensory perception of human beings is based on external influences from the environment as well as on the inner, mental states of the body. Organs of sense perception receive various stimuli from outside the body and transform them into sensations via neural processes in the brain. It is important to remark that “the physiology of perception and our perception of perception is sometimes different” (Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 1999: 135). This means that we do not think about the exact biological-​neurological processes of perception when we perceive—​for example, when we see a cat, we are unaware that what we are seeing is actually the light beams that hit the cat and are thrown back on the retina of our eyes as a reversed and upside-​down image of the animal, further passed to and processed in the brain, and so forth. In modern times and especially in our Western marked understanding, we traditionally speak of the “five senses” (Table 27.1). At first glance, the five senses model may seem to be an ordinary and simple differentiation of human sensation. However, it is highly debatable whether this model is valid for other parts of the world or even for past societies and cultures. The debate about the exact number of human senses will not and cannot be discussed in this chapter, since there exist multiple ways to categorise, count, individuate, and describe the senses (Speed et al. 2019: 3; Winter 2019: 11–​15). Until today, there is no consensus on this question since human perception is too complex to capture with only one (more or less) manageable model. In linguistic studies on perception, the five sensory modalities of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste are usually examined—​with the awareness that this may result in certain limitations. According to the latest research, most of the world’s languages have lexemes at least for these five basic senses (Strik Lievers 2007: 167–​ 168). Therefore, this is also the starting point of this chapter. An emphasis is set here on the differentiation between distal (for example, sight, hearing) and proximal (or contact) senses (for example, touch, smell, taste), with a focus on the proximal modalities. Perception through the distal senses is often experienced as being objective and having to do with objects outside our bodies, while the proximal senses are understood as being more subjective and concentrated close to our bodies and feelings (Sweetser 1990: 37–​44). The 576

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Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian Table 27.1  The five senses model Sensory modality

Type of perception

Organ of perception

sight hearing touch smell taste

visual auditory haptic or tactile* olfactory gustatory

eye ear skin nose tongue

Note: * Used here in a broader sense, see Winter 2019: 14–​15.

Table 27.2  Selected examples of classifiers of perceptive verbs Perception verb

Classifier

Description

Transliteration

Translation

human eye

ptr

“to see”

bovid ear

śmt

“to hear”

human arm

ṭ mı ͗

“to touch”

human face in profile

śn

“to smell”

tongue of a cow

ṭp

“to taste”

Note: Hieroglyphs were set with the Hieroglyphic editor JSesh 7.3.2 by Rosmorduc 2019.

criterion of distance as well as “the felt experience of the different sensory modalities” (Winter 2019: 107) is responsible for the differentiation into “lower”1 and “higher” sensory modalities within the sense-​modality hierarchy (Viberg 2001: 1297). Thus, the classification into five sensory modalities will also be used within the present chapter for the sake of organisation. A crucial point in talking about sense perception in ancient Egypt is the fact that there is (according to the evidence) no surviving discourse within ancient Egypt on the topic of perception. This is in contrast with civilisations like ancient Greece, for example, where the writings of philosophers such as Aristotle in his work περὶ ψγχῆϛ (Perí psychḗs “On the Soul”; see Krapinger 2011) show a lively interest in the topic. The study of sense perception in societies and cultures of the ancient world is a challenge in general (due to, e.g., the absence of native speakers, gaps in continuous material over time periods, etc.). Most existing studies concentrate on the more cultural anthropological or literary aspects of the topic.2 Conclusions about the number and understanding of sensory modalities can only be drawn indirectly from textual evidence or material culture. The hieroglyphic script itself gives us some hints about Egyptians’ understanding of perception. The so-​called classifiers3 (also labelled determinatives in the literature) assign Egyptian lexemes to specific semantic categories in written Egyptian and were not spoken. Organs of sense perception function as classifiers at the end of the respective verbal lexemes: an eye for sight, an ear for hearing, a finger or an arm for touch, a nose or a face in profile for smell, and a tongue of a cow for taste (Table 27.2). These classifiers are understood in this chapter as a decisive criterion for assigning lexical items to a particular sensory modality. In addition, the contextual meaning, like the appearance of perception verbs with typical objects of perception (e.g., for taste: food and drinks), plays a role in the attribution to a sensory modality. This seems to justify the use of a modern five senses model to organise this chapter. 577

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The perceptive research history Linguistic interest in sense perception has increased in recent years. Studies of the morphosyntax and semantics of perceptive verbs have led to the formation of a new interdisciplinary branch of research, which is sometimes referred to as perception studies and was recently more aptly called Sensory Linguistics by Bodo Winter (2019). In this research field, methods and results from General and Typological Linguistics have merged with those from Cognitive Linguistics, especially from Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Some of the main linguistic contributions related to perception verbs and metaphorical meaning extensions are the works of Viberg (1984; 2001), Sweetser (1990), Evans and Wilkins (2000), Vanhove (2008), Aikhenvald and Storch (2013), Caballero and Díaz Vera (2013), Speed et al. (2019) and, in an extensive paper on the topic, Winter (2019). Theories and methods from the field of Cognitive Linguistics have also found their way into Egyptology, e.g., Goldwasser (2002), Nyord (2009; 2012), and especially Nyord (2015) with an overview of the current state of the field. Conceptual metaphors are cognitive in nature. They are defined as mappings between two related conceptual domains: a SOURCE DOMAIN and a TARGET DOMAIN .4 These mappings are deeply embodied and based on our sensorimotor experience (i.e., the world mediated through the senses) as well as on the cultural experience we have gained through the environment we live in, i.e., embodiment (Kövecses 2010: 17–​30).5 Thus, conceptual structures are not abstract symbols. Rather, they are linked to semantic structures in a specific and motivated way. It is important to mention that “like embodiment, cognitive linguistics is not a unified theory; it is a loose framework of interconnected theories and hypotheses that relate to each other through a shared set of assumptions” (Winter 2019: 61). For perception verbs, we might find mappings between the SOURCE DOMAIN of concrete physical experiences and the TARGET DOMAIN of abstract concepts having to do with emotions and aspects of thinking and knowing. Mappings within the semantic field of sense perception can also be found in Egyptian, as shall be shown below with mappings of one sensory modality onto another sensory modality.

Perception in the works of Lakoff and Johnson The works of Lakoff and Johnson are briefly mentioned in the following section since they are the founders of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and certain parts of their books are dedicated to metaphors of perception. Their pioneering works assume that human thought is metaphorical by nature. Whereas in Metaphors We Live By (2003) only a few examples of perception metaphors were given under the headline of “some further examples,”6 in their 1999 work Philosophy in the Flesh, more explicit focus is set on the interplay between the body and the mind (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 235–​266). Their chapter “The Mind as a Body System” (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 235–​243) is built upon previous studies on Indo-​European perception verbs like those of Sweetser, who explained the so-​called MIND-​A S-​B ODY conceptual metaphor (Sweetser 1990: 23–​ 48). Taking this metaphor as a starting point, Lakoff and Johnson establish a subsystem of four cases for this metaphor (Table 27.3). The last three cases are relevant for the study of perceptive verbs and can be expanded with even more metaphors coming from the perceptual domain, as Ibarretxe-​Antuñano (2013a) has recently shown based on studies of English, Spanish, and Basque. These metaphors are shown in Table 27.4.

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Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian Table 27.3  THE MIND IS A BODY metaphor Subsystem

Explanation

THINKING IS MOVING

Thought is conceptualised in terms of motion. Thought is conceptualised by the five sensory modalities. Thought is treated like objects and can be manipulated. The human body is understood as a container for thought.

THINKING IS PERCEIVING THINKING IS OBJECT MANIPULATION ACQUIRING IDEAS IS EATING

Note: After Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 236–​243.

Table 27.4  Additional metaphors Sensory modality

Metaphor

Language

Sight

FORESEEING IS SEEING

English, Basque, Spanish Spanish Basque Basque English, Basque, Spanish Spanish English Basque English, Basque, Spanish Spanish

BEING INVOLVED IS HAVING TO SEE

Hearing

BEING TRAINED IS BEING HEARD HAVING AN AGREEMENT IS HAVING A HEARING

Touch

AFFECTING IS TOUCHING PERSUADING IS TOUCHING

Smell

SHOWING CONTEMPT IS SNIFFING PROPHESYING IS SMELLING

Taste

EXPERIENCING STH. IS TASTING KNOWING IS TASTING

Note: After Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 2013a: 113–​114; 2019: 47–​48 (the metaphors given here are a selection from a longer list).

The structuring of metaphorical mappings In their chapter “The Partial Nature of Metaphorical Structuring” (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 52–​55), the authors point out that only parts of the concept in the SOURCE DOMAIN are mapped onto the TARGET DOMAIN . The principle according to which elements from the SOURCE DOMAIN are chosen to create metaphors is left open by the authors. They discuss a used and an unused part of metaphors with the example of the metaphor THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 52): Thus the metaphor THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS has a ‘used’ part (foundation and outer shell) and an ‘unused’ part (rooms, staircases, etc.). Expressions such as construct and foundation are instances of the used part of such a metaphorical concept and are part of our ordinary literal language about theories. In the following years, notions like the Invariance Principle were formulated to explain the structuring of metaphorical mappings (Evans and Green 2006: 302; see also Lakoff 1993: 215): What the invariance principle does is guarantee that image-​ schematic organisation is invariant across metaphoric mappings. This means that the structure of the source domain must be preserved by the mapping in a way consistent with the target domain. This constrains potentially incompatible mappings.

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This is also known as the process of hiding and highlighting (Evans and Green 2006: 303–​304). Finally, Ibarretxe-​Antuñano (1999; 2013a; 2013b) found a way to analyse the partial structure of metaphors in sensory language with so-​called Property Selection Processes. This framework concentrates on the bodily basis of sensory experiences and allows more concrete statements about the inherent structuring of mappings from the SOURCE DOMAIN to the TARGET DOMAIN . Property selection processes Within the framework of Property Selection Processes, the biological and psychological information we have about our senses plays an important role because “the requirements for each sensory modality are not the same; the stimuli, the receptors, the brain areas are different. This is to say, the way in which the perceiver, the object perceived and the act of perception itself interact with each other are not the same” (Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 1999: 143). Every sensory modality is characterised by its own properties, which constitute the elements of the SOURCE DOMAIN . In addition, the relation between the three elements in a perceptual act has to be considered and brought into coherence. These elements are the perceiver (experiencer), the object perceived, and the perceptual act as a whole. Table 27.5 is taken from Ibarretxe-​Antuñano (2019) and shall be understood as the background for the explanations of the metaphorical meaning extensions of Egyptian perception verbs given below. The table shows the for each modality (Ibarretxe-​ Antuñano 1999; 2019: 51). For example, take the property . This property is negative for the distal senses (i.e., sight, hearing) but positive for the proximal senses (i.e., touch, smell, taste). Objects can be seen and voices can be heard from far away. In contrast, touch and taste require close contact to the object of perception to be perceived. The source of a smell also needs to be in the vicinity of the perceiver to be noticed at all. Table 27.5  Properties of the five sensory modalities Elements

Properties

Vision

Hear

Touch

Smell

Taste

PR→OP

‹contact› ‹closeness› ‹internal› ‹limits› ‹location› ‹subjectivity›

no no no

no no yes

yes yes no yes

no yes yes

yes yes yes

yes

yes

PR→P

‹detection› ‹identification› ‹voluntary› ‹directness› ‹correction-​of-​hypothesis›

yes yes yes yes yes

OP→P

‹effects› ‹evaluation› ‹briefness›

yes yes yes no no yes

yes yes yes/​no yes yes yes yes

yes yes no no/​yes yes yes

yes yes yes yes

yes yes

Note: Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 2019: 53. Abbreviations: PR = Perceiver, OP = Object of Perception, P = Perception, → elements involved in the property. A blank space means that a property is not applicable for the respective modality. The properties differ in details compared to the table given in Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 2013a: 118.

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Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian Table 27.6  “to see” Verb

Wb. reference

br

Wb. I, 465

ptr

Wb. I, 564

m ꜣꜣ; ś:m ꜣꜣ *

Wb. II, 7–​10

nw ꜣ; ś:nw ꜣ

Wb. I, 218; Wb. IV, 157

ḥn

Wb. III, 14

ḫf

Wb. III, 271

ḫti ̯

Wb. III, 348

gmḥ; ś:gmḥ

Wb. V, 170–​171; Wb. IV, 321

ṭg ꜣ/​i̯; ś:ṭg ꜣ

Wb. V, 497–​498; Wb. IV, 373

Note: * Verbs with initial “ś:” mark causative forms of the respective vrbal stem. The verb ś:mꜣꜣ, “to make/​let see,” occurs in the Pyramid Texts; see Allen 2013a: PT 69, § 48a (Neith).

The distant senses and their metaphorical extensions The following few examples are given as an insight into the metaphors of sight and hearing in Egyptian.

Metaphors of sight Most verbal lexemes are realised for the vision domain in Egyptian throughout language history. Not all of them are attested for every time period and some of them are extremely rare. The list in Table 27.6 gives an overview of the vision verbs but without further description for the sake of brevity. A reference to the Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache (Wb.) is given in the tables. In the literary text The Tale of King Kheops’ Court, Kheops’ sons tell him of the miraculous deeds done by wise men. Kheops only knows about the miracles second-​hand and says the sentence given in Example 1 at the end of the story.7 In Egyptian, the sensory modality of sight can be used to express intellectual processing using the metaphor UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING . Example 1 –​The Tale of King Kheops’ Court, third story, 6.218 mꜣ.n-​ı ͗ sp-​f nı͗ rḫ GRND see:ANT -​1 SG deed(M)[SG]-​3 SG.M of[M.SG] knowledge(M)[SG] “I have recognised his (i.e. the wise man’s) deed of wisdom.” ı͗w

In the following excerpt of a letter, the scribe Hori addresses another scribe called Amenemope. In a longer part of this text, Hori describes the geography of Syria and Palestine and the dangers that one encounters there. In doing so, he tries to emphasise Amenemope’s incompetence and ignorance in these matters. 581

Elisabeth Steinbach-Eicke Table 27.7  “to hear” Verb

Wb. reference

nṭb ḥfḥf śmt śč ̣m

Wb. II, 367 Wb. III, 75 Wb. IV, 144 Wb. IV, 384–​387

Example 2 –​The Satirical Letter of Hori, 19.7–​8/​127.4–​5

ptr-​k ṭp:t Mhr see:PFV-​2 SG.M taste:F[SG] Maher(M)[SG] “You have encountered the experience of a Maher (i.e., a soldier):

t ꜣy-​k

mrkb:t w ꜣḥ-​tı ͗ r [rmn]-​k chariot:F[SG] lay_​down:RES-​3 SG.F to shoulder(M)[SG) -​2 SG.M when your chariot lays on your shoulders (i.e., when you are responsible for it).”9 POSS:F.SG -​2 SG.M

In Example 2, the sensory modalities of sight and taste are used together in a single phrase, using and combining the metaphors RECOGNISING IS SEEING and EXPERIENCING IS TASTING.

Metaphors of hearing There are a few auditory verbs in Egyptian (Table 27.7). In the teaching attributed to him, the vizier and official Ptahhotep gives advice and instructions to his successor/​son in office. Since a wide range of meanings of the verb śč̣m, “to hear,” may be found within these lines, this part of the teaching is cited here as a longer text without glosses from the version of Papyrus Prisse.10 Example 3 –​The Teaching of Ptahhotep, 16.3–​16.13 (D534–​D563) Hearing is beneficial for a son who hears. Hearing enters into the hearer and the hearer becomes an interrogating one (or judge). If listening is good, speaking is good. A hearer is a lord of what is beneficial. Hearing is beneficial for the one who listens. Hearing is better than anything else, because belovedness of what is good arises. Oh, how good is it for a son to accept what his father says: He will thus be given an old age. One whom god loves very much is one who hears. One who cannot hear is a hated one by god.

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Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian

It is the heart11 that creates his lord as one who hears or one who does not hear. Life-​prosperity-​health for a man is his heart. It is the listener who hears speaking. One who really loves hearing is one who does what is said. Oh, how good is it when a son listens to his father! Oh, how joyful is one of whom this is said: A son shall be pleasing as a lord of hearing. The listener of whom this is said is excellent in the womb and a blessed one before his father. His memory is in the mouths of the living, those who are on earth and those who will exist. In Example 3, the auditory verb śč̣m, “to hear,” can mean “listen to,” “to obey,” and “to interrogate/​judge.”The text plays with these meanings and their verbal and nominal counterparts. This passage comes from the conclusion of the text and is dedicated to hearing in particular. It can be seen as a discourse on obedience.

The proximal senses in Egyptian: prototypical and metaphorical meanings It would also be appropriate to label the proximal sensory modalities of touch, smell, and taste contact senses since the relevant information is retrieved from stimuli that need direct physical contact with the perceiver (cf. Table 27.5, ‹closeness›). That is, if we want to physically feel/​touch something there needs to be close contact between our skin and the material of the object perceived; smell is perceived as being in our noses; the taste of food is experienced by the tongue. There are several lexemes expressing touch, smell, and taste in Egyptian. For the present study, the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA), which is the largest online corpus of Egyptian texts together with the Digitalisiertes Zettelarchiv (DZA), is taken as a database, resource, and main corpus. The data collection concentrates mainly on written Hieroglyphic Egyptian from the time between the third and the first millennium BCE and contains Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian texts from various corpora.12 No restriction is made here between different literary genres, as the goal is to gain a general picture of the semantics of the respective lexemes. Nevertheless, the notion of text genre plays an important role for the study of metaphors as Di Biase-​Dyson (2016) has shown.

Prototypical meanings of the proximal senses In the following section, examples for the prototypical meanings of touch, smell, and taste verbs are given. Prototypical meanings are understood here as being clearly bodily based and showing the most central elements of the respective sensory modalities to which all extended meanings of the verbs are related in a specific manner.13 Prototypical meanings of touch There are numerous lexemes having to do with haptic perception in Egyptian, but none of these verbal lexemes can exclusively be assigned to the touch domain, as the exemplary list in Table 27.8 should show.

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ı ͗(ꜥr) ẖnm śꜣḥ šfṭ šni ̯ šsp gmgm čḥı ͗ čḥn ṭmı ͗

Translation

Wb. reference

“to raise,” “to touch,” “to mount up” “to unite,” “to join” “to reach,” “to approach,” “to touch” “to take,” “to seize,” “to grasp”; “to arrest” “to feel”* “to grasp,” “to seize,” “to receive” “to fumble around” “to encounter,” “to touch” “to get close,” “to meet” “to touch,” “to attach,” “to be joined to”

Wb. I, 41 Wb. III, 377–​381 Wb. IV, 20–​21 Wb. IV, 461 Wb. IV, 495.16 Wb. IV, 530–​533 Wb. V, 172 Wb. V, 389 Wb. V, 389–​390 Wb. V, 453–​455

Note: * In medical texts, otherwise “to ask,” “to say” or “to examine.”

The individual lexemes express rather specific nuances in the touch domain and might cover, for instance, the semantics of motion verbs, as will be shown further below (Example 8). For this reason, a few verbs were chosen in the present chapter to illustrate the general semantics of the field: šfṭ, “to grasp, to seize”; šsp, “to receive, to grasp”; and ṭmı ,͗ “to touch.” Example 4 –​Coffin Texts, Spell 173, § 47i N.N. nn

šfṭ

św

N.N.

tn

m

touch:SBJV 3SG.M N.N. DEM.PROX:F.SG with “This N.N.14 will not touch it (i.e., filth) with her fingers.” NEG

Example 5 –​Pyramid Texts, Spell 442, § 819b

Rꜥw grasp:PFV.PASS arm:M[SG]-​2 SG.M AGT Ra “Your arm has been grasped by (the sun god) Ra.” šsp

ꜥ:w-​k

ı ͗n

Example 6 –​The Story of Sinuhe, B200–​201 and AOS19 Text witness B200–​201: Text witness AOS19: ṭmı ͗:n-​ı ͗

touch:ANT-​1 SG “I touched the ground.”

584

sꜣč:w

earth:M[SG]

č ̣ bꜥ-​w-​ś

finger(M)-​P L-​3 SG.F

Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian

Example 7 –​The Teaching of Amenemope, 15.1

ı ͗w

ṭmı ͗

touch:IPFV “The stick hits him.” GRND

św 3SG.M

šbṭ

stick(M)[SG]

Example 8 –​The Story of Sinuhe, B16–​17; R42; C6–​7; AOS15 Text witness B16–​17: Text witness R42: Text witness C6–​7: Text witness AOS15:

ı ͗nb-​w_​ḥḳꜣ touch:ANT-​1 SG wall(M)-​P L _​ruler(M)[SG] “I reached the walls of the ruler (the walls of the ruler, my father).” ṭmı ͗:n-​ı ͗

ı ͗ti ̯-​ı ͗ father(M)[SG]-​1 SG

The Story of Sinuhe, from which Example 8 was taken, was passed down from different time periods and is roughly attested from the twentieth to the eleventh century BCE by various sources (given above as Text witness). If one compares the writing of the lexeme ṭmı ͗, “to touch,” in the sources for one textual instance, differences in the classifier of the verb are obvious (Example 8). They reflect the semantic structure of ṭmı ͗, which can have several meanings. In contrast to other lexemes coming from the semantic field of sensory perception, the verb shows a certain variability in its classifiers. It appears with classifiers that denote EFFORT (arm, arm for striking, striking man), MOTION (legs), which represents here reaching something by walking, or ABSTRACTNESS (book scroll), which implies an abstract or quite general meaning (“a skeleton key, a kind of ‘wildcard’,” see Chantrain 2014: 40). Prototypical meanings of smell Four main verbal lexemes from the domain of olfactory sensation in Egyptian will be considered (Table 27.9). The last three lexemes go back to the same lexical root, ś:śn being a causative form of the stem śn and śnśn being built by reduplication. They are demonstrated in turn in the following examples.

Table 27.9  Main verbal lexemes for olfactory sensation Verb

Translation

Wb. reference

ḫnm śn śnśn ś:śn

“to breathe,” “to smell” “to smell,” “to kiss” “to breathe,” “to smell” “to breathe,” “to smell”

Wb. III, 292 Wb. IV, 153–​154 Wb. IV, 172 Wb. IV, 277

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Example 9 –​Papyrus Harris I, 42.1–​2

ı ͗mi̯ šsp-​ı ͗ ḥtp pri ̯ m_​b ꜣḥ-​k give:IMP grasp:SBJV-​1 SG bunch_​of_​flowers(M)[SG] go_​out:PTCP.ACT in_​front_​of-​2 SG.M “Let me grasp a bunch of flowers that comes out in front of you

ḫnm-​ı ͗

ꜥnt:w

śnčr

smell:SBJV-​1 SG incense(M)[SG] myrrh:M[SG] and let me smell incense and myrrh!” Example 10 –​Pyramid Texts, Spell 485, § 1025c

ı ͗:śn-​f 3SG.M smell:POST-​3 SG.M “He will smell cake.” śwt

p ꜣḳ

cake(M)[SG]

Example 11 –​Coffin Texts, Spell 174, § 60e

nn NEG

ś-​śn-​ı ͗

CAUS -​smell:SBJV-​1 SG

św 3SG.M

“I will not smell it (i.e., excrements)!” Example 12 –​Papyrus Bremner Rhind, 12.18

śnśn

č ꜣw

m

r

fnč ̣-​k

smell:IMP of wind(M)[SG] at nose(M)[SG]-​2 SG.M “Smell (or breathe) wind at your nose!” Prototypical meaning of taste Only one verb is lexicalised for gustatory sensation throughout the whole language history of Egyptian: ṭp, “to taste” (Wb. V, 443–​444). The verb is even attested for Coptic, which is the latest stage of the Egyptian language: ⲧⲱⲡⲉ, ⲧⲱⲡ.15 Example 13 –​Coffin Texts, Spell 334, § 182f

śnḳ-​ı ͗

586

mw:t-​ı ͗

ꜣś:t

ṭp-​ı ͗ drink:SBJV -​1 SG of mother:F[SG]-​1 SG Isis taste:SBJV -​1 SG “I will drink from my mother Isis and taste her sweetness.” m

bnı ͗:t-​ś

sweetness:F[SG] -​3 SG.F

Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian

Example 14 –​Temple of Edfu, external wall, west, second register

ṭp

n-​k

ṭp:t-​s

nč̣m:t

wr

taste:IMP for-​2 SG.M taste:F[SG]-​3 SG.F sweet:F[SG] “Taste its very sweet taste (i.e., of a cake)!”

very

Metaphorical meanings of the proximal senses In the following sections, examples for the metaphorical meanings of the proximal sensory modalities are given. Touch domain The sensory modality of touch creates metaphorical mappings onto the cognitive domain. Thus, the lexeme šsp, “to grasp,” gives rise to the intellectual meaning “to accept.” ACCEPTING STH.

is TOUCHING STH.

Example 15 –​The Teaching of Amunnakht, l.6

r-​ı ͗ m ntı ͗-​f grasp:IMP speech(M)[SG]-​1 SG in REL-​3 SG.M “Accept my speech in all of its details.” šsp

nb-​t

every-​F [SG]

Example 16 –​The Teaching of Ani, 22.16.

ı ͗w

nꜣy-​k

GRND

PL.POSS-​2 SG.M

r

šsp-​w

mṭw:t

hru̯-​w

m

word:F.PL please :RES-​3 PL in

ı ͗b hnn heart(M)[SG] nod:SBJV

ı ͗b heart(M)[SG]

r grasp:INF-​3 PL “Your words please the heart so that the heart is inclined to accept them.” Example 17 –​The Letter of Djehuti-​mesu, rt.12–​vs.2.

ı ͗w

nı _͗ ​św_​ı ͗mn:w

ḳbꜥ

ı ͗rm-​ı ͗ ı ͗w-​ı ͗ (r) šsp-​w GRND Nesamun jest:INF with-​1 SG GRND-​1 SG grasp:INF-​3 PL “Nesamun jests about me and I must accept them (i.e., the jokes).

(ı ͗)n ı ͗w-​ı ͗ Q

CORD -​1 SG

(r) šsp-​w

(ḥr)

n-​f

m

grasp:INF-​3 PL from-​3 SG.M in

t ꜣı ͗ DEM.PROX:F. SG

wnw:t

hour:F[SG]

ı ͗w-​ı ͗ GRND-​ 1SG

m

as

śr official(M) [SG]

Shall I accept that from him now while I am an official? 587

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ꜥꜣ śr ı ͗:ı ͗ri̯ as official(M)[SG] big[M.SG] do:PTCP.IPFV Must a big official really accept joking

ı ͗n

m

Q

nı ͗

wꜥ i ̯

nb

of[M.SG] one[M.SG] from anyone?”

every[M.SG]

šsp

grasp:INF

ḳbꜥ

jest:INF

sp_​2

time(M)[SG] _​2

The link between the physical manipulation of objects and intellection is thus pervasive. Mental manipulation, controlling, and understanding can be expressed by the sense of touch—​a mapping which is typologically broadly attested as the tactile verbs in Table 27.10 show (Sweetser 1990: 28, 38, diagram 1).16 Tactile verbs in Indo-​European languages can also have more emotional meanings, giving rise to the metaphor AFFECTING IS TOUCHING . Kövecses even goes further and speaks of a general conceptual metaphor EMOTION IS PERCEPTION , including the metaphor EMOTION IS FEELING/​TOUCH (Kövecses 2019: 336–​337).17 For example, the German “seine Worte haben mich berührt” corresponds to the English “His words have touched me.” In Spanish we have “Juan le tocó el corazón a María,” which in English translates to “John touched Mary’s heart” (Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 2006: 237). Interestingly, in Egyptian similar expressions are rather construed by the sense of taste (see further below for metaphors of taste). Smell domain This section is dedicated to the metaphorical meanings of the sensory modality of smell. The respective lexemes have a wide range of different extended meanings, like “to kiss,” “to perceive” or “to feel,” and “to touch.” KISSING

is SMELLING

Example 18 –​The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor, 133–​134

śn-​k

ḥm:t

smell:SBJV -​2 SG.M wife:F[SG] “You shall kiss your wife.” Example 19 –​Pyramid Texts, Spell 373, § 656b

ı ͗:śn-​f čw rnn-​f čw smell:SBJV -​3 SG.M 2SG.M embrace:SBJV -​3 SG.M 2SG.M “He (i.e. the god) shall kiss you (i.e. the king), he shall embrace you.” The classifier of the verb (Example 19) consists of two faces in profile touching with their noses: .18 The concept of the nose-​to-​nose or Inuit kiss is common in ancient Egypt (LÄ III: 901–​902; Grapow 1983: 121–​122). Like taste, the sense of smell is closely connected to the 588

Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian Table 27.10  UNDERSTANDING is TOUCHING metaphor Language

Examples

Translation/​Explanation

English

to hold a thought to behold the sight of a landscape to perceive something

from Latin cipio “to seize”

French

prendre connaissance de quelque chose

to take notice of something

German

den Textinhalt erfassen das Konzept begreifen etwas zur Kenntnis nehmen

to capture the content of a text to understand the concept to take notice of something

Hungarian

ért

“to understand” from Old Turkish er “to touch, to reach”

Japanese

toraeru

“to catch, to understand”

Figure 27.1  Painting of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep in the offering hall of their tomb at Saqqara, Fifth Dynasty (25th–24th centuries BCE). Source: Photos by Jon Bodsworth.

domain of emotions. The Inuit kiss or kunik “is a traditional greeting and expression of affection between family members and loved ones” (Monger 2013: 407). This classifier is a compact iconic form for expressing a very close physical relationship between two entities. Thus, the semantics of śn, “to smell, to kiss,” is shaped by an Egyptian cultural conception of kissing. We also find the touching noses in pictorial representations from ancient Egypt (Figure 27.1–​2). Here, the two men Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are depicted in a nose-​ to-​nose scene. In the literature, it is debated whether the two were lovers, brothers or even (conjoined) twins (Baines 1985: 463–​470; Parkinson 1995: 62).19 Whatever relationship it may have been: the scene shows a strong, emotional affection between them. The role of culture in metaphorical thought was pointed out by Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 274): “There appear to be both universal and cultural variation.”20 The question of the extent to which culture pervades metaphorical thought is still a topic of ongoing debate.21 To explain the mechanisms of cultural variation, Ibarretxe-​Antuñano (2013b: 324; 2013a) used the 589

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Figure 27.2  Painting of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep in the rock chamber of their tomb at Saqqara, Fifth Dynasty (25th– 24th centuries BCE). Source: Photos by Jon Bodsworth.

term of a cultural sieve: “an active mediating device that makes our physical, sensorimotor universal experiences sift through the complex and socially acquired particular beliefs, knowledge, and worldview(s) intrinsic to belonging to one or several cultures.” SENSING 22

is SMELLING

In a series of pictorial representations in the Temple of Deir el-​Bahari (Figure 27.3–​5), the goddess Hathor appears as a cow licking Queen Hatshepsut’s hand.23 Example 20 shows the title of the three scenes. It can be found right between the depiction of the queen24 and the divine cow (more or less well preserved in the reliefs). Example 20 –​Shrine of Hathor, Deir el-​Bahari

śn

ꜥ:w

ḥꜥ-​w_​nčr

nśb:t

smell:INF arm:M[SG] lick:INF limb(M)-​P L_​god(M)[SG] “To perceive the hand, to lick the god’s body

ẖnm

nsw

m

ꜥnḫ

join:INF king(M)[SG] with life(M)[SG] to join the king with life and power.”

w ꜣś

power(M)[SG]

The inscription of the cow in Figure 27.4 is given in excerpts in the following example.

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Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian

Figure 27.3  The divine Hathor-cow licks Queen Hatshepsut’s hand, Shrine of Hathor, Deir el-Bahari. Source: After Naville 1901: pl. LXXXVII, the original of which was largely destroyed.

Example 21 –​Shrine of Hathor, Deir el-​Bahari

ꜥ:w-​č

śn-​ı ͗

nśb-​ı ͗

ḥꜥ-​w-​k

smell:SBJV-​1 SG arm(M)[SG]-​2 SG.F lick:SBJV-​1 SG limb(M)-​P L-​2 SG.M “I (i.e., Hathor) will perceive your (i.e., Hatshepsut’s) hand and I will lick your limbs

[ m

śnk

nč̣m

pri ̯

[m]‌

]

with tongue(M)[SG] be_​sweet[M.SG] go_​out:PTCP.ACT [from] with (my) sweet tongue coming out of my mouth.”

r-​ı ͗

mouth(M)[SG]-​1 SG

The monumental inscriptions in the scenes use a sense of the verb śn, “to smell,” which is meant to refer to the general act of perceiving and recognising the queen as an offspring of the goddess (Example 21). Beaux (2015: 65) gives a French translation in which the verb “sentir” fits well as a 591

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Figure 27.4  The divine Hathor-cow licks Queen Hatshepsut’s hand, Shrine of Hathor, Deir el-Bahari. Source: After Naville 1901: pl. XCIV.

comparable polysemous item to the Egyptian polysemous lexeme śn:“Je veux sentir ta main, je veux lécher tes membres avec ma douce langue sortie de ma bouche!” The French verb “sentir” means “to smell,” “to taste,” and “to feel,” which is the same for the Egyptian sentence in Example 21. Furthermore, Beaux (2015: 69) interprets the sense of śn in the following way: “il permet de voir dans le verbe sn une double signification, l’intimité et la reconnaissance mutuelle de l’autre par l’odeur ainsi que le partage de l’air respire, ce que les Égyptiens nommaient ‘l’odeur du souffle’.” A similar understanding was earlier formulated by Anselin (2013: 137): “C’est un baiser nasal, un baiser de reconnaissance aussi bien de communication, où les acteurs se sentent littéralement.” The Egyptian verb śn, “to smell,” can thus be understood as a multisensory item which is also underlined by the pictorial representations in Figures 27.1–​27.5. TOUCHING

is SMELLING

Example 22 –​Pyramid Texts, Spell 467, § 891c

śn

Ppy

pn

p:t

smell:POST Pepi DEM.PROX:M.SG sky:F[SG] “This (King) Pepi shall touch the sky as a falcon.” 592

m

as

bı ͗k

falcon(M)[SG]

Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian

Figure 27.5  The divine Hathor-cow licks Queen Hatshepsut’s hand, Chapel of Hathor, Deir el-Bahari. Source: After Naville 1901: pl. XCIV.

Example 23 –​Coffin Texts, Spell 170, § 39d

śnśn

ḥnꜥ

nčr

nčr

smell:SBJV god(M)[SG] with god(M)[SG] “God shall unite with god nose-​to-​nose.”

fnč ̣

nose(M)[SG]

r

to

fnč̣

nose(M)[SG]

Taste domain This section shows the metaphorical meanings of the sense of taste. The lexeme ṭp,“to taste,” has a wide range of different meanings, like “to feel (physically or emotionally),”“to experience,” and “to know.” TOUCHING

is TASTING

Example 24 –​The Contendings of Horus and Seth, 9.1. ꜥḥ ꜥ:n

pꜣ

CJVB:ANT DEF.ART:M.SG

ḥmt ḥr ṭp copper(M)[SG] at taste:INF

m

of

ḥm nı ͗ s ꜣ-​ś ḥr:w majesty(M)[SG] of[M.SG] son(M)[SG]-​3 SG.F Horus 593

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“Then, the majesty of her son Horus was hit by the spear.” In The Contendings of Horus and Seth, the goddess Isis throws a magical copper spear into the water where the gods Seth and Horus are, and the spear hits Horus (Example 24). Thus, in expanding its meaning to the touch domain, taste creates a mapping within the semantic field of sense perception. This could be explained by the fact that the two sensory modalities share the same physical properties (see Table 27.5), except for the property . Popova (2005: 407–​408, n. 12) sums it up: It should not be forgotten that despite its physiological distinctness taste is a kind of touch performed by the tongue. Aristotle classifies touch and taste together, because they are the two senses requiring contact, while the remaining three perceive over a distance. It should also be noted that … the majority of words describing gustatory perception, [sic] originate as concepts describing touch, even though their contemporary meanings are associated with taste only or, in some instances, have been mapped onto higher domains. These smooth transitions between two sensory modalities can be traced in a more etymological way when we look at Indo-​European languages. For English, Classen describes “taste” as coming from the Middle English “tasten,” originating from Latin “taxare” meaning “to feel, touch sharply, judge”; it was not until the fourteenth century that this “taste” came to mean “to savour” (Classen 2019: 39). Nakagawa (2012: 409) even shows some taste-​touch mappings in the African Khoe-​languages ǂHaba and G|ui. EXPERIENCING

is TASTING

Example 25 –​The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor, 179–​181

mꜣ

see:IMP

wı ͗ 1SG

r-​ś ꜣ

after

śꜣḥ-​ı ͗

reach:INF-​1 SG

tꜣ

r-​śꜣ

land(M)[SG] after

mꜣ-​ı ͗

ṭp:t:n-​ı ͗ see:INF -​1 SG taste:REL: F:ANT-​1 SG

“See me, after I have reached the land and after I have realised what I have experienced.” In Example 25, taste is the object of visual perception. The literal translation is “See me, after I have reached the land and after I have seen what I have tasted.” The two modalities are brought into close relation with each other. The verb mꜣꜣ, “to see,” is used for physical and intellectual “seeing,” meaning “to realise something.” The verb ṭp, “to taste,” might be understood as “to experience” in the context of The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor in which the sailor tells his superior about the thrilling events that have happened. Such metaphorical mappings can also be observed in other languages, as the following example from the Hebrew Bible (Ps. 34:9) shows. ‫הוהי בוט־יכ וארו ומעט‬ “O taste and see that the LORD is good.”25

In this case, the Hebrew verb ṭ-​ꜥ-​m,“to taste,” is better understood as “to consider” (Van Hecke 2019: 100).

594

Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian

KNOWING

is TASTING

Example 26 –​Coffin Texts, Spell 316, § 108e

ı ͗nk

ṭp

r

č̣r

nb

p

taste:PTCP.ACT to border(M)[SG] lord(M)[SG] Buto “I am the one who knows everything of the lord of (the city of) Buto.”26 1SG

Lexemes having to do with the acquisition of food can expand their meanings metaphorically into intellectual domains. Lakoff and Johnson’s general metaphors IDEAS ARE FOOD or ACQUIRING IDEAS IS EATING are broadly supported by typological research. The Egyptian lexeme ꜥm, “to swallow” (Wb. I, 183–​184), is a clear instance of such a semantic change over time. It maps from the eating domain to the cognitive domain, resulting in the meanings “to understand” or “to know.”The evidence for the verb ꜥm shows a shift in meaning after the second half of the second millennium BCE . The change of classifier in particular provides evidence that this kind of process took place. Nevertheless, the two meanings existed simultaneously for some time with the sense “to swallow” eventually declining over the centuries (see also Chantrain 2014: 45–​46).

Final comment and conclusion Intrafield mappings27 within the same semantic field (i.e., sense perception) show how sensory modalities can include other sensory modalities within their own semantics (see also Chapter 26, this volume). In Egyptian, the sense of smell and the sense of taste can both create an intrafield extension onto the sense of touch (Examples 22–​24; kissing as a kind of touch in Examples 18–​21). This is particularly common for smell verbs like śn, ś:śn, and śnśn. They create numerous extended meanings like “to touch,” “to feel physically” or “to kiss.” This could possibly be explained by the similar physical properties exhibited by those senses, like , , , , or , which are shared by at least two of the proximal sensory modalities (see Table 27.5). Transfield mappings are extensions from one semantic field to a completely different semantic field, which is here the domain of emotions and intellection. The Egyptian verb for gustatory perception ṭp is a particularly highly polysemous lexical item since it covers meanings referring to internal, emotional (Example 25), and mental perception (Example 26), as well as to external, physical perception (Example 24).28 For the sensory modality of touch, šsp, “to grasp,” appears with the intellectual meaning “to accept” (Examples 15–​17). The interplay of the metaphorical meanings of the proximal sensory modalities makes it possible to think in a more multisensory way instead of separating the senses into a model of five entities. Winter (2019: 238), for instance, recently analysed the multisensory meanings of single lexical items and states that “sensory words appear to involve highly overlapping spheres.”29 The semantics of the proximal sensory modalities of touch, smell, and taste are still a neglected field in studies of the sensory metaphors of perception verbs (Speed and Majid 2020). These modalities include various meanings in their semantics while combining physical, emotional, and cognitive concepts, as can be demonstrated by cross-​linguistic language studies. As the longest-​ recorded written language of the world, Egyptian can give us new insights not only into the perception and intellection of an ancient culture but also into the metaphorical structuring of the human mind in general, which is of eminent relevance with regard to questions concerning possible language universals. 595

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Appendix A. List of Egyptian text examples Ex.

Source

Dating*

Reference

1

The Tale of King Kheops’ Court, 6.21 (Papyrus Berlin P 3033) The Satirical Letter of Hori, 19.7–​8 (Papyrus Anastasi I/​ Papyrus British Museum) EA 10247 The Teaching of Ptahhotep, 16.3–​16.13 (Papyrus Prisse) Coffin Texts, Spell 173, § 47i

15th–​17th Dyn., 17th–​16th cent. BCE

Blackman 1988: 8

end 19th Dyn., 12th cent. BCE

Fischer-​Elfert 1992: 127.4–​5

12th Dyn., 20th–​18th cent. BCE Middle Kingdom, 20th–​18th cent. BCE 6th Dyn., 23rd cent. BCE 12th Dyn., 20–​18th cent. BCE (B); 19th–​20th Dyn., 13th–​11th cent. BCE (AOS)

Žába 1956: 58–​60 (D534–​D563) De Buck 1947: 47i (B3C) Allen 2013c: PT 442, § 819b (Merenre) Koch 1990: B200–​201; AOS19

26th Dyn., 7th cent. BCE

Laisney 2007: 344

2

3 4 5 6

7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14

596

Pyramid Texts, Spell 442, § 819b The Story of Sinuhe, B200–​ 201 (Papyrus Berlin P 3022 & Papyrus Amherst m–​q); AOS19 (Ostracon Ashmolean Museum 1945.40) The Teaching of Amenemope, 15.1 (Papyrus British Museum EA 10474) The Story of Sinuhe, B16–​17 (Papyrus Berlin P 3022 & Papyrus Amherst m–​q); R42 (Papyrus Berlin 10499); C6–​7 (Ostracon Cairo CG 25216); AOS15 (Ostracon Ashmolean Museum 1945.40)

12th Dyn., 20–​18th cent. BCE (B); 13th–​14th Dyn., 18th–​17th cent. BCE (R); 20th–​21st Dyn., 12th–​10th cent. BCE (C); 19th–​20th Dyn., 13th–​11th cent. BCE (AOS) Papyrus Harris I, 42.1–​2 20th Dyn., 12th–​11th cent. BCE Pyramid Texts, Spell 485, § 6th Dyn., 1025c 23rd cent. BCE Coffin Texts, Spell 174, § 60e Middle Kingdom, 20th–​18th cent. BCE Papyrus Bremner Rhind, 12.18 Greco-​Roman time, end 4th cent. BCE Coffin Texts, Spell 334, § 182f Middle Kingdom, 20th–​18th cent. BCE Temple of Edfu, external wall, Greco-​Roman time, west, second register 3rd–​1st cent. BCE

Koch 1990: B16–​17; R42; C6–​7; AOS15

Erichsen 1933: 47 Allen 2013c: PT 485, § 1025c (Pepi I.) De Buck 1947: 60e (B1C) Faulkner 1933: 12.18 De Buck 1951: 182f (G1T) Chassinat 1932: 105, 5–​6

Perception verbs in ancient Egyptian

Ex.

Source

Dating*

Reference

15

The Teaching of Amunnakht, l.6 (Ostracon British Museum 41541) The Teaching of Ani, 22.16 (Papyrus Boulaq 4) The Letter of Djehuti-​mesu, rt.12–​vs.2 (Papyrus BN 198 III) The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor, 133–​134 (Papyrus Petersburg 1115) Pyramid Texts, Spell 373, § 656b Shrine of Hathor, Deir el-​Bahari Shrine of Hathor, Deir el-​Bahari Pyramid Texts, Spell 467, § 891c Coffin Texts, Spell 170, § 39d

20th Dyn., 12th cent. BCE

Dorn 2004: 40 (oBM 41541, line 6)

21st Dyn., 11th–​10th cent. BCE 20th Dyn., 12th–​11th cent. BCE

Quack 1994: 331

12th Dyn., 20th–​18th cent. BCE

Blackman 1972: 133–​134

16 17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26

6th Dyn., 24th–​23rd cent. BCE 18th Dyn., 15th cent. BCE 18th Dyn., 15th cent. BCE 6th Dyn., 23rd cent. BCE Middle Kingdom, 20th–​18th cent. BCE The Contendings of Horus and 20th Dyn., Seth 9.1 (Papyrus Chester 12th–​11th cent. BCE Beatty I) The Story of the Shipwrecked 12th Dyn., Sailor, 179–​181 (Papyrus 20th–​18th cent. BCE Sankt Petersburg 1115) Coffin Texts, Spell 316, § 108e Middle Kingdom, 20th–​18th cent. BCE

Černý 1939: 68

Allen 2013b: PT 373, § 656b (Teti) Urk. IV, 236, 12–​15 Urk. IV, 238, 1–​3

Allen 2013c: PT 467, § 891c (Pepi I.) De Buck 1947: 39d (B4Bo) Gardiner 1932: 48, 15–​16 Blackman 1972: 179–​181 De Buck 1951: 108e (S2P)

Note: * Following the dates given in Hornung et al. 2006.

Appendix B. Glossing abbreviations 1, 2, 3 ACT AGT ANT ART CJVB CORD DEF DEM F

1st, 2nd, 3rd person active agentive anterior article conjunctive verb coordinate definite demonstrative feminine

M NEG PASS PFV PL POSS POST PTCP Q REL

masculine negative passive perfective plural possessive posterior participle question relative

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GRND IMP INF IPFV

grounding imperative infinitive imperfective

RES SBJV SG

resultative subjunctive singular

Notes 1. The problem with the term “lower” is that it may trigger a negative undertone for these three senses, implying that they are less important. 2. For illustration, only one recent publication is mentioned here for each sense modality. Additional literature is mentioned in the respective publications. For vision and concepts of the eye, see Gräßler 2017. Meyer-​Dietrich (2018) studied hearing in ancient Egypt. An overview on the archaeology of smell is given by Price (2018). There are (to my knowledge) no individual examinations on touch and taste. For the Greek and Roman worlds, see the Routledge series The Senses in Antiquity (2014–​2018) and for Byzantium, Ashbrook-​Harvey and Mullet 2017. 3. On the topic of classifiers, see Goldwasser 2002; 2005; 2006; 2009; Goldwasser and Grinevald 2012; Lincke 2011, 2015; Lincke and Kammerzell 2012. For verbal classifiers, see Kammerzell 2015. 4. Metaphors are given in small caps. 5. Winter (2019: 51–​65) also calls it the “Embodied Lexicon Hypothesis.” 6. I.e., IDEAS ARE FOOD (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 46–​47), UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 48) or EMOTIONAL EFFECT IS PHYSICAL CONTACT (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 50). For this article, the 2003 version of the book with a new afterword is used as reference; the first version appeared in 1980. 7. Only in the fourth story of Papyrus Westcar is King Kheops an eyewitness to the miracles that the wise Djedi accomplishes. See Blackman 1988: 6.22–​9.21, i.e., 8–​12. 8. All Egyptian text examples are translated by the author unless marked otherwise. The glossing is mainly based on the suggestions given in Di Biase-​Dyson et al. (2009) as well as the Wiki created by Werning (2014). All glossing abbreviations are given in Appendix B as well as a list with more detailed information on the used text examples in Appendix A. 9. In the translations of Example 1 and Example 2 I tried to avoid the use of the English verb “to see,” which would otherwise also be an appropriate translation of the Egyptian lexemes mꜣꜣ and ptr. But since the English “to see” can also mean “to understand” or “to know,” I wanted to put more emphasis on the Egyptian metaphor by using English synonyms of “to see.” The meaning of Egyptian ṭp, “taste,” is metaphorical here, too. This will be shown further below within the chapter. 10. For a comprehensive study of the Teaching of Ptahhotep, see Junge 2003. 11. Or “mind” in the Egyptian understanding. 12. See also Steinbach 2015, and Steinbach-​Eicke 2018; 2019, on the topic of perception metaphors in Egyptian with further examples. 13. The topic of prototypes and prototypical structures is not further elaborated within this chapter. For Egyptological research in this field, see Goldwasser 2002; Lincke 2015; Nyord 2012. 14. A feminine deceased. 15. In the Sahidic dialect of Coptic tôpe, tôp, see Westendorf 2008: 240. 16. For a cross-​linguistic study on tactile verbs, see Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 2006. 17. Kövecses’ (2019: 337) assumed rank order of “sense-​perception-​based metaphors” seems not to be valid for Egyptian. 18. But this classification is not only linked to the meaning “to kiss” as Example 22 shows. 19. For the publication of the tomb, see Moussa and Altenmüller 1977, especially plates 72–​73, 91. 20. Italics added by the author. 21. Overview by Caballero and Ibarretxe-​Antuñano 2014. 22. Instead of “to sense” or “to perceive,” one could even speak of a kind of synaesthetic perception. In Example 20, “to smell” means “to smell,” “to kiss,” “to taste,” and “to recognise” at the same time. The queen is identified intuitively by the divine cow. 23. For more recent photographs and descriptions, see also Beaux 2015: 62–​63 (figs. 1, 3), 66 (fig. 49). 24. Queen Hatshepsut is often depicted and referred to as a male king. This explains the coexistence of female and male titles or pronouns in the examples given in this section.

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25. The example is taken from the publication of Van Hecke (2019: 99); the italics are by Van Hecke. I set the verb “to taste” in bold type but without any glossing. 26. Within the co-​text of this example, the verb ṭp occurs two more times with a metaphorical meaning. 27. Terminology by Matisoff 1978: 176. 28. The strong connection of smell and taste to emotional domains is further supported by the fact that both are connected to brain areas responsible for emotional processing (Winter 2019: 199; Speed and Majid 2019: 19). 29. For “multisensoriality,” see also Winter 2019: 87–​90.

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Steinbach-​Eicke, E. 2019. “Taste Metaphors in Hieroglyphic Egyptian,” in L. J. Speed, C., O’Meara, L. San Roque, and A. Majid, eds., Perception Metaphors. CELCR 19. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 145–​164. Strik Lievers, F. 2007. “Italian Perception Verbs: A Corpus-​Based Study,” in A. Sansò, ed., Language Resources and Linguistic Theory. Milan: Franco Angeli, 167–​179. Sweetser, E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics (CSL) 54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trojszczak, M. 2019. “Grounding Mental Metaphors in Touch: A Corpus-​Based Study of English and Polish,” in L. J. Speed, C. O’Meara, L. San Roque, and A. Majid, eds., Perception Metaphors. CELCR 19. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 209–​230. Van Hecke, P. 2019. “Tasting Metaphor in Ancient Israel,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. ANEM 25. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 99–​118. Vanhove, M., ed. 2008. From Polysemy to Semantic Change: Towards a Typology of Lexical Semantic Associations. Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) 106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Viberg, Å. 1984. “The Verbs of Perception: A Typological Study.” Linguistics 21 (1): 123–​162. Viberg, Å. 2001. “Verbs of Perception,” in M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher, and W. Raible, eds., Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook, Volume 2. Handbücher zur Sprach-​und Kommunikationswissenschaft (HSK) 20.2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 1294–​1309. Werning, D. A. 2014. Ancient Egyptian: Glossing of Common Earlier Egyptian Forms. https://​wikis.hu-​berlin. de/​interlinear_​glossing/​Ancient_​Egyptian:Glossing_​of_​common_​Earlier_​Egyptian_​forms. Westendorf, W. 2008. Koptisches Handwörterbuch. Bearbeitet auf der Grundlage des Koptischen Handwörterbuchs von Wilhelm Spiegelberg. Second Edition. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter GmbH. Winter, B. 2019. Sensory Linguistics: Language, Perception and Metaphor. CELCR 20. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Žába, Z. 1956. Les Maximes de Ptahhotep. Prague: Éditions de l’Academie Tchécoslovatique des Sciences. Note: Examples from Hungarian and Japanese are taken from Trojszczak 2019: 213.

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28 Metaphors of sensory experience in ancient Egyptian texts Emotion, personality, and social interaction Camilla Di Biase-​Dyson and Gaëlle Chantrain

Introduction The goal of this chapter is to describe how emotional states and personal characteristics are described in terms of sensory experience in ancient Egyptian texts. Since the contribution in this volume by our colleague Elisabeth Steinbach-​Eicke (see Chapter 27, this volume) concerns itself explicitly with the depiction of cognition in ancient Egyptian using the primary senses (what is often called “embodied cognition”),1 our chapter can be seen as taking these ideas in a different direction: we consider specifically the processing of human emotion and temperament and we show that these features are depicted in ancient Egyptian texts with reference to a wide range of sensory phenomena, particularly external impulses like temperatures, textures, colours and shades, sounds, tastes, and smells. Many such metaphorical and metonymic transfers are cross-​linguistically well attested,2 perhaps because they share a metonymic basis, namely, that an emotional state and the physical instantiation of that state—​be it a sensation within the body (like temperature) or one outside the body (like colours, smells, tastes, and textures, as well as the general environment)—​are contiguous, and dependent on each other (cf. Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 40; also Toro Rueda 2003: 86–​89).

Theoretical bases: emotion research, historical semantics, and sensory studies Emotion and metaphor For our research into emotion and temperament we were inspired by the definitional framework established by Klaus Scherer, who defines an emotion as an organism’s affective response to specific situations (of loss, frustration, danger, or success, for instance). As such, emotion is to be distinguished from feeling, which is “the subjective emotional experience component of emotion” (Scherer 2013: 25). An emotion is a “bounded event” in the life of an individual that involves an appraisal of the event plus synchronised changes in a series of mental and somatic subsystems leading to expression and reaction (Frijda and Scherer 2009; also Scherer DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-29

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2013: 24–​25; Bender 2009: 300). Emotional responses are characterised by physiological changes, facial expressions, and shifts in behavioural attention and direction (Scherer 2013: 8). These definitional features are crucial, as many lexical units describing emotion are additionally used to portray the temperament of a person, what Scherer (2005: 705) calls an “affect disposition.” Affect dispositions, or temperaments, “describe the tendency of a person to experience certain moods more frequently or to be prone to react with certain types of emotions” and they may also influence emotion regulation.3 Both emotions and temperaments are interesting for our research,4 and the extent to which the two are distinguishable from each other at the textual level will be a factor in our discussion. From a methodological perspective, Scherer’s (2013: 8) research, like ours, is fundamentally lexical in scope, but of course benefits from the possibility of eliciting data. A questionnaire-​based operationalisation of five emotion components across 24 modern languages allowed Scherer and his team to model the semantic space covered by all emotion terms in a four-​dimensional structure, including VALENCE, POWER, AROUSAL, and NOVELTY. The metaphorical descriptions of emotion that use a type of sensory perception as their source domain (see Lakoff and Johnson 2003 [1980]: 265) are specifically related to AROUSAL (Soriano 2013: 418). Cross-​ linguistically well-​documented examples of this type (which, as we shall see, certainly include ancient Egyptian) include emotions and personalities based on opposing pairs like warm/​cold and sweet/​bitter. Such conceptual metaphors, to which Eve Sweetser (1990: 30) gives the overarching term MIND-​A S-​B ODY , are well-​attested because they are incredibly effective. Though highly conventionalised, they carry a greater affective load than other comparable expressions, indicated by the fact that they can evoke an affective response in the brain and lead to physical reactions evoking the source domain. In the case of the research of Francesca Citron and Adele Goldberg (2014), this involves taste metaphors (like “sweet”) activating primary and secondary gustatory areas more than literal language (like “kind”). One might suggest that this factor can be modelled as a metonymic basis for the MIND-​A S-​B ODY metaphor, namely, THE EFFECT OF AN EMOTION FOR AN EMOTION ,5 a subcategory of EFFECT FOR CAUSE .6 The MIND-​A S-​B ODY conceptual metaphor has a number of instantiations, which can be seen in the Egyptian corpus, as well as elsewhere, such as EXPERIENCING IS SENSING, MENTAL ACTIVITY IS A PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, MENTAL STATE IS A PHYSICAL STATE, EMOTION IS A NATURAL SOURCE (with the subcategories ANGER IS HEAT [Kövecses 2010: 108] and RESTRAINT IS COLD [ Kövecses 2010: 21] ) and THE SOCIAL WORLD IS THE PHYSICAL WORLD (Kövecses 2010: 255) (with the subcategory RESTRAINT IS SILENCE ) (Di Biase-​Dyson 2018). We can see from this list that, though many metaphors may be seen as being culturally specific, or having culturally specific instantiations, a majority, even Egyptian, follow tendencies visible also in other world languages (cf. Kövecses 2005).7 All degrees of cross-​cultural applicability notwithstanding, we must nevertheless account for the role of a specific cultural context and how it “filters” experience. With respect to emotion, for instance, it must be considered whether different cultures have the same emotions and, in the case that similarities appear, whether they are expressed in ways we can understand (Bender 2009: 299). Andrea Bender (2009: 316) concludes that even if there is a biological basis for a range of emotions across cultural boundaries, the way the emotion is appraised, the expression of emotion in speech and behaviour and also the curbing of emotional expression from external forces is often culturally constrained. This cautionary note is exemplified by research into the expression of emotion in another ancient language, namely, biblical Hebrew, in which the conceptual metaphors describing emotion show a different relationship between the body and the emotions and also a different basic understanding of emotions than many Western languages. Emotions are rarely internalised, but rather come from outside the body; they are also not as spontaneous, being more connected 604

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to specific causes (Wagner 2017: 216–​217). Love, for instance, is rarely understood in relation to the common Western mapping THE BODY IS A CONTAINER , but is more often described as an external force, like fire. It is moreover something that can be demanded of others, and is thus not unmanageable, as emotions are often perceived to be (Müller 2014: 236–​237).8 When it comes to anger, however, the BODY IS A CONTAINER metaphor is certainly attestable in Hebrew (Wagner 2012: 40–​42), as are metaphors from the sensory realm that provide parallels for our Egyptian sources (see section “Heat/​warmth”): rage is depicted in terms of hot, fluid, and fiery elements (Wagner 2012: 47–​54; 2017: 216). Equally, “bitterness” and “darkness” are used to describe emotional distress (King 2010). We can also see cultural differences from modern Western metaphors in the textual record of ancient Egypt, in both image and text. Firstly, our cultural distance may mean that we do not understand the subtle cues of emotion (via, for instance, particular gestures). Secondly, the cultural distance is exacerbated by the fact that, in the case of images, their purported function, linked to permanence of the image in a funerary context, would prohibit depictions of anger or distress, at least for elites (Baines 2017: 266–​267). As John Baines (2017: 265) in his discussion of the depiction of emotion in Egyptian visual representations shows, “social conventions restricted the expression of emotion on both elite faces and bodies.” We will see this idea mirrored in textual evidence: the concept of passivity, via the sensory phenomenon of silence, is key to elite conceptions of good behaviour (see section “Quiet”). Nevertheless, Alexandra Verbovsek (2011: 237) makes a case for the application of theories of emotion to ancient Egyptian material, despite the fact that the theory, and even the concept of emotion itself, is entirely modern. She scrutinises a wide array of different source types—​text, image, the built environment—​in order to find “the traces that emotions leave in cultural materials” (Verbovsek 2011: 238) and looks at the way well-​attested emotions like joy and sadness are evoked, performed, but also overcome in rituals, such as mourning and coronation. Research into a wider span of emotional states is of course more fraught and requires a great deal of contextual and co-​textual comparison on the basis of a substantial corpus.

Historical semantics: metaphor and semantic change Another theoretical tenet upon which our research draws is that figuration, including metaphor, plays a structuring role in semantic change (Sweetser 1990: 18–​22; Traugott and Dasher 2001). The general path for semantic change is modelled as movement from a more concrete meaning to a more abstract one (Sweetser 1990: 21, 31), which in our case would comprise the change from the description of more or less concrete sensory phenomena to that of an emotional domain. We shall be testing this alleged shift on the basis of our data.

Sensory studies Sensory research, particularly with a historical basis, is of course also key to our work, as sensory phenomena dominate the source domains used to describe emotion and temperament metaphorically. This is likely the case, as Yannis Hamilakis points out, because “[s]‌ensoriality shapes and organises social life and, perhaps more importantly, activates and evokes affectivity” (Hamilakis 2013: 124). Although “logocentric” approaches, such as ours, have been justly accused of being limiting to studies of the senses (Hamilakis 2013: 68), it must nonetheless be conceded that language is also key to the “differential importance of specific senses across cultures” (Majid and Levinson 2011: 7). Another issue raised by scholars involved with sensory research concerns the cultural boundedness of sensory representation: that the five senses are part 605

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of “a Western folk taxonomy, bequeathed to us since classical antiquity. It is a way of imagining the self and the body” (Hamilakis 2013: 113). Though this argument is also compelling, and in many respects true, this “Procrustean bed” has also provided scholars, especially linguists, with a taxonomic apparatus with which to conduct research that expands our knowledge of what these five senses—​in cross-​linguistic comparative perspective—​can actually mean (Majid and Levinson 2011: 10). Thus, we too orient ourselves in our research towards the five senses, in order to see the potential and limits of this paradigm. The last justifiable criticism concerns the so-​called hierarchy of the senses in perception (as proposed by Viberg 1984: 136, 147; discussed by Howes and Classen 2014: 1, 3; Speed et al. 2019). Eve Sweetser’s diachronic study of Indo-​ European languages certainly supported the primacy of vision in the depiction of cognition, or better, intellection and it was justified on the basis that “vision … is our primary source of objective data about the world” (Sweetser 1990: 39). However, Martine Vanhove (2008: 360) has also shown that non-​Indo-​European languages show hearing and vision to be used in roughly equal amounts in the depiction of internal and/​or intellectual perception. Although it is outside the scope of the current study, it would be interesting to see if a sensory hierarchy in ancient Egyptian (cf. Chapter 27, this volume) has any effect on cases such as ours, in which particular sensory stimuli represent emotional state and temperament.

Research questions Our study questions take on these theoretical frameworks and confront them with the potential of Egyptian linguistic data: 1. What kinds of sensory phenomena are used to depict specific emotions and temperaments? 2. Can lexemes of emotion and temperament be distinguished semantically from each other? Do compounds play a role here? 3. Do these emotion terms exist in complementary distribution with each other? Are there relationships of synonymy, antonymy, even asymmetry, that we need to take into account? 4. Are diachronic forces of language change at work? If so, what effect do they have? 5. What is the role of genre in the appearance and use of emotion terms?

Method Our study hinges on a few different methodological approaches. Our main approach derives from lexical semantics, an approach that takes into consideration two key perspectives: semasiology, which “considers the isolated word and the way its meanings are manifested,” and onomasiology, which “looks at the designations of a particular concept, that is, at a multiplicity of expressions which form a whole” (Baldinger 1980 [1977]: 278). Our approach is a mixture of both, looking first for the words in particular semantic groups then considering the semantic span of each individual lexeme, in order to understand on what semantic basis they were imbued with metaphorical and/​or metonymic meaning. Of course, this line of inquiry also has an indisputable formal dimension: the lexical semantic method often rests on specific grammatical features that engender that meaning (see Vanhove 2008: 357; for Egyptian, Winand 2016). Our approach is moreover historical, focusing on usages of lexemes throughout the entire pharaonic period of Egypt (c. 2700–​1070 BCE ), and it considers the contexts of use (medium, genre, register) as well as the co-​text (presence of matching or asymmetrical pairs, synonymy, antonymy). A diachronic approach is interesting, even just within the pre-​classical or pharaonic

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period of Egyptian history, because there is an increased use of pertinent locutions during the New Kingdom. This may be due in part to the substantially higher number of sources available, but is nevertheless an interesting feature that we shall explore in detail here. Where relevant, we comment on changes in spelling, particularly the use of classifiers (semantic markers for several classes of Egyptian words),9 in cases where the classifier marks a specification of or shift in the meaning towards representing an emotional state. These changes may reflect changing modes of classification due to semantic change (Chantrain 2014; 2019), but may also show alterations according to ad hoc medial or rhetorical needs (Chantrain and Di Biase-​Dyson 2017). Our corpora range from the analogue to the digital. The lexicographical work of all Egyptologists starts with the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache of Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow (Wb.), which is based on massive amounts of data collected around the turn of the twentieth century. The sources on which every meaning is based are accessible via the published Belegstellen (references) and the digitised card catalogue used to assemble the dictionary, the Digitalisiertes Zettelarchiv (DZA). However, the search can never end there: in the last 20 years, two major digital text corpora have been created to vastly increase the data set on which lexical analysis can be conducted and to interrogate the findings of the Wb. We have availed ourselves of both: the online diachronic corpus of Ancient Egyptian hosted by the Berlin-​Brandenburg and Saxon Academies of Sciences (Germany), the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA), as well as the corpus of Late Egyptian Texts based at the Université de Liège, Projet Ramsès (Ramsès). In its current state (soon to be updated with many more texts via a new database, called Berlin Text System [BTS] Version 3), the TLA boasts a corpus of texts of approximately 1.4 million text words from a range of genres (funerary, ritual, epistolary, monumental-​rhetorical, literary, poetic, medical and magical texts) spanning over 3,000 years. The Projet Ramsès database comprises a corpus of texts from literary, poetic, epistolary, administrative, but also monumental-​rhetorical genres (510,000+ tokens; 65,000+ hieroglyphic spellings; 10,000+ lemmata; 4,000+ texts) from the Egyptian New Kingdom–​ Third Intermediate Period (c. 1550–​712 BCE ). Though these sources in total reflect massive amounts of diachronic data, they still suffer from being partial, due on the one hand to the ancient Egyptian textual record being very unevenly distributed and on the other hand due to the corpora reflecting the expertise and interests of their compilers. We searched both corpora for all uses of selected key words for sensory phenomena. For some, the description of an emotional state or temperament was visible at the lexical level in context, for others, emotion was expressed via compounding (or at least collocating) one of these lexemes with a body part like the heart (ḥꜢ.tj, jb),10 the face (ḥr), the mouth (r’), or the body/​ belly (ẖ.t), which in a metonymic transfer of INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION shows the body part in question to be a conduit for an emotional state or temperament. The body parts in question are of course not coincidental: the heart was considered the locus of emotion and intelligence (see especially el-​Kholy 2003; Toro Rueda 2003; Nyord 2009a: 86–​113), the face the medium of expression, the mouth the conduit of enunciation, and the belly the receptacle of emotional load (Nyord 2009a: 55–​67). For the corpus of 32 lexemes there are a total of 1551 attestations.

Findings Our case studies consider and compare the semantic breadth, use-​life, and frequency of lexemes for sensory stimuli that additionally convey meanings relating to emotion and temperament. The consideration of use-​life takes in the kinds of contexts (textual, generic, and chronological) in which each lexeme appeared. Often we have taken opposing stimuli and compared them to each other, in order to note where complementarity and where asymmetry exist. 607

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Sounds There is a natural opposition in Egyptian texts between the presence and absence of sound. The absence of sound, incarnated by the lexeme gr, “to be quiet, silent” (Wb. V, 179.9–​180.7), is generally positively connoted, especially in its substantivised form of gr.w, “the silent one” (Wb. V 180.10–​11), whereas phrases such as jr(j) ḫrw,“making noise,” are mostly connected to the actions of intemperate people. Quiet The verb gr, “to be quiet,” colexifies (François 2008) two kinds of quietness: one referring to an absence of sound but also (when used in reference to the heart) one referring to an absence of motion (or very slow, controlled motion). gr moreover refers both to a temperament and to an emotion, since the fact of being quiet (gr) means both “to be calm” and “to be peaceful” (Wb. V, 180.6–​7).11 It is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (Wb. V, 179.9) and can be used metaphorically to describe a temperament from the Middle Kingdom on12 and an emotion (in rarer cases) from the New Kingdom at the latest.13 The substantivised form “the silent one” appears around the same time (Wb. V, 180.10–​11) (Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 39–​40). gr appears in metaphorical collocations with jb and ḥꜢ.tj (both lexemes meaning “heart”) to express controlled or absent emotion from the New Kingdom on (Wb. V, 179.16). gr, “to be quiet,” is attested in metaphors based on a system of opposition with lexemes from other sensory domains from the Middle Kingdom on (Wb. V, 180.6–​7): it is a synonym of qbb, “to be cool” (Wb. V, 180.7),14 and an antonym not only of jr(j) ḫrw, “to make noise,” (amongst others) but also of srf, “to be warm,” and to an extent Ꜣs “to be fast.” This conceptual asymmetry may emerge because both the metaphors ANGER IS HEAT and RESTRAINT IS SILENCE (the latter being tied to the more general metaphor THE SOCIAL WORLD IS THE PHYSICAL WORLD ) have a shared metonymic background: EFFECT OF AN EMOTION FOR AN EMOTION ( Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 40–​41), which will also be discussed below in relation to heat (see section “Heat/​warmth”). Asymmetry might also be tied to the high degree of conventionality of both metaphors (Kimmel 2010: 99). Quiet versus noise is best illustrated by this classic example from The Teachings of Ani (P. Boulaq 4, 17.1–​2; Quack 1994: 289): m-​ḏy.t ꜥšꜢ.wt md.wt gr tw ḫpr=k m nfr m-​jr jry ḫrw ḫnw n nṯr bw.t=f pw sbḥ.w Do not allow (yourself) to be one of many words, be quiet, and you will stand in good stead. Do not make noise the resting place of the god, shouting is his abomination. The asymmetric (but nevertheless antonymic) pairing of quiet versus hot can also be seen in a Hymn to Thoth (P. Sallier I, 8.5 = LEM 86.5–​7): ḏḥw.tj tꜢ ẖnm.t nḏm.t {mj} z jb ḫꜢs.t sw ḫtm.tj n pꜢ gm(j) r’=f sw wn.tj n pꜢ gr.w

Thoth, pleasant well the man who is thirsty the desert! It is sealed for the chatty one (lit. he who has found his mouth), but it is open for the silent one. The asymmetric pairing of quiet versus motion seems to be strictly in relation to the heart being fast. The personification of the “racing heart” when agitated or impatient is of course recognisable to English speakers and can be seen in The Teaching of a Man for his Son (O. Michaelides 16, 6–​8, § 20.3–​6; Fischer-​Elfert 1999: Tafelband § 20, 3–​6): 608

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nn Ꜣs jb šw(j) m ḫrw.w=f […] jr gr=k ḫpr n=k pḥ.w(y) There is no impatient person (lit. one fast of heart) who is free of enemies […] If you remain quiet, you will have a good outcome (lit: an end will happen for you). A combination of these properties—​and more—​can be seen in a highly conventionalised and metaphorically-​laden, self-​laudatory inscription from the tomb of the noble Amenemope, called Tjanefer (Theban Tomb 297, 18th Dynasty; DZA 30.668.130): jnk gr qb srf nḏm jb dns sḫr.w qb ḏd md.t I am a calm (lit. silent) one, who soothes tempers (lit. cools warmth), one kind of intentions (lit. sweet of heart), serious (lit. heavy) of plans, cool (i.e. calm) when making speeches. The sheer amount of multisensory metaphors, of sound, temperature, taste, and touch, are key to metaphors for personality in autobiographical texts like this one from the Middle Kingdom on. Just like in modern languages, however, silence is not always a good quality to have: being silent and (inherently) subscribing to a mob mentality was considered as dangerous in ancient Egypt as it is now. In The Teachings of Ani (P. Boulaq 4, 21.19–​20; Quack 1994: 323), the sage warns: j.jr rwj r rmṯ rqy jw ḥꜢ.tj gr m-​ẖnw pꜢ mšꜥ Keep away from rebellious people when the heart is silent in the middle of a crowd (or: an army).15 The lack of opposition (for good or bad) seems to be key to the semantics of gr, “quiet”: it is a state of non-​marked emotion, a state of balance, without alarm. Noise We have already addressed noise in its antonymic relation to quiet, where it is tied to a disruptive temperament. However, two things need to be mentioned here. Firstly, whereas the idea of “silence” is generated by a single lexeme, as we have seen by the prior examples, no such coherence exists when it comes to noise, so already there is a significant degree of lexical asymmetry in the metaphor.16 Secondly, making sound is not always an indication of a negative emotion or temperament. Two lexemes are worth a look in this respect: jhj, “to make a loud noise,” and, by extension, “to express a strong emotion” (Wb. I, 118.2) and ꜥḏꜥḏ, “to cheer” but also “to be happy (in a loud way)” (Wb. I, 241.11–​14). Such cases are best characterised as metonyms, such as EXPRESSION OF AN EMOTION FOR AN EMOTION . Other cases of this same metonymy exist outside of the realm of sounds: ṯm, “to look down” also means “to be ashamed” (Wb. V, 367.4) but being a non-​sensory metonym it falls outside the purview of this chapter. jhj, “to make a loud noise” and “to express a strong emotion,” is attested from the Old Kingdom. In the Pyramid Texts (e.g., Pyramid Text 359 [§ 594a T]; Sethe 1908: 316) it carries the meaning of “complaining.”17 However, the sound is clearly linked to emotion in a magical papyrus from the New Kingdom (P. Leiden I 348, rto 13.11, Spell 29; Borghouts 1971: 28, pl. 13): ḫrw sgꜢbw n(.j) sḫm.t jhj m-​ẖnw ḥw.t-​ꜥꜢ.t

The sound of the shrieking of [the goddess] Sachmet, who is rejoicing (jhj) inside the great temple.

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ꜥḏꜥḏ, “to cheer” and “to be happy (in a loud way),” is attested somewhat later, in the New

Kingdom. A person and also their personified heart (jb) can be presented as being happy in this way. When a person does it, it often comes with rš(w), “to be pleased,” which makes it likely that the more literal “to cheer” is meant by ꜥḏꜥḏ.18 With the heart as the agent, however, only the more metaphorical sense of emotion can be meant, as seen in a love poem (O. Cairo CGC 25218 + O. DeM 1266, 14, Group A, Song 20; Mathieu 2008: pl. 18): sn.t jy.tj jb=j ḥr ꜥḏꜥḏ The lover (lit. sister) has arrived! My heart is rejoicing.

Temperatures Temperatures (cold/​cool and hot/​warm) are very commonly used in the expression of emotions and temperaments.19 Psychological tests (Gibbs 1994) and cross-​linguistic studies (Kövecses 2000b; Koptjevskaja-​Tamm 2015: 2) have indicated fairly conclusively that anger is commonly described metaphorically in terms of heat across a range of cultures and languages. The studies conducted by Benjamin Wilkowski et al. (2009: 474) go even further, supporting Ray Gibbs’ (2006) hypothesis that “the conceptualization of anger involves a cognitive simulation of heat.” This suggests at the descriptive level of the conceptual path that the expressions are more than metaphors. They are rather metaphtonymies,20 since the metonym EFFECT OF AN EMOTION FOR AN EMOTION lies at the basis of the metaphors ANGER IS HEAT and RESTRAINT IS COLD . However, as the surface form of the passages is metaphorical, we shall be referring to these tropes as “metaphors” in the chapter. Heat/​warmth Hot temperatures, expressed by lexemes like tꜢ, “to be hot, to burn”; šmm, “to be hot”; and to a limited extent also the less intense srf, “to be warm,” and the noun nsr, “fire,”21 are associated with anger and impulsivity, a transfer that is well-​ attested cross-​ linguistically (Lakoff and Kövecses 1987). The verb tꜢ, “to be hot” (Wb. V, 229.1–​15), attested from the Old Kingdom, in later periods carries also the metaphorical meaning of “to be angry” (Wb. V, 229.11–​14) and is either used alone22 or in relation to r’, “mouth, speech.”23 These rare usages are found in the so-​called Negative Confessions (Chapter 125) in the Book of the Dead, which appeared in tombs from the New Kingdom on. More commonly, tꜢ is to be found in compounds with body parts, such as the body/​belly (ẖ.t), heart ( jb), and mouth (r’) (Wb. V, 229.12–​14), whereby it generates linguistic metaphors based around ANGER IS HEAT (IN A CONTAINER) ( see also Effland 2003: 76; Köhler 2016: 119–​ 126). However, though these compounds depicting heat inside the body reflect an angry temperament, they are not used to express a more transient emotion. The phrase tꜢ-​ẖ.t, “hot of body/​belly,” is rare, and is perhaps exclusive to the Middle Kingdom wisdom text The Teachings of Ptahhotep (P. Prisse = P. BN 186–​194, 11.5; Žába 1956: 44; and P. BM EA 10509, 6.4–​5; Caminos 1956: pl. 28)24 to refer (as a substantive) to someone with a violent temper.25 Heat in relation to the heart, in the composite tꜢ-​jb, “hot of heart,” to describe an aggressive antagonist, also occurs first in the Middle Kingdom Teachings of Ptahhotep (P. Prisse = P. BN 186–​194, 12.2–​ 3 and P. BM EA 10509, 4.9; Žába 1956: 46 and 35)26 and after the New Kingdom in the Book of the Dead, Chapter 28 II (P. BM 10793, 16.16; Munro 1996:Tf. 17). However, it is not frequently attested.27 Lastly, the compound involving the mouth, the substantive tꜢ-​r’, “hot of mouth,”28 is 610

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found in the New Kingdom Teachings of Amenemope (P. BM 10474, 5.10; Laisney 2007: 331) to refer to someone impulsive and choleric: m-jr nḥb ṯtṯt irm pꜢ tꜢ-​r’ Do not start an argument with the hot-​mouth. šmm, “to be hot, warm” (Wb. IV, 468.1–​15), similarly to the expressions based on tꜢ, can be used for the expression of temperament, but in contrast to tꜢ, the metaphorical use is only attested from the New Kingdom on, though the lexeme itself is attested from the Old Kingdom. The verbal usage, “be hot” (Wb. IV, 468.1–​15), can refer to being argumentative, even litigious, as seen in legal documents from the late 18th Dynasty (P. Berlin P 9784, 8–​9; Gardiner 1906: 28–​29):

ꜥḥꜥ.n pꜢ hrw 2 ḥr šm m ḥm(.t) ḥnw.t Then the two work days were contested (lit. hot) with the servant Henut. The substantive form, šmm, “the hot one” (Wb. IV, 469.1–​2), attested only from the late New Kingdom, is someone with a choleric, impulsive temper (see Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 34; also Effland 2003: 76; Toro Rueda 2003: 103). šmm can be used with this meaning both alone or in the expression šmm-​r’, “hot-​mouth.”29 In the following invocation, someone demands that the “hot-​mouth” in question go to a cold place in winter and a hot place in summer—​to be damned, in other words (O. Leipzig 8, 1–​5, Černý and Gardiner 1957: pl. 7.5; Fischer-​Elfert 1986b: 8–​12): yḥ šm(j)=k r jꜢbt.t pꜢ šm(m)-​r’ nn jn(j).tw=k wnn=k n šw.t qb.y m tr n pr.t wnn=k n qꜥḥ šmm m tr n {pw(?) n} šmw Oh, may you go off East, o hot-​mouth! You should not be brought back, but rather belong to the cool shade in the wintertime and belong to the warm corner in the summertime!30 Seven of the eleven attestations of the “hot-​mouth” in the New Kingdom corpus (Ramsès) are from The Teachings of Amenemope, where he is associated with loud storms and animals of prey,31 storms and fires,32 and perhaps because of this, he is contrasted with a quiet person, a pairing which would otherwise seem asymmetrical.33 The verb srf, “to be warm, to make warm” (Wb. IV, 195.6–​13), does not have any clearly attested metaphorical cases relating to emotion, though one fragmentary case, linking being warm (srf ), quiet (gr), and cool (qb), makes it very likely that in this case we simply lack good sources.34 On the other hand, the substantive form, “warmth” (Wb. IV, 196.1–​5), is clearly linked to emotion (Wb. IV, 196.7–​10), appearing commonly with dꜢr, “to control,” meaning “restrained” (Wb. V, 478.11). This phrase can also appear in relation to silence,35 as seen on the statue of Amenemope (Cairo TN 8/​6/​24/​10, 10–​11; Ockinga 2004: 91): gr.w mꜢꜥ dꜢr srf A truly reserved person (lit. silent one), whose temper (lit. warmth) was under control. The expression srf-​jb, “warm of heart” (Wb. IV, 195.10), is used to express the temperament of being “zealous.” This expression seems to be chiefly attested from the Old Kingdom, in the context of captions on tomb walls portraying discussions between workers who are carrying out tasks for the tomb owner (Chapel of Sekhem-​ankh-​ptah in Saqqara, south wall, 1; Simpson 1976: 10–​16, fig. 5–​10, pl. D): 611

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jšst pw rf ṯꜢy srf-​jb Who is the zealous man? The only other attested cases within this scope of meaning from the pharaonic period come from the New Kingdom tomb autobiography of the vizier Rekhmire, lines 36 and 41 (Urk. IV, 1082.8 and 1084.5). We can conclude that this lexeme, which indicates less intensity of temperature compared to its counterparts, is also semantically more ambivalent: as in English, “warmth” can relate to being excitable, but also carries the positive meaning of being zealous. More intense heat-​based metaphors of the Old and Middle Kingdoms that are more closely linked to excessive emotion or temperament, based on the lexemes nsr and tꜢ, were eclipsed in the second half of the New Kingdom by šm(m) (Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 37). All cases are decisively linked more to temperament than to emotion. Cold/​coolness As opposed to warmth, which expresses rather negative behaviours and states of mind, coolness can be associated with positive ideas, and with temperance and ease. That noted, we shall see that a negative association can also be made, which in English and in other languages is associated with the more extreme temperature of “cold.” Unfortunately, unlike the lexical gradations of warm/​hot temperatures, Egyptian does not disambiguate lexically between “cool” and “cold,” so it is harder to distinguish the level of intensity. In any case, as regards the positive aspect, the association of cool temperatures with positive features seems natural in a country where the climate is very hot and dry. The verb qbb, “to be cool, fresh,” can be used metaphorically with the meaning “to be quiet, calm” already from the Old Kingdom on. A further metaphorical meaning develops in the New Kingdom, as we shall see presently. The earlier cases of qbb in relation to emotion are as adjectives in expressions with jb, “heart,” already from the Old Kingdom, as seen in Pyramid Text 32 (§ 22b W) (Sethe 1908: 15): jw(j).n(=j) jn(j).n(=j) n=k jr.t-​ḥr.w qb jb=k ẖr=s That (I) came and that (I) brought you the Eye of Horus was so your heart could be calm (lit. cool) because of it. Metaphorical usage of qbb in autobiographies of the Middle Kingdom goes in two directions. It appears in relation to speech, as we see on the stela of Ibi (Cairo JE 46200, 7; Kubisch 2008: 235–​ 236): qb r’ hr(w) ṯz.w, “Calm (lit. cool) of speech (lit. mouth) and comforting of words,” and it manifests in relation to temperate behaviour, being connected with the aforementioned srf, “heat:” qbb srf, “one who cools warmth” (Wb. V, 23.17).36 Once the verb qbb comes to be used alone and metaphorically, it seems to have shifted somewhat in its semantic value, no longer simply meaning “calm” but also “without passion” (Wb. V, 23.4–​8). For instance, a passage in the New Kingdom Teaching of Amunnakht criticises the attitude of the one who wants to be left to his own devices (O. Lacau = HO III/​3, rto 8–​9; Dorn 2004: 41):

Ꜣb(j)=k [tw=tw] ḥr ꜥnḫ qbb nn mtr.t You wish that [one] could live detached (lit. cool, perhaps cold?) without being watched over (lit. witnessed).

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The negative connotation of the word seems in any case to have grown, which could explain why there is no personification of a “cool man” in later Ramesside wisdom literature and also why “coolness” (in particular in contrast to heat) seems to be used less to represent a positive attribute (Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 39). The lexeme qbḥ, like qbb, is used in relation to being “cool,” “pleasant”37 or, relating even more to temperament and emotion, “calm”/​“quiet,” as seen in the example directly below. The difference between qbb and qbḥ is not clear, but it seems that qbḥ was not used as often for metaphorical expressions. In general, qbḥ is less often attested38 and has no adjective linked to it. One case, however, can be seen here from an early source, a letter to the dead from the Old Kingdom (Cairo Linen = JdE 25975, K7–​8; Gardiner and Sethe 1928: pl. I, IA): j=s ḥr jṯ(j).t ḫt.(w) nb n.y ḥm=k r-​sꜢ jṯ(j).t wn.t nb m pr(w)=k jn wnn jb=k qbḥ r=s She is taking all the attendants of your lordship away, after taking everything from your house—is your heart going to be calm (lit. cool) about it?

Visual stimuli Emotion and temperament are encoded via particular visual stimuli, such as colours, shades, and also physical beauty—​though apparently not ugliness, for which there seems to be no lexeme in Egyptian, perhaps because it did not conform to the kind of visual and textual discourse key to Egyptian cultural output. Our research indicates that colours per se seem only very rarely to be tied to specific emotional states. Egyptian thought is tied more to shades and luminosity rather than different colours, which might have to do with the solar ideology key to Egyptian religion, since the link between sun/​light versus not-​sun/​darkness is to an extent the link between life and death, between well-​being and danger, that is tied to visibility and by extension to joy, as we see in a whole range of solar hymns (Assmann 1995: 75) as well as in a love song (P. Harris 500, 7.4; Grapow 1924: 43). That being said, the argument for cultural specificity may be saying too much—​psychological studies linking brightness and happiness indicate that this is a fundamental feature of human perception (Meier and Robinson 2004). Colour There has been quite a bit of work done with colour from the perspective of linguistic typology, but comparatively little has been done with the semantic span of colour terms, particularly extending to what else a colour term could mean besides colour. To sketch briefly what is a complex and contentious issue, Egyptian language used four basic colour terms, all of which are derived from verbs: “black/​dark” (kmm), “white/​light” (ḥḏ), “red/​yellow, with the focus on red” (dšr),39 and “green/​blue, with the focus on green” (wꜢḏ)40 as well as a range of non-​basic colour terms that, as adjectives derived from nouns, refer to colours of specific objects, like “turquoise-​ like” (mfkꜢ.ty) (Schenkel 2007: 226; 2019: 43).41 Interestingly, the four basic colour terms are also the same four colour terms used together in ritual (Baines 2007 [1985]: 244; Pinch 2001: 183). It must be noted that kmm and ḥḏ are best regarded as shades, establishing degrees of luminosity, rather than as colours proper (Schenkel 2019: 38), which shall be discussed more in detail in the section “Shade and luminosity.” Unfortunately, considering the impressive research being undertaken into colour and emotion in relation to modern languages (for instance Soriano and Valenzuela 2009), our analysis suggests that the only colour clearly tied to an emotion or personality characteristic in Egyptian is dšr, “red.” Although wꜢḏ, “green,” has positive connotations, these references are exclusively tied to 613

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“flourishing,” showing an etymological link with the fecundity of the natural environment, and are not emotive.42 On the other hand, the semantic pathways of dšr, “to be red,” in relation to anger are significant (cf. Köhler 2016: 115). The semantics of “being red” in relation to “raging” and “anger” is closely linked to heat, fire, and perhaps also blood, which shows that even basic colour terms, which are supposed to be “abstract,” have a close semantic connection to coloured objects and phenomena. The meaning may moreover go even deeper into an embodied reaction to an emotion: an angry person does indeed become red and warm (because of heightened blood pressure). Thus, a physical symptom is used to refer to the emotion triggering it. Red is also tied to a number of mythical antecedents, which very likely have an impact on the semantics. The Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom refer to the chaotic “red land, desert” (dšr.t), living quarters of the god Seth, in contrast to the fertile valley, the “black land” (km.t) (Mathieu 2009: 29–​30). Red symbolises danger in magical texts, in the form of (j)ḫ.t dšr.t, “red things” (Ebers 2 = P. Ebers 1.14), as well as in execration ritual texts, where enemies’ names were written in red (Pinch 2001: 184). The injured red eye (in ritual made of carnelian) contrasts the blue eye (lapis lazuli) in the myth of the Eye of Horus.43 All that being said, the first clear connection between redness and emotion comes in the form of a compound with jb (the heart) in the Middle Kingdom, and it seems that the semantics does not significantly change until the Greco-​Roman period, when both red (dšr) and carnelian-​ coloured (ḥrs) can mean “angry”44 and “evil”45 (Schenkel 2007: 219). The “red heart” in the pharaonic period clearly refers to an emotion, contingent on a specific situation (Tomb of Hapidjefai/​Djefaihapi [Tomb 1] in Asyut, hall, east wall, south, 230; Urk. VII 54.17): dšr jb mꜢꜢ=f tkr One who is angry (lit. red of heart) when he sees an opponent. Shade and luminosity Much more abundant in relation to emotion and temperament are shades or degrees of luminosity. This is apparently common in pre-​industrial societies: “It would seem that natural languages develop their terms for dark and light, dry or dusty and moist or fresh before they developed a supplementary set of colour terms” (Quirke 2001: 187, based on Lyons 1995: 212). If this is the case, it is understandable why conventionalised metaphors relating to emotion or temperament would derive from these qualities instead. Moreover, psychological research has indicated clearly that not only are light and dark useful and common metaphors for positive and negative polarity in discourse, but also that these light/​dark metaphors actually shape the automatic conceptual representation of good and bad qualities (Meier et al. 2007: 374).

Lightness, brightness In Egyptian, in the case of ḥḏ, the colour “white,” the shade “light,” and the degree of luminosity “bright, shiny” seem to be conflated with each other. The fact that not colour, but rather “to be clear, light” can be attributed to the Afroasiatic cognates of ḥḏ, Hebrew ṣḥw, and Syrian ṣḥy, ṣḥḥ “to be clear, light/​bright” (Osing 2001: 579) indicates that the use as a colour term at all is an Egyptian development, and perhaps even in Egyptian a subsidiary to the other meanings. In any case, the shade/​degree of luminosity continues to be profiled in the semantics of the colour term (Schenkel 2007: 225). The finding significant for our research is that the cases bearing metaphorical meaning (of which there are many) seem to be profiling not the colour white but rather brightness and luminosity to depict the emotion of joy. That being said, though there are several words (verbs and adjectives) for “bright,” only ḥḏ, “to be bright, light, white” (Wb. III, 614

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207.17–​208.6), together with its causative counterpart sḥḏ, “to brighten” (Wb. IV, 224.16–​226.6), are in any way connected to emotion or temperament.46 From the 11th Dynasty on (Middle Kingdom), when in combination with ḥr (face), i.e., “bright of face,” ḥḏ can mean (as a compounded adjective, but more often as a looser collocation) “joyful, happy, generous” (Wb. III, 207.16). In contrast to other comparable constructions, and contrary to appearances in the TLA corpus, there seems to be no compound with jb (heart), at least in texts from the pharaonic period.47 The earliest attestation, from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts, seems to describe a transient emotion of “being happy” in relation to a specific event (Pyramid Text 581 (§ 1554b P); Sethe 1910: 332): hꜢ(j) ḥtp.wt-​nṯr ḥḏ ḥr rmṯ.(w) ḥꜥ(j) jb nṯr.w Divine offerings will descend—​the face of the people will be happy (lit. bright) and the heart of the gods will rejoice. Sources from the Middle Kingdom attest to the meaning of the temperament “to be generous, kind” for the first time, as we see in The Teachings of Ptahhotep (P. Prisse = P. BN 186–​194, 14.12, § 481; Žába 1956: 54): ḥḏ ḥr=k tr n wnn=k

May you be friendly (lit. may your face be bright) for the duration of your existence.48 ḥḏ can be tied to other body parts too, such as the intestines (jmy.wt-​ẖ.t), but the subsequent

meaning is not related to emotion or temperament, but rather to brilliant thoughts.49 The shade bright/​shiny seems thus inherently linked to positive states and emotions. That being noted, light can take a negative connotation in relation to (very welcome) shade.50

Darkness Whereas light and brightness are generally positively connotated, darkness, conversely, is linked to negative contexts, states, and emotions (Salmas 2013: 199; Hsu 2021: 80). However, this general connotation is reflected on a semi-​literal level. Physical darkness (lack of sun or light) can be associated with danger and difficulty, but, like noise discussed above (section “Noise”), it is not fully lexicalised, and is instead rather suggested by the context. None of the verbs for “to be dark”—​wḫ (Wb. I, 352.3–​4), snk (Wb. IV, 175.11–​13), and kmm (Wb. V, 124.6–​8)—​are clearly connected to metaphorical meaning.51 Of the substantives, the colour kmm, “black, darkness,” is never metaphorical, and wḫ (Wb. I, 352.5–​10; TLA 49060), a term for “darkness” attested from the New Kingdom, has an uncertain metaphorical usage.52 kk.w (Wb. V, 142–​143.15; TLA 165680), though it often refers to “darkness” as a negative experience, always sits on the border between literal and figurative meaning. The lexeme is attested from the Old Kingdom and adopts a metaphorical meaning from the New Kingdom, in which “seeing darkness by day” (mꜢꜢ kk.w ẖr.t/​m hrw), is tied to being neglected, even punished, by the god.53 In magical texts, putting someone in darkness means having power over them (P. mag. Harris 501 = pBM EA 10042, vso 1.10–​2.1; Leitz 1999: pl. 21–​22): jw=j sthꜢ=k nḥm msḏr.t=k dj.t n=k kk.w tm dj.t ḥḏ I 54 drive you away and take away your hearing and give you darkness—​there being no light! 615

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By comparison, another term for “darkness,” snk.t (Wb. IV, 176.4–​ 10), is well-​ attested in connection with a negative temperament. It is used in relation to a person being šw m snk.t, “free from darkness” (e.g., the Inscription of Kai, Hatnub Graffito 24, 3; Anthes 1928: 54–​55), and links darkness with obscurity and untrustworthiness. The lexeme is attested from the early Middle Kingdom, but in this case immediately in connection with the metaphorical meaning of “untrustworthiness.” Perhaps the lack of data from the Old Kingdom is a hindrance here.55 Physical beauty The verb ꜥn(j) and the corresponding adjective mean “to be beautiful, kind, pleasing” (Wb. I, 190.1–​18; TLA 38070). Both the more basic meaning of “beauty” and the more metaphorical meaning of “kindness” seem, according to the corpus, to emerge around the same time in the Middle Kingdom. On its own, ꜥn(j) expresses a personal characteristic, “being pleasant,” rather than an emotion, as seen in the tomb biography of Sarenput I (Qubbet el-​Hawa 36, façade, right side, 2; Urk. VII, 6.12):

ꜥn(j) n nzw mry qnb.t=f rḫ.n rmṯ.(w) ḥz(w).t=f One pleasing (lit. beautiful) to the king, whose council is beloved, whose favour people have known. However, in specific compounds the meaning can also express emotion: ꜥn(j) ḥr (“to be beautiful of face”) means “to be happy” (Wb. I, 190.13–​14; TLA 38200) whereas ꜥn(j) jb (“to be beautiful of heart”) means “to be kind” (Wb. I, 190.15). Both of them are attested from the New Kingdom. Thus, the expression ꜥn(j), used alone or with jb, refers to the character of a person, as we see in the reference to the Bedouin in the satirical Letter of Hori (P. Anastasi I, 23.8; Fischer-​ Elfert 1983: 140): bw ꜥn jb=sn Their hearts are not kind (lit. beautiful). On the other hand, ꜥn(j) ḥr seems to refer to a temporary state of mind (emotion), which makes sense because it may be referring to a facial expression in the text of the Great Stela of the Sphinx (Urk. IV, 1280.8): ḥr.w ꜥn m mꜢꜢ n=f

The faces were joyful (lit. beautiful) while looking at him. The highly polysemous verb nfr, which can mean “beautiful,” “good,” “perfect,” “effective,” and so forth (Wb. II, 253.1–​256.15),56 has a tendency, like ꜥn(j), of forming compounds to indicate emotion or temperament. With jb, “heart,” it can indicate both a temperament (the first example) and an emotion (the second example). In the Giza mastaba of Kai-​Her-​Ptah (G 5560, burial chamber, east wall, legend of scene, l.4, Junker, Giza VIII, Abb. 56) we read: jnk zẖꜢ.w jqr n(.j)-​mrw.t nfr(.w)-​jb hr(w)-​s.t-​jb jw.tj sḏr.n rmṯ nb špty (j)r=f I am an effective, beloved, contented (lit. beautiful of heart) and completely happy scribe, about whom no-​one spends the night angry.

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In the fantastic narrative cycle of Papyrus Westcar from the Second Intermediate Period, the king’s mood is described thus (P. Berlin P 3033, 12.7–​8; de Buck 1948: 87.9):57 wn.jn jb=f nfr r (j)ḫ.t nb.t Then he was overjoyed (lit. his heart was beautiful) more than anything. The association of nfr and jb for expressing a temperament is attested very early, already from the Old Kingdom. However, the expression nfr ḥr, “beautiful of face,” appears later, in the Second Intermediate Period, for the expression of a temperament. It is not considered as a compound by the databases, but is a known collocation (Wb. II, 255.5–​9). The corpus attests the metaphorical usage,“friendly face/​expression,” only from the New Kingdom in the Book of the Dead Spell 141/​2 (P. BM EA 10477[P. Nu], 62; Lapp 1997: pl. 44): n jr.jw zmy.t ḏḏ.yw ḥr nfr For the protectors (lit. those pertaining to) of the necropolis, who put on a friendly (lit. beautiful) face/​expression. It seems thus that there is a degree of complementarity between nfr jb and nfr ḥr, though the first case expresses both emotion (joyful) and temperament (contented) and the second one only a temperament (friendly).

Tastes Sweetness and bitterness are closely associated with the expression of positive and negative emotions respectively. The lexemes used to express the idea of sweetness are bnj (early spelling bnr) (Wb. I, 462.7–​463.6) and nḏm (Wb. II, 380.1–​18). In a metaphorical sense, they can refer to a pleasant emotion, to something or someone that brings joy. Bitterness is expressed by two lexemes as well: jkn (Wb. I, 140.4–​5) and dḥr (Wb. V, 482.14–​483.4). The association of the source domains of sweetness and bitterness to positive and negative elements respectively is attested cross-​linguistically,58 which may be tied to the fact that the metaphorical activation of this source domain has shown to be more engaging than similar literal expressions.59 The opposing concepts of sweetness and bitterness appear together in some rhetorically forceful Ramesside texts to form an antonymic semantic system, as we shall also see below (section “Bitterness”). Sweetness bnj,“sweet,” appears in the Old Kingdom and is attested in a metaphorical way for “pleasant” from the Middle Kingdom at the latest.60 It does not seem to be part of specific compounds or idioms nor does it seem to ever refer to an emotion per se, but represents either the element potentially triggering an emotion (sweet of charm,61 sweet of love62), or the character of a person.63 Though not a compound like the cases above, bnj can also be used in relation to a single body part, namely the lips. It seems to express the pleasantness (however superficial) of a social encounter64 or the promise of romantic love.65 The latter case we find in a love poem (P. Chester Beatty I, vso C 1.2–​3; Mathieu 2008: pl. 1):

ꜥn(j){.t} ir.ty (ḥr) gmḥ bnj sp.t=s (ḥr) md.t eyes are beautiful when glancing, her lips are pleasant/​inviting (lit. sweet) when talking. 617

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Sweetness (both bnj and nḏm) can also refer attributively to words,66 to plans,67 or substantively to refer to “sweet people.”68 Of course, it can also refer to things being pleasant,69 which is not the focus of this chapter. The lexeme nḏm is used many times in a metaphorical way with the meaning “pleasant,” “friendly” or “useful, beneficial”; it is less specific in reference to sweetness (as a taste) than bnj. The meaning of “pleasant” can refer to situations70 (Wb. II, 380.15–​16) or words (Wb. II, 379. 4),71 but, in contrast to bnj, it cannot refer to a “sweet person.” However, in collocations with jb and ḥꜢ.tj (both meaning “heart”),72 the lexeme expresses the emotion of “joy” (Wb. II, 379. 15–​17), as seen in a Hymn to Amun (P. Leiden I 350, 2.23; Zandee 1947: pl. II): js.wt m hnw jb=sn nḏm The crew is in exaltation; they are joyful (lit. their hearts are sweet).73 Bitterness The lexeme jkn seems to appear exclusively in The Teachings of Amenemope,74 so our translation is based on parallels with another lexeme for bitterness, dḥr, which was, like jkn, placed in parallel to the potential antonyms for sweetness, bnj and nḏm (Laisney 2007: 130).75 A paradigmatic example for jkn in Amenemope associates bnj (sweet, pleasant) to jkn (bitter, unpleasant), both lexemes being used in a metaphorical way. It illustrates the contrast between the form and the content of speech, highlights the lack of sincerity of the speaker, who speaks out of repressed anger (here figuratively realised as “fire”). Moreover, in a metaphorical way, it shows that the further from the surface that the body part is in the body, the truer the emotion (Amenemope, P. BM 10474, 13.6; Laisney 2007: 342): sp.ty=f bnj ns.t=f jkn tꜢ ḫ.t rkḥ.tw m ẖ.t=f His lips are sweet, but his tongue is bitter. The anger (lit. fire) burns in his body. The other lexeme for bitterness, dḥr, has very little attestation of a metaphorical usage in relation to people’s temperaments or emotions outside of a rare collocation dḥr-jb, that refers to gloominess (Wb. V, 483.2). Nevertheless, the causative form of the verb, sdḥr, “to make bitter,” is attested in a single case (with two parallels), in The Teachings of Ptahhotep, from the Middle Kingdom (P. BM EA 10509, 4.16; also P. BM EA 10371+10435, a.7, § D305; Žába 1956: 40): jw=f sdḥr=f ḫnms bj He makes the kind (lit. sweet) friend angry (lit. bitter). In the New Kingdom, dḥr is used attributively to describe unpleasant talk, especially in contrast to bnj and nḏm: in Amenemope (P. BM 10474, 25.12–​13; Laisney 2007: 360), the “man who says the pleasant (lit. sweet) thing (pꜢ nḏm)” is contrasted to the rich man with “unpleasant (lit. bitter) utterances (ḫn dḥr),” and almost the same thing appears in The Teachings of Ani, in the satirical Letter of Hori76 and in the Oracular Amuletic Decrees (P. BM 10083 [L1], 26).

Tactile stimuli A range of sensory phenomena related to touch, such as textures, weights, and surfaces, come into play to represent temperaments metaphorically, but it must be noted that very few of these metaphors seem to be used to portray emotions (nḥꜢ, “uneven,” is the standout case here). In 618

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relation to textures, three oppositions are considered here: uneven versus smooth/​even, heavy versus light and firm versus soft.77 Only the second pairing, heavy and light, are brought into metaphorical opposition in Egyptian texts and will be discussed together. The first group we observe is the concept of being “uneven,” expressed by nḥꜢ (Wb. II, 290.5–​140) and “smooth, even,” expressed by the verb nꜥꜥ (Wb. II, 208.2–​9). Unevenness The lexeme nḥꜢ, “to be uneven,” often rendered nominally as nḥꜢ.t, “unevenness,” attested from the Old Kingdom, is used in the emotional sphere either to refer to someone of uneven or angry behaviour, presumably connected to unpredictability,78 or, in connection with jb, in relation to “heartbreak,” or some other kind of emotional instability (Wb. II, 291.4). The usage of the lexeme with jb seems to be attested from the Middle Kingdom, an early attestation coming from The Discourse of a Man with his Ba (P. Berlin P 3024, 56–​57; Faulkner 1956: 23): jr sḫꜢk qrs nḥꜢ.t-​jb pw As for you remembering a burial—​it only means (lit. is) heartbreak.79 From the New Kingdom, the emotional sense of the lexeme on its own is also attested (Teachings of Ani, P. Boulaq 4, 22.9; Quack 1994: 328): pnꜥ=f ḥz(j).t=f Ꜣs m-​sꜢ wnw.t=f nḥꜢ.t He will change his favour quickly after his moment of anger (lit. unevenness). Earlier cases, such as from Old Kingdom offering lists80 or medical texts from the Second Intermediate Period and New Kingdom, show that the basic meaning can be related to physical abnormality.81 This is supported by the fact that the classifier used for nḥꜢ is often the one of the pustules (Gardiner Sign Aa2 ), used for negative things in general, but also, more precisely, for negative elements in relation with the body: diseases, putrefaction, fluids, and so on. Smoothness Used alone, nꜥꜥ,“smooth,” can be read metaphorically as “free” in the sense of being a “libertine.”82 When used in a compound with jb,“heart,” nꜥꜥ takes on the more positive, and more emotionally driven connotation of being “calm.”83 nꜥꜥ jb and its associated metaphorical meaning are attested from the First Intermediate Period, in autobiographical texts, like the stela of Rediwikhnum (Cairo CG 20543, A4; Landgráfová 2011: 74): rḫ tp-​ḥsb n(.j) jr(j).t nꜥꜥ jb dmj n sr.(w) One who knows the correct method of doing (things), one calm (lit. smooth of heart), who associates with (lit. connects to) officials. Heaviness and lightness A true metaphorical opposition in the realm of touch is between “heavy” and “light.” “Heavy” is expressed in Egyptian by dns (Wb. V, 468.3–​469.8) and wdn (Wb. I, 390.1–​15) and its causative counterpart swdn, “make heavy” (Wb. IV, 78.5), both from at least the Old Kingdom. dns can mean “serious” or “difficult” in reference to a situation,84 but it can also be used to refer to a person being “important”85 or “serious,” also in an ironic way.86 wdn, in its metaphorical usage, means “difficult,” in the sense that a situation weighs a person down,87 but in reference to 619

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personal qualities it means “important.”The metaphorical meanings of both lexemes had already developed by the end of the First Intermediate Period (for wdn) and the early Middle Kingdom (for dns), as we see in autobiographical texts (stela of Djari, Cairo JE 41437, 5; Landgráfová 2011: 8): jnk wdn m-​m sr.w wꜢ(j) jb Ꜣ zḫ(j).t I was one important (lit. weighty) amongst the officials, one with a planning mind (lit. heart) (at) the moment of striking. The verb jzj, “to be light” (Wb. I, 128.4), can refer to a low degree of difficulty of a task,88 as in English, but it can also refer to being “careless” or “weak” (of character), also “insignificant,”89 and the compound jzj jb, “light of heart,” can refer to a “careless person.”90 The lexeme is attested from the Middle Kingdom, and the meaning relating to character dates to around the same time, as we see from the following example from The Eloquent Peasant (P. Berlin P 3023, 191; Parkinson 1991: 29.4–​5), which contrasts both weights metaphorically to great rhetorical effect: m jzj jw=k dns.t(j) m ḏd grg Don’t be careless (lit. light), because you are important (lit. heavy)—​don’t tell lies! Heaviness and lightness are thus to a certain extent a symmetrical pair, since heaviness is more linked to seriousness and importance, whereas lightness is tied to carelessness. Firmness Another opposition envisaged, still associated with touch, is the one between firm/​stable and soft. Firmness is associated with strength, physical and psychological, while softness is linked to weakness. The lexeme used for the expression of stability is smn (Wb. IV, 131–​134.22), attested from the First Intermediate Period. In particular, the expressions smn ḥꜢ.tj and smn jb, “to stabilise the heart,” attested from the New Kingdom, mean “to fortify, to make courageous.”The meaning is more related to temperament than emotion and does not really seem to be attested outside of the expressions with jb and ḥꜢ.tj, as exemplified in The Teachings of Amenemope (P. BM 10474, 20.3; Laisney 2007: 351): dns tw m jb=k smn ḥꜢ.tj=k

Be serious (lit. heavy) in your jb-​heart; be courageous (lit. stable) in your ḥꜢ.tj-​heart! Softness The lexemes for “soft” used to express softness but also physical and psychological weakness, lack of courage or resolution are gnn, “to be weak, to be soft” (Wb. V, 174–​175.17), and its causative form sgnn, “to weaken” (Wb. IV, 321–​322.8). Though gnn and sgnn are attested from the Old Kingdom, metaphorical implicatures are extremely rare and attested only from the early New Kingdom, as seen in The Teaching for Merikare (P. Petersburg 1116 A, vso 7.7–​8, § 76–​77; Quack 1992: 180): jmꜢ n=k n gnn=sn n=k (It) is pleasant for you, on account of their being lenient (lit. weak) towards you!

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Summing up, firmness is tied to steadfastness and weakness more to leniency. They do not stand in metaphorical opposition to each other, as far as our data indicates, but both are used for the expression of temperament rather than emotion.

Smells Stinkiness The lexeme ḫnš is attested from the New Kingdom (see also Chapter 29, this volume). Its first meaning is “to stink, to have a bad smell” and it can be used metaphorically in two contexts. The first metaphor is in association with rn, “name,” whereby “a stinky name” expresses the idea of a tarnished reputation. The Teachings of Ani (P. Boulaq 4, 16.17–​17.1; Quack 1994: 289) also links reputation to the domain of quiet versus noisy: jmj=k šm(j) ꜥq r qnb.t tm rn=k ḫnš ḫpr sḫt m-ḏy.t ꜥšꜢ.wt md.wt gr tw ḫpr=k m nfr May you not come and go to the tribunal, so that your reputation shall not be tarnished (lit. that your name shall not stink) and become a trap. Do not allow (yourself) to be one of many words, be quiet, and you will stand in good stead.91 In the Late Period, which lies somewhat outside of our data set, ḫnš takes on the meaning “recalcitrant, rebellious,” as seen in a wisdom text (P. Brooklyn 47.218.135, 2.9–​10; Jasnow 1992: fig. 4–​5, for commentary, 54): jn-​jw kꜢ.w ḫnš pꜢy=w mnjw pꜢ nty (ḥr) qnb[=w] [m]‌r’ n tꜢy=f dr.t Are the bulls recalcitrant (lit. smelly)? Their herdsman is the one that tames (lit. binds) [them] [with] the tip (lit. mouth) of his cattle-​prod. As we can see, the metaphorical use of ḫnš is more related to a character feature (recalcitrant) or to a condition in the opinion of society, but is not really tied to a specific emotion or temperament.

Discussion and conclusion Our study has considered a range of sense-​based lexemes according to their semantic breadth (with specific focus on the kinds of emotional state or reaction they convey), the manner in which they are used with respect to each other, their relationship to specific genres, and their use-​life in chronological perspective. So, to come back to the research questions, we can see that our study offers new insights into a number of issues.

1. What kinds of sensory phenomena are used to depict specific emotions and temperaments? Specific emotions do indeed seem to be tied to particular sensory domains, though there is some crossover, which we find interesting: •

calm (as a temperament and occasionally an emotion) is tied to low sound (gr), cool temperature (qbb, qbḥ, also dꜢr srf and qbb srf  ), smooth texture (nꜥꜥ ), and (in a compound) physical beauty (ꜥn(j)-​ḥr)

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• • • •

• • • • • • •

the connected temperament of kindness is tied, as we would expect, to sweetness (nḏm, bnj) and also physical beauty (ꜥn(j)) the temperament of seriousness is portrayed as heaviness (dns) the temperament of steadfastness is firmness (smn) happiness of the more dynamic kind (often an emotion, also a temperament) is to be found in loud sounds, presumably of cheering (jhj and ꜥḏꜥḏ), but also with visual cues of brightness (the compound ḥḏ-​ḥr) and beauty (nfr) the temperament of zealousness is also more dramatic, being tied (via a compound) to warmth (srf-​jb) of the more ambivalent temperaments, carelessness is light (jzj), but it can also be cool (qbb), and perhaps even quiet (gr) the temperament of leniency is softness (gnn) the temperament of untrustworthiness is darkness (snk.t) sadness is poorly lexicalised, but predominantly linked to darkness agitation is also poorly lexicalised, but may be linked to loud sounds anger is well-​lexicalised and very diverse, tied to a high temperature in the case of temperament (tꜢ, nsr, srf, šmm) and in relation to emotion more to the colour red (dšr), a rough texture (nḥꜢ ), as well as a bitter taste (dḥr, jkn)

A key element for the expression of emotion via sensory experience in Egyptian seems to be the intensity of the stimulus, and of its potential effect on the body. For some of the sensory experiences, the effect impacts the body to a greater extent, especially in cases of excess. For example, something too hot burns, bad taste can be a sign of inedible food, and so on. Excess, in general, is perceived as negative and the sensory domains that can express emotions (sounds, temperatures—​and one related colour—​tastes, and some textures) play on the intensity in the expression of positive or negative emotions. What is too close to one pole or the other of the continuum for the sensory experiences measurable in their intensity is seen as being negative. For example, qbb, “cool/​quiet,” is positive, but the same lexeme taken with a stronger meaning “cold/​indifferent” is negative. The same can be seen on the other side of the continuum: srf-​jb, “warm of heart/​zealous,” can be seen as positive because it is moderate, while tꜢ and šmm, “hot/​ angry,” as well as the closely related colour dšr, “red,” are seen as negative, because they express an intense, excessive heat and therefore an excessive emotion. Compared to the sensory stimuli that directly impact the body, shades have a less direct role, which may also affect the kinds of meaning to which they relate. Brightness is a sensory stimulus, but does not affect the body by touching it. Therefore, there is also no emotional trigger and it is thus understandable that the metaphors are used instead to describe temperament. Darkness refers to a lack of sensory stimulus and highlights this lack by indicating negative states or temperaments that are opaque. Silence is also a lack of sensory stimulus. Where there is a low amount, silence indicates a positive temperament, but where there is an excess, even silence can be negative, indicative perhaps of someone passively following a mob mentality. The same can be said for the remaining sensory phenomena—​textures, surfaces, and weights—​that cannot really be measured in terms of stimulus intensity: their impact on the body and on its functioning is minimal. They are thus predominantly used for metaphors of temperament rather than of emotion. Within a paradigm of this nature, the case of smell appears as an exception. One could indeed expect it to be part of the first category (of intense stimuli), but interestingly it does not seem to trigger a real embodiment/​internalisation process here, even though the criterion of intensity could apply. Smell rather expresses a mental perception of and reaction towards a situation as 622

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calibrated by interaction with the outside world (for instance, “having bad reputation” or, later, “being rebellious”).

2. Can lexemes of emotion and temperament be distinguished semantically from each other? Do compounds play a role here? The differentiation between emotion and temperament is based on a combination of factors. In the expression of emotion, a specific event usually acts as a trigger. The stimulus and the degree of intensity are the key difference between an emotion and a temperament. Co-​textual elements referring to the transient nature of the emotion by explicitly referring to short time periods are also of help in asserting its expression in a text (e.g., wnw.t=f nḥꜢ.t, “his moment of anger,” cf. supra section “Smoothness”). According to our hypothesis, the compounds would have been lexically transparent had compounds with one body part (like the face) always indicated emotion and one (like the heart) always indicated temperament. Interestingly enough, this is not the case: the choice of body part does not follow the same pattern across all compound combinations. The complementary opposition between expressions built with ḥr and jb for emotions and character is nonetheless a recurrent strategy. However, the meaning of ḥr or jb in the compound depends on the lexeme that constitutes the other part of the expression. This means that for some lexemes (e.g., ꜥn(j)) [lex + jb = temperament] and [lex + ḥr = emotion], while for others (e.g., nfr) it is the opposite, or only one of the patterns is attested. The compounds with jb and ḥr, though they often appear in complementary distribution, can also undergo chronological change, especially when one of the compounds undergoes a semantic shift or new elements are introduced (as often happens in the New Kingdom). For example, nfr jb, “beautiful of heart,” appears very early in the Old Kingdom and expresses a temperament. Around the same time, the expression nfr ḥr, “beautiful of face,” enters the lexicon and is used to refer to a temperament in the New Kingdom. It overlaps with jb for the expression of temperament and, as a consequence, nfr jb starts being used more for the expression of emotion (joy), either as a way of accommodating the new term or as an indication of a subtle shift in the meaning of nfr jb.

3. Do these terms exist in complementary distribution with each other? Are there relationships of synonymy, antonymy, even asymmetry that we need to take into account? As we saw in our discussion of Question 1, similar kinds of emotions and temperaments can be expressed by metaphors from different sensory domains, but even if they do, they are nevertheless not real synonyms. Rather, they complement each other to cover the spectrum of nuances linked to this affect disposition or emotional domain. For example, the affect disposition of being happy (state, temperament) or the emotion of joy can be expressed by using metaphors of sound (highlighting the vocal expression of joy), luminescence (suggesting a visual embodiment of joy), and beauty (indicating the positive aspect of joy). Antonymy is well represented, as we can see with heavy (dns) and light (jzj), bitter (dḥr, jkn) and sweet (nḏm, bnj). Another case concerns lexemes that usually do not have a metaphorical meaning for emotion/​temperament but are linked to it in some specific co-​textual associations. srf, “to be warm, to burn,” is an example of this kind: it is used as an antonym of qbb for the literal meaning of this lexeme “to be cool.” Since qbb is used in this collocation also in its metaphorical meaning, srf becomes part of the metaphor in this specific context.92 However, srf is not used alone metaphorically: its metaphorical meaning comes only from specific contexts of use. 623

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Semantic asymmetry is certainly visible in the data set, for various, connected reasons. In some cases, asymmetry is due to the semantic span of a single lexeme. For instance, gr, “to be quiet,” implies the absence of noise (and movement) and thus absence of trouble, so everything and anything that indicates trouble (from whichever sensory stimulus) could stand in an antonymic relationship to it: noise, heat, and motion (in relation to the heart). The other side of the issue of asymmetry concerns genre and decorum. In Egyptian texts, there is a focus on the positive: there is no ugliness, there is little darkness that is not cosmic, and there are no clear cases of lexicalised agitation, because people just did not want to show it, in text or image (cf. Baines 2017).

4. Are diachronic forces of language change at work? If so, what effect do they have? Looking at the diachronic span of textual material, several main conclusions can be drawn. The late First Intermediate Period–​early Middle Kingdom ushers in the appearance of most of the first metaphorical meanings tied to temperament/​character for the lexemes that appear in the Old Kingdom, First Intermediate Period, and Middle Kingdom. Autobiographies play a very important role in this respect. They use metaphors to describe the character of a person and, since their function is self-​presentation and auto-​eulogy, they display an important number of metaphors referring to positive character features. In most cases, the metaphorical meaning referring to a temperament appears before the one referring to emotion (if any)—​at least in the texts at our disposal in this large digital corpus. There are very few exceptions to this in our corpus (such as ḥḏ, “bright, joyful”). However, this may simply be an indication of insufficient evidence. The fact that some of our metaphorical meanings are attested at the same time as the literal meanings (for instance qbb and snk.t) indicates that our data is not always able to show the kind of semantic change from literal to figurative that Sweetser (1990) and Traugott and Dasher (2001) proposed. The second key moment is the New Kingdom, which witnesses many changes on several levels. First, a whole range of new genres appear in the textual record, such as scribal texts, literary letters, and love poetry. Second, texts seem to express a new awareness about the world and its limits, leading to a marked surge in the amount of negative metaphors drawing on the sensory domain. They seem to be key to wisdom literature of the late New Kingdom. Moreover, there was a substantial degree of linguistic change at this time. One can clearly see the appearance of a far higher number of compounds and recurring collocations and an increased diversity in their composition: they become associated with a greater number of body parts, or to a lexical variant referring to the same body part ( jb and ḥꜢ.tj).93 It is likely that a semantic loss on the level of the metaphorical meaning (or perhaps also a loss of transparency in the link between the different meanings colexified by a same lexeme) was one of the elements that triggered the increased use of compounds. This great increase may also be due to a general tendency in this period to develop analytic structures, particularly in the case of prepositions, which develop ever more compounds with body parts (Junge 2005: 89). An increased polysemy can also be seen for lexemes used alone (i.e., beside their use in compounds) from the New Kingdom on. Indeed, the semantics of several lexemes keeps actively evolving and the end of the New Kingdom/​Third Intermediate Period seems to be a new turning point in this respect. One of the factors of this evolution seems precisely to be the metaphorical use of some lexemes, leading them toward a higher or different degree of abstraction (such the aforementioned case of qbb, “cool,” which becomes less positively connoted over time). 624

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5. What is the role of genre in the appearance and use of emotion terms? Genre seems to be working closely with diachronic factors, so most of our response has been dealt with in the last section. It merely bears noting that, as mentioned above, the autobiographical genre clearly influenced the development of these emotive, sense-​based metaphors, being used to describe positive character features from the late First Intermediate Period on. This tendency was continued in the New Kingdom, where these metaphors flourish most in normative genres like wisdom texts and scribal miscellanies. In general, these metaphors appear in texts that are literary in style and rhetorical, even persuasive, in function. In sum, this study is indicative of the confluence of a number of phenomena: sensory impulses, metaphorical language, decorum, and rhetorical exigency, which come together in a range of primarily normative genres to explain human behaviour in increasingly complex ways. Ancient Egyptian, the longest-​attested language in the world, is a prime candidate for such a study, providing a rich diachronic sample to test the theories of modern psychologists and linguists. In general, this dead language behaves exactly as we would expect, using metaphors mirrored in our own languages, though it must also be noted that some concepts, such as “silence,” had a much more positive connotation than they do in contemporary Western society.

Notes 1. Barsalou (1999) defines embodied cognition as the process by which thinking involves constructing “simulations” of bodily experiences. However, the term “embodied cognition” in relation to metaphor is being met with increasing scepticism (cf. Casasanto and Gijssels 2015: 327–​328). 2. See Kövecses (2000a; 2005). Aside from approaches from the perspective of metaphor analysis and emotion and affect studies, some philosophical approaches, such as Merleau-​Ponty’s (1962) “phenomenology of perception,” establish the role of metaphor in cognition and show how the senses are interrelated aspects of human bodily engagement with the world. That being noted, we would do well to heed the warning of Bergson (1911: 170), who remarked that “[p]‌erception is never a mere contact of the mind with the object present; it is impregnated with memory-​images which complete it as they interpret it.” 3. Affective phenomena are explained in Scherer (2005: especially 704, table 2). Scherer (2009: 1328, table 4) outlines the potential sources of systematic individual differences in event appraisal and response dispositions of emotional stimuli, which are either hardwired (here temperament is a factor), learned (concerning judgement), or transient (concerning momentary regulation). 4. The appraisal of both is also present in other works on emotion from an Egyptological perspective. See also McDonald 2020: 1. 5. See Radden and Kövecses 1999: 39; Kövecses 2010: 108. This metonymic basis has also been identified for Egyptian by Toro Rueda (2003: 84). 6. Köhler (2016: 118) sees it as rather being a PART FOR WHOLE metonymy. 7. For recent research in this area, see Hsu and Llop Raduà 2021. 8. That being noted, one might wonder whether the evidence does not suggest that the semantics of LOVE in Hebrew is not somewhat broader than in English, for example “caring for,” which is more pastoral and less emotional. 9. The identification of “determinatives” as “classifiers,” defined by Allan (1977: 285) as bound morphemes that classify with respect to semantic features of the classified entity, has been promoted and supported by, amongst others, Goldwasser (1995), Lincke (2011), Lincke and Kammerzell (2012), Goldwasser and Grinevald (2012), and Chantrain (2014). By way of example, a classifier depicting a crocodile (Gardiner Sign I3, for which see Gardiner 1957) categorises some lexemes relating to “being angry,” such as Ꜣd, or “being greedy,” such as ꜥf(j), ḥnt(j) and skn, because, following Lincke (2011: 53), the crocodile is being portrayed as a prototypical experiencer of this emotion or characteristic. 10. Bardinet (1995) makes a case, on the basis of the medical texts, for there to be a semantic distinction between jb, which refers more generally to the “interior” of the body, particularly the torso region, where the heart resides, and ḥꜢ.tj, which refers to the organ of the heart itself. This point does not, 625

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however, undermine the translation of jb in literary texts as “heart,” since it is the only one of the two terms to occur in compounds. ḥꜢ.tj occurs in our corpus only in collocations and predominantly from the New Kingdom on, as ḥꜢ.tj came to encroach upon the semantic territory of jb, indicating, as Nyord (2009b: 67) argues, that ḥꜢ.tj, though relating to the bodily organ, is also “a part of the felt body.” 11. However, there might be even more to “silence” than this. As McDonald (2020: 2) notes, “For the Egyptians, the quality of being ‘silent’ (gr) or being ‘efficient’ (mnḫ) may have had particular emotional resonance that is lacking in the English-​speaking world.” 12. Stela of Montuhotep, University College London 14333, 12 (12th Dynasty). 13. pḥ.w pḥ.t(w)=f gr.w gr.t(w), “The one who attacks when he is attacked; the one who is silent when one is silent” (Uronarti Stela of Thutmosis III, Khartoum Nr. 3 = Inv. 451, 6). 14. Stela of Intef, son of Senet, BM EA 581 (12th Dynasty). 15. The parallel text, P. Louvre E 30144, 1.3 (cf. for translation, Quack 1994: 143) has for the latter section: nḏm ḥꜢ.tj gr m qn(j).t pꜢ mšꜥ, “angenehm ist ein schweigsames Herz in der Macht der Menge” (“a silent heart is pleasant in the strength of a crowd”). 16. The kinds of variation apparent when comparing quiet (gr) and all types of noise can be seen paradigmatically in The Teaching of Amenemope (P. BM 10474, 26.1–​3; Laisney 2007: 360–​361). One case describes: šrj jw=f (ḥr) sḥwr ꜥꜢ jmj jry=f qnqn=k jw ḏr.t=k m qnj=k jmj jry=f sḥwr=k jw=k gr.tw, “The small person who insults the great one: let him beat you, while your hand is in your lap. Let him insult you, while you remain quiet.” In other cases, metaphor scenarios play on an opposition between silence (often embodied by the “silent one”) and all manner of noise-​producing and dynamic phenomena, including storms (ḏꜥ, 3.15 and 5.14; qrj, 4.16 and šnꜥ, 13.2), as well as wild animals, all of which are personifications of the šmm, “hot one,” or antagonist. The idea of a storm (ḏꜥ) relating to a temper tantrum is also evident in earlier wisdom literature, like The Teachings of Ptahhotep (P. Prisse = P. BN 186–​194, 10.11; Žába 1956: 42). 17. This diachronic data may be misleading, however. The idea that jhj was actually used to refer to an emotion already in the Old Kingdom is indicated indirectly in the contemporary substantive form, jhy, “joy, jubilation” (Wb. I, 117.15–​118.1; TLA 30170). 18. For example, the miscellany text about a charioteer (P. Anastasi III = P. BM EA 10246, 6.6 = LEM 27.7); a laudation hymn to a king (O. DeM 1223, rto 10; Fischer-​Elfert 1997: 73); and a love poem (P. Turin Cat. 1966, rto 2.8; Mathieu 2008: pl. 16). 19. For Egyptian texts, see Brunner 1975: 809. 20. Goosens (1990: 323) describes metaphtonymy as being the case where metonymy interacts with metaphor in figurative language. These cases correspond to his category “metaphor from metonymy” (1990: 328), whereby the figurative expression extends from a metonym but has the surface form of a metaphor. See also, in relation to Egyptian material, Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 40–​41. 21. A single interesting case in The Teachings of Ptahhotep (P. Prisse = P. BN 186–​194, 12.1–​2, § 375–​6; Žába 1956: 46) deserves our attention: m gr zꜢw ḫn=k wšb=k md.t m {n}nsr, “Do not be silent (gr)! And stop yourself offending (lit. your treading) and answering a speech with anger(?) (lit. fire, nsr).” In this case, nsr bears the classifier of a man with a hand to his mouth (Gardiner Sign A2, see Gardiner 1957), unusual for this lexeme but commonly used for emotions, rather than the usual torch (Gardiner Sign Q7). This change of classifier seems to highlight the metaphorical use of nsr, from physical, actual heat to anger. The dictionary (Wb. II, 335.2) presents the lexeme nsr as an unknown verb, different from nsr, “to burn” (Wb. II, 335.4–​10), which Köhler (2011: 87) suggests means “to be hot tempered.” The TLA translates this lexeme as a substantive, “anger,” but confusingly categorises this key example under nsr, “fire, flame” (Wb. II, 335.13–​18), which is not otherwise attested as having metaphorical scope. 22. Though the Belegstellen of Wb. V, 229.11 negate the validity of tꜢ appearing alone in relation to anger, two cases from Book of the Dead Chapter 125 are present in the current version of the TLA (accessed 09.10.2019): P. Cairo CG 24095 (P. Maiherperi), 431 and P. Cairo CG 51189 (P. Yuya), 744, which read n(j) tꜢ=j, “I was not angry (lit. hot).” 23. See, for instance, P. BM EA 10477 Spell 125 (P. Nu), 45; Lapp 1997: pl. 67: n(j) tꜢ r’=j, “My speech (lit. mouth) was not angry (lit. hot).” 24. In the former, we read pr( j).w pw n tꜢ-​ẖ.t, “it is what comes forth from a hot-​belly,” and in the latter, n(j) //​/​ [t]‌Ꜣ-​ẖ.t ḏd (j)ḫ.t n(j) [mꜢꜢ] n(j) sḏm, “not //​/​a hot-​belly, who says things that have neither been [seen] nor heard.” 25. The only other case of a “hot belly” in the corpus is describing a physical symptom in the medical P. Ebers, 36.8 (Recipe Eb 188; Wreszinski 1913: 50). 626

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26. In the former it is realised as jw nsw.t n.(j)t tꜢ jb sẖr={f}, “The flame of the hot-​heart spreads(?),” and in the latter as tꜢ jb ẖr ḏḏ nṯr, “the hot-​heart suffers (lit. is) under what the god causes.” 27. The only other reference to a “hot heart” from the pharaonic period comes from the medical P. Ebers, 42.10 (Recipe Eb 207a; Wreszinski 1913: 61) to refer to a symptom of disease. All other cases from the corpus come from the Ptolemaic period. Another meaning relating heart and heat, where the heart burns with care and worry (Wb. V, 229.9–​10), is attested only in the Greco-​Roman period, for instance, P. BM 10188 (P. Bremner Rhind), 7.5, 7.6 and 7.22; Faulkner 1933: 13–​14. 28. For the potential connection between tꜢ-​r’ and tꜢr, “enemy” (Wb. V, 233.4–​7), see Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 34. 29. The compound form can sometimes be seen by the spelling, since the classifier to mark the end of the word, in the case of P. Berlin P 9784, 8–​9, the seated man (Gardiner Sign A1), comes only at the end of the whole compound, šmm-​r’. 30. A parallel of sorts can be found in P. Kahun II, 17–​18, a hymn to the king, in which the qualities are more flatteringly inverted—​shade in summer, a warm corner in winter (Fischer-​Elfert 1986b: 10). 31. pꜢ qrj ḫy nꜢ msḥ.w bjn pꜢ šmm tw=k mj jḫ, “the storm is high, the crocodiles are evil, o hot one, how are you?” (Amenemope, P. BM 10474, 4.16–​17; Laisney 2007: 330). 32. ḏꜥ pr(j)=f mj ḫ.t m rwy.t pꜢ šmm m wnw.t=f, “the storm, it comes forth like fire in straw, (so is) the hot one in his moment (lit. hour)” (Amenemope, P. BM 10474, 5.17; Laisney 2007: 331). Other attestations of šmm,“hot one,” in The Teachings of Amenemope appear in P. BM 10474, 6.1; 11.12; 13.11 (= P. Stockholm MM 18416, 2.11) and 15.13 (Laisney 2007: 331, 339, 342, 345). 33. In The Teachings of Amenemope, P. BM 10474, 6.1–​12 (Laisney 2007: 331–​332), the antagonistic “hot one” in the temple is described as being a tree that ends up as firewood and the “quiet one” as the tree that ends up flourishing in the garden. Another case in which the šmm, “hot one,” is compared with gr.w, “the silent one,” is in P. Sallier I, 8.6 = LEM 86.7, in a prayer to the god Thoth. For a possible reading of this passage, see Di Biase-​Dyson 2018: 40. 34. The Teaching of a Man for his Son, Fischer-​Elfert (1999, Tafelband), for (fragmentary) references to srf (§ 10.7–​8, O. DeM 1818 = O. IFAO Inv. 2719, rto x+4), gr(.w) (§ 10.5, O. Gardiner 343, 4) and qb (§ 19.9, O. Michaelides 16.4). 35. Earlier, Middle Kingdom examples include the stela of Intef, Louvre C 167 = E 3111, 8 (Landgráfová 2011: 138) and the stela of Samontu, BM EA 828, 11 (Landgráfová 2011: 272). 36. The expression m qbb, “in peace (lit. coolness)” (Wb. V, 24.II.3–​5), also has two attestations in the corpus, both from the New Kingdom: the tomb of Sennefer (DZA 30.329.540) and P. Lansing (DZA 30.329.550). 37. Pyramid Text 375 (§ 660b T) (Sethe 1908: 363) has jn(j) wp.t=k qbḥ.tj, “Bring your message, it being pleasant (lit. cool)!” 38. Quantitatively, the distribution of the lexemes (taken from the TLA and Ramsès database) is as follows: qbb, “to be fresh” (104 tokens); qbb, “fresh” (36 tokens); qbḥ, “to be fresh, to refresh” (30 tokens). Moreover, the nouns derived from the two verbs are also different: on the one hand there is qbb, “freshness;” qbb, “fresh wind”; and qbb.t (fresh water, feminine); and on the other hand qbḥ, “freshness,” and qbḥ, “libation.”There is also a verbal lemma qbḥ, “to make a libation,” which might indeed comprise the first meaning of qbḥ, primarily associated with fresh water, which established the derived meaning “to be fresh.” Both meanings are attested from the Old Kingdom. 39. Schenkel (2007; also 2019: 42) abandons his earlier (1963) hypothesis that dšr means both “red” and “yellow,” in line with the findings of Berlin and Kay (1969) and more modern typological research, which argue that “yellow” is usually not linguistically attested in a language before “blue.” On this basis, Egyptian is allegedly at Stage IIIa of colour terminology (Baines 2007 [1985]: 253). Schenkel (2019: 51) stipulates most recently that “the focus of ‘red’ lies in the red range.” 40. “Green” (wꜢḏ) is not clearly attested as a colour verb, though the alternate meaning of “to be fresh, to prosper” is attested as a verb, so Schenkel (2007: 218) assumes that the verb exists, making “green” a basic colour term. Schenkel (2019: 40, 52) has now abandoned the reading of w Ꜣḏ as “grue” (Schenkel 1963: 142; Baines 2007 [1985]: 242) and offers now the following translation: “ ‘green,’ ‘blue,’ with the focus in green.” 41. Warburton (2004; 2007) argues that even basic colour terms were originally also concrete and not abstract, and he therefore groups all colour terms together. However, Schenkel (2007: 225) has, we feel conclusively, shown, on the basis of comparative etymology, that since the Egyptian basic colour terms (or BCTs) are also mirrored in verbs with similar meanings in other Afroasiatic languages, they are very likely not derivates of nouns for coloured objects and rather originally verbs of colour. The distinction 627

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Schenkel establishes is thus very likely valid. Schenkel (2019: 46) moreover emphasises that the kinds of things referred to with non-​BCT colours in the blue range are “devoid of significance in daily life and do not belong to the general vocabulary of colour terms and are, therefore, not Basic Color Terms.” 42. For instance, in the coronation story of Hatshepsut from her mortuary temple in Deir el-​Bahari, 27–​28 (Urk. IV, 260.8–​11): jr z(j) nb mrr sy m jb=f dwꜢ s(y) r’ nb s.{t}ḫꜥ(j)=f w Ꜣḏ=f r (j)ḫ.t nb.t, “As for any man who loves her in his heart and praises her (i.e. Hatshepsut) every day—​he will be made to appear (in glory) and he will flourish (lit. be green) more than anything.” 43. Here, “red of eye” (dšr ​jr.t) in relation to the god Horus refers (in a ritual sense) to the carnelian stone that was used as an inlay in eye amulets, to contrast the lapis lazuli inlay of the other eye of Horus, “blue of eye” (ḫsbdḏ ​jr.t). On the mythical plane, the red right eye is linked to the sun and the blue left eye to the moon. Additionally, the redness may also refer to the fact that the eye was injured. See Pyramid Text 246 (§ 253a–​b W); Sethe 1908: 139: “The blue-​eyed Horus comes against you! Protect yourselves from the red-​eyed Horus, terrible/​painful(?) of power—​his Ba cannot be repelled!” This is paralleled in the Middle Kingdom Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus, 75 (DZA 27.266.850), where Horus tells Seth he has a carnelian-​coloured eye (jr.t(=j) ḥrs.t). See also Hussein 2010: 3–​4. 44. From texts in the temples of Edfu (e.g., DZA 27.266.800) and Philae (e.g., DZA 27.266.810). The connection made by Köhler (2016: 116), that the earlier references to carnelian eyes (for instance in the Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus) also indicate anger, is, we feel, not explicit enough to be unequivocal. It is more likely to be red in relation to being injured, a state which may trigger aggressiveness. The meaning of anger seems to have appeared much later. 45. Wb. III, 150.9–​15, for instance in the temple of Edfu (e.g., DZA 27.267.000). 46. The other possible candidate, bꜢq, “to be bright, light, clear, well” (Wb. I, 424.12–​425.17; TLA 53730), all of which meanings are attested in the Old Kingdom, refers rather to a general state of well-​being, like wꜢḏ, “green,” mentioned above (Pyramid Text 476 (§ 955b P); Sethe 1910: 33). 47. The compound is cited in Wb. III, 207.26, but the DZA provides only a single attestation, from a Ptolemaic temple in Karnak (DZA 27.557.750). It is moreover suggested that even this case could just as easily be read as ḥr=f ḥḏ (rather than jb=f ḥḏ, see DZA 27.557.750). 48. The parallel (Ptahhotep, P. BM EA 10509, 7.17–​8.1; Caminos 1956: pl. 29–​30), which is almost completely reconstructed, may read [ḥḏ] [ḥr]=[k]‌[r] tr. Translated, this means “[may you be generous (lit. may your face be bright) at the (right) ti]me.” Though there is more immediacy in this case, it seems nonetheless to refer to a temperament (revealed at a certain time) and not an emotion. However, given the state of reconstruction, the passage cannot be taken as a reliable source. This meaning of “friendliness” seems to extend to the New Kingdom. Some interesting examples from the Kadesh Poem of Ramesses II (S, § 218–​219, KRI 2, 70.5 and 10) refer to being “unkind”: ẖs.wsy m ḫm.yt nṯr nty bw ḥḏ ḥr=j n ḥḥ.w m-​jm=sn, “How weak, namely, those ignorant of god, to millions of whom I have been unfriendly (lit. my face has not been bright).” 49. jnk […] pgꜢ jb ḥḏ jmy.wt-​ẖ.t, “I am […] one open-​hearted, one with brilliant thoughts (lit. bright of intestines)” (stela of Henwen, Cairo JE 36346, 2). 50. In The Eloquent Peasant, P. Berlin P 3023 (= B1), 254; Parkinson 1991: 33.7–​8, the peasant cries: šw.yt m jr(j) m šw, “O shade, don’t act as sunlight!” (also Parkinson 2012: 209). 51. Peter Dils (TLA) in his reading of The Teaching of a Man for his Son (O. Moskau 4478 + oBerlin P 9026, 1, § 24.2) tries to read snk, “dark,” as “unergründlich,” but the classifier I3 clearly indicates that the word skn, “greedy,” is intended instead. This case (the only potentially metaphorical case of snk) is thus untenable. Fischer-​Elfert (1999: 248) proposes “beherrsche dich(?)” but states that the translation is provisional. 52. The potential example comes from a love Song (P. Chester Beatty I, rto 17.7–​8; Mathieu 2008: pl. 7): sn{n} j{=k} pr(w)=s wḫꜢwt.k(w), “ passed by her house, while I was in a dark mood.” However, a literal reading, which does not take the Resultative ending .kw seriously, is more likely: sn{n} j{=k} pr(w)=s wḫꜢ.wt{=k}, “ passed by her house the darkness,” proposed by Lutz Popko (TLA). Though all other cases of the Resultative.kw in the Chester Beatty cycle are fitting, many of the personal pronouns are incorrect. 53. For examples and discussion of this concept, see Luiselli 2011: 162–​168. 54. Leitz (1999: 48) translates rather “I cause you to move back and take away your hearing, to give you darkness and refuse light,” but does not justify the syntactic basis for the translation. In any case, a would be missing for his reading to work, just like the would be required for the translation proposed here. 55. Indeed, the Wb. dates it only from the New Kingdom on, in both its literal and metaphorical meaning. 628

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56. In the TLA corpus, only one example is encoded under the compound nfr.w-​jb, “to satisfy” (TLA 853734), and four attestations under the noun nfr-​jb, “satisfaction” (TLA 650060), but the amount of fitting collocations of the two lexemes in the same corpus seems to be far greater. 57. Another example: jw jr=f ḥm nfr r(m)ṯ.w tḫ.w swrj=sn {my.t} jb.w=sn nfr, “Indeed it is good when people are drunk, when they drink mjnt-​beverage and their hearts are happy (lit. beautiful)” (Admonitions of Ipuwer, P. Leiden I 344, rto 13.13–​14; Enmarch 2005: 53). 58. The object of love, for example, is associated with sweet food, and sexual desire is likened to hunger (Kövecses 1990: 130–​131). Other tastes appear in other languages: in Beja, to suffer is to taste something hot, a bitter voice is an unpleasant voice, and a bitter character is a bad character (Vanhove and Hamid Ahmed 2021). 59. This statement may be true for other source domains as well, but the study investigated the taste domain only (Citron and Goldberg 2014). 60. See the stela of Intef, son of Senet from Abydos, BM EA 581, B9 (Landgráfová 2011: 112–​114). 61. For bnj jꜢm.t, see the stela of Intef, son of Senet, BM EA 581, B9 (Landgráfová 2011: 112–​114). 62. For bnj mrw.t, see the stela of Mery (Louvre C 3 = AE 3; Landgráfová 2011: 134–​137). 63. For bnj bjꜢ.t, see the stela of Hor (Cairo JE 71901, 6; Landgráfová 2011: 256–​258). 64. The Teachings of Amenemope, P. BM 10474, 13.6; Laisney 2007: 342. 65. This fits the theory posited by Kövecses (1990: 130–​131). 66. jw md.(w)t=j nb bnj nḏm […] šꜢꜥ=k{wj} r=j m sḥwrj m zp tpy, “Because all my words are nice (lit. sweet) and pleasant (lit. sweet) […] (whereas) you began with insults against me from the first moment” (Letter of Hori, P. Anastasi I, 8.1–​2; Fischer-​Elfert 1983: 77–​78; 1986a: 71). 67. bnj sḫr.w=f m r’ n rmṯ.w nty m wpwty-​nzw, “his [the King’s] decisions were pleasant in the mouth of the people who were royal messengers” (Gebel el-​Silsileh stela, 10 = KRI 1, 61.2). 68. jṯ(j)=tw bnj r msdd.w, “One prefers (lit. takes) the sweet person to the hater” (The Teaching of a Man for his Son, O. Gardiner 343, x+7, § 12.3; Fischer-​Elfert 1999: Tafelband § 12.3). 69. P. Chester Beatty 9, daily offering ritual, rto 9.16; Gardiner 1935: pl. 50–​58. 70. nḏm sp-​sn gm(j) z(j) jp m kꜢ.t nb.t, “It is very pleasant to find a man who is diligent in all tasks” (The Teachings of Amunnakht, O. BM EA 41541, 4–​5; Dorn 2004: 40). 71. We refer again to the passage in the Letter of Hori (P. Anastasi I, 8.1–​2; Fischer-​Elfert 1983: 77), where nḏm and bnj occur together as parasynonyms: md.(w)t=j nb bnj nḏm, “all my words are nice (lit. sweet) and pleasant (lit. sweet).” 72. While the collocation with jb is attested very early, from the Old Kingdom, the one with ḥꜢ.tj appears much later, in the New Kingdom, which fits with the increased preference for this lexeme over jb. The Wb. does not mention ḥꜢ.tj, though in our corpus it is well-​attested. 73. Another example from a love song: gm(j).n=j sn m tꜢy=f ḥnk.t{=j} ḥꜢ.tj=j nḏm m ḥꜢw, “I found the brother in his room and my heart was excessively happy” (P. Harris 500, rto 5.7; Mathieu 2008: pl. 12). 74. Laisney (2007: 130) makes a case for etymological links to skn.tj, “to turn (someone) against (another)” (Wb. IV, 318.12), which is only attested in the Middle Kingdom Teachings of Ptahhotep (P. Prisse = P. BN 186–​194, 7.4 and its parallel BM EA 10509, 3.4; Žába 1956: 28) and/​or to knj, “to complain” (Wb. V, 131.11), which is also attested from the Middle Kingdom. 75. The Teachings of Amenemope (P. BM EA 10474) contain a range of opposing terms for sweetness and bitterness (bnj with nḏm 6.11; bnj vs jkn 13.6; nḏm vs dḥr 25.12–​13; nḏm alone 9.7, 16.5 and jkn alone 24.3, Laisney 2007: 332, 342, 360, 336, 346, 357); The Teachings of Ani (P. Boulaq 4) also have nḏm vs dḥr in 22.7 and nḏm alone in 20.11 (Quack 1994: 327, 309–​310); The Letter of Hori (P. Anastasi I = P. BM EA 10247, 5.2–​3; Fischer-​Elfert 1983: 57–​58) has bnj and nḏm vs dḥr, as well as a range of related lexemes which play on the metaphor: ḥmꜢ.t(?) (a bitter herb –​fenugreek?) and bj.t (honey), šdḥ (shedeh-​ wine) and pꜢwr (vinegar). 76. From Ani (P. Boulaq 4, 22.7; Quack 1994: 327): j-​ḏd pꜢ nḏm jw=f (ḥr) ḏd pꜢ dḥ{ Ꜣj}, “Say what is pleasant (lit. sweet) when he says something unpleasant (lit. bitter).” From The Letter of Hori (P. Anastasi I, 5.2–​3; Fischer-​Elfert 1983: 57): [bn] tp.j(w)t-​r’ bjn bn st dḥrj, “Your utterances are [neither] sweet nor are they bitter.” 77. Another texture spd, “sharp,” has a range of metaphorical meanings, related to “being effective” or “being skilled” (Wb. IV, 108.15–​109.13). The collocation with ḥr, “sharp of face,” indicates the character trait “being alert” (Wb. IV, 109.14–​16), a collocation with jb, “sharp of heart,” indicates “being effective,” one with r’, “sharp of mouth,” means “being erudite” (Wb. IV, 109.17) and with ḏbꜥ.w,

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“sharp of fingers,” “being dextrous” (Wb. IV, 109.18). However, these meanings describe intellectual qualities rather than clear indications of emotion or temperament. 78. In other contexts, alone or in compounds with ḥr, “face,” nḥꜢ takes on the meaning “wild, dangerous,” a meaning attested in the Second Intermediate Period: smwn msḥ p nḥꜢ, “Surely that crocodile is something dangerous!” (P. Westcar, 4.1; Blackman 1988: 4). 79. The other two cases of the compound nḥꜢ.t-​jb in the TLA are P. Ebers, 39.11–​12 = Recipe Eb 197b; Wreszinski 1913: 56 (though this may refer to symptoms more physical then emotional, for which see Nyord 2009a: 91, n. 507) and The Admonitions of Ipuwer (P. Leiden I 344, rto 12.3; Enmarch 2005: 51). Additionally, a case emerges in Coffin Text 848, CT VII, 52m, discussed in Nyord 2009a: 88–​89. 80. Talking about ḥnw.t-​vessels, it is remarked: nḥꜢ r’=sn ꜥšꜢ, “Their rims are often uneven” (P. Louvre E 25280 (22 A), e:7.2; De Cenival and Posener-​Kriéger 1968: pl. XXII, fragment A). 81. When conducting a physical examination, it is noted: gmm=k (j)ḫ.t jm nḥꜢ ẖr ḏbꜥ.w=k, “Under your fingers you find something there that is uneven” (P. Edwin Smith, 2.3–​4; Breasted 1930: pl. II). 82. This (rare) meaning is attested in the New Kingdom (The Teachings of Ani, P. Boulaq 4, 16.14–​15; Quack 1994: 288): mw mḏ bw rḫ=tw pẖr={s} s.t-​ḥm.t wꜢ(j).tw hꜢy=s jnk nꜥ ḫr(w)=s n=k rꜥ nb, “A deep water, which one cannot fathom (lit. go around) is the wife far away her husband. ‘I am free (lit. smooth),’ she says to you daily.” 83. An example from the New Kingdom is to be found in The Teachings of Amunnakht (O. Lacau = HO III/​3, rto 4; Dorn 2004: 41): wn jb=i Ꜥn ḥwrw, “My heart is (sometimes) calm (lit. smooth), (sometimes) wretched (lit. weak).” 84. The Trials of the Soldier (P. Chester Beatty 5 = P. BM EA 10685, rto 7.1–​2 = Gardiner 1935: pl. 25): jw nꜢ šfn.w ꜥšꜢ{.t} ḥr dns, “and the numerous bushes are burdensome.” 85. See the example from The Eloquent Peasant (P. Berlin P 3023, 191; Parkinson 1991: 29.4–​5) directly below. 86. As seen in a rhetorical question in The Tale of Wenamun, P. Moscow 120, 1.17 = LES 62.11: (j)n dns=k (j)n mnḫ=k, “Are you serious (lit. heavy)? Are you right in the head (lit. effective)?” 87. As in the Lamentations of Khakheperreseneb, it is said: Ꜣww wdn mn(.t)=j, “Extended and difficult (lit. heavy) is my suffering” (T. BM EA 5645, vso 4; Gardiner 1969: pl. 18). 88. Neferhotep says in his letter to the vizier To: bn jzj fꜢ(j).t n wdn “lifting a block of stone is not insignificant” (O. OIC 16991, vso 9 = KRI 5, 560.10; Wente 1961). 89. The meaning “weak” or “insignificant” is further confirmed with this example: tꜢ.w nb.w fjṯ jzj n-​ḥr=f “All lands are ridiculed and insignificant before him (the Pharaoh)” (Medinet Habu I, 46.6 = KRI 5, 38.5). 90. The Dialogue of Sasobek (P. Ramesseum I = P. BM EA 10754, B1, 22; Barns 1956: pl. 2). 91. We see something similar in the satirical Letter of Hori (P. Anastasi I, 28.7; Fischer-​Elfert 1983: 157) which provides a unique causative use of ḫnš: tm=k ḏd ḫnš=k rn=j n kywy ḥr-​nb{t}.w, “… that you cannot say ‘You tarnished my reputation (lit. you made my name stink)!’ to the crowd and everyone!” 92. As mentioned earlier (section “Heat/​Warmth”), the association of qbb, “cool,” and srf, “warm,” gives the meaning “quiet, cool-​blooded” (Wb. V, 23.B.17), in stelae of the 11th Dynasty (e.g., DZA 30.327.750). 93. Nevertheless, this conclusion is to be considered with all due precaution, because the amount of data available for the New Kingdom is disproportionately large.

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29 Smellscapes in ancient Egypt Dora Goldsmith

Why smell? The discipline of Egyptology has not yet fully recognised the potential of the archaeology of smell to contribute to the understanding of ancient Egyptian culture. No comprehensive research has ever been carried out on the role of the sense of smell in ancient Egypt.1 Linguistic research in Egyptology rarely considers olfaction in the interpretation of written documents and does not discuss the olfactory and spatial implications of the scenarios the texts describe. The written sources amount to a great number of references to smell, so much so that if one pays attention to them, one can smell the scenes described, instead of visualising them. However, since Egyptologists have largely overlooked these references to the sense of smell, the meaning of odours for ancient Egyptian society is lost for the modern world. Archaeologists excavating in Egypt do not describe the smells they encounter during their fieldwork, even though they elaborate on the visual appearance of finds in their excavation reports. Furthermore, archaeologists do not consider the smell environments of the sites they excavate. Their primary focus is to determine the use of structures and to reconstruct their visual appearance. As a result, the ancient Egyptian urban landscape is presented as an albeit colourful and monumental, but odourless and sterile living environment. The reluctance of Egyptologists to integrate the sense of smell in their linguistic and archaeological work is due to the marginalisation of olfaction in the modern Western world. The modern contempt of odours can be traced back to the enlightenment period in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which privileged the “more rational” sense of sight and hearing over the “lesser” senses of smell, touch, and taste in an attempt to differentiate humane society from the animal kingdom. Due to the bodily and chemical nature of the senses of smell, touch, and taste, they were branded as “primitive” and “animalistic.” Enlightenment scientists argued that vision and hearing could be kept at a distance from the perceiver, thus they were more “rational” and “noble.” The societal and academic trend to prioritise vision and hearing over the other senses was fully embraced in the modern age, as we move towards living in completely odourless urban spaces or blandscapes.2 Impacted by modern odour perceptions and odourless living conditions, Reinarz wrote (2014: 184), “researchers have been all too silent, repelled, it seems, by modern hygienic sensibilities even from contemplating the stench of former times.” 636

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-30

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Nevertheless, ignoring the sense of smell in Egyptological research due to modern sensory values comes with a price. As a result of overlooking the olfactory world of the ancient Egyptians, we are only getting a partial view of their life. The goal of the present chapter is to reveal previously unmentioned and unexperienced aspects of the ancient Egyptian culture based on written documents by focusing on the olfactory experience of the city, while temporarily setting aside all of the other senses. By investigating how the ancient Egyptians made sense of the world through smell, previously hidden elements of their lives unfold, providing greater access to knowledge about their perception of the world and creating a richer narrative and a deeper understanding of their culture.

Smell and the city The sense of smell plays a crucial role in place perception and experience, as it enables direct encounters with the environment in ways that sight and hearing cannot, creating an unmediated sense of place (see also Chapters 14 and 20, this volume). City smells have a powerful impact on people’s everyday experiences of urban life and their perceptions of streets, buildings, and neighbourhoods. Urban smell environments also contribute to the formation of a person’s identity and a sense of belonging to a place. It is through the immediate link of smell to memory and place that city smells become olfactory emblems of place identity, culture, and heritage. Olfactory memory proves to be the strongest type of memory. Olfactory information is processed more quickly and with less editing than visual and auditory information and lasts longer. Modern experiments show that odour memory does not decline over time. It is largely the same after five minutes, as one year later (Engen 1982: 106–​109). Context-​dependent memory is based on the principle that environmental features encoded as part of a memory trace can facilitate memory for stored material when subsequently encountered. When odour memory is combined with context-​dependent memory, memory cues are unusually strong and effective (Herz and Engen 1996: 307–​308). Geographer J. Douglas Porteous (1990: 364–​365) was one of the first scholars to establish that each city has its own characteristic smell:3 “Individual cities, even urban types, may be distinguished by smell. Pulp mill towns, colliery towns, leather-​working towns, chemical towns, smelting towns, each has its particular type of smell. … Whether urban or rural, smells identify places in the lived world.” In her work on urban smellscapes,Victoria Henshaw (2014: 33) called these characteristic smells the “smell genetics” of a place: Differences in various types of places or the components of towns and cities provide place-​ specific exposure to odorous substances or unique combinations of smells that could not be experienced in nature or other places. That is not to say that the different smell ingredients that combine to form an urban smellscape are themselves necessarily unique to only one place, or one type of place, but that the mix of odours in different proportions has the potential to create a unique olfactory pattern: a smell genetics of place. The smell genetics of a city is made up of multiple smellscapes. The word “smellscape” has its roots in cultural geography. Porteous (1990: 359) defined the term “smellscape” as an olfactory equivalent of a visual landscape, while noting its volatile nature and limitedness in space: The concept of smellscape suggests that, like visual impressions, smells may be spatially ordered or place-​related. It is clear, however, that any conceptualization of smellscape must recognize that the perceived smellscape will be non-​continuous, fragmentary in space and 637

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episodic in time, and limited by the height of our noses from the ground, where smells tend to linger. In her doctoral dissertation on the practice of smellscape mapping, Kate McLean (2019: 37) highlights the complex and profound nature of smellscapes: The smellscape is a term used to describe the odour landscape that surrounds us. Generally, it is agreed that it is a spatial construct that appears to a single person at a moment in time. Depending on the field of research it may be embodied, experiential, ingested and immersive, or objectified and seen as a means by which we enrich our understanding of the world. Smells may come from natural sources, be generated by activity and include the smells of humanity and materiality. Although odour detection is airborne, smells are also embedded in surfaces and within the materiality of urban structures and fabrications, as well as the natural world. Despite the focus on the spatial, the smellscape also equally possesses historical, ephemeral and dynamic temporal qualities, which vary according to seasonal urban activity fluctuations and as volatile molecules dissipate. Henshaw and McLean agree that the perception of a smellscape is highly individual and depends on many factors, thus it is debated as to whether a smellscape can ever be fully known. It is impossible for a number of humans to detect the entire smellscape of an area as a whole at any point in time (McLean et al. 2015: 336). Furthermore, due to physiological and genetic differences—​for example, gender, age, body size, general health, pregnancy, smoking habits, and anosmia—​it is unlikely that two people will ever register identical smells. In general, females have higher olfactory performance than males, including detection, identification, and recollection of an odour. Age has a limiting influence on smell performance, with 50 per cent of people experiencing a major loss in olfactory function over the age of 65. Smoking also reduces smell performance. Body size plays an influence in olfactory detection, with under-​or overweight people having lower olfactory acuity than people with normal body weight. General health and pregnancy are important factors in smell performance. Around 1 per cent of the general population is anosmic, with causes ranging from nose surgery, or illness, or exposure to toxic substances. Environmental factors also play a role in smell detection. The form and content of the built environment has a significant impact on odour detection and identification. The importance of the role of the built environment in influencing odours becomes apparent when we examine the distances across which smells can travel. The sense of smell is widely described as a proximate sense; however, this is not always the case. There are numerous documented examples, where unidentified odours have travelled large distances and covered vast areas (Henshaw: 2014: 27–​ 30; see also Chapter 27, this volume). Henshaw (2014: 172) and McLean (2019: 35) underline that smellscapes must be understood not only spatially, but also a temporally, both comparing urban smellscapes to notes in perfumery. The micro-​level smellscape, which consists of short-​lived, immediate, site-​based smells, is equivalent to the top notes in perfumery, the first impressions of the fragrance, which evaporates quickly. The mid-​level smellscape represents the episodic odours of neighbourhoods, such as a factory or a bakery, corresponding to the middle notes in perfumery, the heart or character of the fragrance. The macro-​level smellscape constitutes involuntary, long-​lasting, ambient smells of the entire city, comparable to the base notes in perfumery, which gives body and longevity to the fragrance. Smellwalking is a method used to identify local perceptions and meanings of urban smellscapes. A smellwalk is a type of sensewalk, where the olfactory becomes active, and all of 638

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the other senses become temporarily passive, in order to investigate and analyse how we understand, experience, and utilise space through the sense of smell. Henshaw (2014: 214) describes smellwalking as a professional tool, which can be used by smell experts and urban designers to evaluate olfactory components of different areas or neighbourhoods within a city. Smellwalks may also be performed with an educational purpose to raise the participants’ awareness of the role and potential for smell in the city. The findings of smellwalks may be easily communicated through the use of illustrative tools, such as smellmaps. Smellmaps bring together spatial information with details of the various smells that can or could be detected in an area, and occasionally incorporate other factors, such as topography and wind flow, thus providing an effective means of investigating human perception of smells, both in recording and communicating the smells that can be detected in an area, and in accessing the meaning that people attach to these sensory experiences (Henshaw: 2014: 54–​ 55). For McLean (2014: 92) creating a smellmap of a city is a collaborative exercise. During a series of smellwalks, McLean has local participants identify distinct aromas emanating from specific locations and record the description, expectation, intensity, personal association, and reaction; she then analyses this data, along with conversation arising from the smellwalks, and selects a set of smells that convey the smellscape of the city at that moment in time, visualising the scents and their locations in the city as a map. The resulting map visualisations are propositions: indications of what one might smell in a certain place. Mapping urban smellscapes can also take the form of olfactory installations, which enable the reader or museum visitor to sniff out urban smellscapes instead of visualising them. Olfactory artist Sissel Tolaas has undertaken numerous urban smellscapes projects, in which she tracks down urban smells and reproduces synthetic versions of them, presenting a subjective portrait of the city (McLean 2019: 55).

Ancient smellscapes Two types of evidence can be used to investigate the smellscapes of an ancient city: archaeological evidence and surviving written sources. In his pioneering article on the concept of smellscapes, Porteous (1990: 360) stressed the advantage of using literature for understanding past smellscapes, as it contains the odour perceptions of those who wrote them—​their judgements, emotions, and associated meanings.4 However, when relying on textual sources to reconstruct ancient smellscapes without consulting the archaeological record, we need to be aware of two facts: (1) the odour perceptions reflected in the texts might not be representative of the entire society, and often reflect an elite perspective, owing to the nature of the written texts preserved from antiquity; (2) the smells mentioned in the sources are those that their writers chose to discuss, and consequently, they might not reveal the entire smellscape of the time. Conversely, when we turn to the archaeological evidence to reconstruct the smellscapes of a long-​gone urban society, we are missing the perceptions of the ancients or the so-​called “period nose,”5 and our understanding of an ancient smellscape might be influenced by our own modern odour perceptions. Ideally, the textual sources and archaeological material complement one another to reconstruct the smellscapes of a past urban society. However, scholars of ancient history rarely have the luxury of having both archaeological and written evidence from the same site pertaining to the sense of smell. Here, I refer to a selection of noteworthy studies that have reconstructed ancient smellscapes using archaeological material or textual sources. In her comprehensive study of the archaeological evidence related to the smell environments of Herculaneum, Ostia, Pompeii, and Rome, Koloski-​Ostrow (2015) discusses odours relating to urban sanitation; the smells of residential insulae and atrium houses; the fragrances and stinks of public places; the foul smells of workshops; and lastly, the stench of death and burial. In his 639

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archaeological investigation of urban smellscapes at Vindolanda, a third-​century CE Roman military fort in northern England, Derrick (2017) distinguishes between micro (enclosed spaces with limited access) and macro (open or communal spaces with greater access) smell environments, and takes into consideration the geographic location of the site, the direction of the wind, the closedness or openness of architectural features, and smell-​producing human activities, such as the temple, workshops, bathhouses, taverns, shops, barracks, and latrines. German-​Saudi excavations at the ancient oasis of Tayma in modern Saudi Arabia unearthed vast quantities of incense burners with traces of burning and residues of burnt aromatics. Located on the Incense Road, Tayma served as a significant trading post of frankincense and myrrh during the first millennium BCE . Based on the chemical analyses of the residues, Huber (2018) determined that frankincense (Boswellia spp.) was mostly burnt in domestic quarters, Pistacia resin (Pistacia spp.) was designated for a large public building, while myrrh (Commiphora spp.) was used in funerary contexts (see also Chapter 21, this volume). Working from textual sources, Morley (2015: 118) reconstructs the Romans’ perception of their own urban smellscapes, noting that while the Roman urban air undoubtedly stank, the Romans themselves apparently failed to notice this, since there are no complaints about the stench of the city as a whole in the written record: “the characteristic smell of a Roman city—​ a mixture of urine, shit, decay, smoke, incense, cooked meat and boiled cabbage—​must have been the smell of home to its inhabitants and perhaps even the smell of civilization.” McHugh (2012: 62–​63) researched Sanskrit documents to learn about the smellscapes of premodern South Asia, stating that his goal was not to catalogue the smells or reconstruct the smellscapes of premodern South Asia, but to enumerate the smells that the Sanskrit texts document: “I am not attempting to draw up an inventory of the sensations that were present at a given moment in history in each social milieu. … The smells in this chapter were what the intellectuals consciously chose to discuss; the odors that they wished to present as their olfactory benchmarks.6 These odors are not a given smellscape, but an idealised, conventional, respectable, and rather conservative smellscape.”7 In recent years, anthropologists have stressed the importance of protecting urban smellscapes, arguing that certain city smells belong to the city’s historical landscape and must be regarded as its intangible heritage, and that by sanitising and modernising cities, and eliminating their smellscapes, we destroy history and place identity. In her work on the deteriorating smellscapes of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Stone Town in Zanzibar, Boswell (2008) concludes that fragrances disappeared from public places following the reconstruction and sanitisation of the site in 2000, and that scents, which once belonged to the everyday urban smellscapes of Stone Town, such as the smoke of incense rising from houses, are now reminiscent of a time and people lost. Davis and Thys-​Şenocak (2017) have demonstrated that the powerful smellscape of the Eminönü Spice Market in Istanbul, which dates to the mid-​seventeenth century CE , has been an olfactory emblem of the city. Yet while the market has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, its scents are not regarded as such, and have been slowly disappearing in recent years due to a massive urban renewal project in the area. Reinarz (2014: 208) noted that the modernisation of Indian culture brought about a loss of urban smellscapes, and accordingly, a loss of place identity. In much of modern India, markets and bazaars have been replaced by sanitised, air-​conditioned malls and multiplexes. Hindi authors reporting from Jaipur regard this as a cause for concern, claiming that “It’s become very difficult to take care of one’s roots today. Once we forget our ‘gandh’ (smell), we forget our roots.” Whether embedded in the residue of an incense burner or hidden between the lines of a long-​lost inscription, smells are, in the words of Marcel Proust from Remembrance of Things Past,

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“waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest” to be rediscovered, as if they know that after thousands of years, they will have the power to bring back moments of civilisations long gone in tiny, impalpable drops of memory.

Methods, difficulties, and goals My work on ancient Egyptian smellscapes is inspired by Henshaw and McLean’s work on modern urban smellscapes and I attempt here to apply their theories and methods to the linguistic evidence for the sense of smell in ancient Egypt from a wide range of textual sources. When reconstructing the urban8 smellscapes of ancient Egypt based on written evidence, I faced two challenges. First, there does not exist a large enough quantity or wide enough range of document types concerning the sense of smell from one site alone to enable me to focus on a single city. For example, although we have numerous inscriptions concerning the olfactory experience of the temple complex of Edfu, documents concerning the smells of everyday life (e.g., occupations, medicine, lovemaking) are not preserved from this site. The second issue concerns the nature of Egyptian archaeology. Urban settlements have been scarcely excavated in Egypt, and most archaeological finds come from tombs. Hence, creating a visual smellmap of an ancient Egyptian city using preserved textual sources and archaeological finds from a single site is not feasible.9 Instead, for the current study, I take the reader on a smellwalk in an idealised ancient Egyptian city, including all of the urban establishments and spaces mentioned in the textual sources. I selected a number of texts concerning the sense of smell from all periods of ancient Egyptian culture—​from the beginning of the Predynastic period until the Greco-​Roman period—​in order to document and investigate the various meanings of odours experienced in the city and to understand the olfactory world of the living in the ancient Egyptian urban environment.10 The present work aims to uncover the olfactory experiences of ancient Egyptian urban living previously unknown and unimagined. It invites the reader to reorient their senses, so that visualisation becomes passive and olfaction active. Through focusing on the olfactory, the reader will gain a new perspective on the ancient Egyptians’ interaction with their environment. Furthermore, this chapter hopes to create a richer narrative and a deeper understanding of urban life in ancient Egypt and provide a meaningful experience to the reader.

Smellscapes in ancient Egypt To the ancient Egyptians, the smell of the city was a symbol of civilisation, peace, and authority. Cities were the spatial and olfactory representatives of the concept of ma’at, the world of peace, justice, order, and truth.11 The smell of the city was embodied by the fragrance of perfume oils and unguents. The pleasant aroma of cities, symbolised by the scent of perfume, was an inseparable part of urban life and culture in ancient Egypt (Edfu II, 16,14): You founded cities on this Earth. You made everyone friendly, as they praise your heritage, [as] the smell of your perfume reach[es their] nose. The verso of the 19th Dynasty literary work P. Sallier IV or A Letter Concerning the Wonders of Memphis describes the northern capital city of Memphis at a time when ma’at is present, following the restoration work of Khaemwaset (Verhoeven 2004: 68). At this time, the city is said to be dominated by pleasant smells (P. Sallier IV verso, 2, 3–​3, 7; Gardiner 1937):

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I have arrived [at Memphis] and have found Memphis in extremely good condition, and those that are in it are healthy, they have grown plants … Her granaries are full of barley and emmer. Her hills are covered with fresh herbs. Her lakes are full of lotus buds […] The inundated land is covered with lotus flowers; moringa oil is sweet and fat is abundant, and there are plenty of jars of oil. There is no shortage of boards, beams or incense wood. The Asiatic of Memphis sits at ease, he declined, embraced(?)[…] [A cone of (?)] fat [upon] his head […], ointment, moringa oil and pleasant lotus buds around [his] neck … Upon their head with anointing oil […] anew […] [sw]eet fat. The provisions(?), fat, reeds, [all manner of] sweet-​smelling herbs … The text describes Memphis at a time when ma’at is present. After stating that the city was found in good condition, first, it is said that its citizens are healthy and that they have enough nutrition. Then the text gets into a long, detailed description of fine scents. The fact that scents are mentioned right after health and sufficient food supply in this description shows the great importance of pleasant scents in the everyday, urban life of the Egyptians. The number of references and the length of the section referring to fragrances further strengthen the significance of sweet aroma in the city. Pleasant smells belong to an ideal situation, when Memphis is in peace, in “extremely good condition.” Thus, the text teaches us that the world of ma’at was imagined as an urbanised world with sweet scents. What cities and pleasant smells had in common was that they both required a central government. Cities are an artificially created, human-​made environment held together by the laws of justice. Cities were created by the king for the people as their home. Without the king, there were no cities, chaos ruled the world, and people had nowhere to live. Sweet scents were similarly the result of the efforts of the king for the society. We learn from another text dating to around the same period, entitled Hymn III to Ramesses VI, that once the king had ascended the throne after a period of chaos and injustice, people were able to return to their cities, where sweet smells filled the air and the courts of law functioned again (Hymn III to Ramesses VI, 8; Rossi and Pleyte 1869–​1876; Condon 1978): We have returned to our city, to your audience-​halls, to the many sweet-​smelling things. Kings were assigned by the gods to the throne to put ma’at into effect. Acting as a mediator of the gods for the society, the king annihilated the malodours and evil forces of isfet, the world of chaos, and created cities and perfume. When Amun appointed his divine daughter, Hatshepsut, to the throne to act on his behalf, one of the tasks assigned to Hatshepsut by her father was to carry out an expedition to Punt and to bring back odiferous myrrh trees to Egypt. Amun explicitly names the function of the scent of myrrh (Urk. IV, 347, 4–​5): The sky and the land shall abound in divine scent.12 There shall be fragrances in the court of the gods. The court of the gods in Heliopolis had jurisdiction over the entire land of Egypt. The court of the gods could only function with pleasant scents in an urban environment. The world of cities, justice, and sweet scents were inseparable matters. When there was order, truth, and justice, or in other words ma’at, perfume pervaded the sky and the land, and the sweet aroma filled the court halls. It was the king’s duty to assure the presence of sweet scents. The king was commissioned by the gods to bring cities, justice, and fragrance to the world, which provided a liveable environment for society. 642

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In sum, to the Egyptians, fragrance was a cultural product of urbanisation commissioned by the gods and enacted by the king. Cities and sweet smells existed together, hand-​in-​hand—​they were inseparable phenomena of ancient Egyptian culture.

Smell of the palace Drawing on excerpts from inscriptions—​of both temple and funerary contexts, and dating to the Middle Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period—​I guide the reader through the physical space and smell experiences of the palace in the following. I begin in the king’s private chamber. Through the very fact that the king is the descendant of the gods, he inherited a divine smell, which distinguishes him from the rest of the Egyptian population. As the king performs his daily morning ritual, his servants anoint him with the best perfumes made out of the costliest ingredients in order to enhance his divine appearance (Edfu VII, 189, 17–​190, 1–​2): The son of Re (Ptolemy X)| (comes) out of his house. The gods on the standards protect his Majesty. His nose is myrrh,13 his lips are incense,14 the scent of his body is the summer lotus and the fragrance of his clothes is identical with that of the perfume workshop. The queen is on her way to see the king. As the queen of Egypt, she possesses a pleasant aroma, which is noticeable in every room into which she walks. As she enters the main pillared hall of the palace, she inevitably fills it with the smell of her perfume (Urk. IV, 1772, 10): The one who fills the hall with the smell of her perfume. The royal couple make their way together into a courtyard, where they see their son engaged in conversation with a number of court officials. The young prince stands out from the crowd owing to his smell, which overpowers that of the courtiers standing next to him (The Epigraphic Survey 1954: pl. 21, 2): Sweet scented amongst the courtiers like the large lotus bud, which is at the nose of every god. An official from a remote province arrives at the palace to pay his respects to the reigning sovereign. The king receives him in the reception hall, where his subject presents a large floral bouquet to him as a gift. The strong floral scent fills the hall of the palace and makes the king content (Theban Tomb 110 of Tehuti; Davis 1932): Presenting all manner of fresh plants that are native to this land, the pick of the pools of the king, namely lotuses, lotus buds, reeds, mandragora, fresh myrrh from Punt, the scent of marsh plants, all manner of pure flowers native to the land of the god, in which there is joy and health, all that has been offered to the king of god[s]‌, to the nose of his beloved daughter, Hatshepsut-​Khenemet-​Amun, who lives forever. The king then decides to inspect his extensive perfume supply in the treasury. He consults the official appointed to safeguard his fragrant oils and unguents in the palace. The courtier 643

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responsible for overseeing the king’s sweet-​ smelling valuables is given the title (Tomb of Amenemhat at Beni Hasan, Tomb Nr. 2; Newberry 1893):15 Great of Fragrance in the Palace

Smell of the temple It is time for the daily temple ritual. The king leaves the palace and makes his way into the temple to perform his daily duties as the high priest of Egypt. Through the gate and pillared courtyards, he proceeds into the sanctuary—​the innermost, darkest, and smallest chamber of the temple complex, built along the axis of the temple. It was in this remote chamber, cut off from the outside world, that the statue of the god was erected. The king burns incense (sntr) in an arm-​shaped incense burner inside the cult chamber.16 The exudation of burning incense renders the ritual space pure.17 Its scent also serves to restore the vital body fluids of the statue of the god, which was believed to be a dry and shrivelled corpse every morning.18 As a sign of the divine presence, the smell of incense helps the king perceive divinity during the course of the ritual.19 Furthermore, the pleasant aroma is instrumental in pleasing the deity,20 who rejoices as the smells slowly fill the entire sanctuary (Dendera IV, 136, 1–​3):21 Censing. Words to be spoken: The incense is for your ka in front of all the gods. I put it on the flame for your statue. Its scent is coming. Your nose smells it. It censes your sanctuary with its fragrance. The divinity receives an offering of costly myrrh ( ntyw), which was cooked and made into an oil (Dendera III, 82, 1–​2):22 Take yourself the myrrh cooked by Shesmu. Its fragrance penetrates your nose. The cult image is anointed with honey, which, similarly to incense, serves to revive the dry and shrivelled body of the god through its strong, sweet aroma (Daily Temple Ritual 70–​71; Moret 1902): O Amun-​Re, Lord of the Two Lands, accept the honey, the sweet Eye of Horus. […] It opens his flesh (of Amun), links his bones and gathers his limbs. When he smells its scent, it is like Re is united in the horizon. The ten sacred oils23 are presented. While the ingredients of each are mostly unknown,24 it seems clear that each perfume had a different scent and a different function. The divine body is anointed with all of the perfumes (Dendera IV, 106, 1–​107, 4): The md.t-​oil directly in front of you revives your body (lit. makes it new) in your chapel. The stỉ ḥᴈb-​oil25 is for your image to satisfy your heart, its scent diffuses in your shrine. The ḥkn.w-​oil is for your Majesty to impregnate your body, your countenance is happy about its fragrance. The sf-​oil is for your statue to rejuvenate your body and to strengthen your image more than power itself [= to make it powerful]. The nẖnm-​oil is for your image to unite with your manifestations, your nostrils inhale its scent. The twᴈ.wt-​oil is for your

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likeness, purified appropriately (?), its fragrance permeates (lit. makes itself permanent) your clothing. The ḥᴈ.t-​oils are for your Majesty, splendid in their preparation, to illuminate your face in your sanctuary. The ỉbr-​oil for your ba, you are endowed with a ba thanks to it. The bᴈq-​oil covers your ka. All the oils (mrḥ.t) are divine property for your sanctuary to come in touch with the god, with his body. Put in order by the Ibis, cooked by Shesmu to anoint your body with what you love, they are all there available for your ka without a stop, forever. The king clothes the divine image (Dendera III, 160, 4–​6): I came to you Tayet in the Temple of Menat, Goddess of the Sun, who illuminates the earth. I am bringing you pure garments drenched in lotus (oil). Its fragrance is for your body. The deity receives an offering of fresh, sweet-​smelling flowers, green herbs, and plants from the field (Kom Ombo I, 110, No. 143; Morgan 1895): Take yourself plants that come from the field, lotus that blossoms on the Nile, green herbs that grow because of you, their fragrance gets mixed in your nose. The god partakes in an offering of lotus flowers, which are also presented separately from the floral offering due to their pleasant scent and outstanding religious and cultural value (Edfu VII, 162, 6–​10):26 Offering lotus flowers. Words to be spoken: Take yourself this god, who is in his lake, who created light at the beginning of times, the great lotus flower that emerged from the primeval waters on the Island of Fire in the Nome of the Beginning. You see its shine, and your divine eyes are complete. You sm[ell] it, and your [n]‌ose is delighted. In his role as the high priest, the king adorns the neck of the cult statue with flower garlands. The scent of the several different odiferous plant offerings mixes in the cult chamber (Theban Tomb 23 of Tjay; Assman 1983): Flowers and lotus around your neck, all the sweet-​smelling herbs of the land of the god are getting mixed in your cult chamber. Through all the sweet-​smelling floral offerings present in the sanctuary, the king becomes fragrant himself (Kom Ombo I, 13, No. 6; Morgan 1895): Good god, ruler of the orchard, lord of the garden, who picks flowers, who offers flowers to his father every day, who is assembled in the residence in Chemmis, who is pleasant in appearance through their scent. The king opens the door of the sanctuary and proceeds into the neighbouring hall of offerings. He roasts a choice cut of meat on the altar made up of oxen, birds, gazelles, oryx antelopes, and ibexes. The smell of roast meat triggers the appetite of the deity and attracts them to the temple. At the same time, the smell emitting from the meat grilled on the altar serves as an olfactory equivalent of the smell of the burning corpses of the enemy. This temple odour constitutes a daily olfactory sign of ma’at, the Egyptian concept of peace, justice, and order, indicating that

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the presence of the gods in the temple, their home, is assured, and the enemy of Egypt has been defeated (Philae III, 25; Kockelmann and Winter 2016):27 Offering choice cut of meat and reciting: I am extending my arms to the choice cut of meat of oxen, birds, gazelles, oryx antelopes and ibexes. Your braziers are on fire. May you smell its fragrance! Its scent of fat rises up to the sky! As it is the king who is responsible for defeating the enemy of Egypt and making a daily offering of meat in the temple, he boasts of being the one who makes the smell of the temple pleasant (Hatnub 24, 4; Anthes 1928): Lord of geese with many birds, great of braziers, pure of cut of meat, who makes pleasant the smell of the temple. The divine image partakes in an offering of white bread. The hot smell of fresh bread enters the nose of the god (Dendera III, 111, 1–​112, 4): Presenting white bread. Words to be spoken: Perfect white bread. Provisions of bread in the following way (?): I am presenting (them) to your ka on my hands. Its hot smell is for your nose. (My) Majesty, while you are eating, your heart is (filled with) love. Sweet-​smelling cakes are being brought and placed on the altar (Edfu VII, 72, 1–​7): Carrying the cakes. Words to be spoken: […] for your ka, falcon, with the mysterious splendour. The baked goods equip his figure. How glorious is […] its scent! May you eat from it. The king brings cold milk in jars. The deity rejoices in its pleasant smell (Kom Ombo I, 62, No. 66; Morgan 1895): He is bringing you Nu, who lets the water of Re flow, whose jugs are flooded with fresh water. His ḥnw.t-​jars are full. His nms.t-​jars are [filled] with sweet-​smelling milk. Fragrant beer is offered. Its aroma pleases the god (Philae III, 33; Kockelmann and Winter 2016): Come in peace my beloved son, who is greatly respected in all of Egypt! I accept the beer and smell it. My heart is happy with what you do for me. Sweet-​smelling wine is poured at the altar as an offering. Its fragrance enters the nose and the body of the god and fills it with happiness (Dendera VI, 112, 1–​113, 3): Offering w This wine that I am bringing as a tribute is presented in jugs placed on my hands. (This) wine, I am pouring (lit. offering) the intoxicating drink to the earth in Iatdi (Dendera). Its fragrance fills your body.28 How pleasant is its goodness for the nose (=aroma)29 of the living! You drink from it. It is pure. The daily temple ritual is completed, the deity partook in all of the food offerings through the open door connecting the cult chamber and the offering hall. The scent of incense, myrrh, honey, perfumes, scented cloth, and floral offerings from the sanctuary mixed with the smell 646

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of roast meat, bread, cake, milk, beer, and wine from the hall of offerings, resulting in a strong, peculiar smell, which pervades the inner halls of the temple, reaching as far as the hypostyle hall (Dendera IV, 170, 8–​171, 11):30 He is bringing you an offering of bread, meat and beer, offerings and provisions without a stop, oxen from the place of slaughter, butchered cattle, fat geese, waterbirds on the altar, myrrh on the flame, incense on the fire and all manner of plants issue their scent. The smell of their fat goes up to the sky, their scent goes up to the horizon. The sti ḥᴈb-​oil goes up to the four corners of the sky. Green Eye of Horus, wine from Baharia, your sanctuary is flooded with wine, shiny plants, your countenance is happy to see them. They are for your ka, when you rise to unite with the sun disk of your father in the sky. After the daily temple ritual is complete, the king proceeds to the temple treasury to examine whether there is adequate perfume supply for the upcoming religious festivities (Urk. IV, 853, 7–​13): [The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Menkheperre had] his monument for his father, Amun, [lord of the thrones of the two lands], made, a treasury (erected) for him for myrrh […] [in order to] make exquisite unguents, so that [he (=Amun)] may remain in the fragrance of divine matters. May he live forever. The head florist of the temple informs the sovereign that they received the generous vegetable, fruit, and flower supply and the preparations for the upcoming festivals have started (P. Harris I, 40a, 1–​9; Erichsen 1933): Grape seed oil: jars; grape seed oil in measurements; melon/​cucumber (?) in measurements; vegetables: bundles; vegetables: bundles; cyprus from the riverbanks: handful; sweet flag (calamus): basket; fresh fruit: bowls; garden fragrance: bouquets.

Smell of a garden After attending to his religious and administrative duties, the king takes a walk in the garden he had proudly built for the gods. Filled with fragrant trees, flowers, and herbs, the garden’s purpose is to satisfy the gods and to contribute to the pleasant olfactory landscape of the city (Urk. IV, 1730, 5–​7): [I made a garden for him with offerings opposite the royal harem,] planted with all manner of sweet-​smelling plants and all manner of pleasant, fresh herbs from the field.

Smell of the House of Life The scribal students enter the scriptorium called House of Life to dedicate their day to learning the writing system, philology, and theology. They need to make sure not to be anointed with the exquisite scent of myrrh, as their life must be simple, devoid of olfactory pleasure (The Book of Thoth, 25, 28–​29; Jasnow and Zauzich 2014): [So he said, namely, The-​one-​who praises-​knowledge, he said:] Do you smell of myrrh? Do not enter the House of Life. Stinking bulls are the ones who are in [it (?)] … 647

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The-​one-​who-​loves-​knowledge, he said: »I know the abominations, which are in the Chambers of Darkness. I come in their lack. My abomination is wine. I reject (?) the perfume of myrrh.

Smell of streets Not able to cope with the hardship of scribal duty, a scribal student has abandoned writing, and wanders around drunk in the streets (P. Anastasi IV, recto, 11, 9–​11, 11 = P. Sallier I, recto, 9, 11; Gardiner 1937): I am told that you have abandoned writing and you whirl around in pleasures, that you go from street to street, and it reeks of beer (lit. there is stench of beer) every time you pass by. Beer undoes a man.

Smell of stables In the city stables, the stable master is training horses for an impending battle. He is well aware of the fact that horses have a keen sense of smell, and that they become spooked when experiencing an unfamiliar odour. Thus, he is exposing them to a scent that the enemy is known to use, so that they wouldn’t flee in battle when smelling this otherwise unfamiliar odour (P. BM EA 10085 + 10105, verso, III, 5–​6; Leitz 1999): Giving water to (the horse) ‘Beloved of Montu’. I will cause […], if (the horse) is strong at night. I will cause the arousing of scents for (the horse) ‘Beloved of Amun LPH.’31

Smell of private houses Smell of lower-​class housing It is a hot summer day and a peasant arrives home sweating after working in the field. He does not have a bath in his house, thus he needs a remedy for his stench (P. Ebers 708 = P. Hearst 32, P. Hearst 151; Grapow 1958): Remedy to eliminate stench in the summer: incense, ỉbw-​plant,32 juniper berries and myrrh are made into one mixture to be used as ointment. While the peasant is preparing the remedy, his wife tries to breastfeed their new-​born child. However, her milk has gone bad and stinks like fish (P. Ebers 788; Grapow 1958):33 Seeing34 bad milk: You should see, if it has a smell like the stench of fish. Smell of middle-​class housing In another district of the city, an official opens a jar of liquor at his house. He raises the glass and is about walk out the door to attend to his daily tasks, when he realises that hundreds of dogs and jackals have surrounded his house, attracted by the sweet smell of the liquor (P. Anastasi V, 12, 11–​13, 1; Gardiner 1937): When it is the case of opening a jar that is filled with qdi-​beer, and people come out to raise a glass outside, then there are 200 large dogs, as well as 300 jackals, 500 in total, and 648

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they stand in readiness every day at door of the house every time I go out, as they smell (lit. through their making smell) the liquor when the jar is opened. Finally, the dogs and jackals go away. The official ventures out of his house, only to notice a sick dog lying at his doorstep. He calls for a veterinarian, who sniffs the dog in order to arrive at the diagnosis (P. Kahun C + H; Griffith 1898): […] its35 eyes, there is […], its […], its leg […], its leg with no pain in them, its odour is like the smell of the shrew,36 sees […] dog (?) […] tooth […] Smell of upper-​class housing In yet another area of the city, a lady of a noble family is burning kyphi in her living quarters to make the smell of her rooms and clothing pleasant (P. Ebers 852; Grapow 1958): Kyphi to make the smell of the house and clothing pleasant: dry myrrh, juniper berries, incense, cypress, wood of camphor tree,37 Pistacia resin, reed of Djahy (Canaan) (sweet flag) (= calamus), ? (unknown aromatic substance), ? (unknown aromatic substance), and styrax are ground (until) smooth, made into a mixture, some of it is placed on top of fire. At the same time, her servants are preparing dinner for her and her husband. The kitchen is flooded with the strong odours of cooking (Mastaba of Mehu at Saqqara; Altenmüller 1998): Its smell is that of cooking. After dinner, the loving couple engage in a romantic walk in the extensive garden of their estate. The strong scent of blooming flowers and blossoming twigs in the garden create the perfect setting for lovemaking (P. Harris 500, Collection III, 2nd stanza; Müller 1899): Artemisia flowers are in it. One is made great in their presence. I am your chief sister. I am yours like this plot of ground planted with flowers and with all manner of sweet-​smelling plants. The nobleman holds mandragora under the nose of his beloved wife, who is intoxicated from the fragrance, and wants to make love to her husband (O. Cairo CG 25218 + oDeM 1266; Posener 1972): I wish I was her Nubian maid, who is at her feet, who then would bring her a [jar of] mandragora […] my hand, so that she might smell it. In other words: that she may offer me the gifts of her body.38 The noblewoman made sure that she came appropriately dressed for the romantic occasion, being clothed in a garment drenched in the attractive scent of camphor. Surrounded by the scent of intoxicating flowers, she takes a bath in a pond in front of her husband (O. Cairo 25218 + oDeM 1266; Posener 1972): My desire is to go down to bathe before you, so I may cause you [to see] my beauty, in a robe of finest royal linen, permeated with camphor oil […] [in a pool edg]ed with reeds. 649

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It is now dark and the couple make their way back to their house. The house is quiet, as they do not have any children yet. In order to find out whether they will be blessed with a child after their romantic night, the noblewoman places garlic in her vagina and sleeps with it all night. The next morning, a physician examines the smell of her breath to establish if she can bear children (P. Carlsberg 4; Grapow 1958):39 […] for a [woman], who does not give birth. You should make her sleep with a clove of garlic placed (lit. dipped) in her vagina until the crack of dawn. If there is a smell in her mouth, she will give birth. If […], she will never [give birth].

Smell of workshops On the outskirts of the city, the less fortunate are hard at work surrounded by foul smells. A sandal-​maker is hard at work mixing tan to soften hides, which he will use to make sandals (P. Lansing 4, 5–​4, 7; Gardiner 1937): The sandal-​maker mixes tan, his odour is penetrating. A smith in close proximity to the sandal-​maker is making weapons on royal demand for an impeding battle (Satire of Trades IV, b–​c; Helck 1970; Jäger 2004): I have seen the smith at work, at the opening of his furnace with fingers like claws of a crocodile. He stinks more than fish roe. In a bakery, a stoker is heating a furnace, where the bread and cake provisions of the soldiers will be prepared (Satire of Trades VII, a–​b; Helck 1970; Jäger 2004): The stoker, his fingers are rotten, their smell is that of corpses, his eyes are burning by much smoke.

Smell of festivals Another important smellscape that contributed to the olfactory experience of the Egyptian city was the religious festivals performed in honour of the city’s patron deity. The yearly processional festival is the only time of the year when the divine image leaves the sanctuary and appears in a portable shrine barque in front of the entire city. To mark this special occasion, the cult statue receives an offering of myrrh to purify40 and to perfume the divine head and body (Dendera IV, 136, 1–​137, 3): Presenting myrrh. Words to be spoken: Take yourself a vessel filled with unguent on the arms of the lion, ruler of Punt. You anoint your head, you anoint your body. Your heart rejoices in the smell of [your] perfume. You go out in a procession of the chapel of your manifestation (=statue), the gods and the people are happy to see you. The divinity receives a festive floral collar made up of plants with an intoxicating aroma (Dendera VI, 65, 1–​66, 2): The King of Upper and Lower Egypt is coming in front of you Hathor, lady of Iunet, Eye of Re, lady of the sky, mistress of all the gods. He is presenting an usekh-​collar to you made 650

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up of intoxicating and aromatic ỉbw-​plants (lit. plants of intoxication and aroma) that protect you in the Place of Drunkenness. He celebrates the festival of eternity (Heh) in the second month of the season of inundation. The festival is on the fifth day of the month. The boat shrine with the statue of the god leaves the temple and it is carried in a procession to another temple. In order to render this holy day different from all other days of the year, myrrh is burnt during the entire course of the procession. The king accompanies the divine barque with a censer. The scent of myrrh permeates the streets of the entire city (Mammisi of Edfu 84, 17; Chassinat 1939): See, the roads of Mesen (Edfu) are imbued with the scent of myrrh. [The sovereign] strides in them. The divine nature manifests itself through the scent of myrrh to the entire populace. This processional festival is the only opportunity throughout the year for every inhabitant of the city to experience the smell of the god, the very essence of the divine. Thus, the priests instruct all to consciously smell the myrrh on fire (P. Sallier IV and P. Cairo JE 86637, IV. pt. 7; Leitz 1994): The gods are rejoicing. Your heart should be (directed) to the incense on the fire. Smell the sweet (scent of) myrrh! The festival is accompanied by dancers, musicians, and singers. The inhabitants of the city drink wine to a point of intoxication to be able to perceive the divine with their entire body and mind. The sweet smell of wine fills the streets of the city (Edfu VIII, 63, 8–​10): Take yourself the vineyard, noble woman, lady of the vineyard, Eye of Re in the Residence of Re (Edfu), the tamarisks that bow down under the things that are in it, together with the sweet-​smelling wine. Dendera is in a festive ambiance. Tarer (Dendera) is in joy. Similar to the god, the townsfolk anoint themselves with myrrh and place floral garlands around their necks for the festive occasion. The smell of myrrh, flowers, and wine constitute in unison the olfactory landscape of the holy day, permeating the processional way of the city (Dendera V, 60, 1–​7): Hathor, the great lady of Iunet, goes out on a procession. There are no opponents in her way. The heart of her Majesty is in exultation. The gods of the sky are in great jubilation, the ancestors of the land are in joy, the Hathors grab the tambourine, the noble ladies carry their menat-​necklace. The inhabitants of Iunet are drunk from drinking wine, flower garlands on their heads, the people of Edfu arrive in joy. They are anointed with dry myrrh of the best quality. Everyone celebrates the Golden One.

Smell of a banquet An official has been confirmed in a high post and to celebrate the occasion, he hosts a banquet at his residence. The guests arrive with gifts. One guest offers the host garden fragrance to honour him. The garden fragrance is made up of the scent of all manner of fresh plants growing in the garden, hence its name “garden fragrance” (stỉ šᴈ). It is the scent that is being offered as an object 651

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in its own right, and not the substances emitting the odours (Theban Tomb 100 of Rekhmire; Davies 1943): Take yourself the [garden] fragrance that I brought for you. The guests are anointed with perfume oils, an unguent cone is placed on their head, with a lotus flower in the front, and a floral garland around their necks. The guests smell heavenly and are ready to celebrate (Theban Tomb 78 of Horemhab; Brack and Brack 1980): Your fragrance is better than that of the land of the god. Little do they know that Hathor, the goddess of love, enters the banquet uninvited and disguised as a young, attractive woman. She brings along love in the form of intoxicating perfume, which makes everyone at the banquet fall in love (P. Chester Beatty I, 16, 12–​17, 1; Gardiner 1931): The sky descends with a puff of its wind, so that she (Hathor) may bring you her fragrance, the scent will flood and intoxicate all those who are present. It is the Golden Goddess who destinies it (love) for you as a reward to let you fulfil the span of your life.

Discussion In the smellwalk presented here, I have drawn upon ancient Egyptian written documents with relevance to the sense of smell from all periods of pharaonic history and have focused on the urban context of the scenes described in the texts as vital for comprehending the Egyptians’ daily life and their olfactory experiences. Knowing that the foul-​smelling sick were treated at home, that lovers met in gardens surrounded by the intoxicating fragrance of flowers, and that the streets of the city were imbued with the scent of myrrh during festivals can significantly contribute to our understanding of urban life and place perception in ancient Egypt. The above smellwalk recreated the smell genetics of an idealised ancient Egyptian city based on written documents. However, as noted earlier, the smells mentioned in the written sources are the ones that the scribes deliberately chose to include, and thus they might not be representative of the entire smellscape. A comparable study based on archaeological evidence might result in a very different reconstruction. The written sources do not mention odours, such as live animal husbandry, meat processing, carcass disposal, human waste, and garbage disposal, which as Bartosiewicz (2003) has demonstrated, must have been a source of stench in every ancient city. Evidence of such practices have been uncovered during excavations of Egyptian urban spaces, affirming that these smells made an important contribution to the urban smellscape. A room in the Middle Kingdom private house H 70 at Elephantine, for instance, revealed a 6-​centimetre-​ thick layer of earth and goat droppings (Arnold 2015: 157). Brian Muhs (2015) has found that starting in the Saite period, the number of houses and urban spaces rose due to increasing population density, which led to an accumulation of dirt and garbage in the streets. Similarly, Nadine Moeller (2015) has demonstrated that in the Old Kingdom town of Heit el-​Gurob at Giza, the inhabitants put their garbage in front of their houses and that some houses served entirely as garbage dumps.41 The silence of the texts with respect to such undesired city smells demonstrates that the ancient Egyptian written documents deliberately present idealised smellscapes, the perfect world of ma’at, where the city is all in all a sweet-​smelling living environment commissioned by the gods and put into effect by the king. While the texts do not shy away from describing stinking 652

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professions and emphasizing odour differences motivated by social hierarchy, a strong olfactory hierarchy corresponds to the ancient Egyptian worldview and is a part of the world of ma’at. Expelling the stench of disease was similarly an act of ma’at, which belonged to the daily task of physicians in the city. The scribe and physician Djehutinakhtankh states in his autobiography that he expelled the stench of those who were sick, and by doing so, he acted according to the principles of ma’at: “My magic belonged to those who had a sick face, my curse to those who had a stench” (Hatnub 12, 13–​15; Anthes 1928).42 Consequently, the written sources only elaborate on those city smells, which were acceptable in the ideal world of ma’at, either because they were considered pleasant, or if they were considered unpleasant, they were a part of the accepted social hierarchy, or expelling them served as a righteous act. Odours that did not belong in any of these categories did not make it to the written records.43 For the reconstruction of ancient Egyptian smellscapes, I do not find Derrick’s idea of micro and macro smell environments beneficial, as these environments existed at the same time and could have intersected with each other. The overwhelming smell of festivals, for example, could have entered from the streets into private houses, or the noblewoman censing her clothing with kyphi at home could have brought the fragrance outside as she left the house. Henshaw and McLean’s approach of comparing city smells with notes in perfumery—​identifying base notes/​background smells, middle notes/​episodic smells, and top notes/​short-​lived smells—​is similarly not beneficial for the current study due to insufficient evidence in the written sources. Except for the temple smells, which occurred daily, and the festival smells that occurred annually, it is impossible to know how often the specific “smell stories” I put together above actually took place. Porteous and McLean emphasise that smells are markers of seasonal temporality. In this regard, the ancient Egyptian documents are not quiet. Numerous texts highlight the strong scent of blossoming vegetation after the inundation of the Nile and others describe the festive smells of holy days permeating the processional way of the city. The archaeological record has much to contribute to our understanding of the seasonality of smells. Rzeuska (2006: 465–​492) excavated a large number of pottery vessels at Saqqara filled with floral offerings, which were burnt during funerary rites. Based on the type of flowers used, researchers were able to reconstruct the season of the offerings. Similarly, the innermost coffin of Tutankhamun yielded an intricate floral collar around the golden face of the boy king, the flowers and fruits of which reveal, as concluded by Newberry, that Tutankhamun was buried sometime between the middle of March and the end of April (Hepper 1990: 9–​10). The rich documents detailing the olfactory world of temples in particular suggest that this built environment can be classified as a smellmark, a term originally coined by Porteous (1990: 27) that refers to the olfactory equivalent of a landmark—​a place, neighbourhood, or city that is distinguished by a distinct smell. Furthermore, descriptions of food smells in the temple demonstrate that the smell of food was a powerful instrument for expressing and shaping interactions between the king and the gods, and that the smell of the offerings, rather than the taste, was what the gods enjoyed. However, this is not completely astonishing since the sense of smell plays a key role in eating. Interactions between the sense of smell and taste occur every time we eat or drink. The ancient Egyptian perception of certain food smells might strike the modern reader. The smell of roast meat in particular was so meaningful for the Egyptians that in the Ptolemaic period, there was a separate word for it—​ḳn, “smell of fat”—​that referred specifically to the fatty part of the meat being grilled. This smell was considered not only extremely pleasant by the Egyptians, but it was also instrumental in olfactory communication with the environment, signalling peace, authority, and defeat over the enemy. Interestingly, a gourmet chef in Berlin revealed to me in a private conversation that grilling fatty pieces of meat was the most repugnant 653

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odour he experienced in the kitchen, and many other people I have spoken to about my research have reacted with disgust at the idea of mixing the smell of roast meat with the scent of perfume, flowers, incense, and other foodstuff, as in Egyptian temples. The marked difference in the perception of the smell of roast meat between ancient Egypt and the modern West demonstrates a cultural shift in the meaning of meat in society and shows how different odour perceptions of food might be from culture to culture.44 As Henshaw (2014: 85) wrote, “food odours have the potential to both delight and disgust, with the meanings that are attached to them being changeable and invoking different emotions at different times, in different places and different people.” The smellscape of annual festivals that permeated the streets of the city might be classified by another term coined by Porteous (1990: 360): a smell event. Three important characteristics distinguish processional festivals from temple rituals: availability, space, and duration. First, as opposed to the daily temple ritual, where only the king, priests, and the rest of the temple staff could smell the divine, during festivals, the scent of the god was available to the entire population. Second, temple rituals took place within a restricted, enclosed space and were characterised by a relative lack of movement. Processional festivals, on the other hand, were marked by constant movement in a large, open space with smells, such as that of myrrh, travelling in the air and signalling celebration.45 Third, in contrast with the daily temple ritual, which only lasted for a few hours, festivals lasted several days and many were celebrated with multiple processions, each procession lasting at least one day, but possibly more.46 The strong scent of myrrh, flowers, and wine filling the air during the festivals must have considerably affected the place perception, as well as the physiological and psychological state of the city inhabitants. An essential characteristic of festivals was that they always reoccurred at the same time of the year and in the same public place. Through the immediate link of smell and memory, the reoccurrence of the scent of myrrh, floral garlands, and wine on holy days recalled in people’s mind the meaning of the festival, assuring religious and historical continuity. In other words, odour memory assisted in creating cultural memory—​a social structure, in which every member of the ancient Egyptian society participated. The scents making up the olfactory landscape of festivals were cultural codes understood by the ancient Egyptian populace—​what Jan Assmann (1992) called kulturelles Gedächtnis, or “cultural memory.” Religious rituals in public urban spaces create a feeling of “togetherness,” a feeling of belonging to a group in a certain place—​they create place identity. Thus, the smell of festivals must have played a key factor in shaping place identity in ancient Egypt. The shared, public nature of the scent of festivals in ancient Egypt, which would have spread over a vast urban area, is not to be underestimated. This argues against Ruggles (2017: 126–​127) who, drawing on her work on the smellscape of Islamic gardens of Al-​Andalus in Spain, suggests that smell is necessarily intimate, because it invades the body, each inhaled smell entering our nasal passages and lungs; vision, on the other hand, she argues, can be held at a distance. As we have seen above, the smell of festivals in ancient Egypt must have dominated a very large, or possibly, even the entire urban smellscape, as an inscription from the temple of Edfu indicated, “the roads of Mesen (Edfu) are imbued with the scent of myrrh” (Mammisi of Edfu 84, 17; Chassinat 1939). Henshaw (2014: 29–​30) similarly noted numerous modern examples, where unidentified odours travelled large distances and covered vast areas. With relevance to the smell of festivals, it is noteworthy that it is being anointed with myrrh and drinking wine that the scribal students of the House of Life vehemently refused. Both myrrh and wine were fragrant, luxurious substances designated for the festive landscape of holy days. The scribes of the House of Life dedicated themselves to a life of studying devoid of olfactory pleasure. By living a simple, reclusive life centred around learning, without earthly pleasures, they hoped to reach a higher level of knowledge.

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The written sources discussed above also demonstrate that in their daily urban lives, the Egyptians were surrounded by a plethora of both pleasant scents and unpleasant stinks, including the smell of sweat, diseases, perfume oils and unguents, scented clothing, the smoke of kyphi, trees, flowers, and plants. Bad odours, both of humans and animals, were taken seriously, as the Egyptians were well aware of the fact that they could indicate diseases and thus, sick people with a bad smell were immediately treated in order to get rid of the stench and the causative agent. Because a pleasant body smell was of utmost importance in the hot climate of Egypt, perfumes were in high demand.47 Perfume oils and unguents were made through maceration by steeping resins, flowers, herbs, spices, and wood in wine, animal fat, and vegetable oil. Through their antifungal and antibacterial properties, resins, barks, and herbs killed micro-​organisms, eliminating body odour and providing for soft and fragrant skin. Homes were censed with kyphi to mask other odours and purify the air. The fragrance of kyphi also had an impregnation effect by attaching itself to other items or materials in the space, such as clothing. Besides censing clothing with kyphi, garments were treated with perfume oils, such as camphor (tỉ-​šps). As presented above, lovemaking was accompanied by the scent of mandragora, blossoming twigs and flowers at the pond. The combination of literary, ritual, and everyday texts gives us the impression that the aforementioned smells would have been common and belonged to the everyday smellscapes of urban living in ancient Egypt. While incapable of reflecting all daily urban smell environments in all time periods, they yield vital information about the various meanings of odours experienced in the city, and create understandings of olfactory space in the ancient Egyptian urban environment. We learn that the ancient Egyptians were highly focused on hygiene, wished to expel foul body odours, put great emphasis on smelling pleasant and attractive, appreciated the scents of nature, and were aware of the fact that smells can communicate disease or sexual attraction. Furthermore, the texts reveal a social hierarchy, which was both olfactory and spatial, with certain scents being confined to specific urban establishments. The king comes out of the palace bringing a cloud of fragrance of myrrh, lotus, and perfume with him. The queen enters the palace’s pillared hall filling it with her perfume. The prince is sweet-​smelling like a large lotus bud amongst the courtiers at the royal court. The high official bearing the title “Great of Fragrances in the Palace” makes sure the invaluable perfumes of the royal family remain within the palace precinct, separate from the rest of the society. The elite, who can afford their own garden, take a walk in an area with flowers and all manner of sweet-​smelling plants or take a bath in a pool edged with reeds while wearing fragrant clothing. The scribes in the House of Life are “stinking bulls,” since they consciously chose a life without sweet scents in return for secret knowledge. Those scribes who abandon their profession wander from street to street stinking of beer. The workmen representing the lowest strata of society are confined to their workshops on the outskirts of the city surrounded by foul smells.48 The smith is at the opening of his furnace stinking more than fish roe, the stoker’s fingers are rotten because of all the smoke, while the sandal-​maker’s odour is penetrating due to mixing tan. Hence, a thorough investigation of the written sources reveals that urban smellscapes in ancient Egypt were directly linked to the social environment, the smell inequalities experienced in the different urban spaces reflecting the socio-​economic inequalities. What is unquestionable based on the above study is that the ancient Egyptians’ perception of the smell of the city was markedly different from our modern perception. Henshaw’s (2014: 11) smellwalks and smell surveys revealed that urban smells today are more negatively rated: modern city dwellers consider cities as sites of olfactory conflict, where negatively perceived odours are combined with those that are culturally somewhat more acceptable. Similarly, Dann and Jacobsen’s (2003) study of smell perceptions in classical and contemporary texts of rural towns and large cities all over the world, such as London, Chicago, Cologne, Warsaw, Moscow, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Delhi, Istanbul, Beirut, Lagos, Doha, and Marrakesh, found 655

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that urban smellscapes were portrayed far more negatively than were rural smellscapes. Even in medieval Egypt, the smell of cities has been described in a highly derogatory manner, including the works of the Egyptian physician Ibn Radwn writing in the eleventh century CE , who elaborates on the urban smellscapes of Fustat (medieval Cairo), with references to vapours that will not dissolve, and the smell of decay, sewers, smoke, and dust in the streets (On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt; Dols 1984). The comparison of the ancient Egyptians’ perception of urban smellscapes with medieval and modern perceptions shows that the way we experience smell in the city is embedded within the social and political contexts of our culture. Ancient Egyptian cities did not necessarily smell better, rather it is the perception of the city as a social and cultural phenomenon that leads a nosewitness49 to describe the urban smellscapes they experience in a positive or negative manner. By focusing on written evidence related to the sense of smell in an urban context in the present study, I have revealed a new understanding of olfactory space in ancient Egyptian cities and of various urban smell environments both in daily life and on special occasions. With the help of the written sources, I have reconstructed the smellscape of an idealised ancient Egyptian city, identifying important details about place perception and place identity, olfactory communication, odour preferences, religious customs, social inequalities, diet, hygiene, medical practices, animal husbandry, and sexual behaviour in ancient Egypt. I hope that this chapter will inspire Egyptologists and other scholars of ancient history to consider the sense of smell in their linguistic and archaeological work.

Notes 1. The present chapter contains some preliminary results of my Ph.D. thesis entitled “The Archaeology of Smell in Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Anthropological Study Based on Written Sources” registered at the Egyptology Seminar of the Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin, Germany. My first supervisor is Prof. Dr. Jochem Kahl, the head of the Egyptology Seminar of the Freie Universität Berlin. My second supervisor is Prof. Dr. Friederike Seyfried, the director of the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in Berlin. My Ph.D. project is carried out within the framework of the archaeology of the senses and explores the sense of smell in ancient Egypt. Smell is a social phenomenon, a gateway of knowledge, an instrument of power, and a source of pleasure and pain; it is subject to dramatically different constructions in different societies and periods. The goal of my research is to examine the role of olfaction in all spheres of ancient Egyptian society from the very beginning until the end of pharaonic history (3200–​332 BCE ) based on written evidence. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. Due to the limited scope of the present chapter, my translations are not accompanied by a transliteration.   The only publication to have treated smells as a whole is Lise Manniche’s Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt (1999). However, this work does not treat the role of smell in the Egyptian culture. For articles on smell, see Beaux 2015; von Lieven 2016; Price 2018; Goldsmith 2019a; 2019b. 2. Geographer J. Douglas Porteous was the first to use the word “blandscape” in his 1990 publication, warning the modern world that if we keep annihilating negative smells from our urban environments, we might end up in the future in severely impoverished olfactory blandscapes. 3. In 1987, a few years before Porteous, archaeologist and philologist Paul Faure (1990: 270) also noted in his book Parfums et aromates de l’Antiquité that each city has its own individual smell. I will quote the German edition of Faure’s work entitled Magie der Düfte: “Jedes Haus, jede Siedlung, jedes Stadtviertel hat seinen eigenen Geruch. So sagt man, Athen sei staubig, Jerusalem rieche innerhalb der Festungsmauern nach Hammel und Öl, Palermo nach Zitrusfrüchten, Kairo nach billigem, gegerbtem Leder, Sanaa nach Gewürzen, Delhi nach feuchter Erde, Bangkok nach Baumharzen und Weihrauch und Djakarta nach Blumen.” 4. “One alternative is to explore the depiction of smell, both spatially and temporally, in literature. The use of smell in literature demonstrates that while one may stand outside a visual landscape and judge it artistically, as one does a painting, one is immersed in smellscape; it is immediately evocative, emotional 656

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and meaningful. Literature provides ample data for the discussion of smells of persons and landscapes in space and through time” (Porteous 1990: 360). 5. Following Baxandall’s “period eye” concept, Jenner (2011: 342–​343) was the first to use the term “period nose”: “Smells … are perceptual entities. Ontologically, they come into being in the period nose of the perceiver. The historian of smell therefore generally sees her-​or himself as engaged in a form of social or cultural history, exploring the history of mentalities. Their project is the reconstruction of the history of the sense of smell, of the classification and perceptions of odors and of their cultural meanings.” 6. What McHugh calls “olfactory benchmark,” I call “prototype of smell,” for example, fish was the prototype of stench in ancient Egypt. For olfactory prototypes in ancient Egypt, see Goldsmith 2019a. 7. Studies that have investigated the smellscapes of particular urban establishments or industries include Bartosiewicz’s (2003) study of the stinking industries of ancient and medieval cities; Flohr’s (2017) description of the smellscape of the Roman fullonica; Day’s (2017) reconstruction of the experience of liquid sparsiones in ancient Roman theatres; and Buccellati’s (2020) investigation of how the smell of toilets, kitchens, and workshops was managed for ancient Near Eastern palaces. 8. The word “urban” or “urbanism” with relevance to ancient Egypt requires a definition here. I agree with Nadine Moeller (2016: 1, 7) that size and population density are not the decisive criteria for defining the urban character of Egyptian settlements and follow Moeller’s definition of urbanism in ancient Egypt: “Urban society in ancient Egypt is defined here as the element of the population that is exposed to the presence of urban centers and experiencing the existence of urbanism with the overall settlement system.” As Moeller (2016: 7–​14) notes, modern definitions of “village,” “town,” “city,” and “urban centers” cannot be applied to ancient Egyptian culture “because of the inherent cultural differences and traditions that shape these concepts.” The word niwt was used to designate a wide range of settlements, from farming villages and estates to major cities and national capitals. Archaeological evidence from ancient Egypt shows that a certain number of inhabitants in urban settlements were also involved in agricultural activities. Moreover, written sources inform us that some urban dwellers not only lived in a town, but also owned property in the countryside. Thus, it was not a prerogative for members of the ancient Egyptian urban society to live in urban centres as such. Following the aforementioned definition and understanding of urban life in ancient Egypt, a great many members of ancient Egyptian society could have participated in the urban smellscapes I describe in the present chapter. 9. I considered Amarna for this study, owing to the fact that the site has been thoroughly excavated and includes an array of urban establishments; however, the open architectural features of the Great Aton Temple, which are markedly different from the closed and limited inner spaces of traditional Egyptian temples, made it an unfit choice to authentically represent the smell of temples. 10. On the smells of mummification, funerary customs, the necropolis, tombs, and the hereafter, see Goldsmith 2019b, and my forthcoming doctoral dissertation. 11. For a detailed description of the sweet scent of ma’at versus the stench of isfet, see Goldsmith 2019a. 12. stỉ ntr, “divine scent,” refers to the scent of myrrh here. 13. Whether the word ntyw is to be indeed identified with myrrh (Commiphora spp.) is a matter of debate. I find the current state of written evidence compelling for equating ntyw with myrrh based on its designated medical use, during religious festivals, and for the process of embalming. Thus, in the present article I translate the word ntyw as “myrrh.” 14. The word sntr has been largely identified as frankincense (Boswellia spp.) or Pistacia resin (Pistacia spp.). I follow Margaret Serpico (2004; 2011; Serpico and White 2000; 2001) in stating that sntr is not a specific botanical identity, but a function. sntr, which means “to make divine,” is a generic term indicating a sweet-​smelling resinous substance that served to confer divinity upon any object it came into contact with. sntr could have designated both frankincense (Boswellia spp.) or Pistacia resin (Pistacia spp.) depending on the resins available to the Egyptians at the time period in question. In the 18th Dynasty, for example, as Serpico (2000: 458–​459) has shown, sntr predominantly designated Pistacia resin. In the present chapter, the word sntr is consistently translated as “incense.” 15. The first attestation of this title is inscribed on the 1st Dynasty statue of Rdyt in the Egyptian Museum Cairo, CG 1: pr dšr wr ỉd.t ․htp dỉ=f, “Great of Fragrance in the Treasury by Bringing the Offering.” All other attestations date to the Middle Kingdom, written wr ỉd.t pr nsw, “Great of Fragrance in the Palace.” 16. See, e.g., the censer in the Brooklyn Museum collection (72.8). 17. See, e.g., the Daily Temple Ritual 176–​177 (Moret 1902): “Pure, twice, is Amun-​Re, Lord of the Two Lands, Amun-​Re, Kamutef, superintendent of his great throne. Take yourself the Eye of Horus. Its scent comes to you. The scent of the Eye of Horus is over you. Pure, twice, is Amun-​Re, Lord of the Two Lands. Four times.” 657

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18. See, e.g., the Daily Temple Ritual 116, 8–​10 (Moret 1902): “The incense of the god issued from him, the smell of the body fluid issued from his divine body, the exudation, which fell on the ground […] It is the Eye of Horus. If it lives, the people will live, your body will live.” 19. See, e.g., the Daily Temple Ritual 117, 11–​1 (Moret 1902), which attests to an intensification of the smell of burning incense. The longer the king, or the priest substituting him, is burning the incense, the stronger the scent becomes and the closer he is to god: “The incense comes, twice, the scent of the god comes, the fragrance of the god comes, the grains (of the incense) come, the perfume of the god comes. Its smell is over you Amun-​Re, Lord of the Two Lands.” 20. See, e.g., KRI II, 2, 627, 11–​14: “Censing for Amun-​Re, the king of the gods … it is pure for your ka, [king] of the gods, […] the strong one with pure, sweet-​smelling incense. May you smell it, so that your ka will be pleased.” 21. Out of all the fragrant substances in the temple, the scent of incense (sntr) had the largest spectrum of functions. A detailed description of all of its functions will be published in my Ph.D. dissertation. 22. The main difference between sntr and ntyw presented as an offering in the temple is that sntr was burnt, while ntyw was mostly cooked (nwd) and made into an unguent or an oil. 23. From the Old Kingdom until the Middle Kingdom, the written documents mention seven sacred oils: sti ḥᴈb, ḥkn.w, sft, nẖnm, twᴈ.wt, ḥᴈtt š, and ḥᴈtt tḥnw. In the New Kingdom, their number grows to ten. The three other oils added later are md.t, ỉbr, and bᴈḳ. Calling them sacred “oils” seems to be incorrect, since some of them must have been solid unguents, while others were liquid oils. 24. Chemical analyses of perfume residues have not revealed anything conclusive yet on the ingredients of the sacred oils, see e.g., Serpico 2011, and only two of the recipes have been preserved—​ḥkn.w and md.t. 25. Since we do not know the exact content or function of each perfume, I suggest not translating their names. stỉ ḥᴈb, for example, means “festival scent,” but it was not used during festivals per se, but instead in the daily temple ritual and for embalming. The references that provide an explanation about the designated use of each perfume, such as the one quoted above, are also inconsistent and seem to be motivated by rhymes, for example, nẖnm n ẖn.tỉ=t r ẖnm ḫpr.w=t nšp ẖnm.tỉ bhd=f. 26. The scent of the lotus was an emblem of the creation of the world. One of the creation myths, which survived only in part, told that the world was a limitless dark sea before there was life. Out of this rose a large, luminous lotus bud bringing light and fragrance to the world. The lotus was also a symbol of the sun god, Re. Every morning, the redolent blue lotus flower rises to the surfaces of the water and opens and closes and sinks at night. This unique blooming-​cycle reminded the Egyptians of the sun. The analogy of the lotus and the sun caused the Egyptians to associate the lotus flower with regeneration, as it was believed that in the morning, the deceased appears in the barque of the sun god Re in the horizon and disappears in the Netherworld at night. Nefertem, the god of lotus, was associated with the sun himself. It was believed that Nefertem was the young, regenerating sun that appears in the horizon every morning. 27. For more on the smell of meat grilled on the altar as an olfactory sign of peace and authority, see Goldsmith 2019a. 28. Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. med. habil. Hanns Hatt, medical doctor and smell researcher at the University of Bochum, has demonstrated that we do not only smell with our noses, but our entire body contains smell receptors (Hatt and Dee 2010). When we consume a fragrant drink, such as wine, which consists of hundreds of aromas (Hatt and Dee: 2012: 94–​96), we consume the scents, and the smell receptors in our stomach are activated. Thus, the sentence “Its fragrance fills your body” describing the fragrance of wine being absorbed in the body is medically correct. 29. nfr.w n fnd, “beauty for the nose” or “goodness for the nose,” is a rare literary expression to denote “fragrance.” 30. On the architectural plan of the temple, see Arnold 1962: 43–​44. While reliefs on the walls of sanctuaries show food offerings being brought into the cult chamber and placed in front of the statue of the deity, it is unclear if these depictions represent reality (Arnold 1962: 9–​10). 31. The reference is unfortunately fragmentary. I understand that the smell in question is used for training a horse, which is supported by the fact that the topic of the entire compendium is horse training. 32. Unidentified plant. Germer (2008: 23) notes that ỉbw is probably an odiferous plant. 33. It is the breaking down of trimethylamine oxide into trimethylamine, when the fish are killed, that causes the characteristic “fishy” smell. When breasts are infected, they also contain trimethylamine. Thus, medically, it is indeed a correct observation that infected breasts smell like rotten fish. 34. Interestingly, the text uses the verb mᴈᴈ, “to see,” as an instruction to perceive the smell of breast milk, literally “see the smell.” Since the same verb is used twice in this short text, the choice of words must be deliberate. Ancient Egyptian literature contains multiple instances of synaesthesia, where visual sensation enhances olfactory sensation. For example, when mirrors are offered to Hathor in her temple 658

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at Dendera, first the goddess observes the form of her lips and the glow of her face in the mirror, then she perceives the scent of the summer lotus under her nose. Mirrors in Egyptian are called “that which reveals the face.” Smell was such an important element of one’s overall appearance that even mirrors were thought to reflect it: “Offering mirrors. I receive the disk. I hold the mirror. I present (it) in front of your ka. You see your countenance. Your heart is glad. Your mouth rejoices in its form. Your face glows. Your lips are sweet. The scent of the summer lotus is for your nostrils” (Dendera VI, 22, 1–​3). 35. Griffith (1898: 12) establishes that H, the fifth and sixth lines of which are completed by C, refers to some quadruped, perhaps a dog, which appears again on D. 36. The text states that a sick dog smells like an m  m.w animal. The classifier depicts a small quadruped with short legs and a long tail; the head is unfortunately lost. It must be an animal with a strong, penetrant smell, such as a skunk. Griffith (1898: 13) suggests an ichneumon (Egyptian mongoose) or a rat. The TLA translates it as “shrewmouse” (lemma-​no. 37830). The shrew (Soricidae) is a mole-​like mammal that produces an evil-​smelling secretion when threatened. Due to their foul smell and taste, dogs immediately spit out shrews. Based on the shrew’s foul smell, I translate the word m  m.w as “shrew.” 37. Lüchtrath (1999) and Incordino (2017) have convincingly demonstrated that tỉ-​šps is to be identified with camphor (Cinnamomum camphora) and not with cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum or Cinnamomum cassia). 38. Written documents demonstrate that the ancient Egyptians were well aware of the narcotic and aphrodisiac effects of the mandragora (Mandragora officinarum), in Egyptian rrm.t. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether they knew that in large quantities, the roots of the mandragora are highly poisonous, and could even be lethal (Müller-​Ebeling and Rätsch 2004). Germer (2008: 294) notes that the mandragora is conspicuously not listed in medical documents, even though it has multiple pharmaceutical effects. She concludes that it must have had another name besides rrm.t, which was employed in medical texts. 39. Prof. Hanns Hatt confirmed to me in a private consultation that this reference is medically correct. The skin contains smell receptors, which would absorb the scent of garlic in the vagina and transfer it to through the blood to the mouth. Young and fertile women tend to be more moist than elder women in the vaginal area. The more moisture the vaginal area contains, the stronger the scent will be, and the faster it will arrive to the mouth. 40. See, e.g., Dendera IV, 294, 1–​2: “Presenting double vessels made out of lapis lazuli filled with myrrh to purify this goddess on the day of the New Year (Wepet-​Renpet). Words to be spoken: Take yourself myrrh that came out of the gods, the divine fragrance is for your body.” 41. As Henshaw (2014: 150) has demonstrated, the process of waste collection and disposal can significantly affect urban smellscape experience and perception in a variety of ways. 42. The sentence ỉw ḥkᴈ(=ỉ) n ḥr ỉnd šn.t(=ỉ) n stỉ is difficult to understand. From a grammatical and semantic point of view, this sentence is the closest to the following sentence in the inscription: “(A) My food belonged to those, who were hungry, (B) my unguent to those who were not anointed.” Both sentences consist of two parts and both are introduced by iw. In both sentences, n stands for “to/​for,” referring to doing something for those who were in need. 43. Another source of stench in ancient cities would have been the smell of putrefaction, as mentioned for example by Koloski-​Ostrow (2015). The Egyptians wrote about the stench of corpses in detail; however, current evidence at hand indicates that the process of embalming took place in the necropolis, which is outside the scope of this chapter. 44. During her smellwalks, Henshaw (2014: 91) also came across disgust over the smell of meat at the Doncaster meat market. Vegetarians reacted to the smell of meat in a very negative manner. Henshaw notes that the hanging carcasses and the redness of the meat provide vivid, visual stimuli, which must also impact odour perception. 45. The size of the urban area dominated by the smell of festivals was dependent on the nature of the surrounding architecture and the wind; for example, air flow could have had a neutralising effect on smell, diluting its concentration, or a diffusing effect, reducing concentrations over time and potentially moving it from a fixed to a wider location (Henshaw: 2014: 217). 46. The duration of the Opet Festival varied from 12 to 24 days (Murnane 1982) and the Festivals of Sokar, Min, and Osiris at Abydos were celebrated with several processions (Bleeker 1967: 82–​86; Stadelmann 1982: 1162). 47. That scented unguents and oils were in high demand and widely available in ancient Egyptian society is demonstrated by the fact that they served as a payment for work. While on strike during the time of 659

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Ramesses III, the workers of the city of the dead of Thebes complained: “We have come here because we are hungry and thirsty. We have no clothing, no unguents, no fish and no vegetables” (P. Turin Cat. 1880 [Turin Strike Papyrus]). 48. At Amarna, the workshops were located in the southeastern part of the city, where all the non-​royal residences were built. The royal palace located in the northern part of the city would have never been bothered by the smell of the workshops, since the main direction of the wind in Egypt is north-​south. The northern wind would have carried the stench of the workshops further south. Thus, urban architecture at Amarna demonstrates that smellscapes and wind direction were considered in urban design. 49. “Nosewitness” is a word coined by Porteous (1990: 360) to describe the equivalent of an eyewitness.

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Faure, P. 1990. Magie der Düfte: Eine Kultugeschichte der Wohlgerüche von den Pharaonen zu den Römern. Munich: Artemis. Flohr, M. 2017. “Beyond Smell: The Sensory Landscape of the Roman Fullonica,” in E. Betts, ed., Senses of the Empire. London and New York: Routledge, 39–​53. Gardiner, A. H. 1931. The Library of A. Chester Beatty, Description of a Hieratic Papyrus with a Mythological Story, Love-​Songs and other Miscellaneous Texts, The Chester Beatty Papyri, No. I. London: Oxford University Press. Gardiner, A. H. 1937. Late-​Egyptian Miscellanies. Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca VII. Brussels: Édition de la Fondation Égyptologique. Germer, R. 2008. Handbuch der altägyptischen Heilpflanzen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Goldsmith, D. 2019a. “Fish, Fowl, and Stench in Ancient Egypt,” in A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. ANEM 25. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 335–​360. Goldsmith, D. 2019b. “The Smell of Mummification,” in R. Shikaku, ed., Mummies and Gods: Afterlife in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Okayama: Okayama Orient Museum, 18–​23 (in Japanese). Grapow, H. 1958. Grundriss der Medizin der alten Ägypter, Band V: Die medizinischen Texte in hieroglyphischer Umschreibung. Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag. Griffith, F. Ll. 1898. The Petrie Papyri: Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob. London: Quaritch. Hatt, H., and R. Dee. 2010. Niemand riecht so gut wie du: Die geheimen Botschaften der Düfte. Munich: Piper. Hatt, H., and R. Dee. 2012. Das kleine Buch vom Riechen und Schmecken. Munich: Knaus. Helck, W. 1970. Die Lehre des DwA-​xtjj. Kleine Ägyptische Texte 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Henshaw, V. 2014. Urban Smellscapes: Understanding and Designing City Smell Environments. London and New York: Routledge. Hepper, N. 1990. Pharaoh’s Flowers: The Botanical Treasures of Tutankhamun. London: HMSO. Herz, R. S., and T. Engen. 1996. “Odor Memory: Review and Analysis.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 3 (3): 300–​313. Huber, B. 2018. “Ancient Aromatics at the Oasis of Tayma, NW Arabia: An Olfactory Perspective.” M.A. Dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin. Incordino, I. 2017. “African Aromata in Egypt: The ‘ti-​shepes,’ ” in I. Incordino and P. P. Creasman, eds., Flora Trade between Egypt and Africa in Antiquity: Proceedings of a Conference Held in Naples, Italy, 13 April 2015. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 49–​63. Jäger, S. 2004. Altägyptische Berufstypologien. Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica 4. Göttingen: Seminar für Koptologie und Ägyptologie. Jasnow, R., and K.-​T. Zauzich. 2014. Conversations in the House of Life: A New Translation of the Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz. Jenner, M. S. R. 2011. “Follow Your Nose? Smell, Smelling and Their Histories.” The American Historical Review 116 (2): 335–​351. Kockelmann, H., and E. Winter. 2016. Philae III: Die Zweite Ostkolonade des Tempels der Isis in Philae (CO II und CO II K), Teil 2: Tafeln. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Koloski-​Ostrow, A. O. 2015. “Roman Urban Smells: The Archaeological Evidence,” in M. Bradley, ed., Smell and the Ancient Senses. London and New York: Routledge, 90–​109. Leitz, C. 1994. Tagewählerei: Das Buch ḥ3t nḥḥ pḥ.wy dṯ und verwandte Texte. Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 55. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Leitz, C. 1999. Magical and Medical Papyri of the New Kingdom, Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum VII. London: British Museum Press. Lüchtrath, A. 1999. “Das Kyphirezept,” in D. Kurth, ed., Edfu: Bericht über drei Surveys; Materialien und Studien. Die Inschriften des Tempels von Edfu Begleitheft 5. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 97–​145. Manniche, L. 1999. Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt. London: Opus. McHugh, J. 2012. Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. McLean, K. 2014. “Smellmap: Amsterdam –​Olfactory Art & Smell Visualisation.” Leonardo 50: 92–​93. McLean, K. 2019. “Nose-​First: Practices of Smellwalking and Smellscape Mapping.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Royal College of Art, London. McLean, K., D. Quercia, R. Schifanella, and L. Aiello. 2015. “Smelly Maps: The Digital Life of Urban Smellscapes.” AAAI Publications, Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. Oxford, 327–​336.

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Moeller, N. 2015. “Multifunctionality and Hybrid Households: The Case of Ancient Egypt,” in M. Müller, ed., Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 447–​462. Moeller, N. 2016. The Archaeology of Urbanism in Ancient Egypt: From the Predynastic Period to the End of the Middle Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moret, A. 1902. Le ritual du cult divin journalier en Égypte: D’après les papyrus de Berlin et les textes du temple de Séti Ier à Abydos. Paris: Leroux. Morgan, J. de. 1895. Catalogue des monuments et inscriptions de l’Egypte antique 2, Kom Ombos: première partie. Vienna: Adolphe Holzhausen. Morley, N. 2015. “Urban Smells and Roman Noses,” in M. Bradley, ed., Smell and the Ancient Senses. London and New York: Routledge, 110–​119. Muhs, B. P. 2015. “Property Title, Domestic Architecture, and Household Lifecycles in Egypt,” in M. Müller, ed., Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 321–​337. Müller, W. M. 1899. Die Liebespoesie der alten Ägypter: mit 18 Tafeln in Autographie und 3 Tafeln in Lichtdruck. Leipzig: Hinrichs. Müller-​Ebeling, C., and C. Rätsch. 2004. Zauberpflanze Alraune; Die magische Mandragora. Nördlingen: Steinmeier. Murnane, W. J. 1982. “Opetfest,” in W. Helck and E. Otto, eds., Lexikon der Ägyptologie IV. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 574–​579. Newberry, P. E. 1893. Beni Hasan, Part I, Archaeological Survey of Egypt 1. London: Paul, Trench & Trübner. Porteous, J. D. 1990. Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Posener, G. 1972. Catalogue des ostraca hiératiques littéraires de Deir el Médineh II, 3 (Nos 1214–​1266). DFIFAO 18 (3). Cairo. Price, R. 2018. “Sniffing out the Gods: Archaeology with the Senses.” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnection 17: 137–​155. Reinarz, J. 2014. Historical Perspectives on Smell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rossi, F., and W. Pleyte. 1869–​1876. Papyrus de Turin: Planches. Leiden. Ruggles, D. F. 2017. “Scent, Sound, and the Senses in Islamic Gardens of Al-​Andalus,” in S. Ashbrook Harvey and M. Mullett, eds., Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 123–​139. Rzeuska, T. 2006. Saqqara II: Pottery of the Late Old Kingdom: Funerary Pottery and Burial Customs. Warsaw: Archeobooks. Serpico, M. 2004. “Natural Product Technology in New Kingdom Egypt,” in J. Bourriau and J. S. Phillips, eds., Invention and Innovation: The Social Context of Technological Change 2. Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East, 1650–​1150 BC. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 96–​120. Serpico, M. 2011. “The Contents of Jars in Hatshepsut’s Foundation Deposit at Deir el-​Bahri and their Significance for Trade,” in D. Aston, B. Bader, C. Gallorini, P. Nicholson, and S. Buckingham, eds., Studies on Ancient Egypt Presented to Janine Bourriau on the Occasion of her 70th Birthday. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 204. Leuven: Peeters, 843–​883. Serpico, M., and R. White. 2000. “The Botanical Identity and Transport of Incense during the Egyptian New Kingdom.” Antiquity 74 (286): 884–​897. Serpico, M., and R. White. 2001. “The Use and Identification of Varnish on New Kingdom Funerary Equipment,” in W. V. Davies, ed., Colour and Painting in Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press, 33–​43. Stadelmann, R. 1982. “Prozessionen,” in W. Helck and E. Otto, eds., Lexikon der Ägyptologie IV. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1160–​1164. Verhoeven, U. 2004. “Literarische Ansichtskarten aus dem Norden versus Sehnsucht nach dem Süden,” in G. Burkard, A. Grimm, S. Schoske, and A. Verbovsek, eds., Kon-​Texte: Akten des Symposions “Spurensuche –​Altägypten im Spiegel seiner Texte” München 2. bis 3. Mai 2003. Ägypten und Altes Testament 60. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 65–​80. von Lieven, A. 2016. “‘Thy Fragrance Is in All My Limbs’: On the Olfactory Sense in Ancient Egyptian Religion,” in P. Reichling and M. Strothmann, eds., Religion für die Sinne –​Religion for the Senses. Artificium 58. Oberhausen: Athena, 309–​325.

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30 Crossing sensory boundaries From vocabulary to physical experience Anne-​Caroline Rendu Loisel

Introduction “May the word from his (Marduk’s) lips be pleasant as honey to humankind” (Pinches 1882: 16, r. 3).1 In this quote from a prayer addressed to the Babylonian god, the articulated and pronounced divine words induce a physical pleasure which is compared to the one that arises during a gustatory experience. The vocabulary employed invites the individual into a multisensory experience of the divine voice. What does it mean for those who are listening or reciting this prayer in a ritual context? Can they understand and experience this sweetness of the god’s word? For more than 30 years, anthropology of the senses has invited us to consider a society for its sensory dynamic, which is deeply rooted in a system of customs, values, and representations (Stoller 1989; Classen 1993; Howes 2009; Howes and Classen 2014; among others). The individual experience of the surrounding environment is translated thanks to a complex network of concepts and metaphors, which are shared with the other members of the community. The descriptions of sensory phenomena are culturally defined and vary from one culture to another. For instance, our Western and modern societies have been profoundly marked by the penta-​ sensory model theorised by the Greek philosopher Aristotle: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting form the basis of human perception. However, this model is not suitable for the societies of the ancient Near East: Yael Avrahami (2012) pointed out that seven senses at least may be identified in biblical context. Furthermore, the human bodily experience is undeniably characterised for its multisensorial dynamic; more than one sensory phenomenon are perceived by the body at the same time. Senses interact with each other, as cognitivist anthropologists have recently shown (Candau and Wathelet 2013: 216). Approaching ancient societies through their senses remains quite new in the field of ancient history. Yet this necessity was already suggested by the historian Lucien Febvre during the 1940s, and Alain Corbin has shown the fruitfulness of this topic in order to better understand the political and the social context during and after the French Revolution (Febvre 1941; Corbin 1982; 1994). In recent decades, the topic has been widely explored by historians. Various sensory phenomena have been studied, and these studies have not been limited to colours and noises, but also concern odours, tastes, tactile properties, and so forth (Jütte 2005; Bradley 2009; 2015; Grand-​ Clément 2011; Brulé 2012; Butler and Purves 2013; Day 2013; Krampl et al. 2015; Vincent DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-31

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2016; Butler and Nooter 2018). Even if inscriptions and texts are missing or lacking—​which is frequently the case with ancient societies—​the topic may be explored thanks to archaeological artefacts, as Yannis Hamilakis (2013) demonstrated for Crete during the Minoan period. Societies of the ancient Near East have not been left out—​especially in the last decade (Winter 2000; Goering 2014; Thomason 2016; Rendu Loisel 2016a; 2016b; 2016c; Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019; Krüger and Schellenberg 2019). Studies share the desire not to focus on one sense, but to widen the research to all of the intertwined senses. When Augusta McMahon (2013) looks at the luminosity of Assyrian palaces, she also investigates its link to movement (kinaesthesia). For the Sumerian cities of the third millennium BCE and their urban environment, Mary Shepperson draws attention to the same relation between luminosity, movement, and indirectly the sense of time (2017; see also Neumann 2019). The topic of multisensoriality is not a new one. In her study of the splendeur divine (Akkadian melammu; Aster 2012)2—​an unbearable light emanating from the divine body—​Elena Cassin (1968) highlights the sensory conflict that exists between human and deities. On the one hand, human communities are characterised by noises, light, and movement; on the other hand, goddesses and gods seek obscurity, silence, and lethargy.3 This multisensorial dimension of the divine light is deeply rooted in Akkadian semantics, as melammu can be used for light, but also sound and heat. Investigating the cultural system related to senses in the ancient Near East is to study the words and metaphors employed to describe them. This semantic approach is of the utmost importance to improve our translations of the cuneiform languages and to grasp cultural meanings and concepts. In this chapter, my aim is to investigate this multisensory dimension of the relevant Akkadian vocabulary; I will show that it is deeply related to the experience of the physical properties of substances and materials present in the surrounding environment. The cuneiform clay tablets at our disposal have a large geographical and temporal range, starting with third-​millennium BCE texts from the Sumerian cities of southern Iraq to texts from the Neo-​Assyrian Empire of the first millennium BCE , which at its peak stretched from the Mediterranean coast in the west to the Zagros Mountains in the east. Yet our data is fragmentary by nature: it depends not only on the extent of archaeological excavations through space and time, but also on the state of preservation of the tablets, which are subject to natural erosion and temporal destruction. However, the great number of tablets and fragments that we do have at our disposal can help us expand our knowledge of Akkadian lexicography. My approach here is to establish connections between the different corpora—​lexical lists, divinatory treaties, literary compositions, narratives, prayers, hymns, royal inscriptions, and administrative documents—​ while also taking into account the diachronic and geographical perspectives. I intend to grasp the various meanings of a word and to highlight what the Babylonian and Assyrian scribes did with them, throughout the centuries and the corpora. My aim is not to reconstruct the individual experience of the past sensorium—​which would be illusory—​but to get back to the cultural concepts associated with senses in the discourses at our disposal. When someone describes the noise he/​she hears, he/​she employs lexemes, metaphors, and comparisons that are understood by the other members of his/​her own community. Furthermore, sensory descriptions help us approach the material culture. Cultural and social practices are deeply settled in the tangible and material reality. We are looking for the shared cultural experience of the surrounding world, and not what the individual may have lived. For this inquiry on multisensoriality, I will focus my research on several Akkadian terms from texts dating to the second to first millennia BCE . Thanks to online databases (ORACC)4 and dictionaries, such as The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD) and the Akkadischen Handwörterbuch (AHw), it is possible to explore almost all of the known attestations of a word, and to then better understand its various meanings from a diachronic 664

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perspective. First, I will present methodological aspects for identifying the sensory meanings of a lexeme in our cuneiform sources. Then, I will explore the multisensory dimension of specific substances and materials such as honey and jewellery. Lastly, I will show that ritual contexts and interactions with the divine world are particularly concerned with this multisensory atmosphere: the physical properties of the objects, materials, and substances used and handled during the ritual procedure simultaneously produce colours, luminosity, sweet fragrances, noises, music, movements, and the opportunity for tactile interaction. For instance, a piece of textile is not only pleasant to look at: moved by the gestures of its owner, it can also produce rustling noises (suggesting the wealth of the owner), and emit a sweet fragrance when mixed with the perfume or smell of the human body (Neumann 2017). More than a simple literary description, the metaphors and comparisons that describe these sensory effects in prayers are based on real-​life experience; the boundaries between individual senses are easily crossed, and the members of the community are invited to take part in this shared experience of the surrounding environment.

Tracking sensory dimension in Akkadian vocabulary: a methodological approach to vocabulary Investigating the sensorium of a society necessitates the study of the vocabulary employed by native speakers in daily life. Of course, for an ancient society, obtaining that vocabulary is not that simple as we cannot walk down the streets of Babylon and ask a resident how he/​she sees light or colours, what sounds he/​she hears, or what smell he/​she can or cannot stand. Furthermore, when dealing with conceptualisation and theory, cuneiform sources are frustrating for scholars, as we do not have philosophical and theoretical texts as is the case for ancient Greece. Yet there remain ways in which we can access ancient Mesopotamian sensations. Lexicographical research helps us to understand how ancient Babylonians describe their sensory experiences, and how they share them with members of their community: words, comparisons, and metaphors convey meanings that must have been understood by others (see also other chapters in Part VI, this volume).

Identifying the semantic value of vocabulary First, we can start by exploring sensory phenomena that we ourselves experience in modern society and then check if these same phenomena can be identified in Akkadian sources. Such an inquiry concerns not only sensory qualities that can be perceived—​that is colour, noise, or scent for instance—​but also verbs employed to describe if an individual is producing a sensory phenomenon him-​or herself—​such as “to cry, to shout, to creak”—​and those used to describe how a person is actively experiencing something—​for example, “to suffer, to hear, to smell, to taste.” Regarding vision, a dozen Akkadian verbs are related to this topic, suggesting many different ways to look at something or someone.5 The lexical variety may be related to the types of sources (narrative versus letters for instance),6 or to dialectal, geographical, and chronological differences. As for sounds, although only a few verbs related to auditory experiences may be identified in Akkadian sources,7 about 38 roots (verbs describing a noisy activity as well as lexemes designating a sound/​noise/​voice) have been identified (Rendu Loisel 2011). Studies in philosophy and neurosciences have demonstrated that bodily perception cannot be limited to the Aristotelian penta-​sensory model. Therefore, we must consider more than five senses; for instance, in Akkadian sources, kinaesthesia (movement) and speech/​language seem to have been understood in the same manner as our famous five senses (Rendu Loisel 2020). Secondly, the context in which a lexeme is employed is of the utmost importance for the identification of its sensory semantic content (especially for hapax legomenon only mentioned 665

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in lexical lists): omen lists are frequently organised by themes, and words are enumerated together (Rendu Loisel 2016b).8 Accompanied by comparisons (kīma, “like”), sensory semantics are then obvious (for example, kīma kalbim šasû, literally “to shout like a dog” = nabāḫu, “to bark”). The literary context highlights not only the cultural beliefs associated with a specific sensory phenomenon, but also the distinction between various sensory effects represented by different substantives; in the story of the Flood in Akkadian literature, the context clarifies why sometimes we find the generic term rigmu, “a sound, a voice, a noise, a cry,” and ḫubūru, which designates a “noise” but also refers to human life and activity, the transgression of norms, and the difficulty different communities have in living together.9 Thirdly, some sensory experiences have meaningful linguistic forms, such as roots that produce distinct sounds when spoken. Semitic roots enlarged by an additive /​n/​may be onomatopoeic. With the two other consonants, they reproduce the sound they describe (Kouwenberg 2004; Rendu Loisel 2015; 2016a: 33–​37). For instance, if we take again “to bark” as an example, we find in Akkadian the verb nabāḫu, “to bark.” It can be deconstructed as follows: n-​buḫ, “to make the sound [buḫ]”—​buḫ would be the transcription of the sound heard when a dog is barking. The mediae-​geminatae type (PaSāSu) concerns also onomatopoeic-​based Semitic roots, such as damāmu, “to moan,” or gaṣāṣu, “to gnash (the teeth).” In Akkadian, sensory lexemes are based on roots that were originally linked to one sense; their use in metaphors and comparisons illustrates the overlapping of sensory domains. To describe an impression or a feeling, the poet combined a number of sensory effects, creating a new experience and endowing the Akkadian vocabulary with a multisensory dimension.

The multisensory dimension of Akkadian vocabulary To explore this multisensoriality, we must consider all of the ways in which the Akkadian terms are used in the various sources at our disposal. In doing so, new light is shed on the semantic fields of these terms: the boundaries between sensory experiences seem no longer to exist, as certain terms—​whether it is a verbal form, a substantive, or an adjective—​may be employed in various sensory situations. This topic deals not with synaesthesia, that is, the perceptual phenomenon in which a sensory stimulation leads to automatic and involuntary experiences in another sensory pathway (like “hearing a colour”). Rather the present study focuses on descriptions of effects and impressions that can be found in different sensory experiences: for example, a noise can be described as being as “heavy” as the intensity of light, suggesting that both can be unbearable. The context in which sensory terms are used may demonstrate that at times the emphasis is not on the source of the sense itself, but on the feelings the experience has aroused in the individual. Here, I present a few examples. The verbal form barāmu/​burrumu (CAD B: 103) is attested from the Old Babylonian period (first half of the second millennium BCE ) to the first millennium BCE (Neo-​Assyrian and Standard Babylonian). It is the Akkadian equivalent of the Sumerian gun3, “(to be) multi-​coloured,” in lexical lists and bilingual texts. In her study of colour in ancient Mesopotamia, Shiyanthi Thavapalan (2020: 79–​89) clearly demonstrates that the verbal form barāmu can be translated as “to be multihued, to be versicolored.” In Medical Diagnoses Treatises, barāmu is employed to describe the visual appearance of the forehead of a pregnant woman (Labat 1951: 200, 5).10 The context of this use of the verb invites us to consider barāmu as a description of a colour: in the previous omens, the interpretive sign is yellow, white, black, or red; barāmu may thus designate the presence of several hues on the forehead. Barāmu may also refer to the brilliance of the eyes of a living entity and thus can be translated as “iridescent.”11 Regarding textile properties, barāmu may designate the intertwining of colourful strings of wool.12 It describes the colour variability 666

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of a living or inanimate entity: this variability depends on the source of illumination and on the contrast of several hues that can be observed on the surface. The visual experience of colour (and light/​brilliance) is thus deeply related to the material and physical properties of the thing or being. The verb ṣarāpu (CAD Ṣ: 102–​105) has a wide semantic field. It is especially attested in industrial and technical contexts such as the refining of metals by fire, the dyeing of wool, and the tanning of leather (Thavapalan 2020: 55–​63). All of these activities necessitate heat processes, and the basic meaning of this Semitic root is “to heat/​scorch.” In Akkadian, ṣarāpu designates figuratively the visual aspect of the colour-​saturated brilliance of stained fabrics (for instance those dyed with madder or murex). It also has a sensory and affective counterpart, indicating physical and mental pain, and the associated sonorous and vocal manifestations.13 This semantic topic of ṣarāpu may be based on the physical experience of heat and the induced pain, probably endured during the improper manipulation of metals during refinement, or during tanning procedures. This high-​intensity physical pain leads to a psychological distress that is emphasised in lamentations and painful songs. As for the verb šapû/​šabû (CAD Š/​1: 487–​490), its semantic field concerns not only a loud voice emitted in distress,14 but also luminous effects of high intensity,15 as well as, in contrast, obscurity, for example in the comparison kīma upê, “like a cloud.”16 The CAD explains these lexical differences as follows (CAD Š/​1: 489–​490): As šapû describes both light and sound phenomena, it may describe their varying intensity especially when used in the I/​3 stem. The stative šapu, when it refers to clouds and darkness, may refer to their billowing mass. By focusing on the common characteristics between all these sensory phenomena, we may be able to reconcile the semantic values of šapû. It describes phenomena of high intensity, visual and noisy effects that are so intense that they cover everything, just as a big cloud is able to do in the sky. The common characteristic would then be “density”—​suggesting a physical dimension—​that can be used to describe impressions aroused by various sensory effects: sound, light, obscurity. This multisensory dimension of the sensory vocabulary cannot be understood without considering the objects, substances, and materials that produce the sensory effects described by the literary context within which they are used.

Material, substances, and their sensory descriptions Akkadian colour terms lend themselves to a multisensory approach concerned with the materiality of a thing. The semantic field of colour terms is not limited to basic hue; it is also related to other material properties, such as brilliance or opacity, which depend on the substance of the object itself (Thavapalan et al. 2016; Thavapalan 2020). For instance, what we translate as “yellow/​g reen” (warqu) is connected to the notion of luxuriance or vegetal exuberance, as it first qualifies vegetation and green plants (Thavapalan 2020: 65–​79). Describing something as (w)arqu conveys also freshness or vividness, as well as a green visual effect. This link to the physical properties of the surrounding world may explain why a material or substance may arouse different sensations depending on the context and the recipient. Cultural differences may then be identified; when, in our modern concepts of perception, we focus on a visual aspect such as a hue, the Akkadian vocabulary invites us to consider another dimension. The Akkadian uqnû, “lapis lazuli” may also be used to describe something as “blue” (Casanova 2013; Thavapalan 667

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2020: 310–​325). Using the name of this precious stone for “blue” conveys not only hue but also the brilliance and twinkling that characterise the stone itself. In Sumerian Akkadian bilingual texts, uqnû is metaphorically employed for the male beard of gods and heroes.17 This metaphor refers not only to the dark colour of the beard, but also considers its speckled aspect, as well as its brilliance and iridescence. The dark and thick beard materially illustrates the power and the strength of its male owner. Precious metals like gold (ḫurāṣu; Thavapalan 2020: 367–​373) are included in metaphors in prayers and poetic contexts. The emphasis is sometimes not on the visual aspect (shiny, yellow), but on the impression the precious metal induces for its owner. For instance, in a Neo-​Assyrian catalogue, a song starts with the following comparisons: “Indeed your love is obsidian, your love-​making is gold” (KAR 158, r. ii, 44).18 Gold and love are related with the word ṣīḫātu, “laughter,” suggesting a vocal and sonorous expression of pleasure that can also be found in the Gilgameš Epic: before meeting Uta-​Napištim, the king of Uruk arrives in a garden where all the trees bear precious stones instead of fruit. The “lapis lazuli tree” is described as ana amāri ṣâḫ, “laughing to see” (Gilgameš IX, 176; George 2003: 672): the visual stimulus induces a vocal response (ṣâḫu; CAD Ṣ: 64–​65) that expresses the wonder, the amazement the tree creates for the viewer. Hearing the laugh of pleasure of a partner would arouse the same positive sensations as those that a person might experience with gold. The sensations are not only visually based, they are also connected to the economic value of this metal; in this song, love is then associated with wealth. Love and sexual themes are a fruitful field to investigate regarding the multisensoriality issue. Love is a physical experience that involves an individual’s entire body (Rendu Loisel 2018b; 2019): in a prayer addressed to the goddess Ištar (seventh century BCE ), songs (tanadātu) are compared to jewellery and metallic adornment (za’ānu).19 Visual and auditory pleasures thus induce the same impression. Auditory stimulation can also be associated with taste, for example in the anti-​witchcraft rituals Maqlû, an incantation compares words (amāteka) to apples (GIŠ.ḪAŠHUR ) (Maqlû III, 14, in Abusch 2015). Let us go back to the quote at the beginning of this chapter; honey constitutes an interesting substance to investigate, as it deals with multisensory experiences: “May the statement of his (Marduk’s) lips be as sweet (lišaṭîb) as honey (lallari) for humanity.” The pleasure induced by the vocal stimulation—​the statement of the god—​is equal to the one induced by honey on the tongue, that is a sweet taste. With honey, visual effects are also indirectly suggested as the substance is also shiny and yellow. By combining sensory experiences in metaphors and comparisons, the Assyrian and Babylonian poets suggest a concrete, physical experience that is based on a blurring of sense boundaries. The effects of love, as demonstrated in the above examples, but also alcoholic beverages to a certain extent, as attested in other examples, blend together all of the sensory characteristics (Rendu Loisel 2017). With this multisensory approach, impressions, feelings, and all of the physical changes induced by this complex experience are communicated and made comprehensible to others. Associating love with laughter and gold, or words to sweets, becomes literary topoi, based on a shared experience of the surrounding environment between the composer and his or her audience. It also creates a “sensorial community,”20 that is, individuals linked together by the same perceptual concepts. These metaphors and comparisons may be linked to “cultural synaesthesia,” an expression formulated by the anthropologist of senses David Howes (Howes 2006a; 2006b; Hupé and Dojat 2015): sensory lexical associations are culturally defined, and expressions, referents as well as literary images in Akkadian semantics, are shared by the members of the same community. This brief inquiry shows that materials and substances cannot be limited to one sensory characteristic; for instance, a fire can be characterised by its colour and its movement, but also the 668

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heat it produces. Semantic inquiries should consider this wide range of sensory effects affecting the perceiver’s body.21 In ritual contexts, where human and divine communicate and interact, the concepts and meanings conveyed by words are of the utmost importance in order to better understand the ritual dynamic and how a human body may feel the divine presence.

Linking words and experience: the ritual scene as a case study During a ritual procedure, members of the same community handle substances, move their bodies, and sing or pronounce words: all highly sensorial actions that create an atmosphere that engages not only the human body but also invites the divine entity into the scene. The spoken words add meanings to the substances and materials present. Sensory semantics are at the root of ritual experience. I will first present the multisensory characteristics of ritual procedures, and then I will focus on the metaphors and comparisons, inviting the audience to share in a real sensory experience.

The ritual scene: presencing the divine with sensory effects One of the most fundamental purposes of ritual procedures is to help two entities of different natures—​one divine and one human—​communicate and interact with each other. The task is not that simple as deities are invisible by nature. Materials and substances help make visible what remains unseen to human eyes. This is what is communicated in the Epic of Erra (first millennium BCE ); thanks to precious metals, the cultic statue visually and concretely manifests the divine power of the great god Marduk in his Babylonian temple. Precious, brilliant stones applied to small-​scale figurines serve the same important function of representing and making present protective spirits: here is a quote for a ritual to protect someone by invoking the dog-​ man of Marduk (first millennium BCE ) (Abusch and Schwemer 2016: 226, text 8.27, “Protected by the Dog-​man of Marduk,” 66–​69 [Fragment A, Neo-​Assyrian period, ninth–​eighth centuries BCE ,VAT 9727 = KAR 26; KAL 2, 21]): Its ritual: You make the figurine of a dog-​man of cedar wood; you string it on a cord of gold. You wrap a cord of silver with a golden loop, you string hulālu-​stone and ‘dark obsidian’ (on it); you put it [o]‌n it. Incantation: “You are Asari, expel the enemy, send away the sorceries!”You write this incantation on the figurine of the dog-​man …22 The figurine of the dog-​man is made of different precious raw materials: cedar wood (with its olfactory properties), gold, and silver (with the brilliance of both metals). Their properties make visible and materially present the divine entities on which the specialist wants to act. The brightness and the sweet smell make tangible the deity and its benevolent power. One may wonder if these pleasant sensory phenomena are also felt by the god who is attracted by these sensory effects. In another ritual of the same period and corpus, the expert and the patient have to make a figurine of the aggressor, tying his arms, twisting his legs (Abusch and Schwemer 2016: 148–​149, text 8.17, “Figurine Magic before Utu,” 8′–​16′ [middle-​Babylonian script]).23 On the figurine, they apply substances with negative sensory qualities, such as fish oil. In another ritual, the substitute of the aggressor is associated with the hair of a black dog, the excrements of a pig, and fish oil (Abusch and Schwemer 2016: 428, text 11.5, “Evil signs in a man’s house,” 7–​8 [VAT 13952 = LKA 115, Neo-​Assyrian period, seventh century BCE ]).24 The ritual procedures give a concrete and tangible form to the malevolent demon which has to be fought. Visual and

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olfactory effects create a negative image of this enemy, which is disgusting and repelling from a human perspective. The Body Description Texts of the first millennium BCE reflect theological thoughts on the divine body. Thanks to metaphorical associations based on the properties of substances and materials (their shape, colours, and so on), the god is given a concrete and tangible shape (Livingstone 2007). For instance, “Cedar is his knees. The apple is his ankle bones. The snake is his penis. The harp is his hand” (KAR 307, 3). This aspect of the text not only concerns exegetical reflections but also applies to rituals in general. Associations are frequently based on explicit analogies with what is present in the ritual scene. As Beate Pongratz-​Leisten has recently shown in The Materiality of Divine Agency (2015: 10, 119–​140), ritual objects play an important role by presencing the divine, following the definition given by the theorist Gumbrecht: “ ‘producing presence’ means to put things into reach so that they can be touched.” The objects help to transform the ritual process into an aesthetic experience for the individual and the audience; they have a tangible effect on human senses and emotions thanks to various sensory phenomena produced by the physical properties of the substances. With their evanescent and ephemeral nature, these types of sensory effects create the temporal and special boundaries appropriate for the ritual. In turn, the objects and substances acquire their ritual function and power only in the precise moment of the ritual, and only in that specific place. The transformation of the material properties of these objects and substances functions as an indicator of their ritual efficacy. Modifications in the appearance of metals indicate the presence or the absence of invisible powers. For example, the mīs pî ritual, the purpose of which is to help the divine enter its cultic statue, is performed when the statue no longer has divine power as demonstrated by a lack of brilliance, or if it is too dirty or damaged. This is the argument presented by Erra to Marduk in the Epic of Erra in order to convince the great god of Babylon to leave his throne: “Why has your precious image, symbol of your lordship, which was full of splendour as the stars of heaven lost its brilliance?” (Erra I, 127–​128, translation in Foster 2005: 764). Thanks to his skills and knowledge, the ritual expert has the ability to act on the sensible and the supra-​sensible worlds by altering the physical properties of the materials he handles.25 Materials with the same physical and sensory properties may be exchanged. In her study of ritual stones in the ancient Near East, Anais Schuster-​Brandis (2008: 8) noticed that precious stones may be replaced by glass (or fritte), as long as it shares the same shape, colour, and brightness as the stone counterparts (see also Chapter 3, this volume). The prescriptive nature of our written sources does not stop the expert from adapting the instructions to the material he has at his disposal, especially when he is in the private house of a patient. The ritual substances and objects are neither essential nor effective by themselves, but their sensory effects are. With its particular time and space, the ritual procedure gives them these properties. The matter does not matter; the expert with his knowledge, his technical know-​how, and his skills can act on and create the unique and requisite sensorium for the ritual performance.

Sensory metaphors and physical experience in ritual The multisensory effects are of the utmost importance for the individual to feel the presence of the divine. In ancient Mesopotamia, divine bodies are conceived of as luminous, with a light emanating from their body and accessories (jewellery, crown, dress, etc.) that is unbearable for human eyes. As noted above, this awe-​inspiring radiance is designated with the term melammu, which also has other sensory characteristics, such as temperature (it can be hot), a tactile counterpart (compared to the ointment of oil on the skin), or even a sonorous aspect (especially 670

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when it deals with musical instruments made of bronze or copper; Cassin 1968; Aster 2012; Grand-​Clément and Rendu Loisel 2016). This sensory dimension of the divine is presenced in the ritual scene, thanks to the cult statue and the precious metals covering it. This multisensory aspect may also be found in Semitic roots based on a PaRuSS-​paradigm (that is šalummatu, šuḫarruru, šuqammumu, etc.), which are linked to affective states and impressions aroused in the presence of a deity (Speiser 1952; von Soden 1965: § 55p 28 a) III). These roots suggest a multisensory experience; for instance, šuḫarruru and šuqammumu, frequently translated as “to be silent,” designate not only a lack of sound, but also an immobility, especially in the context of the Flood where there is no light and no human life (Rendu Loisel 2016a). The physical meeting with the divine is completed by the recitation of words accompanying the gestures of the ritual procedure. Metaphors and comparisons constitute powerful tools to induce emotions among the audience. They should not be understood solely as a literary device used to illustrate or give meaning, but also as a means of making present what is being described (Gumbrecht 2004; 2006). Listeners are invited to participate in this aesthetic and embodied experience, and emotions play an important role in replicating the experience for the listener/​viewer. As the linguists Lakoff and Johnson (2003) have shown, referents in metaphors and comparisons are related to the real experiences of people in their daily lives and the surrounding world; what is described is often familiar as it refers to known and repetitive events. Metaphors constitute powerful stimuli to induce an embodied experience, as the listener/​viewer has already experienced in his/​her own life what is being described. In the Old Babylonian hymn to the mother-​goddess Bēlet-ilī, its incipit is full of sensory phenomena (BM 87535; CT XV, 1, I, 1–​8; Vanderburgh 1912: 21–​32; for this goddess, see Brisch 2013; Rodin 2015):26 I sing the song of Bēlet-ilī. Friend, look! Warrior, listen! The goddess Mama, her song is sweeter than honey and wine! Sweeter than honey and wine; sweeter than ḫananābu-​fruits and apples. The acoustic dimension of this composition is explicit thanks to the mention of the song (zamāru), creating an auditive stimulus for the audience. The poet also creates new associations that activate other parts of the body, for example stimulating the area of taste for an auditory effect by comparing the song to the sweetness of honey, wine, and fruits. These substances may have been present in the ritual scene. The song is thus also imbued with visual stimuli. Honey, wine, and fruits are also substances that the faithful—​at least the poet—​would have been familiar with in daily life, even if only occasionally. We must consider these expressions more than simply metaphors and literary images as they create a common experience, starting with the poet and his own experience of the divine, then transmitted to the general audience. This audience, who listens and participates in the hymnic performance, is invited to call on its own sensory memory to experience again these effects.27 We can go a step further: if we keep in mind this physical engagement of the poet using sensory metaphors, we can better understand their use in maledictions and treaties from the Neo-​Assyrian period. These treaties bound a vassal to the Assyrian king with strong links that had terrible consequences should the vassal not respect the treaty. Contrary to the ritual context characterised by sensory optima (good and pleasant sensations), here the maledictions threaten bad sensory effects (SAA 2: 2, r. iv, 8′–​16′): May Adad, the canal inspector of heaven and earth, put an end to Mati’-​ilu, his land, and the people of his land through hunger, want, and famine, may they eat the flesh of their 671

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sons and daughters, and may it taste as good to them as the flesh of spring lambs. May they be deprived of Adad’s thunder so that rain become forbidden to them. May dust be their food, pitch their ointment, donkey’s urine their drink, papyrus their clothing, and may their sleeping place be in the dung heap. The passage condemns the vassal to a bad sensory experience: he will not be able to distinguish between lambs and the flesh of his own children, and this blindness will condemn him to anthropophagy, which stands outside social norms. In addition, the vassal will know disgusting sensory experiences for his entire body, including his skin (tactile), drink and food (taste), and sleep (de Zorzi 2019). In the treaty, there is an accumulation of bad sensations that creates a kind of dystopia—​that is, the opposite of sensorial utopia28 which is characterised by positive phenomena. This is also present in the Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty from Nimrud (SAA 2: 6, 637–​648): (637) (Ditto;) just as the noise of (these) doves is persistent, so may you, your women, your sons and your daughters have no rest or sleep, and may your bones never come together. (641) Just as the inside of a hole is empty, may your inside be empty. (643) When your enemy pierces you, may there be no honey, oil, ginger or cedar-​resin available to place on your wound. Just as gall is bitter, so may you, your women, your sons and your daughters be bitter towards each other.29 Here the multisensory dimension of the experience is at the core of the metaphors, promising to the transgressor insomnia and bad family relationships. The audience is invited to remember on the one hand the annoyance endured because of a noisy dove, and on the other hand the physical and painful sensations of the gall. The sensory analogies strengthen the physical effects that would be inflicted on the vassal. The quality of the sensations is the same (positive versus negative) but the objects producing the sensation are different. In the version of the same treaty from Tell Tayinat, we find the following (SAA 2: 15, vii, 60–​61; see also Lauinger 2012): Ditto, ditto; just as honey is sweet, so may the blood of your women, your sons and your daughters be sweet in your mouth.30 The sensory pleasure that can be associated with taste is present, but the referents change. The line begins with honey—​the sweetest taste and the sensory optimum in an Akkadian system of taste—​but this is followed by its opposite, blood, which arouses disgust, ideas of death, and the violation of social norms. Sensory references in treaties are of course not just intellectual games or the fantasy of a genius scribe mastering words and meanings. By calling on the individual bodily memory, the mention of sensory stimuli invites the audience to feel in their body what would happen if the treaty is terminated. It suggests also that the treaty may have been recited aloud—​or at least read carefully by those who signed it—​which would have had a physical and psychological impact on the vassal.

Conclusion Although cuneiform sources do not allow us to access the very experience of the individual him/​herself, by considering their semantic content, words help us to understand discourses and cultural concepts that were shared by members of the same community. A Semitic root may be based on one sense—​such as onomatopoeic construction—​but is often employed to refer to a much larger range of sensory phenomena; the multisensorial dimension of the Akkadian 672

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vocabulary discussed above invites us to cross the boundaries of the individual senses, and to go beyond the Aristotelian penta-​sensory model. Based on everyday experiences, sensory metaphors create new meanings that communicate the complex feelings and affective impressions that are aroused in sensory experiences for both the writer/​scribe and the listener/​reader. Sensory phenomena connect the individual to his/​her surrounding environments, whether the natural, the divine, or the social. Words and meanings transform the individual experience into a shared one. Metaphors and comparison convey more than just literary images. They activate the sensory memory of the listener/​reader who already experienced what is described in his/​her daily life. They invite him/​her to feel again the physical properties of the objects and substances, present in the ritual scene, even if the listener/​reader cannot see them, or is not allowed to touch or feel them. Words, memory, and physical properties react with one another, and a new individual experience of the surrounding world is then induced.

Notes 1. zikir šaptīšu kīma lallāri eli abrāti lišaṭīb. 2. For a comparative approach between Greece and Mesopotamia, see Grand-​Clément and Rendu Loisel 2016. 3. For the topic of silence in Akkadian prayers, see Rendu Loisel 2016c. 4. See the following website for all of the ORACC projects: http://​oracc.museum.upenn.edu. 5. For this topic, see Chapter 26 in this volume; see also the contributions of Friedrich, Manasterska, and Hawthorn in Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019. 6. For instance, seeing is expressed by two Akkadian verbs amāru and dagālu in Neo-​Assyrian letters, whereas palāsu and naṭālu are verbal forms that occur commonly in literary sources, and remain rare in the epistolary corpus (Manasterska 2019). 7. To the common šemû, “to hear,” we may add verbs like ḫasāsu or qâlu: their semantic field deals with an attitude of listening and paying attention to something/​someone (see Rendu Loisel 2016a). 8. For pragmatics in divinatory treaties, see Winitzer 2017, with review in Rendu Loisel 2018a. 9. For this topic, see Glassner 2019: ch. 15. 10. šumma ālittu muḫ pētiša SU 9//​ ba-​ru-​um, “If a pregnant woman, the top of her forehead is multicolored” (Labat 1951: 200, 5). 11. īnāya bitrumāma ul ṣabbâ, “My eyes are brilliant but cannot see” (Brünnow 1890: 80, r. 13). 12. ḫaṭṭa ištu kirî inakkisuni ṣirpāni ḫaṭṭa ubarrumū, “they cut a staff in the orchard, twine colored strands of wool around the staff ” (KAR 33, 5, Neo-​Assyrian ritual). See also examples under “birmu” (CAD B: 257). 13. kî lallari qubê ušaṣrap, “like a professional mourner, he make resound bitter cries” (Lambert 1959: 58; Oshima 2011: 152, 133). 14. Ninsiskura išappu kīma arḫim, “Ninsiskurra was bellowing like a cow” (UET 6 395, r. 12); kīma lilissi lu šapū rigimka, “let your voice be loud like the lilissu-​kettledrum” (Gilgameš IV, 22; George 2003: 600); see additional examples in CAD Š/​1: 489. 15. šumma nūru ša ina bīt amēli kunnu šapū, “If the lamp which is set up in a man’s house burns fitfully” (mentioned after the descriptions of the same lamp as bright [namir], dull [eṭu], and quiet [nēḫ]) (CT 39, 34, 21, omen from the Šumma ālu series). 16. murṣu ina zumrīya kīma upê išappi, “the illness is dense as a cloud in my body” (Farber 1977: Ištar und Dumuzi, 58, 38); šapāt ikletumma ul ibašši nūru, “the darkness is still dense, there is no light” (Gilgameš IX, 165; George 2003: 672). One may notice also the existence of another semantic root, šapû/​šebû, attested at the beginning of the second millennium BCE and in Standard Babylonian; it designates a silent attitude. Owing to its verbal paradigm, it cannot be etymologically related to the preceding šabû (šapû); however, because their verbal forms fluctuate, these two verbs can be mistaken for one another (išappi, išappu are both attested for the durative forms of these two verbs; see CAD Š/​1: 490–​491). 17. ziqni uqnî zaqnu, “who bears a lapis-​lazuli beard” (4R 9: 20; Rawlinson 1891); for additional examples, see CAD U: 196. 18. rāmka lu NA 4.ZU 2 ṣīḫātuka lu KU 3.GI .

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19. Ištar [ša] tanadātīša kuzbu za’[n]ā, “Ištar, her songs (i.e., “the songs addressed to her”) are adorned with attractiveness” (AAA 20: 80, 2). 20. This expression is based on the “emotional community,” defined in Chaniotis 2011. 21. In previous work, I have shown that this multisensory dimension of the vocabulary may be used by ancient Babylonian diviners to create sense, by playing on the multiple sensory vocabulary networks (Rendu Loisel 2019). 22. DU 3.DU 3.BI urdimmu ša erēni(gišEREN ) teppuš ina ṭurri hurāṣi (KU 3.SI 22) tašakkak (E 3-​ak)/​ ṭurri (DUR ) kaspi (KU 3.BABBAR ) ina kippat hurāṣi (KU 3.SI 22) talammi (NIGIN -​mi) hulāla (na4NIR 2) ˹ṣurra˺ (na4ZU 2) ṣalma (GE 6) tašakkak (E 3-​ak) [ina mu]hhīšu tašakkan /​ EN 2 asar-​r i-​me-​en sil7 erim2-​ma nig2-​ak-​a bar-​bar-​r[e]‌-​ eš /​ šiptu (EN 2) annītu ina muhhi (UGU ) urdimmu (UR.IDIM ) tašaṭṭar (SAR -​ar2). 23. alan uš11-​z[u munus uš11-​zu]-​ke4-​ne /​ 2-​am3 ˹im˺ u3-​me-​ni-​dim2 /​ 2-​am3 niĝ2-​˹sila11-​ĝa2˺ u3-​me-​ ni-​dim2 /​ 2-​am3 uzui3-​udu u3-​me-​ni-​dim2 /​ 2-​am3 DUH-​L AL 3 u3-​me-​ni-​dim2 a2-​bi-​ne egir-​bi-​ne //​ im-​ma-​an-​gur-​re /​ ĝiri3-​bi-​ne u3-​me-​ni-​gil-​gil /​ šu!? (ku)-​ur4-​ur4-​bi-​ta u3-​me-​ni-​keš2/​ i3 ku6-​ a u3-​me-​ni-​˹šeš2˺,“Figurine of warlo[ck and witch] /​you fashion two of clay /​you fashion two of dough /​ you fashion two of tallow /​you fashion two of wax /​you wrench (text: he wrenches) their arms behind them /​you twist their legs /​you attach sweepings to (the figurines) /​you smear fish oil (on them).” Here, I only take into account the Sumerian part of this bilingual text. See also the same use of fish oil on figurines that will be buried at the end of the procedure (Abusch and Schwemer 2016: 415). 24. ina burzigalli šārāt kalbi ṣalmi /​ zê šahî šaman nūni tašakkan, “You place hair of a black dog excrement of a pig and fish oil in a burzigallu-​bowl.” 25. For this topic, see for instance the importance of colours in ritual contexts (Rendu Loisel 2019). 26. za-​ma-​ar dbe-​li-​it-​D INGIR a-​za-​ma-​ar /​ ib-​ru uṣ-​ṣi-​ra qu-​ra-​du ši-​me-​a /​ dma-​ma za-​ma-​ra-​ša-​ma e-​li /​ di-​iš-​ pi-​i-​im u ka-​ra-​nim ṭa-​bu /​ ṭa-​a-​bu e-​li diš-​pi u ka-​ra-​ni-​i-​im /​ ṭa-​bu-​u e-​li ḫa-​na-​na-​bi-​im-​ma ḫa-​aš-​ḫu-​ri-​i-​im /​ e-​lu-​u lu ḫi-​me-​e-​tim za-​ku-​u-​tim /​ ṭa-​a-​bu e-​lu ḫa-​na-​na-​bi-​im-​ma ḫa-​aš-​ḫu-​ri-​i. 27. Metaphors and comparisons play here an important role in a kind of “sensorial contagion” between the writer and the audience. I employ this expression as a parallel to the “emotional contagion” developed recently by Paul Delnero for the performance of Sumerian Laments (Delnero 2020; for my study on sensory contagion in Sumerian hymns, see Rendu Loisel 2021). 28. I follow here the expression formulated by the anthropologist Jean-​Pierre Albert (2017). 29. ki-​i ša2 kil-​lu ša2 su-​ʾi i-​ḫa-​lul-​u-​ni /​ ki-​i ḫa-​an-​ni-​e at-​tu-​nu MI 2-​M EŠ -​ku-​nu DUMU-​ MEŠ -​ku-​nu /​ DUMU.MI 2-​M EŠ -​ku-​nu la ta-​nu-​ḫa la ta-​ṣa-​la-​la /​ eṣ-​ma-​a-​te-​ku-​nu a-​na a-​ḫe-​iš lu la i-​qar-​r i-​ba /​ ki-​i ša2 ša3-​bu ša2 ḫu-​up-​pi ra-​qu-​u-​ni /​ ˹lib˺-​bi-​ku-​nu li-​ri-​qu /​ ki-​i LU 2.KUR 2-​ku-​nu u2-​pa-​ta-​ḫu-​ka-​nu-​ ni /​ LAL 3 I 3-​M EŠ zi-​in-​za-​ru-​ʾu MUD 2—​G IŠ .ERIN /​ a-​na ša2-​kan pi-​it-​ḫi-​ku-​nu li-​iḫ-​liq /​ ki-​i ša2 mar-​tu mar-​rat-​u-​ni /​ at-​tu-​nu MI 2-​M EŠ -​ku-​nu DUMU-​M EŠ -​ku-​nu DUMU .MI 2-​M EŠ -​ku-​nu /​ ina UGU a-​ḫe-​iš lu ma-​ra-​ku-​nu. 30. KI.MIN ˹ki-​i˺ ša2 ˹LAL 3˺ ma-​ti-​qu-​u-​ni MUD 2-​M EŠ ša2 ˹MI 2˺-​M EŠ -​ku-​nu /​ DUMU-​M EŠ -​ku-​nu DUMU .˹MI 2˺-​ MEŠ -​ku-​nu ina pi-​i-​ku-​nu li-​im-​ti-​iq.

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Brulé, P. 2012. Comment percevoir le sanctuaire grec? Une analyse sensorielle du paysage sacrée. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Brünnow, R. E. 1890. “Assyrian Hymns.” ZA 5: 55–​136. Butler, S., and A. Purves, eds. 2013. Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses. The Senses in Antiquity. London and New York: Routledge. Butler, S., and S. Nooter, eds. 2018. Sound and the Ancient Senses. The Senses in Antiquity. London and New York: Routledge. Candau, J., and O. Wathelet. 2013. “Considérations méthodologiques en anthropologie sensorielle: pour une ethnographie cognitive des perceptions,” in J. Candau and M.-​B. Le Gonidec, eds., Paysages sensoriels. Paris: CTHS, 213–​239. Casanova, M. 2013. Le lapis-​lazuli dans l’Orient ancien: Production et circulation néolithique au IIe millénaire av. J.-​C. Paris: CTHS. Cassin, E. 1968. La splendeur divine: Introduction à la mentalité mésopotamienne. Paris: Mouton. Chaniotis, A., ed. 2011. Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean: Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation. Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien 49. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Classen, C. 1993. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures. London: Routledge. Corbin, A. 1982. Le Miasme et la Jonquille. L’odorat et l’imaginaire social, XVIIIe–​XIXe siècles. Paris: Seuil. Corbin, A. 1994. Les Cloches de la terre. Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle. Paris: Flammarion. Day, J. A., ed. 2013. Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Occasional Paper 40. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigation, Southern Illinois University Press. de Zorzi, N. 2019. “‘Rude Remarks Not Fit to Smell’: Negative Value Judgements Relating to Sensory Perceptions in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in T. Krüger and A. Schellenberg, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. ANEM 25. Atlanta: SBL Press, 217–​252. Delnero, P. 2020. How to Do Things with Tears: Ritual Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia. Sources in Ancient Near Eastern Records 26. Berlin: De Gruyter. Farber, W. 1977. Beschwörungsrituale an Ištar und Dumuzi, attī Ištar ša harmasā Dumuzi, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Veröffentlichungen der Orientalischen Kommission XXX. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Febvre, L. 1941. “La sensibilité et l’histoire: comment reconstituer la vie affective d’autrefois?” Annales ESC 3: 221–​238. Foster, B. R. 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Third Edition. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. George, A. R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glassner, J.-​J. 2019. Le devin historien. AMD 16. Boston and Leiden: Brill. Goering, G. S. 2014. “Sapiential Synesthesia: The Conceptual Blending of Light and Word in Ben Sira’s Wisdom Instruction,” in B. Howe and J. B. Green, eds., Cognitive Linguistic Explorations in Biblical Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter, 121–​143. Grand-​Clément, A. 2011. La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens (VIIIe–​début du Ve s. av. n. è.). Paris: De Boccard. Grand-​Clément, A., and A.-​ C. Rendu Loisel. 2016. “Splendeur divine, flamme efficace et éclats métalliques: regards croisés sur les usages de la lumière dans les rituels et la mise en scène du divin en Mésopotamie ancienne et en Grèce,” in C. Beaufort and M. Lebrère, eds., Ambivalences de la Lumière. Espaces, Frontières, Métissages 6. Pau: Presses Universitaires de Pau et des Pays de L’adour, 251–​266. Gumbrecht, H. U. 2004. Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gumbrecht, H. U. 2006. “Presence Achieved in Language (with Special Attention Given to the Presence of the Past).” History and Theory 45 (3): 317–​327. Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hawthorn, A., and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds. 2019. Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns. Howes, D. 2006a. “Hearing Scents, Tasting Sights: Toward a Cross-​Cultural Multi-​Modal Theory of Aesthetics.” Art and the Senses Conference, October 27–​29, Oxford.

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Howes, D. 2006b. “Scent, Sound and Synaesthesia: Intersensoriality and Material Culture Theory,” in C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, and P. Speyer, eds., Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage, 161–​172. Howes, D., ed. 2009. The Sixth Sense Reader: Sensory Formations. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009. Howes, D., and C. Classen. 2014. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London: Routledge. Hupé, J.-​M., and M. Dojat. 2015. “A Critical Review of the Neuroimagining Literature on Synesthesia.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 31, March. http://​journal.frontiersin.org/​article/​10.3389/​fnhum. 2015.00103/​full. Jütte, R. 2005. A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kouwenberg, N. J. C. 2004. “Assyrian Light on the History of the N-​Stem,” in J. G. Dercksen, ed., Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen. Leyde: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije oosten, 333–​352. Krampl, U., A. Steinbrecher, A. Rathmann-​Lutz, and J.-​F. Missfelder, eds. 2015. “Par tous les sens. Von allen Sinnen.” Special issue of the journal Traverse. Zeitschrift für Geschichte –​Revue d’Histoire 2015 (2). Zürich: Chronos Verlag. Krüger, T., and A. Schellenberg, eds. 2019. Sounding Sensory Profiles in Antiquity: On the Role of the Senses in the World of Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East. ANEM 25. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press. Labat, R. 1951. Traité akkadien de diagnostics et pronostics médicaux. Collection de travaux de l’Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences 7. Paris: Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences. Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson. 2003 [1980]. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lambert, W. G. 1959. “Three Literary Prayers of the Babylonians.” AfO 19: 47–​66. Lauinger, J. 2012. “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty at Tell Tayinat: Text and Commentary.” JCS 64: 87–​123. Livingstone, A. 2007 [1986]. Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Manasterska, S. 2019. “Looking and Seeing in Neo-​Assyrian Letters,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 93–​104. McMahon, A. 2013. “Space, Sound, and Light: Toward a Sensory Experience of Ancient Monumental Architecture.” AJA 117 (2): 163–​179. Neumann, K. 2017. “Gods Among Men: Fashioning the Divine Image in Assyria,” in M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinski, eds., What Shall I Say of Clothes? Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 4–​23. Neumann, K. 2019. “Laying Foundations for Eternity: Timing Temple Construction in Assyria,” in T. Krüger and A. Schellenberg, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in Antiquity: On the Role of the Senses in the World of Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East. Ancient Near East Monographs 25. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 253–​278. Oshima, T. 2011. Babylonian Prayers to Marduk. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike Agypten, Israel. Alter Orient /​Oriental Religions in Antiquity Egypt, Israel, Ancient Near East (ORA) 7. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Pinches, T. G. 1882. Texts in the Babylonian Wedge-​Writing, Autographed from the Original Documents; with a List of Characters and their Meanings. London: The Society of Biblical Archaeology. Pongratz-​Leisten, B. 2015. “Imperial Allegories: Divine Agency and Monstruous Bodies in Mesopotamia’s Body Descriptions Texts,” in B. Pongratz-​Leisten and K. Sonik, eds., The Materiality of Divine Agency. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER) 8. Berlin: De Gruyter, 119–​140. Rawlinson, H. 1891. The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia IV. London: R. E. Bowler. Rendu Loisel, A.-​ C. 2011. “Bruit et émotions dans la littérature akkadienne.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Geneva. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2015. “Peut-​on définir le paysage sonore dans les textes cunéiformes de l’ancienne Mésopotamie? Enjeux et méthodes autour des textes divinatoires,” in S. Emerit, S. Perrot, and A. Vincent, eds., Le paysage sonore de l’Antiquité. Méthodologie, historiographie et perspectives, Actes de la journée d’étude tenue à l’École française de Rome le 7 janvier 2013. Cairo: IFAO, 155–​171. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2016a. Les chants du monde. Le paysage sonore de l’ancienne Mésopotamie. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Midi. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2016b. “When Gods Speak to Men: Reading House, Street, and Divination from Sound in Ancient Mesopotamia (1st millennium BC).” JNES 75 (2): 291–​309. 676

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Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2016c. “Une nuit, sur un toit, en Babylonie. Recherches sur le silence dans les rituels akkadiens 2e-​1er millénaire av. J.-​C.,” in P. Butterlin, J. Patrier, and P. Quenet, eds., Mille et une empreintes, un Alsacien en Orient: mélanges en l’honneur de Dominique Beyer à l’occasion de son 65e anniversaire. Paris: Brepols; Subartu, 421–​434. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2017. “L’ivresse en Mésopotamie: de la plénitude des sens à la déraison.” Mythos Rivista di Storia delle Religioni 11 N.S.: 37–​47. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2018a. “Review of Abraham Winitzer, Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature: Its Organizational Framework and Generative and Paradigmatic Characteristics, Ancient Magic and Divination 12, Brill, Boston, 2017.” JNES 78: 155–​158. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2018b. “Acting on an Unwilling Partner: Gender and Sensory Phenomena in Old Akkadian and Old Babylonian Love Incantations,” in A. Garcia-​Ventura, A. Millet Albà, and S. Svärd, eds., Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East. BMO 10. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 65–​74. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2019. “The Caterpillar that Shouted: Akkadian Omens and Multi-​Sensoriality,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 188–​198. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2020. “Beyond the Five Senses: Human Senses According to Akkadian Cuneiform Texts (2nd–​1st Millennia BCE),” in A. Mouton, ed., Flesh and Bones: The Individual and his Body in the Ancient Mediterranean Basin. Semitica et Classica Supplementa 2 (SUPSEC). Turnhout: Brepols: 89–​102. Rendu Loisel, A.-​C. 2021. “From Landscape to Ritual Performances: Emotions in Sumerian Literature,” in S.-​W. Hsu and J. Llop-​Raduà, eds., The Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. CHANES 116. Boston: Brill, 283–​305. Rodin, T. 2015. The World of the Sumerian Mother Goddess: An Interpretation of Her Myths (recenzia). Brno: Česká společnost pro religionistiku. Schuster-​ Brandis, A. 2008. Stein als Schutz-​und Heilmittel: Untersuchung zu ihrer Verwendung in der Beschwörungskunst Mesopotamiens im 1.Jt. v. Chr. AOAT 46. Münster: Ugarit-​Verlag. Shepperson, M. 2017. Sunlight and Shade in the First Cities: A Sensory Archaeology of Early Iraq. Mundus Orientis 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Speiser, E. A. 1952. “The Elative in West Semitic and Akkadian.” JCS 6: 81–​92. Stoller, P. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Contemporary Ethnography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Thavapalan, S. 2020. The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Thavapalan S., J. Stenger, and C. Snow. 2016. “Color and Meaning in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Case of Egyptian Blue.” ZA 106 (2): 198–​214. Thomason, A. K. 2016. “The Sense-​ Scapes of Neo-​ Assyrian Cities: Royal Authority and Bodily Experience.” CAJ 26 (2): 243–​264. Vanderburgh, F. A. 1912. “Babylonian Legends, BM Tablets 87535, 93828 and 87521, CT XV, Plates 1–​6.” JAOS 32: 21–​32. Vincent, A. 2016. Jouer pour la cité: une histoire sociale et politique des musiciens professionnels de l’Occident romain. Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 371. Rome: École française de Rome. von Soden, W. 1965. Grundriss der Akkadischen Grammatik. Analecta Orientalia (AnOr) 33. Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico. Winitzer, A. 2017. Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature: Its Organizational Framework and Generative and Paradigmatic Characteristics. AMD 12. Boston and Leiden: Brill. Winter, I. J. 2000. “The Eyes Have It: Votive Statuary, Gilgamesh’s Axe, and Cathected Viewing in the Ancient Near East,” in R. S. Nelson, ed., Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw. Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 22–​43.

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31 Open your ears and listen! The role of the senses among the Hittites Richard H. Beal

Introduction The Hittites were an Indo-​European speaking people living in what is now Turkey in the second half of the second millennium BCE . They ruled an empire including people speaking Luwian, Palaic, Ḫattic, Hurrian, various West Semitic and many other languages. They were well aware of the power of sensory appeals to create bonds between individuals, and, as we shall see, appealed to all five senses in their celebration of weddings. They also appreciated non-​verbal forms of communication in dealing with their enemies. But they had an additional concern which is not one we worry about terribly much, having long ago embedded our dealings with the Almighty in rituals intended to appeal to the senses of divinity we are no longer fully aware—​ bells and smells, church organs, singing of hymns, decorations of God’s house, and so forth. For the Hittites, by contrast, especially the Hittite king, communication with the gods via sensory stimulants was something that had to be continually worked on and worried about. The thousand gods of Hatti, the word that the Hittites used for their land, were not always receptive; they could be angry, asleep, or inattentive to humans. And when they refused or were unable to make use of their senses, it meant potential disaster not just for one individual but for the entire human community. Thus, we should not be surprised that the Hittite gods were bombarded by humans with sensual stimuli and even given ears so that they could hear better. In what follows we will discuss the five senses. In each section we will discuss the Hittite verbs of perception and nouns and adjectives that describe each sense. We will also discuss stimulants to these senses. With some of the senses, such as sight and hearing, there is much that can be gleaned from the sources. For the others, the sources have far less to say.1

Sight “Sight” in Hittite is uwatar, a noun derived from the verb auš-​, one of the two Hittite verbs for “to see/​look” (HEG U: 177–178). In a ritual, the ritual-​patron says “give me sight of the eyes” (IGI. Ḫ I.A -​aš uwātar) (Christiansen 2006: 48–49, ii, 65; cf. Mouton 2019: 163). “Sight of the eyes” or “eye-​sight” is a symbol in a number of symbol-oracles.2 Sometimes this is said to be “of the king.” “Sight” could also be referred to as uškiwar (HEG U: 119). This is a verbal substantive 678

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derived from the imperfective form of the same verb auš-​, thus adding a nuance of an ongoing action or action over an extended period of time (Hoffner and Melchert 2008: § 24.7–​8); for example: “But you, O Wišuriyanza, keep giving back to the sacrificer life, health, vigour, a long life, continual sight of the eyes and pride(?)” (CHD Š: s.v. šakui-​, 1 a 4′). Mouton (2019: 163) suggests that one might understand “sight of the eyes” in this context to mean “discernment,” thus adding an intellectual or perceptual force to the phrase, as will be discussed in more detail below. There is also mention of something “for the seeing of heaven” (nepišaš uwannaš) (KUB 44: 33, i, 7). In military context, “a seeing” is what we would call “a review” (HEG U: 177–178). Finally, there is the curious object mentioned as belonging to the Hittite Goddess of the Night: “one bronze hand for seeing (QA-​TÙ ZABAR uwannaš)” (Miller 2004: 277, i, 42). This is perhaps a reference to how blind people see by feeling with their hands. Since this is a cult-​object of the Goddess of the Night, at night “seeing” would often be done by “touch.” A periodic (witti meyani) festival for the goddess Šawušga of Tamininga in the city Šamuḫa mentions in a list of cult objects “a silver hand for seeing.” It is mentioned with two other “silver hands,” one of which is not designated as “of seeing”; the other is broken (Wegner 1995: 101, o. 19–​20). On this basis, Miller (2004: 300–301; HEG U: 178), suggests that a “hand for seeing” is a mirror. But, if so, why is the only goddess that gets one a divinity that lives in the dark? As we shall see, the Sun God has three pairs of eyes of which only the first is for seeing. We may perhaps conclude from this that the other two silver hands of the goddess were for other things, like accepting her offerings and granting wishes. The Hittite word for “eye” is šakui-​(CHD Š: 65–​77), from which is derived the other Hittite verb for “to see/​look,” šakuwai(ya)-​ (CHD Š: 55–​56). In the second myth of Illuyanka, when the serpent defeats the Storm God, he incapacitates his adversary by taking his two most important body parts: his heart and his eyes (Hoffner 1998: 13). In the Disappearance of the Sun God myth, the hand of the Storm God sticks to a cup. He then pleads with the god, Frost: “Even if [you seize] these feet and hands (of mine), do not, however, seize my eyes” (Hoffner 1998: 28). An old Hittite text praising the king says that the gods “made the king’s body of tin; they made his head of iron; they made his eyes the eyes of an eagle. They made his teeth the teeth of a lion” (Görke 2015b: § 30, ii, 52–​54). Similarly: “His eyes are (those) of an eagle, and he sees like an eagle” (Steitler 2017: 263, r. 8–9). The same phrase is said of the Sun God, who is said by one text to have three sets of eyes (see below). “Seen with the eyes” (šakuwat dug(g)-​) seems to mean “sighted”: “But whoever is there—​seen with the eyes—​they must give over everything” (Beckman 1999: 163, r. 15; cf. CHD Š: s.v. šakui, 1d 5′ e′). Seeing is, of course, contrasted with blindness (Beal 2017: 38–​40). In a list of prisoners of war we meet Piḫinaš, a blind man from the city of Kutupitašša, and another man, Ḫimuili from Gamamma, who can see (del Monte 1995: 103–104, 6, 8). Blinding is mentioned as a punishment and, in the Middle Hittite period (c. 1400–​1350 BCE ) at least, seems to have been inflicted on prisoners of war. Blinded prisoners were set to work grinding grain (Beal 2017: 39), thus forcing them to rely on their sense of touch. The early Hittite Laws, which date to circa 1630 BCE , read (Hoffner 1997: Laws 7–​8): If anyone blinds a free man or knocks out his tooth, he used to pay 40 shekels of silver. Now he shall pay 20 (variant 10) shekels … If anyone blinds a male or female slave, or knocks out his tooth, he shall pay 10 shekels. One shekel was the equivalent to one month’s wages for a labourer (Law 150). The newer reworking of the laws, which dates to the thirteenth century BCE , modifies the older version of these laws as follows: “If anyone blinds a free man as the result of a quarrel (i.e., intentionally/​ pre-​meditated?), he shall pay 40 shekels of silver. If it is an accident, he shall pay 20 shekels” 679

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(Laws V–​VI). If the victim is a slave, the result is half that for a free man. That knocking out of a tooth carries, in the older version, the same penalty as blinding is astonishing (see further discussion below). Another malfunction of the eyes is described: the woman who has just given birth “became very afraid; she took fright. Her mouth went to the side, likewise her eyes. Likewise, her nine body parts” (Beckman 1983: 176–177, r. 7–​8). A number of expressions refer to seeing with comprehension. Mouton (2019: 163–164) has suggested that with the phrase “sight of the eyes” in the context cited above, of requesting “life, health, vigour, a long life, continual sight of the eyes and pride(?)” (CHD Š: s.v. šakui-​, 1 a 4') one might understand “sight of the eyes” to mean “discernment.” It follows that the phrase “sight of eyes” in certain oracles, also mentioned above, might also be “discernment,” rather than literal “eyesight.” Other expressions also refer to seeing with comprehension. One could “lift the eyes,” implying specific attention to noticing: “Enlil lifted his eyes and saw the child” (Hoffner 1998: 59, § 18). Or, as another example: “Lift your eyes and 1000 eyelashes toward […] and look favourably on the king and queen” (Haas and Wilhelm 1974: 190–191, ii, 10–​11, with new KUB 60.151, o. 4; CHD L–​N: 46a). One could be asked to “bend your eyes,” implying more heightened attention: “Bend your benevolent eyes” (Lebrun 1980: 84, 86, o. 11). Officials should “keep their eyes on something” (šakuwa ḫark-​) (CHD Š: šakui-​, 1 d 2′ f ′ for examples) to show their attentiveness/​watch: “In the winter let him keep his eyes on the royal cattle” (Miller 2013: 234–235 iv, 23–​ 24) or “By all means, keep your eyes on them, the troops of Kašiya, Ḫimuwa,Tegarama and Išuwa, who are there” (Miller 2013: 230–231, iii, 33–​35). As a third example: “Moreover, keep your eyes on my house” (Hoffner 2009: 146, 24–​25). “To watch over” could also be conveyed with the phrase which literally means “to run the eyes over” (šer IGI. Ḫ I.A ḫuiyanza) or simply “oversee” that is the verb auš-​“to see/​look” with the preverb šer “over” (Mouton 2019: 177–178). Another common phrase is “to set your eyes on” (šakuwa ep-​), which means “to concern yourself with.” A letter tells the recipient (Hoffner 2009: 211: 4–​9; CHD Š: s.v šakui-​, 1 d 2′ d′ 2′′): Regarding the matter of the legal cases concerning the house of Tarḫunmiya, … concern yourselves with (lit. set your eyes on) the house of Tarḫunmiya, then judge his cases, and satisfy him. The verb auš-​“to see/​look” with the preverb katta “down” means “to examine.” “To examine by means of birds” is to perform augury. The same verb with the preverb “menaḫḫanda,” “facing,” means to check the results (Mouton 2019: 176). The imperfective form of the verb is used in oracular questions to mean “foresee.” “Do you see (uške-​) danger for (his) person, and do you, O deity, hide it from him?” (Mouton 2019: 182; HW2 A: 583–584 for more examples). “To hide the eyes” (IGI.ḪI.A munnai-​) means “to disregard” (Mouton 2019: 175). The verb auš-​“to see” with the reflexive particle -​za and locative particle -​kan means “to see for oneself ” or “to experience.” Similarly there is IGI.ḪI.A-​it auš-​, “to see with one’s own eyes” (Mouton 2019: 168–​170). The other verb for seeing, šakuwai-​, and its derivatives can also be used to indicate seeing with comprehension (Görke 2015a: § 4): The Sun God has three pairs of eyes. One pair are [the eyes] of seeing. With them [let him look] at the king and queen. One pair are the eyes of soothing. Let the king and queen be satisfied with the Sun God. One pair of his eyes are for governing and judging. The Hittites knew how to exploit this “seeing with comprehension” to shock offenders by way of punishment: “He slaughtered him (a relative) before the eyes of Šarmaššu and Nunnu (misbehaving officers)” (Gilan 2015: 118, i, 17–​18). 680

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The expression “to turn the eyes” (šakuwa nai-​) means “to change cognitive focus,” whether geographically or politically (“to form an alliance with someone else”): e.g., “That deity turned his eyes aside elsewhere (tapušza tamēda nāieš)” (CHD L–​N: 351). The expression can simply be literal: “The Chief of the Royal Bodyguard and the cupbearer go back backwards. Their eyes are turned only toward the king” (BadalÌ and Zinko 1989: 42, 54, § 122); or “They rotate (waḫnu-​) the domestic deities as well. They turn (nai-​) their eyes toward the king” (Singer 1983: 80, iii, 25–​28). The expression “to turn the eyes” can also be used more figuratively: “Turn (your) eyes [in favour] to the king and queen” (Haas and Wilhelm 1974: 190–191, ii, 2). The use of the eyes in a form of non-​verbal communication can be seen in phrases such as “The ḫamena-​man gives the priest a sign with his eyes” (Popko 1994: 310–311, o. 12–​13; Mouton 2019: 162; CHD Š: 74–75, 1 d 5′ c′). The eyes, that is the gaze, or perhaps better the emanation from the eyes, could be “good” (aššu-​), that is “benevolent”: “May the Storm God, my lord, look upon the land of Kummanni with benevolent (aššawit) eyes” (Singer 2002: 85, r. 18); or “O Storm God, my lord, look again with treaty-​bound (takšulit) eyes on our land” (Singer 2002: 84, o. 30). Eyes could also be malevolent, as in the following expressions from various Hittite texts: “Let the evil person, evil tongue (and) the evil eyes be nailed down with (this) hawthorn” (Haas and Thiel 1978: 42, n. 112); or “Let (the magic) search out the evil of/​in the eyes and cast it out” (Otten 1961: 124– 125, ii, 49–​50); but “let go your anger. Likewise (let go your) furious eyes of anger” (Glocker 1997: 36–37, ii, 11–​12); and “I have taken the narrowed (maninkuwanda) furious (tarkuwanda) eyes of the masses; I have taken the furious eyes of the household servants” (Haas and Thiel 1978: 108–109 iii, 23–​26). Other malevolent designations of eyes are described as “angry eyes,” and “furious (karpiwala-​) eyes.” “Envious (aršananta) eyes” is the only term in Hittite that might overlap a bit with the modern Mediterranean concept of “evil eye,” a belief that looking at someone or something with envy or even fulsome praise could intentionally or completely unintentionally damage that person/​thing. The Hittite context occurs in a list of malevolent things magically removed from an angry god or goddess’ being (Güterbock 1986: 207–208): It [expell]ed from the body and heart [of the deit]y […] It [expelled] from him/​her [anger, fury,] misdeed, sullenness. [It expelled(?)] envious [eyes] and the evil [tongue] of mankind. The meagre attestations of the term “envious eyes” occur in similar contexts with other terms for malevolent gaze and in contexts with different types of anger, but do not show the unintentionality inherent in the modern concept of “evil eye” (Mouton 2009: 425–​432). The powerful gaze of the eyes could also be physically incapacitating, as in the Hittite Kumarbi myth: “Kumarbi, Alalu’s offspring, came for battle against Anu. Anu can no longer withstand the eyes of Kumarbi” (Hoffner 1998: 42, i, 20–​21). Perhaps an example of this is from another type of text: “I will seize (ep-​) the puppy with my eyes,” which has been interpreted as “I will fix the puppy with my eyes” (CHD Š: s.v. šakui-, 1 d 5′ b′). In a more earthly sphere, which represents literally a “gaze” rather than “emanation,” King Ḫattušili III says “Whenever I turned my eyes toward an enemy land, no enemy could turn my eyes back” (Otten 1981: 8–9, i, 67–​69). The phrase “to set the eyes” means “to look at,” perhaps in a covetous manner; for example:“whoever sets his eyes on the land of Ḫatti with hostile intent” (Oettinger 1976: 6–​9, i, 23–​24, 42–​43; ii, 12–​13); or “they made him governor of the district, but he set his eyes on an additional district” (Hoffner 1998: 70, ii, 34–​35). In an incubation-ritual to cure impotence, the patient reports his dreams “whether the goddess shows her eyes to him, or whether the goddess sleeps with him” 681

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(Hoffner 1987: 276, 279). In some cases, the verb auš-​with accusative has a similar meaning, which was to be taken quite literally: “[Traitorous royal relatives are told:] Go! Eat and Drink! Do not see my, the king’s, eyes” (Gilan 2015: 111); or when the king of Egypt neglects a Babylonian princess in his court, “he never sees her eyes” (Hagenbuchner 1989: 336–337 10). In the Festival of the Market and perhaps a few other festivals in the Hittite world, an iron spear/​lance is passed to and from the king. In Hittite times, iron was a precious metal and probably too brittle and rare to be used for an actual weapon. This object was designated as “a spear/​ lance of seeing” (CHD Š: s.v. šakuwatar), meaning it was only meant to be seen. Šakuwatar is derived from the word šakui-​, “eye.” As we mentioned above, there is also a verb that is derived from šakui-​, namely šakuwai(ya)-​ (CHD Š: 55–​56). The first of this verb’s three meanings is “to have sight”; it is said of the king: “his teeth are those of a lion. His eyes are those of an eagle. He sees like an eagle” (Steitler 2017: 263, r. 8–​9). A second meaning is “to look,” whereas the third (usually with the particle -​za in the sentence) is “to see.” Passages using both meanings in sequence are common: “the Sun God looked down from heaven. He sees Ullikummi. And Ullikummi sees the Sun God of Heaven” (Hoffner 1998: 59, iv, 33–​34); or from the Hittite version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, “when they arrived […] in the heart of the mountains [they looked(?)] at the mountains and looked at the cedars. Ḫuwawa looked down [at them from …]” (Beckman 2019: 37, 41, § 16). Beckman here translates the verb as “stared at.” “The Sun God has three pairs of eyes. One pair is for [the …] of seeing. With them [let him look] at the king and queen. One is for reconciliation. Let the king and queen be reconciled to the Sun God. One pair of his eyes are for governing and judging” (Görke 2015a: § 4). For the third meaning, attestations include: “the King of Kummiya (that is to say, the god Teššub) set his eye. He set his eye on the terrible(?) basalt-​monster; he sees the terrible basalt-​monster” (Hoffner 1998: 60, i, 23–​26); “Enlil lifted his eyes and sees the child” (Hoffner 1998: 59, iv, 11); and “a messenger set out for the Storm God. Kuruntiya saw him coming, and said: Why have you come O mortal?” (CHD Š: 56, 3 b). A feast for the sense of sight was enjoyed in many Hittite festivals, which often involved the viewing of elaborate dances. These celebrations and rituals called for dancers, male and female. Dancers are referred to by the Sumerian word-​sign lú.mešḫÚB.BI /lú.mešḫÚB.BÍ .The performer/​jester, lú ALAN.ZU 9, also frequently dances. Sometimes court officials, share-​holders (LÚ.MEŠ ZITTI ), and even the queen are called on to dance. The verb “to dance” is tarku(wai)-​. Other verbs describe steps “to turn” (nai-​),“to rotate” (weḫ-​/​waḫnu-​),“to go” (iya-​). Movements could be “to the right” or “to the left,” “in place” or “(forward) from afar” ((parā) tuwaz), which perhaps means a leap. In one text dancers “turn to a sword” (Singer 1984: 94, r. 22). Some descriptions of dances use words for movements that are unique to dancing. Some of the dances were specified to be in the style of a particular locality. Dancers could be elaborately and/​or colourfully costumed. They could be dressed as hunters or animals. A large vase from İnandık covered with a figural relief decoration, which probably shows a wedding, shows a woman clapping, while a naked man does a somersault (Schuol 2004: pl. 3; Alp 2000: 18–​19; Özgüç 1988: pls. K, 38, 55). On the vase and in the texts the dancers were accompanied by music (see below under “Hearing”). A similar vase from Hüseyindede shows acrobats jumping a bull, accompanied by musicians (Schuol 2004: pl. 4). The relief on the wall of a city courtyard at Alaca Höyük shows a sword swallower and a ladder-​walker (Bittel 1976: 193; Alp 2000: 12; Schuol 2004: pl. 10). The festivals also occasionally had skits which were like dances, most likely also multisensorial events, but relied on sight, especially to get their points across and for entertainment. There is one skit described in a text where a hunter (lùmeneya-​) with a bow follows a leopard-​man. Elsewhere the hunter appears with four lion-​men. Another skit at a festival has a bear-​man hunted by a

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female archer. In yet another skit described in texts, a battle is re-​enacted between the men of Ḫatti and the men of Maša. The former, of course, win. There is a staged battle of champions between an enemy and one of us. “We,” of course, win. There is a mock wrestling match, with a similar result. There are also what appear to be actual wrestling and boxing matches, foot-​races (Singer 1983: 103–104), and horse-​races, with awards to the winners. There are also moments in festivals with skits that seem even slapstick (CHD L–​N: 290a): The singer (tarašiya-​) gets up and dances crouching. He sprinkles [water(?)] using a water-​ bag(?). A hunter walks behind him. He draws an arrow on this side and that, but does not release it. He (the singer?) cries out ‘i-​i!’ He goes forward toward the king once. When he turns back, he hits the hunter with the water-​bag(?). When he goes forward, he hits the performers/​jesters. In another skit, two naked performers/​jesters are in a tub. The priestess of the local deity and the head of the prostitutes run three times around the tub. A priest threatens the performers/​ jesters, who are then drenched in beer. They stand up in the tub, blow a horn and exit (De Martino 1995; Alp 2000: 1–​65). If the İnandık vase discussed earlier does indeed represent a scene from an upper-​class wedding, then there is evidence for multisensorial entertainment in secular celebrations as well as in religious festivals. Interestingly, on the vase among the dancers and musicians, two male actors are simulating heterosexual intercourse (a custom still to be found in Anatolia today), no doubt for the benefit of the young couple and the amusement of their elders and the future fertility of the wedding couple. Another visual stimulus was provided by colour. Hittite texts mention the following colours: black, white, red-​brown, blue, yellow-​green, silver, and gold. While we may suppose that Hittite festivals were colourful affairs, our many festival texts seldom mention colours explicitly, probably because they are not descriptions of festivals, but rather stage directions. The most descriptive passage instructs (Elicker 2016: 63–​65): On the 4th day, when it gets light, the decorated carriage is already parked before the temple. Three scarves, one white, one red, and one blue are braided together and hung on the carriage. They bring the deity out of the temple and seat him/​her in the carriage … (Various women and a man) go in front. They carry lit torches and sprinkle ḫarnāi-​in front. Once in a while, texts mention various coloured objects: a white carriage, garments, shoes, stool, spear, or libation vessel (HW2 Ḫ: s.v. ḫarki-​). Black objects are even rarer, mentioning only black shoes, a black libation vessel, and a black cup (CHD T: s.v. dankui-​, forthcoming). There are five mentions in a festival text of a red garment, while red shoes are mentioned only in inventories. In one festival, known in Hittite as the Nuntarriyašḫa Festival (Nakamura 2002: 173–174): The king goes into the bathhouse. He puts on white BAR.DUL 8-​garments, silver earrings and black Hattic-​style shoes. He comes out of the bathhouse and the body-​guards hold golden spears … He goes to Ḫattuša in a gold inlaid carriage. The bodyguards no (longer) hold golden spears … the bodyguards hold white wooden spears. And in another event, known as the KI.LAM -​festival, the king “puts on his robes. He puts on a white Subarian-​type tunic and a shaggy garment known as a šepaḫi. He takes his gold earrings and puts on his black shoes (CAD Š: s.v. šarkuwe-​).” Sometimes no colours are mentioned, but

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merely that something is ornamented, for example “they prepare the altar and ornament it with fruit” (HEG U: 63). A Hittite would have seen a splendid sight as the royal procession moved from temple to temple, or city to city, during a festival. For the KI.LAM festival the procession was as follows: the king and queen ride in festive garments in processional chariots. They are followed by ceremonial carriages pulled by ornamented oxen—​their horns and yokes mounted in gold and having gold crescents symbolizing the moon on their foreheads. They are also followed by ten or more dancers (one naked), priests, a singer, spear-​carriers, ten or twenty copper (or copper coloured) hunting bags, the animals of the gods (a silver panther, silver wolf, golden lion, lapis lazuli boar, silver boar), dog-​men, a singer, a golden stag, silver stags with and without antlers, and so on (Singer 1983: 59–​63, 90; for extant silver animal-​shaped vessels, see Bittel 1976: 160, 165). An additional way of stimulating the sense of sight was through artwork. At the highest point of the capital city, Ḫattuša, the city wall was placed atop a great artificial mound which was covered on the outside by a thick stone glacis, all for no apparent military reason as the city wall was easily defendable. Thus, visual spectacle was the most important reason for this (Seeher 2002: 50–​63). In addition to city walls, the most important gates of Hittite cities were guarded by statues of sphinxes, lions, or gods. For example, the outer wall of a building at Alaca Höyük was adorned with a relief of a festival procession. A procession of the Hittite pantheon and carvings of Tudḫaliya IV and beings specific to his death cult are carved onto the walls of the rock sanctuary at the site of Yazılıkaya (Bittel et al. 1975). Reliefs of the gods or a king were also carved on rock outcrops or at springs (Kohlmeyer 1995: 2645–​2655; Bittel 1976; Ehringhaus 2005). Where there was a rock-​carved inscription, the inscription used Luwian hieroglyphic writing, rather than Luwian or Hittite cuneiform script, probably because hieroglyphics were more visually stimulating or noticeable to the mostly illiterate passers-​by (Bryce 2019: 104–​106). Another source of visual stimulation were foreign embassies arriving in their spectacular foreign clothing, as in one text, the Hittite king mentions: “I took a foreigner, the daughter of a Great King as a daughter-​in-​law. Is it not a praiseworthy thing if at some point he comes in full array (mišriwanda) to visit my daughter-​in-​law” (CHD L–​N: 299). Finally, female bodies could be visually stimulating. In one myth, Šaušga’s naked body aroused the monster Ḫedammu (Hoffner 1998: 54–​55). “Kešši [took] in marriage a woman by the name of Šintalimeni … She was beautiful/​radiant (mišriwant-​), endowed with everything” (Hoffner 1998: 88, § 2). “If you are seeking to punish me for harm suffered by Tawananna (the Queen Mother), I have sent you my adorned substitute. … She is pure. She is beautiful/​radiant (mišriwant-​). She is fair (lit. white). She is endowed with everything. Look at her, O god, my lord” (Singer 2002: 72). To summarise, it is clear from the many words and phrases related to seeing and vision that the sense took on many literal and figurative meanings in the Hittite world. In addition, visual experience (combined with other sensations) must have been a regular part of the Hittite world through objects, festivals, and architecture.

Hearing The Hittite word for “hearing” is ištamaššuwar, a noun derived from the verb ištamaš-​ (HW 2 I: 236–​243). The verb is, in turn, derived from the noun ištamana-​“ear.” The meaning “to hear” is clear for this verb in many types of Hittite texts, including the following royal texts (Beckman 1999: 38, § 6): If somebody makes a revolt against the king of the Land of Hatti […] and you, Aziru, hear, and you do not whole-​heartedly come to help (you are in breach of your oath); 684

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or (Hoffner 2009: 123–124, 5–​12): Concerning what you wrote to me (sc. the king): “While we were in Ḫattuša, the Kaškans heard (about this). They drove off sheep and seized the roads.” When I sent you, Ḫulla, out last winter, they didn’t hear of you then. But NOW they have heard about you. The verb is also attested in the middle-​voice with the meaning “to hear about”: “If a Kaškan man takes a woman (of the city) and comes [into the city], he will leave the city [at night]. If any Kaškan sleeps in the city, and he is heard about, they will throw him into prison” (von Schuler 1965: 147, iii, 28–​31).3 The Hittite words for hearing also have a cognitive or intellectual element, just like the Hittite words for seeing. Thus, the verb ištamaš- also means “to listen” or “pay attention to,” or “to comply with a speaker’s request” (HW2 I: 241, § 2). This we see in two Hittite treaties: “If someone else were to lead you astray to such a thing. Do not listen to him. Do not do it” (Beckman 1999: 32, § 26); and “I did not listen to the anger of my lord nor to the intimidation of my colleagues” (Singer 2002: 100). Interestingly, in a literary text that describes the mortal hunter Kešši, who was besotted with so much love for his beautiful wife that he neglected his hunting, his mother, and offerings to his gods, the text reads: “Kešši listened fully (parā) only to his wife” (CHD -​šan B: 2 f 2′ c′); that is, it does not say, as we would in English “he had eyes only for his wife,” but rather as Hoffner (1998: 88, § 2) paraphrases, “he had ears only for his wife.” This meaning hints at the verb relating to hearing meaning “to obey,” a connotation noted in other texts: “Let all the army obey (lit. hear) him” (Miller 2013: 148–149, i, 18); or “Let the loyalty and obedience of the horse-​troops and infantry back him (i.e., the king)” (Haas and Wilhelm 1974: 192–193, ii, 24–25). A slightly different nuance, related not to action, but to attention can be seen in: “Appu took notice of (lit. heard) the words (of the Sun God) and returned home” (Hoffner 1998: 83, ii, 10f.; HW 2 I: 241-242, § 4), or similarly, “Thus speaks My Majesty: Say to Kaššu: ‘Concerning the matter of the enemy that you wrote to me about. I have taken note (lit. I heard it)’ ” (Hoffner 2009: 100: 1–​4, and passim in letters). With the preverb arḫa, the meaning is “to be heard of,” as in (Beckman 1999: 27, §§ 1–​2; HW2 I: 242): I have now elevated you, Ḫuqqana, a lowly dog and have treated you well. In Ḫattuša I have distinguished you among the men of Ḫayaša and have given you my sister in marriage. All of Ḫatti, the land of Ḫayaša, and the outlying and central lands have heard of you. At the same time, in Hittite texts, different meanings can occur in the same passage; for example (Gilan 2015: 68, § 2): (Crown-​Prince Labarna) always took the advice of his mother, that snake. His brothers and sisters continually sent him cold words and he consistently listened to their words. I, the king, heard (of this), and indeed I quarrelled with him. What we would consider inanimate objects were considered by the Hittites to be living things and thus had the capacity to hear. This meant that they could be expected to understand what was being said to them and to obey instructions, just like a human being; for instance: “The performer/​jester speaks once to the (offering) thick bread and twice to the (libatory) tawal-​ beverage” (Kloekhorst 2008: 491–492).

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One also finds in Hittite the equivalent to the curious English expression “lend me your ears.” A prayer against plague reads (Singer 2002: 64-65, § 2): O gods, my lords! … Lend me your ear and hear me in the matter in which I have bowed down to you. King Muwattalli II prays to the divine assembly (Singer 2002: 87, § 4): I shall make the matters of my own soul into a plea. Divine lords, lend me your ear, and listen to these my pleas. And the words, which I will make into a plea to the divine lords, accept and listen to them. And whatever words you do not wish to hear from me, and I nevertheless persist in making them into a plea to the gods, they merely emerge from my human mouth: refrain from listening to them, divine lords. In a ritual the deity is told: “Do not lend our ear to the enemy” (HW 2 I: 236). The Hittite expression was “to hold out the ear” (ištamanan parā ēp-​), a decidedly more literal understanding of the expression. As another example, a prayer asks the Sun Goddess of the Earth to “lend (lit. hold out) a hearing ear (ištamaššantan GEŠTU -​an parā [ēp]) [to them (to the royal couple)] and [see them] with favourable eyes” (Görke and Melzer 2015: § 29, 161–​162); and the Hittite queen says: “If you, Šarruma, my lord, lend your [ear] (and) listen to me, I will give to Šarruma [one] ear [of] ten shekels of gold (and) one ear (of) one mina of silver” (de Roos 2007: 92, 100, ii, 25–​27). An expression with a similar meaning is “to bend the ear” (ištamanan lak-​): “O god! Bend your ear and listen to what the king [and queen] are saying to you”; “Keep your ear bent forth (ištamanan parā lagān hark) toward what he says to you” (CHD L–​N: 17–18, with many examples). If the adverb parā, which frequently is used in this expression, “means ‘forth’, the image may be of the ear extended. If it means ‘forward,’ the image may be drawn from canine or equid ear movement, i.e. ‘prick up (or cock) the ears’ ” (CHD L–​N: 18). Ears made out of bread or silver were lowered into pits (abi-​) to connect this world with the underworld, presumably in order for the underworld deity to hear better the supplications of humans. The intention was to evoke/​draw up the deity, or at least the deity’s capacity to listen:“Then, in that place they open an abi-​pit. The officiant draws-​up the deity seven times from there with ear-​bread” (HW2 Ḫ: 547, II.1; Miller 2004: 374–375); or (HW2 Ḫ: 548, II.2; Haas and Wilhelm 1974: 156–157): He puts a silver ladder and a silver toggle-​pin into the first abi-​pit. He attaches a silver ear to the toggle-​pin. He hangs it down into the first pit. From the back of the ear, a scarf hangs. In these rituals, the word for “ear” is not the usual Hittite word ištamana-​, but a loanword via Hurrian from Akkadian ḫasīsu, meaning “ear, wisdom and understanding” (HW2 Ḫ: 547–​548). As in Akkadian and Hurrian, this loan word could also be used for what the ear does: “hearing.” In a ritual, “they draw the goddess Ḫebat from the road. (They offer) one sheep for the drawing and for the calling; one sheep for the road, for hearing, and for the coming” (HW2 Ḫ: 548: § III). Scribes at Ḫattuša used the loan word not just for “ear” and “hearing” but for “wisdom,” again connecting sensing with cognition or perception. There is a ritual for “When they make a wisdom sacrifice (SISKUR ḫaziziya) to Aa (= Ea, god of wisdom)” (HW2 Ḫ: 548, § IV). There is also a mention of a deity Ḫazzizi, “Wisdom,” or “Divine Ear” (HW2 Ḫ: 548, § V). Ears were obviously recognised by the Hittites as distinctly important sensory organs. The early Hittite laws punished tearing off an ear of a free man with a penalty of 12 shekels, the equivalent to one year’s wages for a labourer (Hoffner 1997: 27, §§ 15–​16). The penalty, if the victim was a slave was three shekels, raised to six shekels in a later re-​working of the laws. As we 686

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discuss elsewhere, this is less than the penalty for blinding, or biting off a nose. The Hittites do not explain why this is so, but it should be noted that a person with cut-​off ears can still hear, whereas the person without eyes or nose cannot see or smell due to the loss of the actual sensory organs. The laws also speak of mutilating (kukkurške-​) the nose and ears as punishment of a slave who commits burglary or arson (Hoffner 1997: 93–94, § 95; 96–97, § 99). Lack of hearing is also mentioned in Hittite texts. The adjective “deaf ” was duddumiyant-​. A number of temples employed deaf men as menial servants (Beal 2017: 40–41). A ritual reads (CHD L–​N: 57, s.v. lē): Beneath it (a tree) sit a blind man and a deaf man. Does the blind man see? Absolutely not! Does the deaf man hear? Absolutely not! … In the same way let the words of sorcery not see the client. While a magical text asks the gods (Beal 2017: 40–41): [Those who were continually terrifying [him], those who were continually frightening him, take (their) eyes from them, [(as) blind people]; take (their) ears from them (as) deaf people, (saying to them), ‘Will you hear with your ears? Certainly not! Will you see with (your) eyes? Certainly not!’ Or, in another text, a military leader swears that should he turn into a traitor, “let them blind his troops, then let them deafen them. Let comrade not see comrade. Let this one not hear that one” (Oettinger 1976: 6–7). And a magic ritual seeks to remove “a disease of the ear” (ḫazzizziyaš GIG -​an) (HW2 Ḫ: 547, § 1). Spoken words, heard by others, could be forces of evil or good in themselves; “the evil tongue” (idalu-​ lāla-​) (CHD L–​N: 21–​25), which spread slander or blasphemy, was a demonic force that needed to be magically expelled, burned up, destroyed, carried off, purified, or simply caused to perish: “If tongues come upon a person, the ‘Old Woman’ treats him/​her as follows …” (CHD L–​N: 2). In ritual texts, models of tongues were often made to help turn the slander back on the slanderer and slanderous rumours (literally, “tongues of the multitude”) appear in lists of attacking evils. Often the evil tongue appears in inclusive lists of evils to be eradicated, which include evils that one may have brought upon oneself by one’s intentional or inadvertent actions: blood(-​shed), oath, sickness, curse, misdeed, and cultic uncleanliness. This is perhaps best seen in another text: “As these (stelae) have fallen over, so also let those words which on that day came forth from the mouths and tongues of the two clients fall over” (Miller 2004: 98–99, § 40). On the other hand, there was also “true/​correct speech” (lala-​ ḫandant-​) (CHD L–​N: 23, 3). Slander was something one wanted not to be heard, but the truth was something one did want to be heard: “You good lips, keep speaking good […] before the Sun goddess of the Earth” (CHD P: s.v. pūri-​A, 3). The truthful tongue could be bound by witchcraft, and would then be in need of loosening (CHD L–​N: 21, 1 a 3′). A Hittite would have found their sense of hearing stimulated by being surrounded by music at both civilian celebrations and while attending religious festivals—​often at the same time as their sense of sight in these multisensorial moments. On a relief vase found at İnandıktepe (Özgüç 1988: pls. I–​L, 43–​58 passim, fig. 64; Schuol 2004: pl. 3),4 that probably commemorates and portrays a wedding, musicians are depicted with six small lyres and one large lyre, which towers over its two musicians. These are referred to in Hittite texts by the Sumerian word-​sign GIŠ.ᵈINANNA , or “wood-​instrument of the goddess Inanna.” The Hattic and perhaps Hittite word for these is zinar: ḫunzinar for the large one; and ipizinar the small lyre (Schuol 2004: 97–​106). The same wedding vase also shows a lute, and either a small drum (played with the right hand and held with the left), or a pair of cymbals (seen in profile, it is impossible to tell). 687

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A relief on a rhyton shows a king pouring a libation in a ritual before a god and altar, accompanied by lyres, drum/​cymbal, and what appears to be a very long flute/​recorder (Schuol 2004: pls. 8–​9; cf. on a statuette pl. 10, fig. 33.1). The texts probably referred to this instrument as a GI.GÍD “long reed.”5 Reliefs from Hittite successor states show other instruments. One portrays dancers accompanied by a lute and an aulos/​double-​pipe. On another, three musicians play a giant drum, beside a man blowing (parai-​/​pariparai-​) a horn (sišawatar) (Schuol 2004: pl. 11).6 In Hittite festivals lyres often formed a small ensemble (Schuol 2004: 177–​201) with three other instruments, the arkammi-​, ḫuḫupal, and galgalturi. The first two were at least partially made of wood. The ḫuḫupal came in sets and could be boxwood or ivory. The galgalturi could be made of copper, bronze, iron, baked clay, or wood, could be large and could come in sets. There is also an instrument written with the Sumerian word-​sign gišBALAG.DI , which comes in ordinary and large, and a rarer instrument written gišTIBULA . Therse is no agreement as to what these instruments were (Güterbock 1995; de Martino 1995: 2662; HW² Ḫ: 640–​643; Schuol 2004: 107–​120, 124–​128). Three different verbs are used with all these instruments: walḫ-​ “to hit” and ḫazziya-​ “to pluck? to tap?” (de Martino 1995: 2662; Güterbock 1995: 57–58), and ḫupp-​“to make the sound ḫupp-​” (Melchert 2007: 517–518). The texts attest to male and female lyrists, arkammi-​players, BALAG.DI -​ men and flautists. The texts mention no professional designation for horn, ḫuḫupal, and galgalturi, and in fact people in all sorts of musical and non-​musical professions were called on to play these instruments. A different percussion sound was heard when the men of the town of Anunuwa struck spears (gismari-​) together while singing (CHD: s.v. gišmari-​; Schuol 2004: 122–​ 124). Finally, there is a noisemaker that was not part of the band, a gišmukar, which was used to call in the gods, was carried in procession, and was attached to a wagon in procession (CHD: s.v. giš mukar). It has been suggested that it is a sistrum, since sistra have been excavated in pre-​Hittite levels (de Martino 1995: 2662). However, since its main component seems to have been wooden sticks (gišPA.ḪI.A), Schuol (2004: 120–​122) suggests “rattle,” but this too remains contested. While there are many examples from texts and images of musical instruments and ensembles, a participant in Hittite festivals would have had their ears filled not just with the sound of musical instruments, but also with human voices. Frequently the instruments were accompanied by singers ́ (išhamatalla-​/​lu/​munusSÌR ) singing (išhamai-​/S​ ÌR-​RU) songs (išhamai-​/S​ ÌR). Singers were both male and female. There was solo singing, men’s choruses, and choruses of women and/​or girls (HW2 I: 117–​ 130; Schuol 2004: 136–​153). In addition to songs in Hittite, there were songs in Luwian, Hurrian, and Babylonian (see also Chapter 32, this volume). Some songs were in the style of certain cities. Singers (išḫamatalla-​) and musicians (lu.́ mešNAR) are listed among temple staff (Singer 2002: 41: § 12). However, singing in religious ceremonies and festivals was not confined to the professionals. Various festivals call for all sorts of non-​professional people to sing. Among these are lay-​musicians such as the BALAG. DI-​player. Texts show us that there were also specialised palace personnel who sang in various rituals and festivals, including cupbearers, palace servants, pharmacists and goldsmiths, and so forth. In addition to musical instruments and singing, and frequently occurring in conjunction with these sounds, one would have been entertained by other performers, who relied on multiple senses, including: “the performer/​jester” (lúALAN.ZU 9) who speaks (memai-​); the shouter/​ shoutress who shouts (palwatallaš palwaizzi);7 and the kita-​man who calls out (lúkitaš ḫalzai). How exactly each of these verbs of speech should be understood in modern terms (recite, chant, etc.) is not clear. In short, a Hittite festival or festival procession was a very auditory experience (de Martino 1995; Schuol 2004). Outside of festivals, specific songs also accompanied storytelling (de Martino 1995: 2663). What we would call myths and epics, such as Kingship in Heaven and Gilgameš, were called “songs” by the Hittites, and were thus presumably sung in rhythm and with certain tones, or with 688

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instrumental accompaniment. In a Hittite myth called The Song of Ullikummi, the goddess Šaušga sang and played musical instruments as part of her attempt to seduce the monster Ullikummi (Hoffner 1998: 60–​61): [She took(?)] the BALAG.DI and the galgalturi in her hand. … She struck the BALAG.DI and the galgalturi. She set the ‘gold-​things’ in motion. She took up a song, and heaven and earth echoed it back. Šaušga kept on singing. … A great wave(?) from the sea. The great wave(?) said to Šaušga: ‘For whom are you singing? For whom are you filling your mouth with winds? The man (i.e., Ullikummi) is deaf; he can[not] hear.’ Presumably it was not just goddesses who stimulated male interest with singing, and thus we may extrapolate such a display to lucky Hittite mortals. If the İnandık vase does indeed represent a scene from an upper-​class wedding, then there is evidence for music in secular celebrations.

Smell In Hittite,“nose” is usually written with the Sumerian word-sign KIR 14. The Hittite word underlying this word-​sign is not known. A cult inventory mentions a nose of precious metal (Rost 1961–​1963: 198). It is unclear whether this was part of a deity’s statue, or used to lure the deity in by smell, as with the ears mentioned above by hearing. The most common reference to the nose is to its existence as a prominent external body part. A few women are described as having their noses pierced (ḫattant-​): “The pierced-​nose women bow” (Wegner 1995: 185, iii, 10–​11; HW2 Ḫ: 486, III 2); “Afterward, ‘the nose-​pierced one’ takes a place before the gate of the temple. She treats the deity with … for all the curses of the king” (Görke and Melzer 2016: o. 1–​2, cf. 13); and “Is Šaušga of Nineveh angry in the matter of the pierced nose?” (HW2 Ḫ: 486, III 2). As with other important sensory organs, the Hittite laws discuss mutilating (kukkurške-​) the nose and ears as punishment for a slave who commits burglary or arson (Hoffner 1997: 93–​94, 96–​97, §§ 95, 99).8 Texts discuss that a slave could expect to have his nose, eyes, and ears damaged (idalawahh-​) if he offended his master as an analogy to the even worse punishment a temple official could expect if he offended the deity of the temple (Miller 2013: 248–249 i, 29–30). In the Old Hittite Laws, a law punishes biting off a free person’s nose with a hefty penalty of 40 shekels, but only three shekels9 for a slave’s nose (Hoffner 1997: 26–​27, §§ 13–​14). Sturtevant and Bechtel (1935: 225) suggest that biting off a nose was far more humiliating to a free man than to a slave, who had no honour to defend. Surprisingly the 40-​shekel penalty for biting off a nose is the same amount charged as for blinding a person. And even more surprising, in later Hittite laws, the 40-​shekel penalty for blinding is reduced to two shekels, while the penalty for biting off a nose remained at 40. One would think that the life-​shattering experience of losing sight would have been much more heavily penalised than the outwardly humiliating, but not debilitating loss of a nose (Hoffner 1997: 178). On the other hand, a noseless person was very likely to have been a punished criminal and will have looked something like a skeleton, whereas the blind person could always have been that way and will, in any case, have looked far more normal. In other words, losing a nose may not have been as physically debilitating as losing one’s eyes, but it could have been devastatingly socially debilitating. This suggests that the relative importance and hierarchical ordering of the senses must be culturally and historical contextualised. The function of the nose is not referred to in any known text, but we do have any number of references to smells. As with sounds, there were foul odours, and pleasant ones, the latter mostly from perfumed oils. These are frequently described by the adjective šanezzi-​, which basically means “pleasant,” but when used to describe olfactory substances, the word should be translated 689

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“fragrant”: “As this perfumed oil (Ì.DÙG.GA) is fragrant, and it is well-​liked by the gods and humans, let the king and queen and land of Ḫatti be well-​liked by the gods in the same way” (CHD Š: 176, 1 a 2′; Haas and Wilhelm 1974: 192–193); “They take a baked-​clay cup filled with perfumed oil—​and fragrant things are mixed in—​‘sweet-​reed’, šaḫi-​wood, ḫappuria-​wood, and parnulli-​wood (CHD Š: 177, § 3a); “They take one wakšur-measure of perfumed oil for that Storm God. Then he/she scatters fragrant things onto the brazier” (CHD Š: 177, § 3a); and “He/She takes embers/ coals from the fire-pan and throws mixed fragrant-things into the brazier” (CHD Š: 178, § 3a). In one text, the goddess Šaušga of Nineveh wanted to seduce a monster, so she first went to the bathhouse and washed herself, presumably to remove bad odours. Then she anointed herself with fragrant perfumed oil (Hoffner 1998: 54; CHD Š: 176, 1 a 2′). In front of another monster she sang and danced, and also she burned (šamešiya-​) pleasant-​smelling cedar (Hoffner 1998: 60). This suggests that burning aromatics was pleasing to the gods. A purification ritual reads (Fuscagni 2015: § 7): The priest and the mother-​of-​the-​god-​priestess bathe … they sweep the temple out. They keep the roofs from leaking. They sprinkle the temple inside and outside. They smooth(?) the floor. … Then they burn aromatics (ŠEM. Ḫ I.A ). And incense is mentioned just after food as something the gods desire; when the god Ea advises the other gods that they should not destroy mankind, he says “Mankind will not give sacrifices to the gods and they will not burn cedar for you. If you destroy mankind, they will no longer [worship] the gods. No one will offer [bread] or libations to you any longer” (Hoffner 1998: 52, § 6.1). The vocabulary of smelling verbs in Hittite is not clear and much disputed. It was suggested by Hoffner (1963: 35–36; cf. HW2 I: 250–251) that the rare verb ištanḫ-​meant both “to smell” and “to taste.” This is rejected by Puhvel (HED E/​I: 463–464) and Kloekhorst (2008: 413), who only accept “to taste.” If Hoffner is correct, this would imply that the Hittites considered these two senses to be one and the same sense; and would imply that the Hittites were aware of the physical link between the two senses. The only evidence that ištanḫ-​ means “smell” occurs in the following passages: “Let no one break a thick-​bread (offering) for you. May you not ištanḫ-​the waršula-​of cedar” (HEG W–​Z: 371; Collins 1997: 170, § 33); or (Hoffner 1998: 55, § 16.1; CHD Š: 605 g): (Šaušga) dipped aphrodisiac(?), šaḫi-​wood and [parnull]i-​wood into the mighty waters. And the aphrodisiac(?), šaḫi-​wood and parnulli-​wood waršula-​d in the waters. When Ḫedammu smelled/​tasted (ištanḫ-​) the waršula-​of the brew (lit. ‘beer’), sweet sleep overcame the mind of the brave Ḫedammu. It has been argued that waršula-​ means “aroma” (Güterbock 1986: 212) and thus ištanḫ-​ would mean “to smell.” But in other contexts, the translation “smell/​aroma” for waršula-​does not seem to work. If waršula-​ does not mean “aroma/​smell” then the translation “to smell” for ištanḫ-​ is called into question. Whether he smelled the aroma or tasted the beer, we are to understand that Ḫedammu subsequently drank up the whole vat of liquid. To some extent, the understanding of the passage and “smell” in Hittite requires an understanding of the word waršula-​ (for references see Kloekhorst 2008: 975–​978; HEG W–​Z: 370–​373). In many passages a translation “smell” and/​or “odour” (Guẗ erbock 1986: 212) for waršula-​ seems to work best:“Let the waršula-​of cedar, the striking of the lyre and the words of the exorcist be an invitation for the gods” (Haas and Wilhelm 1974: 192–193, ii, 32–​33). There is also mention of fragrant (šanezzi-​) waršula (Hoffner 1998: 16, ii, 7): “Now let the sweet waršula-​, the cedar and 690

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oil call you. Come back into your temple” (Singer 2002: 54, § 4). The Hittite word could also have described foul odours; particularly evocative of the contrary odour:“I have driven away from you the waršula-​of the dog. I have burned the dung(?) of the dog” (CHD Š: 107 s.v. šalpa-​); similarly, “May the waršula-​like a kid-​goat not […] in” (Rieken et al. 2009: § 13, B, iii, 7). A relatively common phrase in Hittite texts might combine the senses of smelling and tasting, waršuli eku. This phrase consists of the verb eku-​“to drink” plus the dative-​locative of waršula-​. This should mean something like “for the waršula-​,” as in the following passages (Rost 1961–​ 1963: 198): Then he ladles with the rhyton of the deity and pours into the cup of the king. He gives (it) to the king. The BALAG.DI -​musicians sing for the divine Favorable Day. The king drinks for the waršula-​. Or, “when they fill the ḫuḫupal-​vessel with wine, only the cup-​bearer drinks up (arḫa) waršuli.” Güterbock (1986: 212), perhaps subconsciously thinking of the modern Turkish phrase sigara içmek “to smoke a cigarette, but literally “to drink a cigarette,” suggested understanding these passages as “he drinks in the smell” in other words “he sniffs the aroma.”10 Other passages, however, cast doubt on a meaning “smell, aroma:” “Holy water is sprinkled. […] Waršula-​[came up and] went into [the body] of the deity” (Güterbock 1986: 207–208, 25–​27). Here it is quite possible that the sprinkling of water, presumably on the hearth, gave rise to the smell of various things cooking/burning there, or at least to an odoriferous steam. But by itself, water or its steam would be odourless. And in another text, waršula-​seems to mean “mist”;11 there is no reason in the plot of the story to think that there is any odour involved (Hoffner 1998: B, i, 9–​11): The Storm God says to [the god Frost’s(?)] brother, the Wind: ‘May your waršula-​ (“refreshing”) go out over the waters of the mountains, gardens and meadows and may it not paralyze them.’ Other passages cast further doubt on a translation “smell, aroma”: “Let your waršula- be seen by me” (Rieken et al. 2009: § 1; HEG W–Z: 370). So waršula- could be (sometimes) seen as well as (sometimes) smelled and perhaps tasted. We have seen above that waršula- could describe something emanating from goats and dogs, where it could indicate foul smell. Another passage concerning horses further problematises that meaning (HED W-Z: 371): When they unharness them (the horses), they bring them into the barn. When the waršula-​ goes forth from them, they wash them five times and make them shudder. After consulting with Margaret Brandt of Léttleiki Icelandics (an Icelandic Horse farm located in Kentucky, USA) in 2019, it seems that horses sweat after exercise and need to be cooled down by washing, but do not exude any odour (contra CHD P: 33). So here waršula-​seems to mean “sweat.”Yet in the two passages quoted earlier, while dogs and goats may “sweat,” it is their foul “smell/​stench” that will have been noticeable. In the case of goats and dogs waršula- apparently was olfactory, while in the case of horses it was an odourless liquid. From the passages we have seen, Kloekhorst concludes (2008: 977–978) that waršula-​“seems to denote the immaterial appearance of a certain object in smell, taste or ‘materialization.’ We could think of a basic meaning ‘fume, haze, vapour.’ ” Similarly, the Chicago Hittite Dictionary (CHD Š: 605, § 2 g) concludes that “waršula-​is a substance that can be seen and tasted, but also a vapor that can be smelled. It is produced by plants as an aroma, and by animals as sweat.” Finally, 691

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to summarise, for the CHD, waršula is “the defining sensory aspect of the releasing entity.” It is something that could be either an aerosol emanation “smell, scent” or liquid emanation “sweat, steam or mist.” Therefore, a translation “emanation” from something would seem to be the closest to what these examples require.12

Taste The poorly attested verb ištanḫ-​can be translated “to taste (in a sensory way)/​to savour.” “The Sun-​deity poured groats into her (sc. the Earth Goddess’s) mouth. He/​She [broke] thick bread. She savoured it (… let the city of Zalpa thrive in the future)” (CHD Š: 554, d1′; Gilan 2015: 183). As we saw above, the verb may or may not also have the meaning “to smell,” depending on how we understand waršula-​+ ištanḫ-​. It may be that the sense of smell was conflated in Hittite texts with the sense of taste, as we mentioned above. A second verb meaning “to taste” is kukuš-: for example,“they hold out wine and ḫarzazu-​bread to the king and the king tastes it” (Kloekhorst 2008: 491–492). Unfortunately, this is the only place where this verb is preserved in any sort of context. The context is sufficiently unclear as to whether it means “to savour the flavour of wine and bread” or perhaps, considering the prosaic nature of instructions in Hittite festivals, is more likely to simply to mean “to sample food and drink.” But the aesthetic experience of taste can be seen frequently in Hittite texts, as in the following from a myth (Hoffner 1998: 16, ii, 16–​27): Figs are lying here. And as figs are sweet, let your mood, Telipinu, likewise become sweet ... As honey is sweet, and ghee is mild let your mood, Telipinu, become sweet and become mild in the same way. One also finds, “Approach the sweet wine and [drink(?)] its sweetness” (CHD L–​N: 253, s.v. maliddu-​B) and “like a sweet cluster of grapes …” (CHD L-N: 251–252). The Hittite word here for “sweet” is derived from the word milit-​“honey.” The word “lips” (puri-​) was used to describe tasting, much like the word “ear” was used to refer to hearing and attentiveness: “Cast out again the evil anger (and) sullenness. Let sweet oily-​cake be put again on you lip(s)” (CHD P: 385). The word for lips also occurs in an idiom “to set the lip(s) to something” (Hoffner 1998: 59, § 27): They set up a chair for him to sit, but he did not sit down. They laid a table for him to eat from, but he did not reach out. They gave him a cup, but he did not put (his) lip to (it). Or, “He sets his lip to the drinking tube and sucks”; and finally, “The Queen puts her lip to the ḫarzazuta-​bread-​soup” (CHD P: 385, b). The adjective šanezzi-​, as we saw above, means “pleasant.” When describing food, it means “tasty” (CHD Š: 175–​178): “Let whatever words come from his mouth be as tasty as honey” (Haas and Thiel 1978:142–143, ii, 56–​58). An instruction text warns temple personnel that if they eat or sell a fat animal from the god’s flock (Miller 2013: 264–265, iv, 67–​77): They have taken the tasty food of the deities’ desire. They are to take an oath “If we have pulled the tasty food of the deities from their mouth and given it to our own desire … then may you, O deity, continually chase us … because of the food of your desire.” The Hittite word for “sour” was always written with the Akkadogram EM Ṣ U , so the Hittite word is still unknown. The only thing described as “sour” is “sour-​bread.”This appears to be the opposite 692

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of “sweet-​bread.” While “taste” is seldom described, Hittite gods (and presumably many of their mortal subjects) liked as many tastes in their diets as possible. Hoffner (1974: 149–​204) lists 144 different types of breads/​cakes, in addition to the normal “flat bread” and “thick-​bread.” These include the abovementioned “sour-​bread,” “sweet bread,” “soldier-​bread,” also “honey-​cake,” “chick-​pea bread,” “oil-​cake,” “porridge” and halva(?). The Hittites also enhanced the sense of taste with onions, garlic, and a few spices, including white cumin, black cumin/​kalonji, coriander, fennel-​seed13 (Hoffner 1974: 103–​105, 108–​111), sesame (Hoffner 1974: 126–127; CHD Š: 207), and asafoetida (a type of gum resin). There seem to have been three meals per day for humans: dawn, noon, and dusk (Hoffner 1987: 286). Meals for the gods, which presumably reflect meals for humans, consisted of a wide range of tasty foods served with meats, fruits, and vegetables. Meat was primarily beef and mutton and in some regions, pork was also consumed (Mouton 2006). Wild game was clearly available as can be seen from reliefs showing hunting and from the fact that the Protective God of the Hunting Bag was an important deity. Fish are seldom mentioned, although the activity of fishing is. Fruits included grapes, raisins, apples, “mountain apples” (pears or apricots), plums(?), medlars(?), figs, pomegranates, and olives. Vegetables included lentils, chick-​peas, broad beans, cucumbers, and bitter vetch (Hoffner 1974). Alcoholic beverages included wine, beer, beer-​wine, honey-​wine (or mead), marnuwan, tawal, walḫi, and lim(m)a-​. Different types and qualities of wine are occasionally mentioned, including “new wine, aged wine, sweet wine, sour wine, fine wine, especially pure wine, red wine, drinking-​ wine, raisin wine” (Alp 2000: 69). The Hittite palate could taste the difference between wines, as in this text (Gilan 2015: 121, § 13): The king issued an amphora of wine for Ḫištayara and Marattiya (his daughter(?) and son-​ in-​law(?)). To the king (the cellar-​master) handed out good wine. But to the others he gave other. She went and spoke to the king: ‘He did not give (us) that wine which the king saw.’ He came and said the same thing. As a consequence, they took [the cellar master] away, and worked him over, and as a result he died. In Hittite festivals, the Great King and Queen drank each member of the numerous pantheon (CHD Š: 483, s.v. šiu- 1 o) (as in Christian communion14), with one of these beverages to the point where one wonders how they managed to continue standing up. Senselessness (more or less) due to alcohol is mentioned: “He sways(?)/staggers(?) like a drunken man and meets the ground” (CHD L–N: 444, s.v. nink- 2). Instructions to temple personnel indicate that drunkenness at a festival was foreseen as a possible problem (Miller 2013: 258–259, § 12): Similarly, If some […]-​person gets drunk in a temple or other sacred building, if he becomes disorderly in the temple and causes a quarrel and disrupts a festival, let them (sc. the temple officials) beat him. And a ritual explains to the deity (CHD L–​N: 445): As this sweet wine [is …] and further when a man [drinks] it and becomes drunk, from him all [ill vanishes], in the same way from you gods may [the evil word, the broken-​oath], the curse, bloodshed [(and) tears] vanish. Teeth, though not directly connected to the sense of taste, were nevertheless understood to have an important function related to eating properly and being sustained with food: “Mouth, tongue, tooth! 693

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Eat!” (Gor̈ ke 2013: § 29, iii, 50). The earliest Hittite laws gave a penalty of 40 shekels for knocking out a tooth, reduced to 20 shekels in later versions. This is amazingly the same penalty as blinding (Hoffner 1997: 21–22, § 7). So perhaps the penalties for knocking out a tooth were so high because the law was assuming that all the teeth were knocked out, and thus one was unable to chew.

Touch No Hittite word has yet been recognised to mean “to touch.” The closest to that meaning are the verbs pašiḫai-​and peš-​, both of which have been translated “to rub.”The former occurs in a healing-​ ritual text: “The ‘Old Woman’ mixes together sand, alkali, flour, [and] b[itter vetch] and she rubs it on the body of the person” (Haas and Thiel 1978: 138–139, ii, 16–​18). Otherwise the verb pašiḫai-​ occurs in several texts in the idiom linked to cognition and (in)attentiveness, “to rub the chest,” which means something on the order of “to ignore(?), disregard(?), betray(?)” (CHD P: 205–225). Peš(š)-​, an even rarer verb (CHD P: 315), is linked to notions of scrubbing or washing. However, there are two other Hittite words clearly meaning “to wash”: warp-​ means “to bathe,” while arra-​ means “to wash.” When the king is worshipping the gods in the course of festivals, instructions usually are (HW2 A: 225–226 II.1a): A palace servant gives the king and queen hand-​water. The king and queen wash their hands. The chief of the palace servants gives (them) a towel. They wipe their hands. While one usually washes one’s hands with water, washing with salt-​water, wine, or soap-​like substances, including soapwort and natron (HW2 A: 227), are also attested. Bathing helps rid oneself of evils and could make oneself not just clean, but cultically pure. The text entitled Instructions for Priests and Temple Officials orders that if anyone sleeps with a woman, they must bathe before returning to the temple. If he approaches the offerings unclean, it is a capital offence for him (Miller 2013: 260–261, § 14, cf. 256–257, § 10). Another use of touch was to transfer one’s misfortunes and evils to a scapegoat or other animal (nakušši-​) or substitute (tarpalli-​, tarpašši-​, or puḫugari-​) using the expression “to place the hand” (keššar dai-​) (Gurney 1977: 47–​58). An example is found in a ritual to rid a plague in the army (Beal 1995: 69): Whoever the army commanders are, each prepares a ram … Then the army commanders place their hands on the rams and say: ‘Whatever deity has caused this plague, now see! These rams are standing here and they are very fat in liver, heart, and loins. Let human flesh be hateful to him/​her. Let him/​her be appeased by these rams. The army commanders point at the rams … They chase them out to the plain and they go running on to the enemy frontier …’ The same way of saying “to touch” is frequently found in the stage directions of religious texts: in a magic ritual to heal a domestic quarrel (Miller 2004: 97–98, iii, 56–​58): The ‘Old Woman’ holds out tarnaš-​sized sweet thick bread and a cup of wine to the two clients/​r itual patrons (lit. ‘owners of the ritual’). They place (their) hand(s) on (them). The ‘Old Woman’ breaks the sweet thick-​bread and libates the wine. Similarly, in a festival: “The supervisor of cooks holds out wine in a zalhāi-​ vessel to the king. The king places (his) hand (on it). The supervisor of the cooks libates once at the hearth” (Görke and Mouton 2014: 138; cf. 131–​142 for other examples in this festival). In these examples it is 694

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less likely that the intent was to transfer evils. Rather the touch is to signify that the toucher is to be the beneficiary of the sacrifice, not the person actually making the sacrifice (Görke 2014: 46). There are some rare uses of touch-​like phrases: one unusual action in a festival is when the king shakes hands with a priest: “But as soon as the king turns toward the [priest]s, he bows toward the priests. The priest gives his hand to the king” (Görke and Mouton 2014: 121); and as we saw above, the Goddess of the Night had “a silver hand for seeing.” This was because living in the dark as she did, she had to “see” by touch. Similarly, the blind millers, that we saw above, will have had to replace their sense of sight with their sense of touch. Touch is also a critical sense in sexual relations. In a prayer, a god is told (Mouton 2007: 304): You were sleeping sweet dreams in the lap of your beloved goddess Tešimi. Arise, O Storm God of Nerik! Tešimi is hanging upon you like a sweet cluster of grapes. As we saw above, the goddess Šaušga tried to save the day by stimulating multiple senses to seduce a dangerous monster, including smell (incense), sight (dancing and nakedness), and hearing (music). This resulted in touch: “Šaušga holds out her [naked body to Ḫedammu]. Ḫedammu [sees the beautiful goddess] and his penis springs forth. His penis impregnates [her]” (Hoffner 1998: 54–55). It would appear that after several intercourse sessions, her touch tamed the monster.

Conclusion In summary, we have seen what evidence there is from Hittite lands for the five senses, for which the sources give us widely differing amounts of information. The two Hittite verbs meaning “to see” are extremely common in the preserved texts. The eyes, too, are frequently mentioned. The verb meaning “to hear” and the noun “ear” are relatively frequent. There were numerous festivals and celebrations throughout the year held in many cities in Hittite lands. Between cities and in front of temples there were colourful processions, singing and musical accompaniment, acrobatics and performances. These would have stimulated the senses of sight and hearing of the Hittite participants. The sense of smell is rarely mentioned, although there are very frequent mentions of things such as aromatics in oil or smoke that surely would have stimulated the sense of smell. The noun waršula-​ can sometimes be translated “smell/​odour” but from other contexts it seems that waršula-​ was an emanation from something, whether aerosolised and smelled or liquid and seen. One, unfortunately very rarely attested, verb may have meant both “to smell” and “to taste,” a recognition of the actual interconnectedness of those two senses. A separate verb “to taste” is very rare and the noun “tongue” usually means “slander.” However, there is a wide range of different foods attested; festivals were often accompanied by banquets (CHD Š: 98, 1 g 2′; for example, Singer 1983: ii, 68–​iii, 11) and it is quite probable that the leftovers of food given to the gods were eaten by mortals. One text makes it clear that a Hittite noble was able to distinguish different wines. Finally, there is no attested verb “to touch.” A phrase “to place the hand,” which essentially means “to touch” is not attested as “touch” in an aesthetic sense, but rather means either “this is for me/​associate this with me” or it is intended to transfer evils to a scape-​animal or the like. Display and dancing (sight), music (hearing), perfume and incense (smell), and beverages (taste) were also used to stimulate sexual desire (touch).

Notes 1. I have cited Hittite texts from translations, rather than the publications of the cuneiform, so that readers can, if they so desire, find context. Giving both when using in-​text reference style would have made the chapter unreadable. The translations are my own and may or may not correspond/​agree word for word with the cited translation. 695

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2. The oracle is asked a yes-or-no question. In a symbol oracle one symbolically named object takes one or more symbolically named objects and places them in a symbolically named receptacle. See Beal 2002: 76–​80. 3. As discussed above, in a similar vein to some Hittite words for seeing, the Hittite words for hearing also have a cognitive or intellectual element. 4. For other portrayals of these Hittite instruments see Schuol 2004: pls. 3–​10. 5. Schuol 2004: 129–​131 considers the GI.GÍD to be a “Doppeloboe,” that is the aulos. 6. For textual references, see Schuol 2004: 129–136, and for more representations of lyres, drums, and auloi, see pls. 12–15. 7. This verb has often been translated “clap,” but it has now been definitively shown to be a verb of speech: “shout, cheer” (CHD P: 80–​83 under palwai-​). 8. Since there is no arḫa, the translation “cut” should be preferred to “cut-​off.” 9. Goetze 1969: 189 suggested that the “3” is a mistake for the expected “30.” 10. Friedrich (1966: 36), followed by HEG W–​Z: 371–372, had translated waršuli-​ as “in drips” (“im Topfen, topferweise”). Zinko (1987: 39–40) translated “to the last drop,”“to the dregs.” Melchert (1989) accepts this, suggesting for waršula-​“a basic sense ‘drop’ or ‘satiation’.” It seems odd, however, if the translation of “drink/​ waršuli” is “drink to the last drop” that the particle -​ašta or the preverb arḫa seldom appear in this phrase. 11. This is different from “fog.”The usual Hittite word for “fog” is kammara-​, but kammara-​is never used in the same contexts as waršula-​. 12. CHD continues: “not just ‘fume, haze, vapor’ but an ‘aromatic drop’ or ‘(drop of) essential oil’ in the case of vegetation.” The “drop” translation goes beyond the evidence and is based on etymologies. HEG (W–​Z: 370–​372) understands the word to mean “Tropfen, Feuchtigkeit, Schweiß,” leading to “Duft” and “Gestank.” In other words the single place where the translation requires a liquid, namely “sweat,” is taken as the primary meaning, based on an assumed etymological connection to the word warša-​, which is translated “Regenguß, Gewitterregen, Platzregen” (HEG W–​Z: 356–​359). This latter word, while fairly rare, clearly refers to a dangerous form of weather, it is only on suggested etymology that a warša-​is wet and not, say “high winds,” or “tornado.”This assumption that waršula-​is wet is also behind the translation of waršuli eku-​as “by drips/​drops.” This translation fails since in many cases waršula-​is immaterial. 13. The translation of zaḫḫeli-​/Z​ À.AḪ.LIsar as fennel was a suggestion of James Muhly, personal communication. zà.aḪ.lisar was famed for colonising abandoned tells as is fennel today. 14 Cf. the words in the Christian communion ceremony: “Take eat: This is my body, which is given for you … Drink: this cup is my blood which is shed for you.” Note also verse 3 of the communion hymn “O God unseen yet ever near” by Edward Osler: “We come obedient to thy word, to feast on heavenly food. Our meat the Body of the Lord. Our drink his precious Blood” (https://hymnary.org/ text/o_god_unseen_yet_ever_near). In the Hittite and Christian rituals, the idea is the same: to put some essence of the god(s) within yourself.

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Bryce, T. 2019. Warriors of Anatolia: A Concise History of the Hittites. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Christiansen, B. 2006. Die Ritualtradition der Ambazzi. StBoT 48. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Collins, B. J. 1997. “Purifying a House: A Ritual for the Infernal Deities,” in W. Hallo and K. L. Younger, eds., The Context of Scripture. Volume 1. Leiden: Brill, 168–​171. de Martino, S. 1995. “Music, Dance, and Processions in Hittite Anatolia,” in J. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Volume 4. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2661–​2669. de Roos, J. 2007. Hittite Votive Texts. Uitgaven van het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten (PIHANS) 109. Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. del Monte, G. 1995. “I testi amministrativi da Maşat Höyük/​Tapika.” Oriens Antiqui Miscellanea 2: 89–​138. Ehringhaus, H. 2005. Götter, Herrscher, Inschriften: Die Felsreliefs der hethitischen Grossreichzeit in der Türkei. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Elicker, J. 2016. “KUB 10.91 (CTH 669),” in H. Marquardt, S. Reichmuth, and J. V. García Trabazo, eds., Anatolica et Indogermanica: Studia linguistica in honorem Johannis Tischler septuagenarii dedicate. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 155. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 62–​73. Friedrich, J. 1966. Hethitisches Wörterbuch 3. Ergänzugsheft. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. Fuscagni, F. 2015. “Reinigungsritual (CTH 456.1).” hethiter.net/​: CTH 456.1 (TX and TRde 24.08.2015). Gilan, A. 2015. Formen und Inhalte althethitischer Literatur. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag. Glocker, J. 1997. Das Ritual für den Wettergott von Kuliwišna. Eothen 6. Florence: LoGisma. Goetze, A. 1969. “The Hittite Laws,” in J. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 188–​197. Görke, S. 2013. “Zwei Rituale zur Besänftigung von Sonnen-​und Wettergott mit Erwähnung von Ziplantawiya, Tudhaliya und Nikkalmadi.” hethiter.net/​ : CTH 443.1 (TX 11.12.2013, TRde 19.12.2013). Görke, S. 2014. “Das Konzept der ‘synthetischen Körperauffassung’ bei den Hethitern.” In K. Müller and A. Wagner, eds., Synthetische Körperauffassung im Hebräischen und den Sprachen der Nachbarkulturen. AOAT 416. Münster: Ugarit Verlag, 41–53. Görke, S. 2015a. “Ein Ritual der Mallidunna für den Sonnengott (CTH 403.1).” hethiter.net/​: CTH 403.1 (TX 11.05.2015, TRde 08.06.2015). Görke, S. 2015b. “Ein Palastbauritual (CTH 414.1).” hethiter.net/​: CTH 414.1 (TX 11.06.2015, TRde 13.04.2015). Görke, S., and S. Melzer 2015. “Ritual gegen eine unheilbringende Biene.” hethiter.net/​: CTH 447 (TX & TRde 20.07.2015). Görke, S., and S. Melzer 2016. “Die zweite Tafel des Rituals von Šamuḫa (CTH 480.1).” hethiter.net/​ : CTH 480.1 (TX 15.02.2016, TRde 10.02.2016). Görke, S., and A. Mouton 2014. “Royal Rites of Passage and Calendar Festivals in the Hittite World,” in A. Mouton and J. Patrier, eds., Life, Death, and Coming of Age in Antiquity: Individual Rites of Passage in the Ancient Near East and Adjacent Regions. Uitgaven van het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten (PIHANS) 124. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 117–​146. Gurney, O. R. 1977. Some Aspects of Hittite Religion: The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1976. London: British Academy; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Güterbock, H. G. 1986. “A Religious Text from Maşat.” Anadolu Araştırmaları 10: 205–​214. Güterbock, H. G. 1995. “Reflections on the Musical Instruments arkammi, galgalturi, and ḫuḫupal in Hittite.” Studio Historiae Ardens: Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Philo H. J. Houwink ten Cate. PIHANS 74. Nederlands historisch-​archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 57–​72. Haas, V., and H. Thiel. 1978. Die Beschwörungsrituale der Allaituraḫ(ḫ)i und verwandte Texte. AOAT 31. Neukirchen-​Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Haas, V., and G. Wilhelm 1974. Hurritische und luwische Riten aus Kizzuwatna. AOATS 3. Neukirchen-​ Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Hagenbuchner, A. 1989. Die Korrespondenz der Hethiter: 2. Teil. Texte der Hethiter (THeth) 16. Heidelberg: Carl Winter-​Universitätsverlag. Hoffner, H. 1963. “Some Suggested Hittite Etymologies.” Revue hittite et asianique 21 (72): 34–​38. Hoffner, H. 1974. Alimenta Hethaeorum: Food Production in Hittite Asia Minor. American Oriental Series 55. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Hoffner, H. 1987. “Paskuwatti’s Ritual Against Sexual Impotence (CTH 406).” Aula Orientalis 5: 271–​287. Hoffner, H. 1997. The Laws of the Hittites. Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui 23. Leiden: Brill. Hoffner, H. 1998. Hittite Myths. WAW 2. Second Edition. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press. Hoffner, H. 2009. Letters from the Hittite Kingdom. WAW 15. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press. 697

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Hoffner, H., and H. C. Melchert 2008. A Grammar of the Hittite Language, Part 1: Reference Grammar. Languages of the Ancient Near East 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Kloekhorst, A. 2008. Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite, Inherited Lexicon. Leiden: Brill. Kohlmeyer, K. 1995. “Anatolian Architectural Decorations, Statuary and Stelae,” in J. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Volume 4. New York: Scribner’s, 2639–​2660. Lebrun, R. 1980. Hymnes et prières hittites. Homo Religiosus 4. Louvain-​la-​Neuve: Centre d’Histoire des Religions. Melchert, H. C. 1989. Review of C. Zinko, Betrachtungen zum AN.TAḪ.ŠUM -​Fest: Aspekte eines hethitischen Festrituals. Scientia 8. Kratylos 34: 184. Melchert, H. C. 2007. “Hittite ḫuu̯app​ ḫuppā(i) ḫuppii̯a”​ in D. Groddek and M. Zorman, eds., Tabularia Hethaeorum: Hethitologische Beiträge: Silvin Košak zum 65. Geburtstag: Dresdner Beiträge zur Hethitologie (DBH) 25. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 513–​519. Miller, J. 2004. Studies in the Origins, Development and Interpretation of the Kizzuwatna. StBoT 46. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Miller, J. 2013. Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts. WAW 31. Atlanta: SBL Press. Mouton, A. 2006. “Le porc dans les textes religieux hittites,” in B. Lion and C. Michel, eds., De la domestication au tabou: le cas des suidés dans le Proche-​Orient ancien. Paris: De Boccard, 255–​265. Mouton, A. 2007. Rêves hittites. CHANE 28. Leiden: Brill. Mouton, A. 2009. “Le ‘mauvais oeil’ d’après les textes cunéiformes hittites et mésopotamiens,” in M.-​A. Amir Moezzi, ed., Pensée Grecque et Sagesse d’Orient: Hommage à Michel Tardieu. Bibliothèque de l’École des Hauts Études Sciences religieuses 142. Turnhout: Brepols, 425–​439. Mouton, A. 2019. “Representing the Senses in Hittite Religious Texts: The Case of Sight,” in A. Hawthorn and A.-​C. Rendu Loisel, eds., Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 159–​187. Nakamura, M. 2002. Das hethitische nuntarriyašḫa-​Fest. PIHANS 94. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Oettinger, N. 1976. Die militärischen Eide der Hethiter. StBoT 22. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Otten, H. 1961. “Eine Beschwörung der Unterirdischen aus Boğazköy.” ZA 54: 114–​157. Otten, H. 1981. Die Apologie Hattusilis III. StBoT 24. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Özgüç, T. 1988. İnandıktepe: An Important Cult Center in the Old Hittite Period. Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, Series 5, Volume 43. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. Popko, M. 1994. Zippalanda: Ein Kultzentrum im hethitischen Kleinasiens. THeth 21. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter. Rieken, E. et al. 2009. “Mythen der Göttin Inara.” hethiter.net/​: CTH 336.1 (TX 2009-​08-​27, TRde 2009-​08-​27). Rost, L. 1961–​ 1963. “Zum hethitischen Bildbeschreibungen: 1. Teil.” Mitteilungen des Institutes fur̈ Orientforschungen 8: 161–​217. Schuol, M. 2004. Hethitische Kultmusik: Eine Untersuchung der Instrumental-​und Vokalmusik anhand hethitischer Ritualtexte und von archäologischen Zeugnissen. Orient-​Archäologie 14. Rahden: Marie Leidorf. Seeher, J. 2002. Hattusha-​Guide: A Day in the Hittite Capital. Istanbul: Ege. Singer, I. 1983. The Hittite KI.LAM Festival: Part 1. StBoT 27. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Singer, I. 1984. The Hittite KI.LAM Festival: Part 2. StBoT 28. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Singer, I. 2002. Hittite Prayers. WAW 11. Atlanta: SBL Press. Steitler, C. 2017. The Solar Deities of Bronze Age Anatolia: Studies in Texts of the Early Hittite Kingdom. StBoT 62. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Sturtevant, E., and G. Bechtel 1935. A Hittite Chrestomathy. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America and University of Pennsylvania. Von Schuler, E. 1965. Die Kaškäer. Untersuchungen zur Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie (UAVA) 3. Berlin: De Gruyter. Wegner, I. 1995. Hurritische Opferlisten aus hethitischen Festbeschreibungen. Corpus der hurritischen Sprachdenkmäler (ChS) I (3–​1). Rome: Bonsignori Editore. Zinko, C. 1987. Betrahtungen zum AN.TAḪ.ŠUM -​ Fest: Aspekte eines hethitischen Festrituals. Scientia 8. Innsbruck: Scientia.

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32 Hearing and seeing in Hurrian Dennis R. M. Campbell

While not limited to texts, our understanding of Hurrian sense concepts is largely dependent upon the written word.1 We can read about acts of seeing and hearing, but evidence for touch, smell, and taste are difficult to locate in the corpus.2 Although limited to sight and sound, we can get some appreciation of how the Hurrians understood sense perceptions. However, the study of any part of the Hurrian language is beset by two significant problems. For one, the tablets upon which Hurrian texts were written are generally not completely preserved. The Mittani Letter (EA 24) of the Amarna correspondences is in good shape, and several relatively well-​preserved tablets are known from Ḫattuša, but in general, the tablets are in fragmentary condition. A good example of this problem is the mythological material from Ḫattuša. Outside of some of the tablets of the Song of Release and its related texts,3 all other tablets containing mythological material are extremely broken.4 These literary texts potentially contain numerous references to sense perceptions, but the fragmentary nature of the tablets makes them all but impossible to read.5 The second issue for Hurrian studies is our limited grasp of the lexicon. Without being able to translate the words themselves, we cannot understand what the ancient scribes were writing. Unfortunately, context is often unattainable, even if we understand the grammar. Despite these difficulties, as we continue to study these texts, we are developing an increasingly sophisticated insight into the meaning of Hurrian words. This present study is an attempt to determine the semantics of verbs of hearing and seeing in Hurrian. A more nuanced understanding of the semantic range of these verbs will allow us to more accurately translate the texts in which they occur. This in turn will allow us a better understanding of how the Hurrians understood their world and their place in it. We know of two Hurrian words for hearing, ḫaž-​and šalġ-​, and three verbs of seeing, for-​, am-​, and, I propose for the first time here, ši-​.6 This does not mean that the Hurrians had only two to three roots for each of these senses. They are, however, the ones that are preserved. With regards to the verbs of hearing, there has been little consensus as to how they are to be differentiated.7 In the following pages I explore these sets of verbs in their context. I demonstrate that in these two sets of sense verbs, one verb is to be understood as general (semantically broad) while other roots are more specific (semantically narrow).

DOI: 10.4324/​9780429280207-33

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Hearing in Hurrian There is limited evidence for Hurrian verbs of hearing from bilingual texts. In fact, it is only from the Hurro-​Hittite Bilingual (i.e., the “Song of Release” and parables) that we obtain translations of these verbs into another language. In these texts, we find both ḫaž-​(in KBo 32.14 and KBo 32.15) and šalġ-​(in KBo 32.14) translated into Hittite by the verb istamas(s)-​.8 The Hittite is typically translated as “to hear,” but it likely had a further semantic component of comprehension (HED E–​I: 460; HEG I–​K: 426–​427). It is clear that the Hurrian roots share certain semantic similarities, but while there is some overlap, the two certainly are not merely synonyms. It will be argued here that these roots had different functions, the general “to hear” and the narrow “to comprehend” for ḫaž-​and šalġ-​respectively. In the parable text KBo 32.14 there are four occurrences of ḫaž-​, and in each instance it appears as the “gerundival” ḫaž-​i-​māi.9 This form can be translated as “hearing” and is used in the context: “(Upon) hearing (the curse), s.o. became ill within himself.”10 The Hittite translates this Hurrian “gerund” as either a subordinate temporal clause headed by maḫḫan, “when,” or as a finite clause. In both cases the Hittite verb is a third person preterit. It is either spelled out explicitly as iš-​ta-​ma-​aš-​ta (ii, 9; ii, 50) or Akkadographically as IŠ-​M E (r. 44, left edge 1).11 In KBo 32.15 we find the (seemingly) defective spelling ḫa-​ši-​im-​ma for expected ḫa-​ši-​ma(-​a)-​i (iv, 8) which is translated by a temporal subordinate maḫḫan … iš-​t[a-​ma-​aš-​ta] (iii, 8).12 In iv, 13, the form ḫa-​ša-​ši-​la-​ab is translated into Hittite as the imperative [i]š-​ta-​ma-​aš-​mu (istamas=mu) “Hear me!” This is almost certainly an error.13 The bilingual occurrences of šalġ-​ are, as mentioned, limited to KBo 32.14. They are all found in identical passages in this text. Between each parable is an injunction by the narrator to his/​her audience, telling them to put aside what they have just heard and prepare themselves for a new lesson/​moral. In every example we find the spelling šal-​ḫu-​u-​la (i, 24, 40; iv, 7, 20, r. 33, 53), an imperative form.14 The subject is the second person plural pronoun =f on the immediately preceding word. The Hittite translates this Hurrian imperative with its own second person plural imperative of istamas(s)-​. In the first two occurrences the Hittite verbs are in the -​ski-​ iterative/​durative (imperfective) form (iš-​ta-​ma-​aš-​ki-​tén, ii, 24 (-​[ki-​t]én), 40). In the final four occurrences the imperfective -​ski-​is not used (iš-​ta-​ma-​aš-​tén, iii, 7, 21, r. 34, 54).

ḫaž-​and šalġ-​in the Hurro-​Hittite bilingual In the bilingual parable text KBo 32.14, four of the parables involve a created or nurtured individual (e.g., a deer, a cup, etc.), that curses its creator/​nurturer. The curses are quoted in detail, describing the violence that the curser hopes will befall its creator/​nurturer, often involving the destruction or breaking of the victim.15 This is immediately followed by a passage that is identical in all four parables in which the victim becomes sick having become aware of the curse (KBo 32.14, i, 8, i, 50–​51, r. 38, r. 59):16 (1)  SUBJECT17-​Ø ḫaž-​i-​māi pār-​u ištan(i)-​ī-​da Hearing (the curse), the SUBJECT is sick inside himself. The Hurrian ḫaž-​i-​māi is translated into Hittite as SUBJECT maḫḫan istamasta, “When the SUBJECT heard” (KBo 32.14, ii, 9; ii, 50) or IŠME SUBJECT, “(When?) the SUBJECT heard” (ibid. r. 44 [l.e. 1]). The -​imai ending has been analysed as gerundival, making the verb a nominal (for example, “smoking” in “There is no smoking allowed here”).18 While there is little doubt that ḫažimai is a non-​declined verbal form, I would argue that it is being used as a converb here. 700

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A converb is “a non-​finite verbal form whose main function is to mark adverbial subordination” (Haspelmath 1995: 3). If -​imai creates converbs, it can mark temporal situations such as “When X happened …” or “As soon as X happened …,” both of which fit the context well.19 As soon as the curses were heard, the subject became sick within it-​/​himself.20 The root ḫaž-​is being used for a general aural act of hearing—​the spoken curse was heard by its intended victim. In the same text, we find five repeated uses of šalġ-​in an identical context. However, in contrast to ḫaž-​, context allows us to interpret this root as a more specific aural act. At the conclusion of each parable in KBo 32.14, the narrator exhorts the audience to put aside the just heard parable and listen to the message in the next one. This is accomplished through a series of modal verbs (KBo 32.14, i, 23–​25, 39–​41; iv, 6–​8, 20–​21; r. 33, 53):21 (2)

kōl-​i-​(e)ž andi tīvšāri ol(i)-​a=ffa kad-​ol(-​i)-​le amōm(i)-​a=f(fa) šalġ-​ōl-​a mad(i)-​ā=ffa kad-​ol(-​i)-​le

May you let go of this matter (viz. the previous parable)! Let me tell you(pl.) another! Heed(pl.) the message! Let me tell you(pl.) a wisdom (story)! Despite attempts to analyse the form otherwise, šalġ-​ōl-​a must be parsed as an intransitive imperative.22 Its subject is the second person plural enclitic pronoun =f (short form of =ffa), which is affixed to the nominal amōma. This has mostly been understood as an absolutive form with final -​a resulting from vowel harmony with =f( fa), while a few have preferred to see it as an essive.23 In my work on the Hurrian imperative (Campbell 2015: 35–​62), I have demonstrated that imperatives in -​a, must be interpreted as intransitive. As such, amōma cannot function as the grammatical patient, despite the above translation. Giorgieri has shown that šalġ-​can function intransitively based on the following passage from Mari (Mari 7+6 11′):24 (3)

ḫutḫ(i)-​a šalġ-​ud-​o-​kko

(The gods?) do not hear/​listen/​heed the prayer The verb šalġ-​ud-​o-​kko can only be analysed as a negative intransitive, therefore requiring us to take ḫutḫ(i)-​a as an essive form. This clearly parallels the amōm(i)-​a=f( fa) šalġ-​ōl-​a of KBo 32.14. The translation of this passage as transitive “Heed the message” is purely conventional as it is difficult to find an English equivalent for the Hurrian construction. In contrast to the Hurrian, the Hittite uses the second plural imperative istamaskiten in a transitive construction.25 The direct object is ḫatressar “message.”26 While it is plausible that the Hurrian amōma is translated into Hittite as ḫatressar (see Neu 1996: 125–​126; Catsanicos 1996: 297–​298), given the syntactic differences between the two versions, we should allow for other possibilities. That šalġ-​is to be understood as an aural act is certain. As we have seen, Hittite istamas(s)-​ has been used to translate both ḫaž-​ and šalġ-​. The use of the two Hurrian verbs indicates that in their respective contexts, the Hurrian is communicating different aural actions that the Hittite simply is not able to capture. Given the nature of the context, while “to hear” is available for šalġ-​, it is certainly too general. The admonition is that the lesson (amōm(i)-​a) is not only heard but that it is listened to or heeded.27

ḫaž-​in other contexts Unlike šalġ-​which is a more specific aural act, ḫaž-​is always used as the more general verb “to hear.” It neither infers any degree of importance (or lack thereof) to the spoken word, nor does it 701

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contain the semantic sense of deeper understanding of the spoken word by the hearer. The verb ḫaž-​often takes as patient the spoken word (typically a noun built off of the root tive “word,” but sometimes a more specific one such as ḫavi “prayer”) or the speaker. It is therefore mostly used as “to hear something or someone.” Occasionally what is heard is more abstract and refers to the unstated speaking of various actions or deeds to the listener.

ḫaž-​with patient = utterance There are a handful of examples of ḫaž-​with some variant of tive “word” as object. In the first example the agent of hearing is not the individual but rather the ears (ChS I/​1 41, i, 24–​25):28 (4)

kād-​i-​[a-​š]še [t]ifšari29 nōu-​īffu-​ž ḫāž-​i-​a=n

My ear hears the words which he has spoken While the spelling nōu for “ear” is atypical (expected: noi), we have here reference to the specific auditory organ as that which hears the spoken words.30 In other texts, we have ḫaž-​in the non-​indicative (ChS I/​6 26, iii, 11′): (5)

[ḫaž-​i]=mmā=l31 tīve-​na mKešše-​ne-​v[e-​na] Hear them, the words of Kešši!

The restoration of [ḫaž-​i]-​is almost certainly correct. See for example, the passage in ChS I/​6, 8, i, 3: ḫā[ž-​i]=mma=l tive-​na. It is a transitive imperative form (see Salvini and Wegner 2004: 172). The element =mma is to be analysed here as the second person singular (absolutive) enclitic pronoun followed by the third plural (absolutive) pronoun =l(la). In the Mittani Letter from Amarna, Tušratta introduces two paragraphs with the injunction: šēn(a)-​iffu-​dā=mān tive šukko kul(-​i)-​le, “Let me say one thing to my brother” (Mitt. ii, 12; iii, 4932). This is followed by the jussive (Mitt. ii, 12–​13; iii, 49; see Diakonoff 1971: 130; Farber 1971: 32–​33; Campbell 2015: 84, n. 101): (6)

šēn(a)-​iffu-​š=(nn>)š(a)=ān ḫaž-​i-​en

Let my brother hear it!

The third person enclitic pronoun =š(a)= (from =nna through regular sound change following the ergative case morpheme), must reference the tive “word” in the preceding sentence.33 In the Tiš-​atal inscription, the verb ḫaž-​takes as patient the noun ḫavi “prayer.” A prayer is simply a more specific type of spoken word, and is therefore parallel to the examples with tive. In the example from the Tiš-​atal inscription, the passage concerning hearing is part of a curse and it is the demand that the gods of anyone who dares to destroy the temple of Lubadaga in Urkeš shun him by not hearing his prayers (given here in transcription) (Tiš-​atal 15–​17):34 (7)

(The one who destroys (the temple), may Lubadaga destroy that one!) DINGIR 35-​[ S] ú? ḫa-​⌈wa-​ʾà⌉-​a ḫa-​śu-​⌈e⌉-​in May [h]‌is god not hear his prayer!

The agent is the DINGIR-​[ S] ú, which should be normalised as ergative *en(i)-​ia?-​ž or the like.36 The direct object is ḫawa’ā (or perhaps better ḫawa-​(a)ya), with the final =a being the third person singular possessive, as per Wilhelm (1998: 138) (see BGH 127 sub ḫa-​WA-​’à-​a). The form 702

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should be in the absolutive case, and therefore the final -​a is not likely to have been the essive -​a. The verb ḫaśoein? is the negative jussive (vetitive) of ḫaž-​to hear (Wilhelm 1998: 140). The positive jussive is expected to be *ḫaś-​o-​in on analogy with ša-​ak-​ru-​in (šagr-​o-​in) in line 10.37 The form ḫaśoein cannot be positive (what kind of curse would demand that the gods actually hear the prayers of a transgressor?), but the negative jussive is usually formed by the negative morpheme -​va-​(for example, pašš-​ar-​ī-​vā-​en, “May (my brother) not keep sending (another messenger)” [Mitt. iv, 53–​54]). The -​e-​sign must be a negative morpheme, but how (and if) it derives from -​va-​is unclear.

ḫaž-​with patient = oblique reference to “word” A number of examples exist where what is heard is not explicitly a word, but rather either a communicated action or an object of communication. Speech acts are still involved, but are implied in the sentence rather than explicit. These are akin to the English expression “I heard that such and such a thing happened.” The clearest examples of this use of ḫaž-​ are found in the Mittani Letter. The first passages given here concern the presentation of the Mittani dowry tablets to the pharaoh. The two lands had been joined through past diplomatic marriages including Tušratta’s aunt, sister, and presently his own daughter. In a not-​uncommon political gesture in which Tušratta attempts to display his wealth and power, he asks the pharaoh to have the dowry tablets brought forth and read to him in order for him to see how much Tušratta has given ([8]‌Mit. iii, 39–​40; see Farber 1971: 52; Bush 1964: 166, 241; [9] Mit. iii, 40–​42; Campbell 2015: 85 with citations in n. 105): (8)

ar-​ann-​i-​en=i=l=an šēn(a)-​iffu-​ž tupp(i)-​i-​až šin(i)-​i-​až-​e-​nā=mmaman ḫaž-​i-​en=i=ll(a)=ān May my brother cause the tablets of theirs (i.e. of Tušratta’s sister and aunt) to be given! May he hear them (-​nā=; i.e. the tablets) of the two (relatives)!

(9)

šō-​ve=mān tuppi niġār(i)-​(n>)rē=v ar-​ōž-​av-​šše-​nē-​ve ar-​ann-​i-​en=n(n)a=man šēn(a)-​iffu-​ž ḫaž-​i-​en=n=an

My tablet of the dowry which I had given, may my brother cause it to be given! May my brother hear it! The pharaoh is to have the tablets upon which the contents of the dowry have been inscribed given (ar-​ann-​), certainly, to a scribe. This is a nice articulation of the process by which letters were sent between the kings of the Late Bronze Age. The rulers themselves did not read the written word; this was left to the scribe or literate envoy. In fact, the letters themselves were composed in such a way as to give forth the illusion of oral communication. The composer is not so much writing (or having written) the letter as he is speaking it to the second party, albeit over both an extended spatial and temporal distance. The texts upon which the dowries have been written are given to a literate person and the texts are then read aloud to the pharaoh. Therefore, in both of these examples the pharaoh is asked to hear the spoken words of the dowry tablets. Two other examples of the use of ḫaž-​with the patient being something other than an explicitly spoken word are known from the Mittani Letter. The first paragraph of column iv is largely concerned with issues of lies. Tušratta is worried that he is being slandered in the presence of the pharaoh. He warns the pharaoh that such a thing is not appropriate and that he should ignore any but the most trusted of envoys (Mitt. iv, 6):38 703

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(10)

(He (i.e. the malicious speaker)39 described40 me(=tta) about (lit. of) myself to my brother with evil intent.) nīrubād(i)-​ae41 ḫaž-​ōž-​av=nn(a)=ān I have heard it/​him with evil intent

This is immediately followed by (Mitt. iv, 9):42 (11)

(On the other hand, as the x-​matter that my brother has done, as/​in the great navi-​, my brother continued to nin-​. For the Awârians he set (it) and he x’ed)43 ḫaž-​ōž-​aū=n44 pic-​and-​ož-​ī=tt(a)=ān I heard it, and I rejoiced!

In both examples Tušratta is stating that he has heard of things that have happened—​it is not the words, but an event (speaking evilly in [10] and an unclear act in [11]) that is heard. Of course, what he has actually heard is word of these things having occurred. In the first case, Tušratta has heard that somebody has been speaking ill of him in the Egyptian court. This has been done with “evil intent” (nīrubādae), i.e., in order to decrease the status of the Mittani king before the pharaoh. In the second example, Tušratta has heard that the Egyptian pharaoh has done a number of deeds that, given his reaction, must be seen as positive for Egyptian–​Mittanian relations.

ḫaž-​with speaker as patient It is not uncommon to find the speaker as the absolutive case direct object of ḫaž-​. Examples of this use of ḫaž-​are found in a variety of contexts, ranging from political (i.e., letters) to religious (both rituals and myths). As is to be expected, the focus is on what the speakers are saying—​that is to say, the act of hearing is dependent upon an initial act of speaking, regardless of whether the patient is the result of the speech act (i.e. a word or the speaker). There are several examples from the Mittani Letter. In ii, 7, it occurs in an inna conditional clause (Mitt. ii, 7): (12)

inna=mā=nīn mKelīa=n mMane=nn(a)=ān ḫaž-​ōž-​av …

When/​If I heard him (or it?), (i.e.?) Keliya and Mane. Although there are multiple patients involved here, they are preceded by the third singular enclitic =ma=. The two messengers/​ambassadors Keliya and Mane, from Mittani and Egypt respectively, were integral in the maintenance of relations between the two lands. In the Mittani Letter Tušratta goes so far as to say that he trusts only Mane and no other messenger.45 In i, 113, the context involves the sending of messengers to Egypt (Mitt. i, 113):46 (13)

(The envoys of my brother which I have […] and […], those I have …) [an]ī=l=⌈an šē⌉n(a)-​iffū(-​ž)=l[l(a)=ā]n ḫaž-​i-​en “May my brother hear those ones [viz. the envoys]”

Other examples can be found in the Hurrian religious texts from Boğazköy ([14] ChS I/​1, 19, i, 45′–​46′; restored from iv, 18; [15] ChS I/​1, 41, iii, 6347):

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(14) (15)

(āšte=nn)]a ḫāž-​ōž-​a48 He heard her, the woman anammi=tta ḫāž-​i=mma Tado-​Ḫeba=dda Hear me, Tado-​Ḫeba!

The examples from ChS I/​1 41 and I/​1 42 are demands to the gods to whom the prayers are directed. The supplicant is trying to ensure that her words are heard.49 In ChS I/​1 19, the passage is too broken to determine context, but it is possible, if not likely, that the agent of the act of hearing is the king Tažmi-​šarri (= Tudḫaliya III).50

šalġ-​“to Listen” We have already seen šalġ-​ used in KBo 32.14 to indicate heeding or listening to the message (amōm(i)-​a) of a parable. Further examples of this root can be found in the prayer ChS I/​1 41, and the ritual text ChS I/​1 9 and its duplicates. These texts are more difficult to translate than the bilingual material. All translations are provisional, and some commentary on forms is necessary. In ChS I/​1 41, šalġ-​occurs in a broader context involving acts of speaking (kad-​) and seeing. Following a series of nominal forms marking individuals who can hear, see, and speak,51 we have three short sentences with verbs in the optative. After the first, which involves the word fōri “eye,”52 we find an act of speaking and hearing (šalġ-​) (ChS I/​1 41, i, 21–​22; Campbell 2007: 283, n. 62; Wilhelm 2016: 458): (16)

kād-​ind-​ōr-​i-​(e)ž ē[n(i)-​zari? ] ⌈pa⌉ġandinzi ⌈tupš⌉[ar]i tive=lla šalġ-​i-​(e)ž May the g[od]s speak53 destruction! May54 the tupšari heed the words!

There are clear difficulties with this passage. The agent of kādindōriž is likely the collective ē[nzari], but this form is almost entirely restored. The object of the speech act is ⌈pa⌉ġindinzi, which I interpret as coming from paġ-​“to destroy.”The optative šalġ-​i-​(e)ž is in the active voice, and since tive=lla is “words,” it must function as the object of the verb. It we analyse ⌈tupš⌉[ar]i as the collective of tovi,“incantation,” we would have no explicit agent.55 The only possible agent would be the collective ē[nzari] from the preceding sentence, which would mean that the gods first speak and then heed (their) words, an unlikely scenario! It is better to take tupšari as the subject/​agent. It would therefore be animate and likely a subset of humankind, or even an occupation.56

ḫaž-​and šalġ-​in the same context In some ritual context, the two verbs of hearing occur in the same context. In these examples, a sentence with šalġ-​ immediately precedes one with ḫaž-​. For example, in ChS I/​1 11 (with duplicates), we read (ChS I/​1 11, r. 12′):57 (17)

ḫaziz[(z)]i-​va()re-​ž:id-​i-​l-​ānni 7 Teššōb-​a-​ž am-​i-​l-​ānni tār(i)-​(n>)re-​ž, “(The deer) began to curse the mountain: If only fire would burn the mountain of its pasturage! (If only) Teššob would strike it! (If only) fire would burn it!” (KBo 32.14, i, 4–​7). 16. Edited in Neu 1996: 107–​109, 154, 191, 206–​207; see also de Martino 1999: 8–​9. 17. The subjects are: fabani, “mountain” (i 8); tabrēnni, “smith” (i 50); [id]en[ni], “builder” (rev. 38); mužūni, “?” (r. 59; Neu [1996: 200–​202] translates as “Stapler”). 18. It is unclear how the gerund is to be parsed. Furthermore, as I argue here, labelling this form as “gerund” is likely incorrect. 19. On this, see Shayanova 2015: 7–​8. 20. A variant form of the “gerund” or converb with ḫaž-​is found in KBo 32.15 (CTH 789) and ChS I/​1, 52 (KBo 20.134+; CTH 777.9), where it is spelled ḫaž-​i-​mma. In KBo 32.15, i, 8–​9, we read: tivošḫi-​ni ḫaž-​i-​mma mMēgi-​ne(-​ž)=lla 9 al-​il-​an-​o-​m ōġni, which is translated into Hittite in ii, 8–​9 as: nu ma-​aḫ-​ ḫa-​an mme-​e-​ki[-​iš] ut-​tar iš-​t[a-​ma-​aš-​ta] 9 na-​aš ú-​e-​eš-​ga-​u-​an d[a-​a-​]iš, “When Megi he[ard] the word, he began to shout.” Giorgieri (2010a: 147, n. 15) has proposed to emend the first Hurrian word to ti-​wuú-​uš-​ḫi-​na!, resulting in an absolutive plural which would be the patient of ḫažimma and would be further referenced by the third plural enclitic =lla. He then analyses ḫažimma (as ḫaž-​i-​mma(i)) as intransitive (ibid.). If ḫažimma is identical to the ḫažimai of KBo 32.14, a situation that is supported by

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the Hittite translation which is parallel to that of KBo 32.14, then it is neither transitive nor intransitive but rather a non-​finite form, a converb, functioning adverbially. The tivošḫi-​ni (from tivošḫi “words, saying, statement”) could not be the patient of this converb. It is also not likely to be the patient of the transitive al-​il-​an-​o-​m, which is more likely =lla … ōġni, “the x(pl.).” The tivošḫi-​ni are the preceding words that Megi has just heard, in which the men of Ebla decide to deny the god Teššob’s demand. It is in the ni-​case, which is a directional/​instrumental case, and is to be translated “because of the words” or similar. The entire sentence reads: “When he heard (= ḫažimma), Mēgi began to shout ōġni-​s because of the words.” In ChS I/​1, 52, o. 23, we read: te-​pu-​u-​u[š-​ḫi]-​ni-​in-​na ḫa-​ši-​im-​ma mt[a-​. The final two signs are read as x by Haas (1984: 282), but photo collation shows a clear masculine determinative (DIŠ ) followed by the upper head of a horizontal sign. I would read this as mT[ažmi-​šarri(-​), who occurs elsewhere in the text. We cannot completely restore the missing material. The pronoun =nna could refer to T[ažmi-​šarri, in which case the royal name would be in the absolutive and the subject of an intransitive or antipassive verb. It is unlikely that the name would be the object of a transitive verb based on the example from KBo 32.15. 21. The spellings are largely consistent in each passage. Note that i, 24, has ka4-​du-​ul-​li, while the others have ka4-​túl-​li. Note too the various spellings of mad(i)-​ā=ffa: ma-​ta-​a-​ap-​pa (i, 25), ma-​ta-​ap-​waa (i, 40; iv, 21), ma-​a-​ta-​ap-​waa (iv 7), ma-​a-​ta-​ap-​pa (r. 33), and [m]a-​ta-​ap-​pa (r. 53). The passage is treated in Campbell 2015: 44–​46, 82–​83, 127–​128 with citations. 22. See, for example, Wegner 2007: 226. Wegner attempted to explain the form as šalġ-​ōl-​a( f here instead, with the voiced velar going to a voiceless velar rather than a voiceless labial. 30. For other examples of noi, “ear,” with ḫaž-​, see below. For bibliography on noi, see BGH 280–​282 sub nui. 31. Dijkstra (2008: 212) reads: [ḫa-​]šu*-​ma-​a-​al. 32. In iii 49, the first form must be emended to še-​e-​ni-​íw-​wu-​ta-​a-​ma-​an. The bibliography on this passage is large and goes back to the early studies of Hurrian. See more recently Campbell 2011: 37. 33. Note that in iv 1 we find the initial injunction tivē=mān šukko ⌈šēn(a)-​iffu-​da⌉ kul(-​i)-​le, “let me say one thing to my brother,” but it is not followed by the request/​demand that the pharaoh hear it. 34. Edited in Wilhelm 1998: 119, 137–​140. 35. Following Wilhelm 1998: 119 with discussion on pages 137–​138. 36. Wegner reads only AN x[] (2007: 233). For -​ia-​as a third singular possessive morpheme, see Wilhelm 1991: 163–​164, n. 20; 1998: 139; Giorgieri (2000: 216) and Wegner (2007: 63) associate this possessive morpheme with the Boğazköy texts. 37. The jussive is consistently written with the IN sign in the Tišatal inscription, and Wilhelm (1998: 135) has preferred to normalise the jussive in this text as -​in. I have proposed a reading of IN as -​en6 (Campbell 2015: 66, n. 13); however, the reading IN = EN 6 for the period of Tišatal is unlikely (see now Wilhelm 2018: 416, n. vii). 38. Translated in Wilhelm apud; Moran 1992: 69; Giorgieri 1999: 388; Wilhelm 2006: 188; 2014: 227. 712

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39. Wilhelm 2006: 188, n. 54 translates the ḫilložikk[ōnn]i of iv 4 as “einer, der gesprochen hat,” and in the context here “Denunziant.” Giorgieri (1999: 388) translates as “[Uno ch]e non sapeva/​doveva parlare (?)” On Hurrian nominals in -​ikkonni, see Campbell 2012. 40. The verb is kul-​ōž-​ā=tt(a)=ān (speak-​P RETERIT-​3 SG.AGENT=1SG.ENCLITIC=CONNECTIVE ). This creates an awkward English translation “He spoke me.” For this reason I decided to translate the root as “to describe.” Wilhelm (2014: 227) translates the root as “to denounce.” 41. On nīrubādae, see Wilhelm 1983: 98, n. 4 42. For translations, see n. 48, and Wilhelm 2014: 229. 43. There are a number of lexical issues that make this particular passage of the Mittani Letter difficult to translate. 44. This form is an example of an infrequent scribal error in the Mittani Letter. The scribe wrote ḫa-​šu-​u-​ lu-​ú-​ú-​un, but the LU sign must be a mistake for ŠA . 45. In iv 52–​57 we read: “May my brother send only Mane so that he might go with my emissary! May my brother not keep sending any other emissary! Let him send (only) Mane! If my brother does not send Mane and he will send another, I do not want him! My brother should know it! No! Let my brother only send Mane!” 46. Translated in: Wilhelm apud Moran 1992: 64; Giorgieri 1999: 379; Wilhelm 2006: 183; 2014: 199. 47. This is paralleled in ChS I/​1 42, i, 15, with anammi=d=an ḫāž-​i=mma “Hear me!” See Giorgieri 2001: 135, n. 39; 2010a: 146; Campbell 2011: 27. 48. The form is to be read ḫa-​a-​šu-​u-​ša, but the -​u-​is omitted in ChS I/​1 p. 158. 49. In I/​1 41, the supplicant is clearly the queen Tado-​Ḫeba, and she is explicitly mentioned in the passage cited above. In I/​1 42, it is likely also the queen, but the evidence is not as secure. 50. Note that immediately following the verb ḫāž-​ōz-​a we have the start of the royal name: mt[a-​ 51. In ChS I/​1 41, i, 19–​20 we have the nominal forms ḫāžikkonni (“one who hears”), fōrikkonni (“one who sees”), and kādik[konn]i (“one who speaks”). On these forms in -​ikkonni see Campbell 2012. 52. The text reads: un-​i-​(e)ž šōvi fōri (ChS I/​1 41, i, 21). The šōvi fōri can be understood as either “my eye” (šō-​ve fōri) or “evil eye” (šōvi fōri). I believe the context calls for a negative element and I therefore prefer the latter. 53. Restoration partially follows Haas (ChS I/​1 p. 219). His restoration of a final -​re-​eš is impossible. Active optative forms in -​i-​take agents in the absolutive (see Campbell 2015: 115). 54. This is a nominal form, although the exact parsing is uncertain. I take the root as paġ-​ “to destroy” (BGH 286–​287 sub p/​waḫ-​II), although it could be from a homophonous root. 55. This has been preferred by Wilhelm (personal communication March 15, 2009). See also Wilhelm 2016. 56. In i, 26, we read [dTešš]op-​pa=lla taržuwani ūn-​d-​o-​kko up-​o-​kko tupšari “Humankind does not come to [Tešš]ob. The tupšari does not up-​.” Tupšari can mean “scribe” (Wilhelm 2016). 57. See Wegner 1995a: 121–​122; Kassian and Yakubovich 2007: 446. They translate noi (nui) as “ ‘(anatomic) ear’ or ‘inner ear, i.e. hearing.’ ” 58. Written ḫa-​zi-​iz-​[z]i-​pal, this could be analysed as ḫazizzi-​b=a=l (ear-​2 SG.POSSESSIVE=EPENTHETIC VOWEL=3PL.ENCLITIC) as per Kassian and Yakubovich 2007: 446 (“your ears”); Wegner 1995: 121; 2007: 113 (both as “Dein Verstand”). Since the verb is in the patient-​focusing optative with -​o-​l-​ež, the agent would have to be ergative. With patient-​focusing optatives, the agent is in the ergative, while the patient is in the absolutive (see Campbell 2015: 139–​142). While the ergative case does elide before the third plural enclitic pronoun =l, the expected epenthetic vowel between the second person possessive morpheme -​b is -​u-​(for example, šēna-​b-​u-​ž “your brother”; Wegner 2007: 62). The epenthetic -​a-​is likely simply separating the noun from the enclitic pronoun. It is more likely that the form is to be read as a genitive, with -​ve > -​va through vowel harmony with the =l(la). This is similar to … pedarrevaf ḫā-​i in ChS I/​5 40, r. 44′–​45′. The noun can be either dative pedar(i)-​(n>)re-​va=f “concerning the bull” pedar(i)-​(n>)re-​va()ša eni-​ž šid-​i-​l-​āi, “and so the god of his father cursed him” (KBo 32.14, iv, 4–​5). 80. Neu 1996: 130 allows for the possibility of a reading ši-​i-​na in KBo 32.14, i, 28, but he prefers to read it as a Sumerogram IGI (see his transcription on p. 28). 81. See already Wilhelm 1992a: 134. 82. The verbal form in -​uw-​a is interpreted here as a transitive middle form. In an manuscript currently in preparation, S. Fischer and I have analysed the naiġēna as essive, indicating location on, and the šī-​na as a plural absolutive form. The Hittite is a close translation: nu-​uš-​ša-​an a-​pé-​e-​da-​aš-​ša š[a-​a-​ku-​wa] zi-​ik-​ ki-​zi “And upon that one he sets the e[ye]” (KBo 32.14, ii, 28–​29). 83. While in (29) the patient is the absolutive plural šī-​na, here it is the šīnzi ḫalzi “second district.” The “eye” is in the oblique instrumental/​adverbial case -​āi. The Hittite repeats the same basic construction that is used in ii, 28–​29 to translate the Hurrian of (30): ta-​a-​an-​ma-​aš-​ša-​an te-​li-​pu-​u-​ri-​ia ša-​a-​ku-​wa zi-​ik-​ki-​zi “He sets the eye upon a second district” (KBo 32.14, ii, 34–​35). 84. On the reading of Ionu, see Wilhelm 2006: 183; 2014: 196. The Hurrian solar deity Šimige is being syncretised with his Egyptian counterpart. 85. Mitt. i, 88–​89: att(a)-​ārd(i)-​ī-​ve-​nā=mān šūa=lla=man ta⌈ž⌉ê-​nameš tiššan tiššan kel-​ōž-​u-​a. Fischer and I will soon address this passage in a manuscript currently in preparation. Although transitive, the ending -​u-​a is to be analysed as middle voice+third person agent agreement. The sentence retains its

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transitivity, but the emphasis is on the patient rather than that agent. A better translation would be “All the gifts of his forefathers he raised up,” fronting the patient in the English. 86. See Wilhelm 2000: 428 on zarra/​sarra. 87. Wilhelm 2000: 428 (treats verbal form as “semantisch unklar”). 88. Various parts of this passage have been extensively treated; however, the verb ši-​a has not. I will only include biography relevant to the discussion at hand. 89. Wilhem 2006: 183,“Und das Land dienes Bruders hat die Beutestücke bewundert. So ist das Geschenk abgegangen, und dien Bruder ist selbst hinsichtlich des Geschenks entzückt.” See Goetze 1948: 265 (“on account of the present x is pleased with thy brother”). 90. Wilhelm 2000: 200 (the verbal form is “aber unzweifelhaft eine transitiv-​nicht-​ergativische Form”). 91. I owe this example to the work of Fischer. 92. It is quite likely that immarde is “sheep” (see Fischer 2020). If so, then the expert in extispicy would be examining both the bird and sheep entrails. 93. See Fischer 2020. See also Trémouille 2005: 322 and BGH 326–​327. 94. For agentive-​optatives with essive patients see Campbell 2015: 121–​124.

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Giorigeri, M. 2010a. “Kleine Beiträge zur hurritisch-​hethitischen Bilingue aus Boğazköy,” in J. Fincke, ed., Festschrift für Gernot Wilhelm anläßlich seines 65. Geburtstages am 28. Januar 2010. Dresden: ISLET, 143–​150. Giorgieri, M. 2010b. “Zu den sogenannten Wurzelerweiterungen des Hurritischen: Allgemeine Probleme und Einzelfälle,” in L. Kogan, N. Koslova, and S. Loesov, eds., Language in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 53e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Vol. 1, Part 2. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 927–​947. Goetze, A. 1948. “Enclitic Pronouns in Hurrian.” JCS 2: 255–​269. Haas, V. 1984. Die Serien itkaḫi und itkalzi des AZU-​Priesters, Rituale für Tašmišarri und Tatuḫepa sowie weitere Texte mit Bezug auf Tašmišarri. Corpus der hurritischen Sprachdenkmäler (ChS) I/​1. Rome: Multigrafica Editrice. Haas, V., and I. Wegner. 1997. “Literarische und grammatikalische Betrachtungen zu einer hurritischen Dichtung.” Orientalische Literaturzeitung 92: 437–​455. Haas, V., and I. Wegner. 2004. “Das Gegenwortpaar ‘wahr’ und ‘falsch’ im Hurritischen,” in D. Groddek and S. Rößle, eds., Šarnikzel: Hethitologischen Studien zum Gedenken an Emil Orgetorix Forrer (19.02.1894–​ 10.01.1986). DBH 10. Dresden: Verlag der Technischen Universität Dresden, 339–​344. Haspelmath, M. 1995. “The Converb as a Cross-​Linguistically Valid Category,” in M. Haspelmath and E. König, eds., Converbs in Cross-​Linguistic Perspective: Structure and Meaning of Adverbial Verb Forms –​ Adverbial Participles, Gerunds. Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 13. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1–​56. Hoffner, H. 1998. Hittite Myths. Second Edition. Writings from the Ancient World. Atlanta: SBL Press. Hoffner, H. Jr., and H. C. Melchert. 2008. A Grammar of the Hittite Language. LANE 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Huehnergard, J. 2005. A Grammar of Akkadian. Second Edition. Harvard Semitic Studies 45. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Kassian, A., and I. Yakubovich. 2007. “Muršili II’s Prayer to Telipinu (CTH 377),” in D. Groddek and M. Zorman, eds., Tabularia Hethaeorum: Hethitologische Beiträge Silvin Košak zum 65. Geburtstag. DBH 25. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 423–​454. Laroche, E. 1980. Glossaire de la langue hourrite. Paris: Éditions Klincksieck. Messerschmidt, L. 1899. Mitanni-​Studien. Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft (MVaG) 1899, 4. Berlin: Wolf Peiser. Moran, W. 1992. The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Neu, E. 1994. “Modusbildungen im Hurritischen,” in R. Bielmeier and R. Stempel, eds., Indogermanica et Caucasica: Festschrift für Karl Horst Schmidt zum 65. Geburtstag. Berlin: De Gruyter, 122–​137. Neu, E. 1996. Das hurritische Epos der Freilassung I: Untersuchungen zu einem hurritisch-​hethitischen Textensemble aus Ḫattuša. StBoT 32. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Pecorella, P. E. 2000. “Note sulla produzione artistica hurrita e mittanica,” in G. Macchiaroli, ed., La Civilità dei Hurriti. La parola del passato (PdP) 55. Naples: G. Carratelli, 349–​365. Salvini, M. 1988. “Un texte nommant Zimrilim.” Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie 82: 56–​69. Salvini, M., and I. Wegner. 2004. Die mythologischen Texte. ChS I/​6. Rome: CNR –​Istituto di Studi sulle Civilta dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente. Shayanova, M. V. 2015. “Specialized Converbs in Mehweb.” National Research University Higher School of Economics: Basic Research Program Working Papers Series: Linguistics WP BRP 31/​LNG/​2015. www.hse. ru/​data/​2015/​12/​08/​1133985320/​31LNG2015.pdf. Speiser, E. 1939. “Studies in Hurrian Grammar.” JAOS 59: 289–​324. Speiser, E. 1941. Introduction to Hurrian. The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research (AASOR) 20. New Haven: American Schools of Oriental Research. Thureau-​Dangin, F. 1939. “Tablettes hurrites provenant de Mâri.” RA 36: 1–​28. Trémouille, M.-​C. 2005. Corpus der hurritischen Sprachdenkmäler. Abt 1: Die Texte aus Boğaz Köy, bd. 8. Rome: CNR. Wegner, I. 1995a. “Die hurritischen Körperteilbezeichnungen.” ZA 85: 116–​126. Wegner, I. 1995b. “Suffixaufnahme in Hurrian: Normal Cases and Special Cases,” in F. Plank, ed., Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. New York: Oxford University, 136–​147. Wegner, I. 2004. “Überlegungen zur zeitlichen Einordnung und geographischen Herkunft des hurritischen Mari-​Briefes 7+6.” Altorientalische Forschungen 31: 101–​104. Wegner, I. 2007. Hurritisch: eine Einführung, 2., überarbeitete Auflage. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wilhelm, G. 1983. “Der hurritische Ablativ-​Instrumentalis /​ne/​.” ZA 73: 96–​113. Wilhelm, G. 1991. “A Hurrian Letter from Tell Brak.” Iraq 53: 159–​168. 716

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Wilhelm, G. 1992a. “Hurritische Berufsbezeichnungen auf -​li.” Studi Micenei ed Egeo-​Anatolici 29: 239–​244. Wilhelm, G. 1992b. “Zum hurritischen Verbalsystem,” in S. R. Anschütz, ed., Texte, Sätze, Wörter und Moneme. Festschrift für Klaus Heger zum 65. Geburtstag. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 659–​671. Wilhelm, G. 1992c. “Hurritische Lexikographie und Grammatik: Die hurritisch-​hethitische Bilingue aus Boğazköy.” Orientalia Nova Series 61: 122–​141. Wilhelm, G. 1998. “Die Inschrift des Tišatal von Urkeš,” in G. Buccellati and M. Kelly-​Buccellati, eds., Urkesh and the Hurrians: Studies in Honor of Lloyd Cotsen. Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 26; Urkesh/​Mozan Studies 3. Malibu: Undena, 117–​143. Wilhelm, G. 2000. “Die Absolutiv-​Essiv-​Konstruktion des Hurritischen,” in Y. Nishina, ed., Europa et Asia Polyglotta —​Sprachen und Kulturen: Festschrift für Robert Schmitt-​Brandt zum 70. Geburtstag. Dettelbach: J. H. Röll, 199–​208. Wilhelm, G. 2006. “Der Brief Tušrattas von Mittani an Amenophis III. In hurritischer Sprache (EA 24),” in B. Janowski and G. Wilhelm, eds., Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments Neue Folge, Band 3: Briefe. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 180–​190. Wilhelm, G. 2014. “EA 24,” in A. F. Rainey collated, transcribed and translated, and W. M. Schniedewind, ed., The El-​Amarna Correspondence: A New Edition of the Cuneiform Letters from the Site of El-​Amarna based on Collations of all Extant Tablets Volume 1. Handbuch der Orientalistik (HdO) I/​110. Leiden: Brill, 188–​241. Wilhelm, G. 2016. “Schreiber und Beschwörung im Hurritischen,” in Š. Velharrtická, ed., Audias fabulas veteres: Anatolian Studies in Honor of Jana Součková-​Siegelová. CHANE 79. Leiden: Brill, 454–​462. Wilhelm, G. 2018. Kleine Beiträge zum Hurritischen. StBoT 64. Wiesbaden: Harrassowtiz.

717

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures; numbers in bold refer to tables. abduction 171, 172, 180, 182 Abu Hawam 420 Abu Simbel 271 Abydos Decree 283 Achaemenid/​Achaemenid period 10, 79, 81–​82, 87, 95, 97, 152, 189, 197, 201–​202, 204, 206–​207, 438, 563, 567; court style 82–​83; sculpture, reliefs, and architecture of 79–​97, 189–​208, 254 acoustics: architectural 7; archaeo 105; of the Nabratein synagogue 364–​387; reverberation studies 386 actor network theory 149 Adad (Hadad; Storm God) 307, 315, 333, 334 administration 23, 82, 521 adornment: 9, 127, 129, 207, 424n7, 431, 445n14, 668; anklets 127, 128; embodied 134–​137; and grave goods 128–​129, 130–​131; iconography of 131–​132; and sensory experience/​role 127, 129, 134–​137; see also jewellery Adrom, Afried 270 aesthetic/​aesthetics: attitude 535, 548n43; of Baumgarten 151, 228, 230n23, 533–​534, 547n31–​32; and art 11, 530–​545; and art for the senses in Mesopotamia 536–​540; bodily 135; disembodied 533–​536; disinterested 531–​536; experience 151, 533, 535, 537; and Gesamtkunstwerk 213; of Hogarth 537–​542, 546n12, 550n57; Hurrian 710n1; judgment 534; labour 46, 52; Mesopotamian 228, 540–​545; pleasure 534–​535; and religion 535–​536; and ritual practice/​performance 10, 227–​228; theory 228; Western philosophical 533–​538; values 148 affect/​affective 4, 79, 141, 148, 150–​152, 157, 160–​161, 168, 171–​172, 176, 181, 183n7, 213, 227–​229, 263, 326, 330, 350, 354, 359, 419, 423, 540–​541, 543–​545, 547n35, 551n71, 603–​605, 625n2–​3; of architecture/​monuments 321–​322, 324–​325; disposition 604, 623; sensory 216, 221; visual 537, 549n53 718

Africa: ancestor veneration in 394; art objects from 532; bodily adornment in 135; San healers/​dancers 136 agate 327 agency 3, 10, 52, 79, 108–​109, 111, 114, 150, 152, 174–​175, 178, 180–​182, 200–​201, 208, 263, 268, 297, 301, 321, 324–​325, 332, 334, 338, 346, 354, 476, 491, 535, 537, 541; abduction of 171–​172; divine/​magical 168, 174, 176; female 108; human/​bodily 199, 268, 322; material/​ object 161n7, 169; vs. intentionality 338n4 agential realism 150, 151 Ahmose, tomb at Amarna 269 ‘Ain-​Ghazal 396 Akka (king of Kish) 542–​545 Akkadian art 229n12 Akkadian language/​terms 11, 49–​50, 56n79, 100, 108, 116n2, 174, 175, 178, 179, 183–​184n17, 219, 421, 433, 438, 439, 472, 518–​519, 523–​524, 561–​562, 686, 709; classifiers of perceptive verbs 577; collocates 564–​570, 573; lexicography 664; loan words from 686; materials, substances, and sensory descriptions 228n21, 667–​669; multisensory dimension of vocabulary 666–​667, 672; ritual scene as case study 669–​672; semantics 664–​666, 668; terms of colour 326–​328; terms of observation, seeing 475–​477, 561–​573, 563, 571–​572, 665, 672n5; see also Akkadian texts Akkadian period/​state 20 Akkadian texts 9, 49–​50, 561; ancestor commemoration 400; bilingual 32n11, 224, 566, 666, 668; astronomical records 477–​478, 480–​481, 484; on death and banqueting 105, 119n64; diplomatic letters 35; on glass production 70–​71, 73n18; lemmatized 563; medical texts and healing rituals 490–​507; omens 106; rituals 224, 669–​672; work songs and lullabies 100, 106, 108, 113 akītu (house, festival; Babylon) 332–​334 alabaster 48, 50, 55n67, 325, 327, 447n33

Index

alabastra 437 Alaca Höyük 682, 684 Al-​Andalus, Islamic gardens of 654 alcoholic liquids 69, 264, 276, 353, 356–​357, 416, 646–​647, 651, 654, 658n28, 668, 691–​695 Alexander of Macedon (the Great) 437 Alexandria, necropolis of 461 algorithms, linguistic 11 almond 441, 442 Altmann, Peter 356 Amarna, Tell el-​(ancient Akhetaten): site 72n1, 269, 657n9, 660n48; correspondence 699, 711n2 Amar-​Suen (king of Ur) 20, 23–​24 Amenhotep III (Egyptian pharaoh) 128, 274, 277, 278, 279–​281, 282, 283, 292n20 American Society of Overseas Research 6, 442 amethyst 49, 307, 327 Amiet, Pierre 257 amphorae 462 amulets 136, 176, 507n8, 628n43 Amun (Egyptian god) 271, 271, 642 Amun-​Re (Egyptian god) 270, 277, 281, 283, 644 Analysis of Beauty (Hogarth) 538, 540 Anatolia 53n19, 128, 142, 244–​245, 396, 397 ancestor cults 393–​394 ancestor veneration/​worship 10, 393–​394, 396, 406, 407; in Africa 394; and relations with the numinous 394–​395 ancestorship 396 ancient Greece see Greece ancient Near East: area defined 7–​8, 12n1 animals: diversity of 5; odours/​smells of 691; for sacrifice 224–​225, 350–​353, 400; sensory experiences of 497; skins of 173–​174; see also bulls; faunal remains; lions anklets 132; in Egyptian iconography 128; and exaggerated body movement 135; on female figurines 131–​132; gendered differences in wearing 129, 131–​132; use for adornment 127, 137 anthropology: 116n6, 320, 357, 536; and ancient/​ non-​Western art 536; French 18; and the senses/​sensory studies 2, 77, 105, 489, 663 anthropomorphism 81, 180, 257, 258, 262, 263, 415, 424n12 anthropophagy 672 Antinoe 454, 455, 455 anti-​Semitism 236 Anuket (Egyptian god) 273 Anunna gods 538 Apadana (Persepolis) reliefs 79–​93, 96–​97, 152, 161; close-​up details 84–​85, 193, 198; conflations within 195–​196; courtiers on north stairway 196, 197; diversity of cultural origins 82–​83; eastern façade 81–​92, 96; embellishments and colorings 83–​84, 97n6;

entanglements in 191–​192, 193; expressions of tactile experience in 87–​88, 88–​92, 90–​91, 93, 190–​191, 190; guards atop the stairs 194, 197; imaginal zone of 195–​196; kinaesthesia and 189, 200; lioness and cubs 191, 192, 198–​199; mimetic slippage in 193, 204, 208; multivalent sensory aspects of 201, 207; original central panel 92, 202, 206; proprioception and 200, 203, 207; reciprocity in 199; reduplication in 193; scentscape in 189; sculptors’ marks 86–​87, 86; stairways 83, 190, 190, 192–​194, 192, 194, 196–​197, 196, 198, 199–​208, 203; synaesthesia in 190; use of scale 95, 200–​207, 205 apotropaic: powers 135; rituals 505–​506 apprenticeship 18, 31n4 Apries 283 Apsu 323 Aquinas, Thomas 518 Arad, Israelite fortress at 354, 355 Aramaic language 366, 369 archaeoacoustics 105 archaeology 3, 5, 23, 117n26, 213, 236, 320, 393, 432; alt(ernative) 5–​6; cognitive 2, 297; of death 394; embodied 4; gender 101; of Jewish ritual baths 238–​239; landscape 4, 226; and olfaction 636, 639; phenomenological 320, 338n2; and the senses/​sensory studies 63, 72n4, 240; sensory 63, 240, 408; symmetrical 161n7 archaeomusicology 101 architectural acoustics 7; see also acoustics architectural elements: bricks 325, 330, 333, 338n7; exotic building materials 82; at Pasargadae 81; at Susa 81 architecture: Achaemenid (Persepolitan) 79, 82–​83, 93, 199–​203, 207; affect of 321–​322; agency of 325, 338; cognitive 171; domestic 142; Eblaic 299; Egypt 81; engagement with 10; monumental 8, 118n50, 321, 323, 326; Pre-​Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) 263; reconstruction of 226; and sensory experience 105, 179, 189, 320; of synagogues 364; Sumer 7; use of foreign workers 82; water 239 Aristotle 3, 474, 518 armour: belts 144; in burial sites 145; symbolic 160 armour scales 144; pectorals 158–​160, 159, 160; beaded 159; synecdochal function of 159 Arndt, Johann 535 Arnolfini Portrait (van Eyck) 77 aromas: in the Jerusalem Temple 353–​354; of the opium poppy 421; see also odours; smells aromatics 223, 640; oils 429–​443; plants 441; ten sacred oils 644–​645; use in healing practices 505–​506; woods 437, 440–​441 Arrian 437 art: and aesthetics 530–​545; and agency 171; ancient and non-​Western 532, 536–​545; 719

Index

creation of 531; curating and producing interactions with 93–​96; of Greece and Rome 549n49; and multisensory signalling 227; as visual stimulus 684 art history 5, 213, 254, 536, 548n40 Artaxerxes I (Achaemenid king) 79 Artaxerxes III (Achaemenid king) 79 Artemis, temple of 81 artists 117n11, 182n1, 463, 464, 549n50 artisans 46, 79, 82, 84, see also craftsmen/​ craftsmanship Asherah (goddess) 132 Ashkelon 129, 420 Ashley-​Cooper, Anthony 535, 545–​546n5 Ashtart (Astarte; goddess) 132, 441 Ashurbanipal (Assyrian king) 65, 477–​479, 485n2, 491; colophon of 475–​477; North Palace (Nineveh) 329, 335, see also Assurbanipal Ashurnasirpal II (Assyrian king) 65, 66; palace of 326, 335, 329 Asimov, Isaac 532 Asklepios (Asklepios-​Herakles) 433 assemblage theory 148–​149 assemblages 4; armour scale pectorals 158–​160; contextual 149, 161n5; dress 9; of dress items 160–​161; dress items as 147–​150; funerary 454; sensorial 141, 150–​152, 152 Assmann, Jan 269, 395, 654 Assur (Aššur; god) 325–​326, 328; Temple of 338n7 Assur (city) 67, 223, 328, 478, 506 Assurbanipal (Assyrian king) 229n12; Garden Scene relief 220, 229n12; see also Ashurbanipal Assyria: 7, 42, 53, 67–​68, 70, 157, 161n8, 480, 546n13; contact with Hasanlu, Iran 142; sensory experience in 7, 152; see also Neo-​ Assyrian period Assyriology 489, 563, 441 Astarte (Ashtart; goddess) 132, 441 astroglyphs 334, 335 astrology 471–​485 Astronoë (Phoenician goddess) 433 Astronomical Diaries 480–​481 astronomy 11, 471–​485 Aswan Dams 279 Atrahasis (Mesopotamian myth) 180 aural experience: of beads 159–​160; at Hittite festivals 687–​688; jewellery and 135; and medical diagnosis 497–​498; in ritual activities 219–​221; ritual of Scripture reading 365–​366; see also hearing autism 526n30 Avrahami,Yael 7 BabyFST 572 baby-​incantations 112–​115 720

Babylon 35, 213, 332, 334, 338n5, 339n15, 472, 480, 670; colour and affect at 326–​335, 337–​338; gates, walls, and moats of 323–​324; Reconstructed Processional Way 331; sensescape in 325; temple of Marduk 337, 476, 481; see also Ishtar Gate (Babylon), Esagila (temple) Babylonian deities 323, 326, 328, 331, 332, 333–​334, 337, 338n7, 494 Babylonian Empire 321 Babylonian texts 82, 174, 179, 180, 219, 332, 335, 471, 480–​482, 484, 485, 472, 477, 496, 505, 563, 566, 567, 671, 688 Bahrani, Zainab 257 Baines, John 605 Balasî (Assyrian scholar) 479 balsam 438 banquets see feasts Barad, Karen 150, 151, 191 Barama (Eblaic goddess) 305 basalt 246, 250n10, 682 basilicas 364 Battle of the Pictures (Hogarth) 538 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 151, 228, 533–​534, 547n32, 547n36 bdellium 434–​437, 435, 438, 439, 442, 446n20 beads 42, 159; on armour scale pectorals 159; from elite women’s burials 156; visual and aural sensory stimuli of 158, 159–​160 Beament, James 102 beauty 534–​535, 548n42, 549n44; as culture-​ specific 228; metaphors for 616–​617 Beisomoun 396 Bēlet-​ilī (goddess) 671 Bell, Catherine 17 benben-​stone 269, 282 Bennett, Jane 149 Bergson, Henri 151 Bey, Osman Hamdy 446n26 birth defects 521 Black Stone of Lord Aberdeen 334, 335 Blacking, John 102 blandscapes 636, 656n2 blindness 519, 521; used as punishment 679–​680 bodily inscription 133 bodily movement 10; see also kinaesthesia; proprioception body: mantic 178–​181; Mesopotamian sense of 174–​178 Body Description Texts 670 body knowledge 18, 31 body modifications 129 body schema 168, 182 Bohr, Niels 150 booty 708–​709 boundary-​crossing, sensory 663–​673 Bourdieu, Pierre 18, 228

Index

bowls: in burial sites 411, 437; for collecting sacrificial blood 351–​352, 351; from Ebla 310–​312, 311–​312 Boyle, Robert 482 Brack-​Bernsen, Lis 475 Brandt, Margaret 691 bricks 325, 330, 333, 338n7 British Museum 93, 329, 456 broadhouses 364, 367 bronze 69, 128, 145, 307, 345–​348, 351–​352, 425n16, 670, 679, 688 Bronze Age 10, 171; see also Late Bronze Age Bruyère, Bernard 460 Bryan, Betsy 277 built environments 4, 95, 105, 218, 257, 262, 263, 265, 320, 605, 638, 653; of the Jerusalem Temple 359n2; materiality of 344; multisensory 10 bull-​man 81 bulls 80, 90–​91, 90, 218, 333–​334, 336, 550nn68–​69, 621, 647, 655, 682; human-​ headed 304 burial assemblages 414, 418–​422; ceramic oil lamps in 416, 419–​421, 420; materiality of 416; in Tomb 100 (Megiddo) 418, 419 burial spaces 10; artefacts from 145; bishop’s house monumental tomb 437; Early Iron Age 159; faunal remains in 395, 398, 406, 410, 412–​413, 418; hypogea 461; Hypogea 460, 461; intramural 10, 409; Late Bronze Age 159; of men 145; microfaunal remains in 424n9; navigation of 412, 417; necropolis of Alexandria 461; odours in 410; ossuaries 412; residential 423; shared 409; statues within 415; subfloor 410; tombs and catacombs 460–​462; of women 141, 144–​145, 153–​160; see also Royal Hypogeum (Qatna) burial taphonomy 408, 424n4 burials 457; bishop’s house monumental tomb 441; and bodily adornment 130–​131; at Carthage 441; chamber tombs 409–​410; compound inhumation 409, 414–​415, 417–​418; cremation 441; early Neolithic 255; in extramural cemeteries 398; at Hasanlu, Iran 148; iconography of 429; Levantine 442; at Monte Sirai (Sicily) 441; multiple-​successive 407–​408, 410; at Qatna 408–​409, 422–​423; residential graves 398–​399, 401, 407, 423; ritual activities surrounding 394; sarcophageal 440; secondary mortuary practices 397; sensory experiences of 407; at Megiddo 408–​409, 416–​423; Theban Tomb 1447 460; tholos tombs 430; see also burial spaces; funerary practices burners (Ebla) 303, 303, 307; see also incense burners Burnt Palace (Nimrud) 66, 67, 70 Butler, Judith 150

Byblos (Gbeil, Lebanon): and the Isis/​Osiris myth 441; king of 434, 435, 436–​437 Byzantine icons 172, 182 cadaverine 430, 442 Canaanites 42, 44, 132, 348, 349, 419–​421 Cadiz 446n15; bishop’s house monumental tomb 437, 441 Cage, John 102 Cairo, medieval (Fustat) 656 cannabis seeds 421 carnelian 50, 54n32, 56n79, 82, 156, 176, 307, 614, 628nn43–​44 Carthage, tombs at 441 cartouches 21 Carvais, Robert 101 caryophyllene 446–​447n30 Cassin, Elena 105, 664 catacombs 460–​462; see also burial spaces Çatalhöyük 264, 397 Cataract Triad 270 cattle 347, 355, 356, 361n35, 413, 424n10, 478, 647, 680 Çayönü 255, 397 cedar (wood) 82, 325, 337, 439, 442, 446n22, 503, 690; fragments of 223, 224 celestial bodies 174, 473, 482, 484, 485n6, 504 celestial sciences see astrology; astronomy censing 644, 651, 654; see also incense; incense burners Central Building (Persepolis) 192–​193, 194, 196, 197, 199, 200–​202, 204–​208 ceramics, in Hasanlu burials 144; at Ebla 419; in the Jerusalem temple 357; see also bowls; clay; figurines/​figures; vessels chaîne opératoire 70–​71 chalcedony 49, 307, 327 chamber tombs 409–​410 charcoal 441 chariots 42, 88, 313, 315, 359n2, 582, 684 Chavín de Huantar (Peru) 152–​153, 161 children 103, 111–​115, 129, 136, 145, 153, 154, 156, 197, 203, 205, 242, 244, 313, 360n4, 405, 432, 648, 650, 672, 680, 682; portraits in Egypt 454, 455, 456, 458; and disability 518, 522, 524, 525n10, 526; childbirth/​rearing: 101, 235 Cicero 474 “cinema tactile” 77 city gates 10, 321–​322, 338; in Hittite cities 684; in Mesopotamia 323–​324; protective power of 321–​322; see also Ishtar Gate (Babylon) city streets, smell of 648 city walls 10, 338; agency of 325; in Babylon 323–​324; decorating 325; in Hittite cities 684; in Mesopotamia 323–​324 Civil, Miguel (Miquel Civil Desveus) 106, 109, 110, 111, 116n1 721

Index

Classen, Constance 1, 2–​3, 4, 93 clay: balls of 20; haptic qualities of 181; as mantic medium 178–​181; as material of creation 180–​181; as medium for cunieform writing 180; as medium for sealing 181; moulded and glazed 333; see also sealing practices; vessels clothing: in Ebla 304; and feelings 51–​52; for religious festivals and royal ceremonies 48; sensory experience of 47–​52; used to express relationships 52 cognition: embodied 171, 625n1; sensuous 531; situated 18 cognitive archaeology 2, 297 cognitive disabilities 521–​522 cognitive feedback 9, 141 cognitive linguistics 562, 578 cognitive science 17, 136 collective imagination 10 collective memory 18, 31, 152, 395, 398, 401; see also memory collocates 564–​570, 572 colours: in the Akkadian language 666–​668; in Babylon 326–​327; in the Court of Audience (Ebla) 302, 303, 304–​305; of dyes and textiles 46, 48–​51; Egyptian blue 462–​464; of healing substances 503; at Hittite festivals 683–​684; and medical diagnosis 493, 495, 496; as metaphor 627n40, 627–​628n41; of objects in the sky 475; use of 219; see also dyes and dyeing commensality 63, 72n10, 105, 356–​357; embodied 68; in festivals 522 Conceptual Metaphor Theory 578 Connerton, Paul 134 copper(-​alloy) 141, 145, 149, 153–​158, 161n12, 327, 330, 504, 593–​594, 670, 684, 688 Corbin, Alain 3 corporeality/​corporealities 415, 424n6, 531, 534; and aesthetics 537 cosmetics 431, 442 cosmology 263–​264 Cradic, Melissa 395, 397 craftsmen/​craftsmanship 71–​72, 79, 81–​83, 86–​87, 97, 313, 320, 324–​325 creation myths: Babylonian 180, 332, 333; Egyptian 269; Mesopotamian 180–​181, 333; Sumerian 180, 521 Creation of the Pickax 180 cremation cemeteries 441 Crete 67, 430, 664 Csordas, Thomas 494 cult images 218, 644; see also imagery cult of the ancestors see ancestor cult cuneiform (writing system) 20, 21, 28, 35, 73n18, 87, 100, 116n2, 142, 167, 174, 180, 181, 299, 413, 476, 562, 664 cypress (wood) 325 Cypriot 133, 421 722

Cyprus 35, 48 Cyrus II (Achaemenid king) 81 Dalí, Salvador 77 Damascius, Life of Isidore 433 dance 132, 134–​136, 226, 264, 457, 460, 682; and San healing 136 Danti, Michael 142 Darius I (Achaemenid king) 79, 83, 97n3, 189; palace at Susa 82 Daston, Lorraine 485 Day, Jo 6 de la Roche, Sophie 93 de Morgan, Jacques 273 deafness 520–​521, 686–​687 death: odours associated with 458–​459; in Roman Egypt 451–​465; see also funerary practices; odours, of decomposition decoration 9, 36–​39, 63, 79, 152–​153, 207, 259, 299–​301, 321, 325–​328, 396, 457, 678, 682 Dedwen (Nubian god) 274 Deir el-​Bahari 42 Deir el-​Medina 453, 460 deities: Adad (Hadad; Storm God) 307, 315, 333, 334; Akkadian 218, 323; Anunna 538; Artemis 81; Asherah 132; Ashtart/​Astarte 132, 441; Babylonian 323, 326, 328, 331, 332, 333–​334, 337, 338n7, 494, 669–​670; banquets for 406, 423; Bēlet-​ilī (goddess) 671; communication with 678; Dumuzi 181; Eblaic 308; Egyptian 270, 271, 271, 273–​274, 277, 281, 283, 284, 290, 441, 459, 628n43, 642, 644, 645; Ha (Lord of the Western Desert) 274; Hindu 216, 218, 223; Hittite 678, 679, 681, 682, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688–​689, 690, 691, 695; Inanna/​Inana 110, 177–​178, 181–​182, 254, 257, 538, 549n55, 687; Ishkhara 301; Ishtar 219, 229n11, 299, 306, 307, 330, 334, 668; Mesopotamian 81, 176, 421, 494; mortuary 420–​421, 425n20; Nanna/​ Su’en (moon god) 218, 225; Nubian 274, 287; Phoenician 433; Sumerian 21, 323, 521; Utu (Sun God) 551n74 Deleuze, Gilles 270, 543 Demotic inscriptions 459 Denon, Dominique-​Vivant 273 Descartes, René 3 Deuteronomic texts 522 Dewey, John 2–​3 Diagnostic Handbook 491–​502 Dicks, Ainsley 561, 563, 566–​567, 572 Diocletian 438 Diodorus Siculus 438, 439, 461, 474 disability studies 11, 517 disease 11; see also diagnosis; healing practices disinterested interest 534–​535, 545–​546n5 Dissayanake, Ellen 227 divination 180, 473, 491, 493, 508n15, 508n16

Index

divine transference 172 Djehutinakhtankh (scribe/​physician) 653 Drehem (ancient Puzriš-​Dagan) 21, 23–​24 dress items: armour scales 144; beaded 157–​158; from Hasanlu burial sites 9, 141, 145, 147–​160, 149; as sensorial assemblages 141; weaponisation of 160; see also jewellery drinking practices 69, 110–​112, 144, 264, 276, 356–​357, 505, 523, 646–​647, 651, 654, 658n28, 691–​695 see also alcoholic liquids drinking bowls/​vessels: depictions of 65, 66, 69; at Ebla 302, 303, 304; functional context for 67–​70; at Hasanlu 145; production of 70–​71; rock crystal 67, 67, 69; tactile depiction of 225; of transparent glass 64, 65–​72 dromos 401 Dumuzi (god) 181 Durkheim, Émile 393 Dur-​Sharrukin see Khorsabad dyes and dyeing 46–​47, 52; colours 46, 48–​51; direct method 46; Egyptian blue 462–​464; henna 46, 47; indigo dye 54n41; madder dye 46, 47, 56n79, 667; murex dye 47, 49, 50, 51, 54n42, 667; woad/​indigo dye 46, 50, 54n41; see also colours Ea (Akkadian god) 323; see also Enki (Sumerian god) Eanna 323 Early Dynastic period 20; Banquet side of the “Standard of Ur” 220; spouted vessels from 214–​216, 214; IIIA 220; votive sculptures from Tell Asmar 217 Early Iron Age 9, 35–​36; burials 159; decorations 38–​39; looms 42 early Neolithic period: social activity in 255–​257; and the use of scale 254–​265 Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh) 10, 107, 310–​312; Administrative Quarter 299; bowls from 311–​312; burners 303, 303; Cisterns’ Square 307, 316; Court of Audience 299, 300–​301, 302, 302, 303, 304; cult structures in 306; drinking vessels 302, 303; Early Syrian (Early Bronze IVA and B) 298–​306, 315–​316; excavation of 298; function of gaze in 304–​305; general plan 306; inlaid wall panel (reconstruction) 301; Ishtar’s Cult Area 307–​308, 308, 309, 312, 315; Ishtar’s Temples 306–​307; Lions’ Terrace 307; Old Syrian period (Middle Bronze I-​II) 298, 306–​308, 310–​316; Rashap’s Temple 306; Ritual of Kingshp 305, 315; Royal Palace 298–​299, 300, 313–​314; Sanctuary of the Deified Royal Ancestors 306; seal of Ushra-​Samu 301; Shamash’s Temple 306; stages of development 298; Steppe Gate 312; Temple of the Rock (Early Syrian) 312; use of

light and shadow 301–​302; votive pit 308, 309, 310–​313, 310, 311, 312, 313, 315 ecstatic experiences 135, 226 Edfu (Mesen), temple of 654 educational theory 17 Egypt 35, 48; adornment practices in 127; apprenticeship in 18; creation myths in 269; eschatological beliefs in 452; funerary practices 11, 461; geologics and geoaesthetics 269–​272; interaction with nature 268; Middle Kingdom 274, 280; mummification practices in 457–​458; myth of Isis and Osiris 441; New Kingdom 274; rituals involving torches in 462–​464; Roman 451–​465; royal living-​rock stelae 267–​291; sensory experiences in 11; smellscapes in 11, 223, 641–​666; stone architecture in 81; urban society in 657n8 Egyptian deities 270, 271, 271, 273–​274, 277, 281, 283, 284, 290, 441, 459. 628n43, 642, 644, 645 Egyptian language/​terms 11, 268–​271, 288; changes in textual records 624; corpora 607; metaphors of perception verbs 576–​595; metaphors of sensory experience 603–​625 Egyptian texts 276, 277, 283, 458–​460, 581–​595, 596–​597; 608–​621, 641–​652, 653 Egyptian pharaohs: Amenhotep III 274, 277, 278, 279, 281, 283; Hatshepsut 591–​593, 598n24, 628n42, 642; Mentuhotep II 42, 274; Neferhotep I 274, 453–​454, 453, 456–​457, 460; Ptolemy X 643; Ramesses II 271; Ramesses III 269; Ramesses VI 642; Seti I 283–​291, 284–​289; Sneferu 135; Tutahkhamun 39, 41, 42, 44, 54n27, 54n31, 54n34, 653; Tuthmosis II 276, 277; Tuthmosis III 287; Tuthmosis IV 274, 276–​277, 276–​277, 279, 280, 283 Egyptology 578, 636–​637 Eicher, Joanne 145 ekal māšarti 66 ekphrasis 531, 540–​545 el Qurn (mountain summit) 270 Elamite 82 embalming 458; see also funerary practices; mummification embodied cognition 625n1 embodiment 151, 424n7; and adornment practices 133–​137; corporeal 127; in funerary rituals 415; of performance 442; postmortem 408; and sensory perception 406; theories of 133–​137 emesal 106, 118n36 emic research 562 emotion studies 625n2 emotions: in ancient Mesopotamia 7, 136; defined 603–​604; embodied 489; vs. feelings 603; and garments 51–​52; literary use of terms 625; metaphors of sight (colour, light/​dark) 613–​617; metaphors of smell (stinkiness) 621; metaphors of sound (quiet/​noise) 608–​610; 723

Index

metaphors of taste (sweetness/​bitterness) 617–​618; metaphors of temperature (heat/​ cold) 608–​613; metaphors of touch (smooth, soft, heavy, etc.) 618–​621; and sensory experience 230n21 Enannatum I (ruler of Lagash) 330 enchantment 45, 171, 172, 324, 325 Eninnu Temple 339n17 Enki (Sumerian god) 323, 521, see also Ea (Akkadian god) Enki and Ninmaḫ (Sumerian creation myth) 180, 521 Enkidu 544, 546n17, 549n55, 550n67, 551n73 Enkomi (Cyprus) 36 Enlil (Babylonian god) 323, 326 Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (Sumerian myth) 178 Enuma Elish (Babylonian creation epic) 180, 333 Ephesus (Turkey), temple of Artemis 81 Epic of Erra 669–​670 Epic of Gilgamesh see Gilgamesh Epic epistemology 174, 489, 493 Eridu 180 Esagila (temple) 331, 481 Esagil-​kīn-​apli (Babylonian scholar) 495 Esarhaddon (Assyrian king) 334, 338, 477–​479 Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty 672 eschatology, Egyptian and Roman 452 Ešmun-​Milqart (Phoenician god) 433; see also Asklepios/​Herakles ethnicity 136 ethnography 104, 262, 357; and the cult of the ancestors 393; and the role of jewellery 135 euphoric experiences 135 Euphrates 167, 256 evil eye 497, 507, 509n34, 681 evil tongue 687 evolutionary biology 2 exorcists (ritual healers)/​exorcism 491, 502, 507–​508n10 extispicy texts 180 faience 35, 36, 38, 42, 45, 326 faunal remains 395, 398, 406, 410, 412–​413, 418 Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkôt) 522, 526–​527n33 feasts 105, 264; ceremonial 522; honoring the dead 393, 407, 416, 429, 459–​460, 461, 462; as offering to the gods 406, 423; as part of funerary ritual 400–​401, 401, 413–​414, 418, 461; in Hittite texts 692; in the Jerusalem Temple 354–​357; Neo-​Assyrian 68–​69; for religious occasions 459–​460; smell of 651–​652; see also foodstuffs Febvre, Lucien 663 festivals: 48, 110, 111, 118n52, 134, 226, 276, 282, 442, 460, 461, 517; akītu-​ 332–​4, 343; Hittite 679, 682–​684, 687–​688, 692, 693, 694, 724

695; multisensorial 522–​523, 526n26, 526n29, 526n32; smellscapes of 647, 650–​654, 657–​660 figurines/​figures: anthropomorphic 424n12; Bronze Age Cypriot 130–​134; Chalcolithic 133–​134; at Ebla 307–​308, 309, 313, 313, 314; female 131–​132, 132; ritual creation of 669; from Susa 146; terracotta female drummers 134; unbaked 313, 313, 314, 314 Fiorina, Paolo 65 First Cataract 272–​273, 279, 281, 283; maps 273–​274 first temples 254 Fleck, Ludwik 483 flowers: 86, 224, 526, 586, 643; garden fragrance 647, 651–​652; jasmine 441, 446–​447n30; lotus 642, 645, 658n26; as offerings 460, 645 foodstuffs: 68, 82, 105, 221, 222, 505, 510n62,; found in burial sites 411–​412, 416–​417; identification of 393; smells of 653–​654; as temple offerings 644–​647; see also feasts; libations foot-​binding 137n4, 154 Fort Shalmaneser (Nimrud) 65, 66, 67, 70 fortresses 83, 142, 238, 240, 242, 286–​288, 354 Foster, Benjamin 113, 563 Foucault, Michel 96 fragrance(s): 68, 69, 223, 324, 325, 353, 354, 421, 439, 442, 458, 460; in Egyptian smellscapes 638–​649, 651–​653, 657–​659, 665 fragrant oils 353, 643 frankincense 6, 223, 354, 358, 438, 458, 640, 657n14 French language 592 Fuente Álamo (Spain) 421 fumigants 406, 422 funerary assemblages 454 funerary garments 178 funerary masks 452 funerary portraits 452–​457, 461–​464, 463 funerary practices: in the ancient Near East 405–​406; animal sacrifice 400; commemoration of the dead 457, 459; cremation cemeteries 441; decorated shrouds 452–​457; Demotic inscriptions 457; in Ecuador 425n22; feasting 413–​414; fumigation of the body 400; funerary sequence approach 410–​415, 423; household 407; interaction with the dead 415, 452, 459–​460; and interaction with the divine 407; interment phase 412–​414; at Megiddo 397, 399–​400; mourning 406, 418–​422; multifaceted experiences of 459–​460; mummification 11, 436, 438, 439, 440, 451, 452–​453, 457–​459, 464; olfactory experience of 399–​400; in the Phoenician city states 431–​443; post-​interment phase 414–​415; pre-​interment phase 410–​412; preparation of the corpse 412–​413, 414, 437, 458; at Qatna 399–​400; and religious beliefs

Index

396; resin baths 441; ritual offerings 452; in Egypt 11, 42, 451–​465; within tombs and catacombs 461; use of aromatic oils and resins 429–​443; see also burials; mortuary rituals; perfumes; unguents funerary spells 459 funerary wreaths 460, 461 Fustat (medieval Cairo) 656 Galison, Peter 485 Gallery of Cornelis Van der Geest (van Haecht) 93, 94 Gallese,Vittorio 196–​197, 199 Gamla 10, 386, 388n21; ritual baths at 240–​241, 247–​248, 247 gardens 112, 220, 229n12, 504, 627n33, 691; in Egypt 645, 647, 649, 651, 652, 654, 655 garden fragrance 647, 651–​652 garments 24, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45–​54, 69, 84, 85, 178, 179, 181, 184n20, 218, 219, 326, 329, 347, 353, 415, 464, 502, 521, 527n45, 645, 649, 655, 683, 684 garment pins 141, 144, 146, 149, 153–​154, 154, 161n4 Garšana 21 Gate of All Lands 190, 194, 197–​198, 207 Gayet, Albert 455 Gbeil, Lebanon see Byblos (Gbeil, Lebanon) Gebel Barkal 270, 271 Gebel es-​Silsila 457 gender 100–​108, 116n8, 118n46, 127–​134, 137, 151, 158, 316, 359n4, 424n7, 431, 453, 454, 638 gender studies 100 geoaesthetics 269–​272 geologics 269–​272 geophilosophy 270 George, Andrew 563 Gesamtkunstwerk 10, 213, 226–​229 gifts 35, 36, 47–​50, 87, 95, 198, 218, 445n4, 522, 526n32, 649, 651, 708–​709 Gilgamesh (king of Uruk) 518, 531, 540–​545 Gilgamesh and Akka 542–​545, 550nn64–​67 Gilgamesh and Huwawa A 537 Gilgamesh Epic 323, 518–​519, 527n36, 531, 668; see also Epic of Gilgamesh Girsu see Tello (Girsu) glass 9, 31n5, 42, 44, 45, 52, 53, 56n76, 95, 156, 157, 159, 236, 326, 443, 461, 533, 648, 670; glassmakers 9; hemispherical transparent 9; natron-​based 64; opaque 62–​63, 64; translucent 63, 64; transparent 63–​65, 67, 70; zagindurû-​70 glass production: in Assyria 62–​63, 70–​71; in Egypt 72n1; slumping technique 65, 65 glyptics 10, 167, 258–​260, 262, 299, 307, 710n1 Göbekli Tepe 10, 256, 397; community buildings at 254–​265; masks at 263–​264; megaliths at 257–​258, 262–​264; miniatures at 257–​262;

plaquettes from 258–​260, 258–​260, 263–​264; porthole (portal) stones from 258, 260–​261, 261, 264; ritual spaces at 257; sensory perspective of 262–​265 Goddess of the Night (Hittite) 679 gods and goddesses see deities gold 42–​43, 44, 45–​49, 52, 53n19n26, 55n67, 82, 84, 97n6, 133, 145, 156–​157, 160, 176–​179, 276, 301, 307, 324, 327, 358, 359n2, 550n69, 569, 574n15, 668–​669, 683–​689, 707, 714n71 Gold Bowl (from Hasanlu) 142, 146, 154, 157 Gopnik, Hilary 204 Göttertypentext 329 Grapow, Hermann 269 grave goods 408, 429, 461; from Hasanlu, Iran 153–​160; jewellery as 128–​129, 130–​131; at Qatna 410, 414 Gray, Terence 285 Greece: Mesopotamia’s connections to 531; music 102; textile production in 41; tomb cult and hero cult in 394, 395 Griffith, Francis Llewellyn 285 Guattari, Félix 270, 543 Gudea (ruler of Lagash) 175, 216, 220, 322, 339n18; Statue B 222, 222; stele fragment 221 Guimet, Émile 455 gustatory senses see taste gut feelings see interoception (“gut feelings”) Guzana (Tell Halaf) 67 Ha (Lord of the Western Desert) 274 habitus 86 Hadad, see Adad (Hadad; Storm God) Hamilakis,Yannis 3, 4, 63, 68, 150, 152, 172, 236, 237, 430, 442, 605, 664 hand-​washing, ceremonial 69 Hanukkah 526n32 haptic 105, 107, 108, 207, 225, 264, 408, 527n45, 537, 544, 577, 583, 584; of animal sacrifice 350–​352; of clay 181; and garment pins 154; jewellery and 135; metaphors of 583–​585, 584; in sealing practices 27–​29, 167–​169, 171–​175, 178–​182; skin as haptic sensory organ 172; vision 5, 8, 9, 497; see also tactile experiences, touch Hasankeyf Höyük 255 Hasanlu (Iran): 9, 64, artefacts and materials in burials (female/​male) 145; burials by sex/​ age and wealth 146; destruction of citadel at 141–​142; excavation of 141–​142; excavation photograph and contour plan 143; excavation photograph (Burial SK448) 148; excavator’s drawing (Burial SK493a) 147; garment pins from burial sites 149; glass production at 64; grave goods from burial sites 153–​160; location of 144; in Period Ivb 141–​142, 144–​145; women’s dress at 141 725

Index

Hasanlu Gold Bowl (beaker) 142, 146, 154, 157 Hasmonean Buried Palace 241, 242, 246 Hasmonean palaces 241 Hatshepsut (Egyptian Queen) 591–​593, 598n24, 628n42, 642 Ḫatti 35, 55n61; Land of 678, 681, 683–​685, 690; Hattic language 678, 687 Hattori, Atsuko 21, 22, 24, 26 Hawara 460 Hawthorn, Ainsley 6, 7, 105 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 96 Ḫazzizi (Hittite deity) 686 headdresses 84, 156–​8, 158, 303 healers 11, 490, 491, 494, 496–​500, 503, 504, 506; African San healers 136; see also exorcists (ritual hearlers)/​exorcism; healing practices; medical diagnosis; physicians healing practices 11; bloodletting 506; exorcism 491; incantations 502–​503, 521; magic 490, 507; pharmaceutical plants 503, 505–​506; rituals 167, 490–​491, 502–​505, 507; spells/​incantations 491, 504; use of music 504; use of paraphernalia (tool-​signs) 502, 507, 510n50; use of smell and taste 505; use of touch 504–​505, 524, 527n45; using kinaesthesia 506; see also medical diagnosis hearing 1, 3, 5, 12, 17, 105, 108, 135, 142, 191, 248, 338n1, 359n3, 364, 374, 387; in Early Syrian Ebla 316; in Egypt 268, 282; in Hittite texts 684–​689, 695; in Hurrian texts 699–​706, 709–​710; impairment of 520–​521, 686–​687; lack of 471; metaphors of 582–​583, 582; in Old Syrian Ebla 316; propriocentric 105 Hebrew Bible 2, 135, 237, 431, 433, 594; intellectual disability in 517–525​ Hebrew language 50, 366, 369, 387n7, 433–​434, 445n10, 518, 523–​524, 594; use of metaphor in 604–​605 Ḫedammu 684, 696 Heliopolitan cosmogony 269 Helms, Mary 83 henna 46, 47 Henshaw,Victoria 637, 653, 654, 655 hepatoscopy 180 Herculaneum (Italy) 639 hermeneutics 493 hero cult 394, 395 Herodian palaces 241 Herodium 364 Herodotus 438, 439, 458 Herzfeld, Ernst 80, 194 heuristics 517, 525n1 Hindu temples 10, 216, 216, 218–​219, 222, 223 historical scholarship 3 history of science 485 Hittite deities 679, 681, 682, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688–​689, 690, 691, 695; communication with 678 726

Hittite Empire/​period 12, 46, 49, 50, 81, 339n13, 679, 682, 684 Hittite language/​terms 11; and the senses 11–​12; words about hearing 684–​689, 695; words about sight 678–​684, 695; words about smelling 689–​691, 695; words about taste 692–​693, 695; words about touch 694–​695 Hittite texts 50, 54n31, 678–​695; Hurro-​Hittite Bilingual 700, 705, 707, 709 Hodder, Ian 2, 397 Hoffer, Peter C. 3 Hoffman, Donald 152 Hogarth, William 537, 538–​540, 538, 546n12, 550n57; Analysis of Beauty 538, 540; Battle of the Pictures 538; The Laughing Audience 541; Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn 542; Time Smoking a Picture 539 Hogwood, Christopher 220 Hooke, Robert 93 Hor-​pa-​bik 458 Horus (Egyptian god) 628n43, 644 House of Life (scriptorium) 647–​648, 654–​655 Howes, David 1, 2–​3, 4, 668 Hsu, Shis-​Weh 7 humanism 2 Humbaba/​Huwawa 518, 527n36, 537, 546n17, 549n55, 682 Hurrian language/​terms 11, 12, 710; difficulty in studying 699; verbs of hearing 699, 700–​706, 709–​710; verbs of seeing 699, 706–​710 Hurrian texts 699–​710; Hurro-​Hittite Bilingual 700, 705, 707, 709 Hylomorphism 518 Hymn III to Ramesses VI 642 Hymn to the Temple of Kesh (Sumer) 321–​322 Ibbi-​Sin (son of Šulgi) 20, 22 Ibn Radwn 656 icon 172, 286 iconcoclasm 219 iconography 213 identity: and the act of sealing 178; bodily 9–​10, 147, 178; and clothing 52; collective 152; construction of 18, 108, 151; ethnic 359; feminine 178; as gift of the gods 175; Israelite 10; and mortuary dress 145–​146; and personhood 152; place 654; re-​establishment of 128; and sealing practices 182; sensory experience and 161; transference of 175; transformation of 18; validation of 172 ideology 81, 134, 315, 321, 323, 358, 613 Ig-​alim 322 Igbo tribe (Nigeria) 135 illness 11; see also diagnosis; healing practices imagery: of animals 262–​263; cult 218; ekphrastic 530–​545; front-​facing royal figures 300; mental 152; multisensory nature of 451; power of 265

Index

imortelles 460 İnandık vase 682, 683, 687, 689 Inana/​Inanna (goddess) 110, 177–​178, 181–​182, 254, 257, 538, 549n55, 687; see also Ishtar incantations 490, 502, 504, 521, 671, 681–​682; anti-​witchcraft 668; baby-​ 112–​115; funerary 459; Hurrian 710 incense 223, 406, 422, 423, 431, 436, 437, 640, 644, 658nn18–​21, 690; Biblical use of 445n3; depiction of 456; funerary use of 456, 460; at the Jerusalem Temple 353–​354, 358, 359; used to mark the sacred 431; medical use of 445n13 incense burners 437, 446n15, 640, 644; depiction of 457 indigo dye 54n41 Ingold, Timothy 107 intellectual disability 521; evaluation of the intellect 518–​519; in the Hebrew Bible 517–​525; and the sense of touch 523–​524; and sensory studies 524–​525 intellectual history 11 interest, disinterested 534–​535, 545–​546n5 interface theory of perception 152 international style 35 interoception (“gut feelings”) 1, 4, 489; and medical diagnosis 500–​502 intersensoriality 104 intersubjectivity 150–​152, 494 intramural burials 10, 397, 401, 408, 409, 423 Iran 9, 79, 141, 144, 437 Iranian Archaeological Service 142 Iraq 167, 255, 531; Sumerian cities in 664 Irisaĝrig (Tell al-​Wilaya) 21 Irkab-​Danu (king of Ebla) 305 Iron Age 10, 62, 128, 129, 429, 432, 435; destruction of Hasanlu citadel 141–​142; music and religion in 134–​135; see also Early Iron Age Ishar-​Damu (king of Ebla) 305 Ishchali, plaque from 219, 229n11 Ishkhara (goddess) 301 Ishtar (goddess) 299, 306, 307, 330, 334, 668; cult of 229n11; temples of 219, 306–​307 Ishtar Gate (Babylon) 10, 321, 325, 330, 334, 337–​ 339; reconstruction 333 Ishtar’s Cult Area (Ebla) 307–​308, 308, 312, 315; objects from 309 Isis (Egyptian goddess) 441 Israel 344–​361, 408, 429, 444n1, 519–​526 Ištar (goddess) see Ishtar (goddess) Italian Institute of the Middle and Far East 81 ivory 35–​38, 40, 46, 54n28, 65, 66, 67, 69, 82, 348, 349, 688 Jacob’s staff 475, 486n13 James, William 2–​3 jasmine 441, 446–​447n30 Jebel al-​Hawāyah 129

Jemdet Nasr period 20 Jensen, Morten 239 Jerf el Ahmar (Syria) 255, 257, 262 Jericho 10, 396, 419; ritual baths at 240–​242, 242 Jerusalem 238, 239, 344, 345, 354, 521 Jerusalem Temple: and the aromas of worship 353–​354; artist’s reconstruction of Temple Mount 346; changes to the built environment of 359n2; feasting in 354–​357; journey to 10, 344–​347; musical performance in 347–​350; ritual of sacrifice in 350–​353; sacred space and the dimming of the senses 358; Scripture reading in 365 jesters 688 jewellery 9, 84, 178, 180, 429, 665, 668, 670; amulets 135–​136; ankh and bulla pendants 455; anklets 9, 127, 128–​129, 128, 131; archer’s rings 154, 155, 155, 161n10; armlets 128; armour scale pectorals 158–​160; “Astarte” pendants 132; aural experience of 135; bangles 128–​129; beaded 141, 145, 156–​158, 156, 159, 160; bracelets 128, 131; chest adornments 141; consecrated 178; finger-​and toe-​r ings 141, 145, 154–​156, 155, 160; in funerary contexts 418, 429; garment pins 141, 144, 146, 149, 153–​154, 154, 160, 161n4; gold 133, 145, 156–​157, 157, 178; haptic experience of 135; and material culture 137; menyet collar 135; mourning 137n2, 418; “Qudšu” pendants 132, 133; and sensory experience 134; sentimental role of 135–​136; shroud pins 146; somatic effects of 9; visual experience of 135; see also adornment practices; dress items jewels, used for sensory amplification 219; see also precious stones John Hyrcanus I (Hasmonean king) 241 Josephus 365–​366, 446n21, 526 Kalḫu see Nimrud Kandalanu (Babylonian king) 484 Kant, Immanuel 534, 536, 546n9, 547n35, 548, 549n48 Karanika, Andromache 103, 108 Kfar HaHoresh 396 Khaemwaset 641 Khafaje (ancient Tutub) 215 Khirbet Shema 386, 387n2 Khnum (Egyptian god) 273–​274, 277 Khnumhotep 589 Khorsabad (ancient Dur-​Sharrukin) 7, 63, 66, 67, 223, 325, 326, 334, 335 kinaesthetic/​kinaesthesia 5, 9, 10, 68, 105, 151, 226, 325, 330, 361–​362n36, 489, 664; in the Akkadian language 665; and the Apadana reliefs 189, 200; and beaded headdresses 158; and dress/​adornment 135, 141, 158, 160; in funerary rituals 457, 459, 464; and 727

Index

intersubjectivity 152; and medical diagnosis 500–​502, 506; in ritual sacrifice 352; in sealing practices 27, 30, 168; in work songs 107 kinetics, and working practices 100, 101, 108, 111, 114; and ritual performance 226, 228 kings 35, 45, 51, 66, 69, 79, 81, 175, 189–​208, 283, 290–​291, 305, 321, 330–​335, 400, 438, 472, 477–​480, 537, 542, 642, 654, 703, 707 Kish 215 kispu/​kispum rites 398–​401, 415, 420 Kitchen, Kenneth 287 Klug, Andrea 276 Kohn, Eduardo 190 Kom el-​Shoqafa (Alexandria) 461 Konosso Island: living-​rock stelae at 267, 272–​274, 275, 276–​277, 278–​282, 279–​283, 290–​291; maps 273–​274; scenes from stelae 276–​278 Korsmeyer, Carolyn 96 Körtik Tepe 255 Krishna (Hindu god) 216, 218, 223 Krüger, Thomas 6 Kumarbi myth (Hittite) 681, 711n5 Kura (Eblaic god) 305 Kuyunjik see Nineveh Lachish: site 129; reliefs of 348 L’Âge d’or (Dalí) 77 Lagash 175, 216, 322, see also Gudea (ruler of Lagash) Lamaštu (demoness) 494 lamps see oil lamps laḫmu 326 lamassu (protective figure) 324, 330, 504 landscapes 4, 255, 320, 321, 525; cultural 135; of Egyptian royal living-​rock stelae 267–​291; emotional 135; of the tomb 452; sensory 72, 431; urban 398 languages 11–​12; linguistic algorithms 11; onomatopoeic words 108, 114, 525n7, 666; technology of 561–​573; see also specific languages by name lapis lazuli (za.gìn/​uqnû) 48–​50, 55n67, 56n76, 82, 176–​178, 177, 182, 301, 307, 325–​327, 330, 543, 550n69, 614, 628n43, 659n40, 667–​668, 684 Larsa 445n4 Late Bronze Age 9, 35–​36; burials 159; decorations 38–​39; looms 42; scale armour in 158 Late Neolithic period 396 Late Uruk period 20 latrines 5 Laughing Audience, The (Hogarth) 541 Layard, Austen Henry 65 learning: and body and emotion 136; experiential 18; kinetic 111; and mirror neurons 196–​197; and practice 17–​19, 27–​28; school-​based/​scribal 728

17, 31n4, 483, 494–​495, 647; sensorial 111; situated 18, 28; visual (Foucault) 96 Lemonnier, Pierre 18 Lepsius, Karl Richard 273, 274 Leroi-​Gourhan, André18 Levant 7–​11, 35, 36, 46–​51, 127–​134, 396, 399, 406–​409, 416, 419–​423, 429, 431–​446 Levantine mortuaries see Qatna (Syria); Megiddo lexemes: Akkadian 518–​519, 523, 525n7, 527n36, 562, 576, 581, 583–​585, 587, 588, 664–​665; Egyptian 577, 592, 593, 595, 598n9, 606–​624, 625n9, 626n21, 627n38, 629n72, 629n75; of emotion and temperament 606, 623–​624; Greek 525n10; for haptic perception 584; Hebrew 518; Hurrian 710; sensory 666 lexical lists/​texts 334, 563, 664, 666 lexicography 664 libation(s): ceremonial 215–​216, 215, 225, 361n26, 627n38; for the dead 393, 394, 399, 401, 402n2, 406, 418, 457; in Hittite festivals 683, 687, 690; see also foodstuffs Life of Isidore (Damascius) 433 light: studies of 7; interior 218; lamplight 419–​421, 423; and luminescent pigments 462–​464; on painted portraits 462–​464; and the radiance of precious metals 218 limestone 36, 79, 84, 87, 246, 256, 260–​264, 301, 312, 345, 354, 360n8 linguistic turn 2 linguistics: cognitive 562, 578; as a field 563; sensory 578 lion-​eagle 334 lions 80, 90–​91, 90, 334, 335, 336, 337, 337, 684; in the Apadana reliefs 191, 192, 198–​199; in gateways 330; Ishtar’s 330, 332, 333, 338; in Mesopotamian art 330–​331; in multiplicity 330, 332 Lions’ Terrace (Ebla) 307 Liu, Li 394 lived experiences 2, 7, 42, 77, 133, 134, 136, 137, 267 Liverani, Mario 290 living-​rock stelae: at Konosso Island 267, 272–​274, 275, 276–​277, 278–​282, 279–​283, 290–​291; at Nauri 267, 290–​291; salience in 267–​291 Locke, John 518, 525n6 loculi 461 lotus (flowers) 154, 193, 204, 642, 643, 645, 652, 655, 658n26, 659n34 Lucian 461 Lugal-​e (Sumerian myth) 176 lullabies 9, 100; To Calm a Baby 113–​115, 116; Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi 112–​115, 116; as work songs 103–​104 Lullaby for a Son of Šulgi 112–​115, 116; lyrics 112–​113

Index

luludānītu stone 327 luminosity 45, 175, 613–​614, 664, 665, 670 mace 145, 322 madder dye 46, 47, 56n79, 667 Magdala, ritual baths at 10, 240–​241, 245–​246, 245 magical texts 11, 687; see also incantations Magnus, Albertus 518 Malafouris, Lambros 151 maledictions 671–​672 Malkata 72n1 mandragora 654 Mannean kingdom 142 Maran, Joseph 159 Marduk (Babylonian god) 326, 331, 332, 333–​334, 494, 669–​670; temple of 337, 476, 481 Mari 43, 46, 54, 56n88, 521, 701 Marina el-​Alamein 461 mark-​making 173; see also sealing practices Masada, ritual baths at 10, 238, 238, 240–​245, 243 masks: funerary 452; at Göbekli Tepe 263–​264; miniature 260, 261 material culture: and bodily adornment 136–​137; cultural/​social memory 134, 136–​137; and identity 108; sensorial aspects of 105, 214–​215, 228, 664; and smell 437; and social history 213; and materiality: of burial assemblages 416; and multisensory experience 11; theory of 320 mathematics 477 Matthiae, Paolo 298, 299 Mauss, Marcel 494 McLean, Kate 638, 653 McMahon, Augusta 7, 664 medical diagnosis 506–​507; and interoception 500–​502; and kinaesthesia 500–​502; in Mesopotamian texts and healing rituals 490–​507; sensory perception in 494–​502; use of auditory perception 497–​498; use of smell and taste 499–​500; use of touch 498–​499; use of visual perception 494–​497; see also healing practices medical imaging technology 2, 462–​463 medical substances 503–​504 medical texts and healing rituals 490–​507; for diagnosis of illness 490–​494 Medieval manuscripts 173–​174, 173, 182; use of animal skin 173–​174 Medinet Habu 269 Mediterranean 9, 35–​56, 128, 132, 144, 156, 159, 167, 272, 366, 421, 429–​431, 436–​439, 461, 464 megaliths 10, 262–​264; anthropomorphic 257; early Neolithic 254; at Göbekli Tepe 257–​258 Megiddo: adornment at 42; burial practices at 10, 221, 397, 399–​400, 406, 408–​409, 419, 422, 423, 424n8; decorated spindles from 40; ivory

figure 348, 349; lamps found at 419–​420; Tomb 100 408–​409, 409, 416–​423, 417–​418 melammu 8, 106, 169, 172, 175, 176, 178, 179, 328, 551n76, 664, 670 Melos 48 memorial chapels 400 memory: and adornment 137n2; bodily 672; collective 152, 395, 398, 401; and commensality 63; communal 160, 354; context-​dependent 637; counter-​present 134; cultural 654; embodied 134, 357; emotive 394; and emplacement 68; episodic 394; formation and retrieval of 127, 442, 462; founding 134; genealogical 394; historical 395; individual 160; multisensory 464; muscle 18, 19, 28, 361–​362n36; odour 637; and sensorial experience 63, 136, 152, 671; social 10, 105, 134; tactile 84; traditional 127 Memphis 641–​642 Menat (Egyptian goddess of the Sun) 645 Mentuhotep II (Egyptian pharaoh) 42, 274 Merleau-​Ponty, Maurice 2, 107, 136, 161n8, 338n1, 490, 625n2 Mesen (Edfu) 654 Mesopotamia: aesthetics and art for the senses in 536–​540; association of gold with the divine in 157; astronomy/​astrology in 11, 471–​485; bureaucratic texts from 21; city walls and city gates in 323–​324; civilization in 531; clothing and identity in 52; emotions in 136; glass production in 62; glyptics in 10; ideas of vision in 11; multisensory experience in 10; ritual practice in 226–​229; royal inscriptions from 563; sealing practices in 167–​168; therapeutic procedures in 502–​507 metal 38, 49–​52, 69, 84, 95, 127–​129, 134–​135, 141, 144, 145, 153–​160, 204, 215, 218, 320, 325, 345–​347, 355, 667–​670 metal anklets see anklets metaphors: in ancient Egyptian texts (perception verbs) 576–​595; in ancient Egyptian texts (sensory experience) 603–​625; based on properties of substances and materials 670; conceptual 11, 578; for emotions 604, 671; experience is tasting 594; of hearing 582–​583, 582; knowing is tasting 595; mapping of 579–​580; mind is a body 579, 604; and multisensorial experiences 672; and semantic change 605; sensing is smelling 590–​592; sensory 579, 580, 663, 665, 671, 672–​673; of sight 581–​582, 581, 613–​617; of smell 585–​586, 585, 588–​590, 621; for sound 608–​610, 625n16; of taste 586–​587, 593–​595, 617–​618; and temperament 624; for temperature (heat/​warmth, cold/​coolness) 610–​613; of touch 583–​585, 584, 587–​588, 618–​621; touching is smelling 592–​594; 729

Index

touching is tasting 593–​594; understanding is touching 589; using colour 627n40, 627–​628n41; Western 605 metonyms 603, 606 Meyers, Carol 366–​367, 369 Meyers, Eric 366–​367, 369 Michalowski, Piotr 219 mikva’ot 235–​238; at Gamla 240–​241, 247–​248, 247; at Jericho 240–​242, 242; at Magdala 240–​241, 245–​246, 245; at Masada 238, 238, 240–​241, 242–​245, 243; stagnant water in 244; see also ritual baths mimesis 172, 200 mimetic slippage 191, 193, 204, 208 mind-​altering substances 407, 421–​422 mind-​body dualism 2, 4, 17, 136 Minet el-​Beida 36, 47 miniatures: at Göbekli Tepe 258–​262; masks 260, 261; porthole (portal) stones 260–​261; stone plaquettes 258–​260, 258–​260 mirror neurons 152, 196–​197, 199–​200 Mishnah 366 Mitanni region 12, 35, 54n31, 128 Mittani Letter 702, 703–​704, 707, 708 mnemonic cues 405 modernity, Western 235–​238 Modiin 364 Moeller, Nadine 652 monster 45, 113, 332–​333, 494, 537, 682, 684, 689–​690, 695; see also Ḫedammu, Huwawa, Tiamat, Ullikummi Monte Sirai (Sicily) 441; ustrinum 446n29 Montserrat, Dominic 457 Montu (Egyptian god) 274 monuments: Achaemenid (Persepolis) 81, 83; affect of 324–​325; decorative elements in 338n3; Eblaic 298, 306, 307; Egyptian 267–​270, 272, 277–​280, 283, 290–​291; Mesopotamian 321; Near Eastern 401; Neolithic (Göbekli Tepe) 255, 264; see also architecture Moralia (Plutarch) 107 Morelli, Giovanni 86 morphology 572, 574n15 Morphy, Howard 537 mortuary deities 420–​421, 425n20 mortuary inscriptions 435, 435 mortuary rituals 10; household practices 408; invocation of deities 420–​421; involving torches 462–​464; Phoenician 437; for transformation of the dead 407, 408, 415, 423; use of lamps in 420; see also funerary practices; ritual activities Mount of Olives 345 mountains, association with the divine 270–​271, 271 mourning 406; materialisation of 418–​422; outside of tomb spaces 422; see also funerary practices 730

mudbrick 79, 416, 569 Muhs, Brian 652 multisensory/​multisensorial approach 4, 5, 7–​8, 105 multisensory/​multisensorial experiences/​ encounters/​interactions 4, 10, 11, 35, 171–​172, 192, 202, 268, 297, 324; 533, 663–​664, 672; in banquests and festivals 68–​69, 517, 522–​523, 682–​683, 687; with the dead/​death 10, 451–​452, 457, 462, 464–​465; healing/​medical and ritual activity 221, 227–​228, 314, 316–​317, 502, 504, 507, 524, 669–​672; and language 592, 595, 609, 664–​668, 672; and materiality 11; of objects 93, 96, 175, 177; in and saddle querns 107; and sensory alteration 105; and soundscapes 104, 106–​107, 110–​111, 116; of textiles and adornment 45, 51–​53, 127; in weaving 41–​42; see also sensory/​sensorial experiences multivalent 201, 219, 460 mummification 11, 436, 438, 439, 440, 451, 452–​453, 457–​461, 464 Muntzberg, Rabbi 238, 238 murex dye 38, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54n42, 55, 56n76, 667 Mureybet (Syria) 255 Murray, Raymon 103 muscle memory 18–​19, 28, 361–​362n36 Musée Buimet 455 Musée du Louvre 454, 455, 455 mušhuššu (dragon) 333, 334, 339n18 music 454; avant-​garde 102; during banquets 69; and female musicians 134–​135; at festivals 651, 682–​683, 687–​688; in funerary rituals 401; hymn to the mother-​goddess 671; imagery of 220, 220, 221, 229n13, 229n14; in the Jerusalem Temple 347–​350; love songs 108, 177; musical instruments 347–​349, 349, 360n11, 360n17, 360n18, 670, 687–​688; as offering to the gods 406; performance of 219–​220, 221; in royal courts 111; and soundscapes 101–​103; used in healing practices 504; vocal performance 42, 347, 350, 360n12, 688; see also lullabies; work songs myrrh 6, 223, 353, 358, 434–​437, 435, 438, 442–​443, 446n17, 640, 644, 650–​651 myth, of Elkunirsa and Ashertu 49; of the Eye of Horus 614; of Isis and Osiris 441 mythological/​mythology 81, 114, 270, 322, 325, 412, 441, 464, 494, 542, 699 Nabopolassar 332 Nabratein synagogue 10, 364–​365; acoustics in 371–​387; bema platforms in 366–​369, 369–​370, 380–​381; excavation of 366–​368; open-​centre 379–​380; pre-​basilica 383–​385; ritual scripture reading and translation 365–​366;

Index

two architectural arrangements of 366–​369, 367, 368, 369, 370 Nabucco (opera) 213 Nabû-​iqiša (Babylonian scribe) 478–​479 Nadali, Davide 6 Naked Sun, The (Asimov) 532–​533 Namburbi rituals 505 Nanna/​Su’en (moon god) 218, 225 Naram-​Sin 304; “Victory Stele” of 175–​176, 304 Natufian period 396 Natural Language processing 561 natural selection 152 Nauri, living-​rock stelae at 267, 290–​291 Nauri Decree Stela of Seti I 283–​291, 284–​289 near-​infrared (NIR) luminescence imaging 462–​463, 463 Nebuchadnezzar II (Babylonian king) 10, 324, 325, 330, 332, 334, 337 necropolis: at Alexandria 461; at Deir el-​Medina 460; at Palermo 441; Puig des Molins 441; at Sidon 436 Neferhotep I (Egyptian pharaoh) 274, 460; painted shroud of 453–​454, 453, 456–​457 Neith (Egyptian god) 274 Nemrik (Iraq) 255 Neo-​Assyrian period 65, 67, 111, 127, 471; astronomical reports and related scholars in 471–​485; cities, palaces, and royal court 65–​73, 97n9, 118n50, 105, 171, 174, 178, 324, 330, 335, 338n7, 474; sensescapes 7; texts 222, 223, 521, 563, 566–​569, 664, 668, 671 Neo-​Babylonian period 333, 337, 333, 567 Neolithic period 10, 20, 142, 254–​265, 394, 396, 397, 401 Neo-​Punic language 432, 433, 443–​444, 445n5 Nergal 504 Nesikohns 64 Neumann, Kiersten 6–​7, 455, 486n10 Neurath, Otto 473 neurobiology, cognitive 136 neurological theories 168 neurology 4 neuro-​motor systems 226 neuroscience 2, 297; cognitive 151–​152, 199 neuroscientific studies 136, 152, 183n5 Nile Valley 269 Nimrud (ancient Kalḫu) 223, 672; cedar fragments from the Southwest Palace 224; glass from 63, 64–​65, 66, 69, 70; Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II 65–​67, 70, 326, 335; Queens’ tombs 42; temple of Ninurta 81; see also Burnt Palace Ninakhkhnum 589 Nineveh 66; celestial observations in 479, 482; North Palace of Ashurbanipal 65, 329, 329, 335; Southwest Palace of Sennacherib 81, 224, 348, 329

Ningirsu 111; temple of 322, 330, 339n18 Ninhursag (Mesopotamian goddess) 215, 322 Ninmaḫ (Sumerian goddess) 521 Ninurta (Mesopotamian god) 176, 494; temple of 81 Nippur 9, 21, 118n52, 170; as site of temple of Enlil 23; tablet sealing practice in 19–​31 “No. 3” (Rothko) 327, 327 nosewitness 656, 660n49 Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Lady of Sorrow) (Prieto) 78 Nunn, Astrid 257 object theory 530, 545n2 observation (celestial): Assyrian 474; celestial 471–​485; Chaldean 474; and divination 482–​483; history of 484; language of 475–​477; mechanics of 474–​475; reports of 478–​480; sources of 477–​481; and thought collectives 481–​484; time required for 474–​475 observation statements 473, 481–​482 ocularcentrism 489 odours: associated with funerary practices 406, 413–​414, 429–​443; associated with immigrants/​ working class 4; of decomposition 396, 399–​400, 401, 410, 412, 414, 415, 416, 421–​422, 423, 430–​431, 442, 458, 500, 549n43; of dye baths 46–​47, 51; and the fragrance of the divine 353–​354; of latrines 5; memory of 637; of mummies 458, 461; of urban sanitation 639–​640; use in medical diagnosis 499–​500; see also olfactory experiences; perfumes; smell/​smells oil lamps 419–​421, 420, 437 offering table 218, 568 Old Persian language 82 oleo-​resins 436–​437, 437, 438, 446n23; from cedar 439–​440; use in mortuary practices 429–​443 olfactory experiences: in Egypt 11, 636; factors influencing 638; and funerary practices 10, 399–​400, 432, 459, 464–​465; at the Jerusalem Temple 353–​354; and medical diagnosis 499–​500; in ritual activities 223–​225; and smell receptors 658n28; in textile production 35; see also odours; smell/​smells omens 106, 174, 178, 473, 475, 478, 479–​482, 492, 493, 508, 563, 566, 567, 666 onomatopoeia/​onomatopoeic words 108, 114, 119n60, 525n7, 666 ontology 3 Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (ORACC) 561, 574n6, 574n10, 664 opium poppies 400, 421 Oriental Institute Persian Expedition in Iran 79–​80 Osiris (Egyptian god) 270, 284, 290, 441, 459 Ossendrijver, Matthieu 477 731

Index

Ossuary/​-​ies 50, 412, 424n15 Ostia 639 Oxyrhynchus 460 palatial phenomenon 68 palatial spaces 68, 324, 409 Palermo cemetery 437, 441 Palestine: 581; Jewish purification rituals in 10, 234–​249 Pallasmaa, Juhani 201 Pamonthes (son of Petisis) 457, 458 papyri 11, 458, 459 Pasargadae 81–​82 Passover Haggadah 522, 526n26, 526n29 Pella (Jordan) 64, 129 perception 2, 3, 7, 11, 35, 51, 87, 94, 105, 111, 114, 116, 117n15, 129, 167, 190, 192, 194, 199, 200, 204, 228, 234, 257, 258, 270, 279, 283, 297, 320, 327, 328, 338n1, 349, 358, 359n2; cultural 471, 473, 481, 483; 489, 507, 508, 534, 535, 539, 547, 549, 566, 567, 571; bodily 9, 201, 206; and disability 517, 518, 524; in Egyptian metaphors 576–​602; interface theory of 152; and interpretation 490–​494; kinaesthetic 330; and Mesopotamian healing 490–​498; phenomenology of 136, 625n2; physiology of 576; of smell 189, 325, 655–​656; studies 578; synaesthetic 598n22; visual 264, 494, 495, 498, 507, 508, 571, 594 performance 4–​10, 96, 104–​116, 157, 178, 199, 216–​229, 248, 264, 277, 290, 302, 303, 321, 326, 327, 332, 333, 344, 347–​350, 353, 698–​401, 406–​410, 423, 459, 502–​506, 541, 542, 638, 670–​671 performative acts/​functions 31, 48, 97, 129, 454, 490 perfumed oils 415 perfumes 6, 223, 431–​432, 436, 437, 442, 443, 638, 654; to cover dye odour 47; and the divine body 644; and preparation for burial 399–​400; use in mortuary practices 430–​431 Pergamon 244–​245 Persian empire, see Achaemenid/​ Achaemenid period Persepolis: Apadana 79–​93, 95–​97, 152, 161, 184n19, 189–​208; Central Building 192–​193, 194, 196, 197, 199, 200–​202, 204–​208; founding of 189–​190; Gate of All Lands 190, 194, 197–​198, 207; Hall of One Hundred Columns 197; Palace of Darius 192; Palace of Xerxes 192; plan of 80, 195; Takht-​e-​Jamshid 79; terrace 79–​80, 83, 86, 93–​94; Treasury 79, 91, 92, 193, 197, 202; see also Apadana reliefs Persepolis Fortification Archives (PFA) 79 Persepolis Treasure Archive (PTA) 79 Persepolitan style 82–​83 personal adornment, see adornment 732

personality, and emotions 603–​604 Pet-​amun 458 pharmaceuticals 503 phenomena 150, 151 phenomenology 4, 11, 109, 127, 151, 199, 417; and archaeology 338n2; and bodily adornment 133; of perception 136, 625n2 Philo 365–​366 philology 5, 105, 562, 572 philosophy 2, 11 Phoenician culture 10, 83, 431–​432, 444n1 Phoenician language 432–​434, 433, 435, 443–​444, 445n5 Phoenician states 429, 431–​443 physical impairment: blindness 519, 521, 679–​680; birth defects 521; deafness 520–​521, 686–​687; deities linked to 528n46; disfigurement 519–​520; loss of a nose 689 physicians 490, 491, 507–​508n10; see also healers physiognomics 297, 494 pilgrimage 345, 522–​523 Pingree, David 479 Pinnock, Frances 6, 10, 51 plaquettes, from Göbekli Tepe 258–​260, 263–​264 Plato 533, 547n34 Pliny the Elder 439–​440, 446n17, 474 Plutarch 107, 118, 441, 447n31 Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, The 471 Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI) 561, 562–​565, 572–​573 polarised light microscopy 326 polysensorial enmeshment 189 polyvalency 174 poets 666, 671 Pompeii 639 Pongratz-​Leisten, Beate 10, 174, 670 portable objects 4, 9, 157, 167, 206, 650 Porteous, J. Douglas 637, 639, 653 porthole (portal) stones 258, 260–​261, 261, 264 portraiture: funerary portraits 452–​457, 461, 464; mummy portraits 462–​464, 463 posthumanism 150, 161n7, 224 post-​processualism 2 power dynamics 142, 152–​153 practice theory 9, 17–​19 prayer shawls 226 precious stones 49, 63, 82, 176, 219, 324–​325, 326, 667, 668, 670 precious metals 38, 49, 95, 184n19, 218, 668–​669, 671, 682, 689 prestige 356, 397 priests 28, 19, 222, 225, 237, 346–​361, 459, 651, 654, 684 Priestly Code 522 printing press 5 production processes 63, 70–​73, 83, 101 Projet Ramsès 607

Index

Promey, Sally 191 proprioception 4, 8, 10, 500; and the Apadana reliefs 88, 199, 200, 203, 207, 208; and Göbekli Tepe 254, 257; in sealing practices 168, 172 Proust, Marcel 640–​641 Psammetik II 283 psychology 2, 4, 17; and synaesthesia 5 Ptah (Egyptian god) 283 Ptolemy of Alexandria 474 Ptolemy X (Egyptian pharaoh) 643 Pu-​abi (Queen) 178 Puig des Molins (Spain) 441 Punic culture 431–​432 Punic language 432, 433, 434, 443–​444, 445n5 purification rituals 10, 333; Hittite 690; Jewish 234–​249; mikva’ot 235–​238 Purim 526n32 putrescine 430, 442 Puzriš-​Dagan (modern Drehem) 21, 23–​24 Qatna (Tell al-​Mishrifeh, Syria): funerary practices at 10, 50, 399–​400, 406; funerary sequence approach at 410–​415; grave goods at 410, 414; Royal Hypogeum 408–​410, 411, 411–​415, 422–​423; royal palace at 410, 411; Tomb VII 408–​409, 410, 411–​412 411, 414–​415, 422–​423 Rādharamāna Temple (Vrindavan) 218 radiance 50, 53, 106, 117, 169, 175, 176, 218, 346, 359, 362n7, 497, 509n34, 544, 551n76, 670 Raduà, Jaume Llop 7 Raman spectroscopy 326 Ramesses II (Egyptian pharaoh) 271 Ramesses III (Egyptian pharaoh) 269 Ramesses VI (Egyptian pharaoh) 642 Randolph, Adrian 225 Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) 419, 420 Rashap’s Temple (Ebla) 306 realism, agential 150, 151 reception 9, 79, 267, 290, 406 reciprocity, phenomenological 199 Regev, Eyal 239 Re-​Horakhty (Egyptian god) 283 Reiner, Erica 479 reliefs 77–​98, 128, 189–​208, 254–​255, 271, 280, 290, 326, 335, 338, 348, 590, 684, 688, 693 religion, and aesthetic experience 535–​536 Rendu Loisel, Anne-​Caroline 6, 7, 11, 105, 106 residential houses: lower-​class 648; middle class 648–​649; upper-​class 649–​650 resin baths 441 resin(s) 6, 105, 302–​4, 316, 353, 354, 355, 414, 458, 505, 640, 649, 655, 657n14, 672; use in mortuary practices 429–​443 Ricoeur, Paul 218 Riegl, Aloïs 94, 225 Riggs, Christina 452

ritual activities 10, 17, 669–​670; aesthetics of 10; associated with ancestor cults and veneration 395; aural experiences in 219–​221; and bodily adornment 129; in the Egyptian temple 644–​647; feasts 354–​357, 357; foodstuffs offered to deities 11, 222–​223; gestures 457; at Göbekli Tepe 257, 263; hand-​washing 69; importance of taste in 221–​223; in India 225; and Ishtar’s Gate 332; at the Jerusalem Temple 344, 346, 350–​353; and kinetics 226; as multisensory and affective experience 228; olfactory experiences in 223–​225, 431; primacy of sight/​vision in 218; to rid a plague 694; sacrifice 346, 350–​353, 361n21, 361n22, 361n27, 361n28; Scripture reading 365–​366; tactile experiences in 225–​226; vessels used for ceremonial libations 215–​216, 215; visual aspects of 216, 217, 218–​219; votive sculptures from Tell Asmar 217; see also funerary practices; mortuary rituals; purification rituals; ritual baths ritual baths 223, 225; archaeology of 238–​239; experience of 239–​248; Jewish 235–​238; in the Sea of Galilee 246; stepped pools in the southern Levant 237–​239, 237 ritual healers 491 ritual purification 10, 229n7, 322, 422, 503, 690; at Babylon 326, 329, 333; in glassmaking 70, 71; hand-​washing 69; use of spouted vessels 216; see also ritual baths ritualisation 10, 31; see also Catherine Bell; ritual activities; sealing practices Roach-​Higgins, Mary Ellen 145 Roaf, Michael 83, 86, 95 Rochberg, Francesca 473 rock crystal 67, 67, 69, 71 Rome 531, 639 Root, Margaret Cool 82, 87, 94, 95, 96, 194, 197, 205 Rothko, Mark 327, 327, 328 Rouse, Joseph 150 Royal Cemetery at Ur 220, 401; see also Ur Royal Hypogeum (Qatna) 400, 408–​409, 410, 411–​415 411, 422–​423; lamps found at 420 royal monuments see Ishtar Gate; monuments Rummel, Ute 270 Sabi Abyad, Tell 20 sacred oils 644–​645 sacred space 345–​359, 457 sacrifice 346; animal 224–​225, 350–​353, 400; child 432; in Egyptian temples 645–​646; human 307; at the Jerusalem Temple 350–​353, 361n21, 361n22, 361n27, 361n28; odours of 353 saddle querns 107 saffron 438 saggilmud-​stone 327 ṣalmu 172, 175, 176, 230n19, 332 733

Index

Sam’al (modern Zincirli) 67 Šamaš (Mesopotamian sun god) 421 San healers 136 Sanahuja, Encarna 101 Sanctuary of the Deified Royal Ancestors (Ebla) 306 Şanlıurfa region (Turkey) 255 Sanskrit texts 640 sarcophagus: amphibolite 440; of King Tabnit 435, 436, 440, 445n12, 446n26 Sargon II (Assyrian king) 66, 327, 338 Satet (Egyptian god) 273–​274 Šaušga of Nineveh (Hittite goddess) 688–​689, 690 Šawušga of Tamininga (Hittite goddess) 679 scale: in the Apadana reliefs 94–​95, 200–​207, 205; in the early Neolithic 254–​265; hierarchy of 254–​255 scanning electron microscopy 326 scaraboids 418 scent see odours; olfactory experiences; smell/​ smells scentscape, in the Apadana reliefs 189 Schellenberg, Annette 6 Schlich, Thomas 235 Schmidt, Erich 80–​81 Schuster-​Brandis, Anais 670 science of sensuous cognition 531 scribes/​scholars 21, 28, 30, 180, 181, 323, 471–​486, 606, 637, 652–​655, 664, 686, 699 Scripture reading 365–​366, 368 sculpture: 539, 540; Achaemenid (Peresepolis) 9, 10, 79–​81, 83, 90, 94–​95; ancient Egyptian 94–​95; ancient Greek 94; at Chavín de Huantar (Peru) 152–​153; Christian icons 77, 78, 172, 218, 226; Classical 532; clothed and ornamented 218; cult images 218; of Gudea 175; inlaid and enlarged eyes of 216, 219; in the Jerusalem Temple 358; Mesopotamian statuary 217, 219; mythological figures 81; votive (Tell Asmar) 217; see also Apadana reliefs, sculptors sculptors 83–​97; marks of 86–​87, 86, 95, 97 seals: cylinder 20, 22; stamp 178, 337; see also sealing practices sealing practices 9, 10; in administrative documents 22–​23, 30–​31; clay as mantic medium 169; with cylinder seals 167–​168, 168, 170, 177, 263; at Ebla 301; and the Göbekli Tepe miniatures 260; as haptic experience 27–​29, 167–​169, 171–​174, 175, 182; idiosyncratic bodily movements incorporated in 26; and individual identity 178; kinaesthetic experiences in 27, 168; liver tablet (Sippar) 181; materials used for seals 176–​177; modern impressions 176, 177, 217; multisensory engagement in 27–​30; in Nippur (Ur) 19–​31; as performative activity 31; in receipts 23–​25; reconstructed drawing of seal 25; scan of tablet 734

19, 25; seals as bodily extensions of the self 171–​172, 181; stamp seal on baked brick 337; standardisation in 21–​22, 31; tablet sealed with seal of En-​engar 27; tablet with incised entrails 182; tablets with seal impressions 169; Ur III cylinder seal 22; Ur III tablets 28, 29, 30; visual experience in 27, 29–​30, 30; and the wearing of cylinder seals 178 seasonality 4, 653 Sebetti figures 329–​330, 329 Seleucid empire 438; tablets from 334, 336 semantics 11, 561–​563; Akkadian 664, 668; historical 605; in the Hurrian language 12, 699–​710; semantic fields 11–​12; semantic rules 564; sensory 665–​666 Semitic language 671, 672 Sennacherib 69; Southwest Palace of 81, 329 sense of place 10 sense of time 4, 8 senses: among the Hittites 678–​695; in ancient Mesopotamia 214; anthropology of 663; autonomy of 5; Cartesian division of 104; dimming of 358; distal 11, 576–​577, 587–​595; in the Hebrew Bible 7; and Mesopotamian therapeutics 502–​507; mutual reinforcement of 191–​192; and power dynamics 152–​153; proximal 11, 576–​577, 583–​587, 595; role of in class, racial, and gender hierarchies 151; sources of information about 298; Western (Aristotelian) hierarchy of 3, 17, 213–​214, 316, 489, 576, 605–​606, 672; see also sensory experiences sensescapes 4, 6, 51; in Babylon 325; at Ebla 302–​303; at the Jerusalem Temple 359–​360n4; Neo-​Assyrian 7; and work songs 115 sensing see sensory experiences sensorial assemblage 4, 9, 141, 148, 150–​153, 160 sensorial community 668 sensorial contagion 674n27 sensorial deficits 11, 519–​522, 524–​525 sensorial utopia 672 sensoriality 150–​151 sensorium/​sensoria 4; of adornment 127; Aristotelian hierarchical 8, 104, 151; contexts of 151; cultural 359n3; Eurocentric hierarchy 5; mortuary 407–​408, 413, 416, 417, 423; of the resident deity 226–​227; role of dress items in 141 sensory boundary-​crossing 663–​673 sensory codes 489 sensory/​sensorial experiences 1, 3–​11; and aesthetics 536; and the Akkadian language 665–​669; in ancient Mesopotamian medicine 489–​507; of animals 497; in architecture and relief sculpture 79, 95–​96, 105; associated with funerary practices 406–​410, 422–​423, 433, 464–​465; of bathing practices 235, 240;

Index

of the city 639; cognitive 11, 407; contexts of 406–​407; and the cult of the ancestors 396–​40; culturally mediated 489; of death and dying 407, 408, 442, 451; of disease 11; and emotions 11, 230n21, 621–​623; of dress, adornment/​ jewelry, textiles, and textile production 35–​36, 45, 47–​52, 134–​135, 137, 151–​153, 160–​161; of festivals and rites 110, 522; of glassmaking 63; of landscapes 274, 290; and materiality 268; memory 136, 152; negative 230n20; properties of sensory modalities 580; and ritualised practice 7, 254, 298; of sealing 27–​28, 171; see also metaphors, multisensorial/​multisensory experiences/​encounters/​interactions sensory impairment, in the Hebrew Bible 517–525​ sensory perception 11; infield mappings 595; and medical diagnosis 494–​502; organs of 576–​577; transfield mappings 595 sensory/​sensorial studies 1, 328, 517, 524, 605–​606; in archaeology 63; defined 2–​6; and disabilities 517–​518; field concept 105; intersection with philosophy and intellectual history 11; Mesopocentric 7; and practice theory 18–​19; and the study of the ancient Near East 6–​7 sensory/​sensorial turn 2–​3, 104, 344, 489; in archaeology 105 sensual pleasure, denigration of 533–​536 sensuous cognition 531 Senwosret III (Nubian god) 287 Serabit el-​Khadim (Sinai) 276 Seti I, Nauri Decree Stela 283–​291, 284–​289 Seven Sages 323 shaft straighteners 258 Shalmaneser III (Assyrian king) 328; Black Obelisk of 350 shamans 157, 255, 262–​263, 397, 504, 527n42 Shamash/​Šamaš (Sun God) 421, 494, 501, 503, 504; temple of 306 Shepperson, Mary 7, 664 shrines 395 shroud pins 146; see also garment pins shrouds: decorated 452–​457, 453; flat mounting of 454, 455, 456–​457; on mummified bodies 455–​457, 456; of Neferhotep 456–​457 Sidon (Lebanon), royal necropolis at 436 sight: in ancient burials 429; in Early Syrian Ebla 315; in the Hittite language 678–​684, 695; impairment of 519, 521; importance of in ritual performance 218–​219; and the intellect/​ rationality 4–​5; lack of 471; metaphors of 581–​582, 613–​617; in Old Syrian Ebla 314–​315, 316; in ritual activities 216, 217, 218–​219; seeing with comprehension 680–​681; see also vision silver 45, 49–​50, 55n67, 82, 157, 214, 324, 327, 348, 419, 500, 501, 569, 669, 679–​686, 695

Sin Temple (Khorsabad) 335, 335 singing/​songs see music situated cognition/​learning 18, 28 Sixth Sense, The (film) 451 Skeates, Robin 4, 6 skin: biological anatomy of 183n8; as haptic sensory organ 172, 179 Skin Ego 168, 172, 173, 174, 182 skulls, human 158, 255, 387n16, 396–​397, 422, 401, 430, 498, 500 skull cult 396 slaves 179, 521 smell/​smells: of animals 691; archaeology of 636; boundary-​crossing nature of 443; cedar fragments 223, 224; of colours 5; connection to taste 595, 599n28; in Early Syrian Ebla 316; in the Hittite language 689–​691, 695; of immortelles 460; importance of 5, 223–​225; of life/​death 442–​443; and the loss of a nose 689; and material culture 437; materiality of 105; and medical diagnosis 499–​500, 648, 659n33; metaphors of 585–​586, 585, 588–​594, 621; in Old Syrian Ebla 316; in the Phoenician language 432–​434; in Phoenician mortuary practices 10; prototypical meanings of 585–​586, 657n6; and San healing/​dancing 136; seasonal 4, 653; urban 637–​639; use in healing practices 505; see also odours; olfactory experiences smell environments see smellscapes smell perception 655–​656 smellmaps 639 smellmarks 653–​654 smellscapes 10, 11, 223; ancient 639–​641; in ancient Egypt 641–​666; of a banquet 651–​652; in the Egyptian palace 643–​644; in the Egyptian temple 644–​647, 653–​654; of festivals 650–​651, 654; in a garden 647; in the House of Life (scriptorum) 647–​648, 654–​655; idealised 652; literary references to 639; mapping of 638; micro/​macro 640; and the “period nose” 639; preservation of 640; of private houses 648–​650; of stables 648; of streets 648; urban 637–​639, 640, 641–​643, 652, 656; of workshops 650 smellwalks 638–​639, 641, 652, 659n44 Smith, Mark M. 3, 458 Sneferu (Egyptian pharaoh) 135 soapwort 503 social awareness 152 social imaginary 134 social memory 10, 105, 134 social relations 298 social structure 298 Society for Biblical Literature 7 sociolinguistic studies 563 sociology 17; French 18 Socnopaiou Nesus 460 735

Index

somatic experience 179 Song of the Millstone 106–​109, 116; lyrics 106–​107 Song of the Plowing Oxen 109–​112, 116; lyrics 109–​111 Song of Ullikummi (Hittite myth) 688–​689 Sonik, Karen 7 sorcery 497 sound/​sounds: of food preparation 357; importance of in ritual performance 219–​221; at the Jerusalem Temple 358; metaphors for 608–​610, 625n16; in Old Syrian Ebla 312–​313; quiet/​noise 608–​610, 625n16; sensations of 105; of weaving 41–​42 soundscapes 9, 10; of Ashurbanipal’s Banquet Scene 339n16; music and 101–​103; silence in 102 Southern Mikveh (Masada) 240–​245, 243 Southwest Palace of Sennacherib 81, 329 sphinxes 684 spinning 36, 38–​39, 41; spindle shafts 38, 40; spindle whorls 36, 37, 38; tools for 37, 39–​40 Spionoza, Baruch 543 splendeur divine 664; see also melammu stables, smell of 648 staff, of the temple 654, 688 stamping devices 20; see also sealing practices “Standard of Ur,” “Banquet” scene 220, 220 Starr, Gabrielle 152 stars 174, 334, 336, 406, 471–​485, 486n22, 567 statues 77, 94, 175, 17, 216, 305, 314, 415, 549n56 Stein, Diana 262 Steinkeller, Piotr 21 steles/​stelae 396, 437, 441; of Amenhotep III 128; of Djari 620; of Gudea (fragments) 220, 221; Great Stela of the Sphinx 616; of Ibi 612; Nauri Decree Stela of Seti I 283–​291, 284–​289; Old Syrian (at Ebla) 220; of Rediwikhnum 619; of Ur-​Namma 220, 225, 225; “Victory Stele” of Naram-​Sin 175–​176, 304; see also living-​ rock stelae Stele of Ur-​Namma 225 stepped pools: as ritual baths 10, 234–​235; see also mikva’ot; ritual baths stone, cosmic qualities of 176 Stone Town (Zanzibar) 640 Storm God (Hittite) 679, 681, 682, 691, 695 Story of Kirta 48 Story of Sinuhe 585 storytelling 688–​689 Strange, James F. 366 Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn (Hogarth) 542 Strong, Meghan 464 Sukkôt (Feast of Tabernacles) 522, 526–​527n33 Šulak (demon) 499 Šulgi (son of Ur-​Namma) 20, 112 Sumer 7, 321 Sumerian King List 31n2 736

Sumerian language/​terms 11, 21, 108, 111, 114, 116n2, 174, 175, 179, 183–​184n17, 219, 326, 400, 477, 499, 503, 666, 668, 682, 687–​689, 708, 709; sensory experience and emotion 228n21; terms of observation 475–​477 Sumerian texts 9, 50, 305, 323, 550n63, 561, 563; administrative texts 2, 521; ancestor commemoration 400; bilingual 32n11, 224, 566, 666, 668; hymns 180, 321–​322; love songs/​ poems 177–​180; myths 176, 178, 521; narratives 542–​545; scholarly compendia 179; work songs and lullabies 100, 106–​108 Šumma ālu 106, 114, 520n59, 673 sun disk 647 Sun God (Hittite) 682, 685 Sun Goddess (Hittite) 686, 687 surgical interventions 491 Susa: architectural elements at 81; Darius’ palace at 82; figurine from 146 Šu-​Suen (son of Šulgi) 20 Suter, Claudia 257 sycamore (wood) 440, 442, 446n27 synaesthesia 5, 8, 9, 35, 104, 338n1, 489; and aesthetics 537; in the Apadana reliefs 190; in cinema 77; cultural 668; in dress items 141; in embellished textiles 45; experiences of 171; perception of 298n22; in rituals of commensality or banquets 105; and the sensorium 151; and sensory alteration 105; in textile production 46–​47, 48 synagogues: architecture of 364; in Galilee 387; at Gamla 386, 388n21; at Khirbet Shema 386–​387, 387n2; open-​centre 364, 367, 368, 379–​380, 385–​386; pre-​basilica 367, 368, 383–​386; see also Nabratein synagogue syntactic rules 564 Tabnit (king of Sidon) 436, 440, 445n12, 446n26 tactile experiences 9, 69, 77–​79; in the Apadana reliefs 190–​191; in museums 93–​94, 532; expressed in sculpture 87–​88, 88–​92, 90–​91, 93; at Göbekli Tepe 264; and medical diagnosis 494, 498–​499; in ritual activities 225–​226; in textile production 35–​36, 39, 42, 48, 52; use in healing practices 504–​505; see also haptic, touch tactile vision 48 tactility, and neuro-​motor systems 226 Takht-​e-​Jamshid (Persepolis) 79 Tale of Aqhat 405–​406, 422 Talmud 366 tamarisk 503 taphonomy, burial 408, 424n4 taskscapes 9; defined 101; and the reconceptualisation of work 100–​101; work songs in 108 taste: connection to smell 595, 599n28; in Early Syrian Ebla 316; and funerary practices 459,

Index

464–​465; at Hittite festivals 693; in the Hittite language 692–​693, 695; importance of 5, 221–​223; libations for deities 225; materiality of 105; of meat 357; and medical diagnosis 499–​500; metaphors of 586–​587, 594–​595, 617–​618; in Old Syrian Ebla 316; prototypical meanings of 586–​587; use in healing practices 505 Tatriphis 459 Taussig, Michael 200 Tawananna (Hittite Queen Mother) 684 taxonomy 3 Tayma oasis 640 Tebtunis 460 Tel Dan 351, 355, 356, 420 Tel Megiddo see Megiddo Tell Ahmar (ancient Til Barsip) 326, 334 Tell al ‘Abr 255 Tell al-​Wilaya (ancient Irisaĝrig) 21 Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna) 217, 218 Tell Aswad 396–​397 Tell el-​’Ajjul 419 Tell el-​Mazar 129 Tell en-​Nasbeh 129 Tell es-​Sa‘idiyeh 129, 420, 425n17 Tell Halaf (ancient Guzana) 67 Tell Mardikh see Ebla Tello (ancient Girsu) 21, 215, 339n17; Gudea Statue B 222, 222; Gudea stele fragment 221 temperament see personality temperature, metaphors for 608–​613 Temple of Mut 271 Temple of the Rock (Early Syrian) 306, 312 temples/​shrines: Assyrian 152, 223; deposits 420; Egyptian 269–​270, 280, 653–​654; “first temples” 254; Eblaic 298, 305–​308, 312; at Hasanlu 157; Hittite 687, 695; Hindu 216, 219; Ionic 81; Mesopotamian 226, 321–​322, 326, 328, 330, 332–​333, 491, 537; staff 654, 688 temporal awareness 4 terebinth 441, 442 terracotta, plaque figurines of 134 textiles 9, 24, 95, 157, 161n4, 218, 303, 400, 414, 437, 461, 521, 665, 666 textile production 9, 153, 218; assessment of quality 48; border patterns 38–​39, 52; dyes and dyeing 46–​47; embellishment 42–​43, 43, 44, 45–​46, 45, 52–​53; in Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages 35–​36; as multisensorial activity 52–​53; sensory experience of 47–​52; spinning 36, 37, 38–​39, 39–​40, 41; terminology 35, 47; tools for 36, 37, 38, 40, 52; weaving 36–​46, 52, 53n12 Thavapalan, Shiyanthi 666 Theban Tomb 1447 460 Thebes 64; mummified bodies from 458 theology, Mesopotamian 175

Theophrastus 438 theory of mind 152 thermoception 4 thing theory 530, 545n2 Thomason, Allison 7, 45, 68, 116, 161n8, 338n8, 339n16 thought collectives 483, 485 thought styles 483–​484, 485 throne 67, 79, 203, 204, 218, 299, 304, 346, 410 Tiamat (Babylonian god) 332–​334 Tiglath-​pileser I (Assyrian king) 325 Tiglath-​pileser III (Assyrian king) 324 Tigris 167, 256 Til Barsip (Tell Ahmar) 326, 334 Tilford, Nicole 2 Tilia, Ann Britt 81 Tilia, Giuseppe 81 Tilley, Christopher 4 Time Smoking a Picture (Hogarth) 539 Tiš-​atal inscription 702 Titriş Höyûk 398 To Calm a Baby 113–​115, 116; lyrics 113 tomb cult 394 tomb dust 422 tomb spaces see burial spaces Torah scrolls 226, 369 torches 462–​464 Tosefta 366 touch: ambiguous aspects of 523–​524; and ancestral veneration 396–​397; in ancient burials 429; in Early Syrian Ebla 316; of God/​ Yahweh 520, 524; handling the dead 396–​397, 399–​400; in the Hittite language 694–​695, 695; importance of 5, 225–​226; metaphors of 587–​588, 589, 592–​594, 618–​621; in Old Syrian Ebla 316; as religious/​sacred experience 171; representation of 87–​93, 88–​92; sensory experience of 28, 38, 48, 77–​79, 93–​97; touching noses 588–​590, 589, 590; use for social exploration 172–​173; see also tactile experiences, haptic Trahndorff, K. F. E. 213 translation studies 563 transparency 62, 63–​65 treasuries 43, 79, 91, 142, 157, 159, 193, 197, 202, 643, 647; see also Persepolis: Treasury tribute 50, 55, 84, 288–​289, 348, 349, 359, 646 Tudḫaliya IV (Hittite king) 684 Tušhan (modern Ziyaret Tepe) 67 Tutahkhamun (Egyptian pharaoh) 39, 41, 42, 44, 54n27, 54n31, 54n34, 653 Tuthmosis II (Egyptian pharaoh) 276, 277 Tuthmosis III (Egyptian pharaoh) 287 Tuthmosis IV (Egyptian pharaoh) 274, 276–​277, 276–​277, 279, 280, 283 Tutub (modern Khafaje) 215 Tyre al-​Bass 441 737

Index

Udug-​hul (exorcistic ritual) 502, 504 ugallu 81, 329–​330 Ugarit (modern Rash Shamra)35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 47–​50, 52–​55 Ugaritic texts 47–​51, 405–​406, 420, 422, 424n12, 433, 527n45 Ullikummi (Hittite monster) 682, 689; see also Song of Ullikummi Uluburun (shipwreck) 42, 44, 132, 133 Umma 21 unguentaria 447n33, 461 unguents 399, 414, 431, 643, 660n47 “Untitled” (Rothko) 327, 328 Ur: funerary altars at 401; Nanna ziggurat complex 226, 227; private chapels 399; Royal Cemetery 220; spouted vessels from 214–​215, 214; Stele of Ur-​Namma 220, 225; tomb of Queen Pu-​abi 178 Ur III period (Third Dynasty of Ur) 9, 19–​31, 220, 322 Ur Nammu/​a 20, 220, 225, 226, 322 Urartian 83, 142 Urartu 142 urban life, urbanism 10, 11, 226, 298, 316, 321, 323, 331, 398, 408, 536, 636–​642, 652–​660, 657n8 Uruk 20, 326; see also Gilgamesh (king of Uruk) Uruk (modern Warka): period 20, 229; city 323, 326, 550n65; (in) texts 179, 184n17, 472, 485, 542–​544, 551n79, 668;Vase 254, 257 ustrinum 446n29 utopia, sensorial 672 Utu (Sun God) 551n74 Vaishnavite tradition 216 van der Mieroop, Mark 473 van Eyck, Jan 77 van Haecht, Willem 93, 94 Vanhove, Martine 606 vassal 52, 67, 349, 350, 671–​672 Varchi, Benedetto 94 Veblen, Thorsten 206 Venit, Marjorie 461 Verbovsek, Alexandra 605 Verderame, Lorenzo 106 Verdi, Giuseppe 213 vessels: anthropomorphic 180; in the Apadana reliefs 87, 88; containing foodstuffs 221; glass 62–​63, 66–​70; Early Dynastic period 214; at Ebla 302–​303, 303, 307, 313; at Hasanlu 145; İnandık vase 682, 683, 687, 689; in mortuary contexts 406, 413, 418, 419, 653; plaque showing use of 215; shaped like bodies 180, 184n21; silver 214; spouted 214–​216, 214–​216; use at ritual bathing 216; used for ceremonial libations 215–​216, 215; see also Hasanlu Gold Bowl (beaker) 738

vibrancy 149–​150 Vindolanda 640 visible-​induced luminescence (VIL) 462–​463, 463 vision see sight; visual experience visual culture 5, 78; of Hasanlu, Iran 146 visual experience 11, 532–​533; and aesthetics 536, 537, 545; and astronomy 11; of clothing and textiles 51; in funerary rituals 459; at Göbekli Tepe 264–​265; at Hittite festivals 682–​684; jewellery and 135; and medical diagnosis 494, 494–​497, 504; in ritual performance 218; in sealing practices 27, 29–​30, 30; and sensuous cognition 531; in textile production 35; viewing of art 530; Western privileging of 151; see also sight visuality, haptic 5 Vitruvius 439 votive objects 394 Wadi ‘Ara 420 Wadi Brisa (Lebanon) 334, 335, 337, 337, 338 Wadi Fidan 129 Wadi Qelt 241 Wagner, Richard 213 Wagner-​Durand, Elisabeth 225 wall paintings 218, 326 water 10, 62, 110, 312, 352, 416, 475, 486n12, 500, 502–​504, 627n38, 645–​648, 683, 691, 694; used in purification rituals 234–​249; primordial 269, 273, 277, 282, 324, 645, see also ritual baths; stepped pools water clocks 475, 478 Watkins, Trevor 263 weapons: in burial sites 145; in funerary contexts 418 weaving 41–​42, 52, 53n12; tools for 41–​42 Wegner, Josef 270 Weismantel, Mary 152 Whitley, James 393 whorls 36, 37, 38; see also spindle whorls wine 69, 276, 356–​357, 458, 646–​651, 654–​655, 658n28, 671, 692–​694 Winter, Irene 49, 51, 117n26, 175, 537, 544, 546n6, 549n51, n53, 550n69 woad/​indigo dye 46, 50, 54n41 Wobst, Martin 147 Wodaabe tribe (Niger) 135 women: burial sites in Hasanlu, Iran 141, 144–​145, 153–​160; at Ebla 299, 313; clothing/​garments of 52, 141; and feminine identity 178, 672; and jewellery 129, 131, 134, 135; “mother goddesses” 133, 671; as musicians 134–​135, 360n15, 688; work done by 101; work songs of 106–​109 work songs 9, 100, 102, 115–​116; African American 103; ancient Near Eastern 106;

Index

baby-​incantations 112–​115; delimitation of 103–​104; haptic and kinetic features of 108; lullabies as 103–​104; Song of the Millstone 106–​109, 116; Song of the Plowing Oxen 109–​112, 116; used by men 109–​112; used by women 106–​109; see also lullabies workshop 41, 52, 70, 639, 640, 643, 655; smell of 650 wormwood 421

writing 1, 6, 8, 20, 21, 28, 142, 179, 180, 240, 282, 432, 570, 648; see also cuneiform (writing system) Xerxes I (Achaemenid king) 79, 83, 190, 194, 197 Yahweh 344–​360, 433, 434, 445, 519–​522, 525 Zincirli (ancient Sam’al) 67 Ziyaret Tepe (ancient Tušhan) 67

739