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Representations of sexual difference (whether visual or textual) have become an area of much theoretical concern and investigation in recent feminist scholarship. Yet although a wide range of relevant evidence survives from the ancient Near East, it has been exceptional for those studying women in the ancient world to stray outside the traditional bounds of Greece and Rome. Women of Babylon is a much-needed historical/art historical study that investigates the concepts of femininity which prevailed in Assyro-Babylonian society. Zainab Bahrani's detailed analysis of how the culture of ancient Mesopotamia defined sexuality and gender roles both in, and through, representation is enhanced by a rich selection of visual material extending from 6500 BC - 1891 AD. Professor Bahrani also investigates the ways in which women of the ancient Near East have been perceived in classical scholarship up to the nineteenth century.
This book is the first in ten years to present a comprehensive
survey of art and architecture in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq,
northeast Syria and southeast Turkey), from 8000 BCE to the arrival
of Islam in 636 CE. The book is richly illustrated with c. 400
full-colour photographs, and maps and time charts that guide
readers through the chronology and geography of this part of the
ancient Near East. The book addresses such essential art historical
themes as the origins of narrative representation, the first
emergence of historical public monuments and the earliest aesthetic
commentaries. It explains how images and monuments were made and
how they were viewed. It also traces the ancient practices of
collecting and conservation and rituals of animating statues and of
architectural construction. Accessible to students and
non-specialists, the book expands the scope of standard surveys to
cover art and architecture from the prehistoric to the Roman era,
including the legendary cities of Ur, Babylon, Nineveh, Hatra and
Seleucia on the Tigris.
Representations of sexual difference (whether visual or textual)
have become an area of much theoretical concern and investigation
in recent feminist scholarship. Yet although a wide range of
relevant evidence survives from the ancient Near East, it has been
exceptional for those studying women in the ancient world to stray
outside the traditional bounds of Greece and Rome.
Women of Babylon is a much-needed historical/art historical study
that investigates the concepts of femininity which prevailed in
Assyro-Babylonian society. Zainab Bahrani's detailed analysis of
how the culture of ancient Mesopotamia defined sexuality and gender
roles both in, and through, representation is enhanced by a rich
selection of visual material extending from 6500 BC - 1891 AD.
Professor Bahrani also investigates the ways in which women of the
ancient Near East have been perceived in classical scholarship up
to the nineteenth century.
'Mario Liverani's work is among the most original and penetrating
in the discipline of ancient Near Eastern studies. I recommend this
brilliant and fascinating book with high enthusiasm.' Benjamin R.
Foster, Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature
and Curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection, Yale University
'This collection of his classic essays, selected by Liverani
himself, and presented in English for the first time, displays
Liverani's brilliance in dissecting a variety of myths, treaties,
royal inscriptions, letters and Biblical narratives. Liverani's
influence on the interpretation of history is generously
acknowledged by professional historians of the Ancient Near East
and by the Italian reading public. This collection will bring his
substantive contributions and his method to a wider audience of
historians, anthropologists, and literary critics. The editors have
done a splendid job introducing the essays, revising Liverani's own
translations and providing handy references to studies that have
appeared since Liverani's original work.' Norman Yoffee, Professor
of Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan The essays
collected in this volume represent a selection of studies,
previously published mainly in Italian, that make explicit use of
anthropological and semiological tools in order to analyze
important texts of historical nature from various regions of the
Ancient Near East. They suggest that these historiographical texts
were of a 'true' historical nature, and that the literary forms and
mental models employed were very apt at accomplishing the intended
results. Two different aspects are especially emphasized: myth and
politics.
The Graven Image Representation in Babylonia and Assyria Zainab
Bahrani "A passionate and powerful polemic."--"Antiquity" "Bahrani
opens up the field of discourse for the study of ancient Near
Eastern art and brings it into dialogue with current disciplinary
trends. . . . The book will stimulate further discussion about the
nature(s) of Babylonian and Assyrian representation across the
disciplinary divides."--"Journal of the American Oriental Society"
"A welcome addition to the study of the ancient Near East. It
breaks away from Eurocentric approaches and tries to do justice to
Mesopotamian thought, thus shedding new light on the relationship
between text and representation. . . . Bahrani's book will become
the center of a lively debate."--"Bryn Mawr Classical Review"
Mesopotamia, the world's earliest literate culture, developed a
rich philosophical conception of representation in which the world
was saturated with signs. Instead of imitating the natural world,
representation--both in writing and in visual images--was thought
to participate in the world and to have an effect upon it in
natural, magical, and supernatural ways. "The Graven Image" is the
first book to explore this tradition, which developed prior to, and
apart from, the Greek understanding of representation. The
classical Greek system, based on the notion of mimesis, or copy, is
the one with which we are most familiar today. The
Assyro-Babylonian ontology presented here by Zainab Bahrani opens
up fresh avenues for thinking about the concept of representation
in general, and her reading of the ancient Mesopotamian textual and
visual record in its own ontological context develops an entirely
new approach to understanding Babylonian and Assyrian arts in
particular. "The Graven Image" describes, for the first time,
rituals and wars involving images; the relationship of divination,
the organic body, and representation; and the use of images as a
substitute for the human form, integrating this ancient material
into contemporary debates in critical theory. Bahrani challenges
current methodologies in the study of Near Eastern archaeology and
art history, introducing a new way to appreciate the unique
contributions of Assyrian and Babylonian culture and their complex
relationships to the past and present. Zainab Bahrani is Edith
Porada Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at
Columbia University. Archaeology, Culture, and Society 2003 256
pages 6 x 9 28 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3648-4 Cloth $59.95s 39.00
World Rights Archaeology Short copy: "A welcome addition to the
study of the ancient Near East. It breaks away from Eurocentric
approaches and tries to do justice to Mesopotamian thought, thus
shedding new light on the relationship between text and
representation. . . . Bahrani's book will become the center of a
lively debate."--"Bryn Mawr Classical Review"
Rituals of War is an investigation into the earliest historical
records of violence and biopolitics. In Mesopotamia, ancient (ca.
3000-500 BCE) Iraqi rituals of war and images of violence
constituted part of the magical technologies of warfare that formed
the underlying irrational processes of war. In Rituals of War,
Zainab Bahrani weaves together three lines of inquiry into one
historical domain of violence: war, the body, and representation.
Building on Foucault's argument in Discipline and Punish that the
art of punishing must rest on a whole technology of representation,
Bahrani investigates the ancient Mesopotamian record to reveal how
that culture relied on the portrayal of violence and control as
part of the mechanics of warfare. Moreover, she takes up the more
recent arguments of Giorgio Agamben on sovereign power and
biopolitics to focus on the relationship of power, the body, and
violence in Assyro-Babylonian texts and monuments of war. Bahrani
analyzes facets of war and sovereign power that fall under the
categories of representation and display, the aesthetic, the
ritualistic, and the supernatural. Besides the invention of the
public monument of war and the rituals of iconoclasm, destruction,
and relocation of monuments in war, she investigates formulations
of power through the body, narrative displays in battle, the
reading of omens before the battle, and historical divination
through the body and body parts. Bahrani describes these as the
magical technologies of war, the realm of the irrational that
enables the ideologies of just war in the distant past as
today.Zainab Bahrani is Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near
Eastern Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. She is
the author of The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and
Assyria and Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in
Mesopotamia.
The essays included in this volume analyze important historical
texts from various regions of the Ancient Near East. The
distinguished Italian historian Mario Liverani suggests that these
historiographical texts were of a "true" historical nature and that
their literary forms achieved their intended results. Liverani
focuses on two central themes in these texts: myth and
politics.There is a close connection, Liverani finds, between the
writing of history and the validation of political order and
political action. History defines the correct role and behavior of
political leaders, especially when they do not possess the
validation provided by tradition. Historical texts, he discovers,
are more often the tools for supporting change than for supporting
stability.Liverani demonstrates that history writing in the Ancient
Near East made frequent use of mythical patterns, wisdom motifs,
and literary themes in order to fulfill its audience's cultural
expectations. The resulting nonhistorical literary forms can
mislead interpretation, but an analysis of these forms allows the
texts' sociopolitical and communicative frameworks to emerge.
"Uruk: the First City" is the first fully historical analysis of
the origins of the city and of the state in southern Mesopotamia,
the region providing the earliest evidence in world history related
to these seminal developments. Contrasting his approach - which has
been influenced by V. Gordan Childe and by Marxist theory - with
the neo-evolutionist ideas of (especially) American anthropological
theory, the author argues that the innovations that took place
during the 'Uruk' period (most of the fourth millennium B.C.) were
a 'true' revolution that fundamentally changed all aspects of
society and culture. This book is unique in its historical approach
and its combination of archaeological and textual sources. It
develops an argument that weaves together a vast amount of
information and places it within a context of contemporary
scholarly debates on such questions as the ancient economy and
world systems. It explains the roots of these debates briefly
without talking down to the reader. The book is accessible to a
wider audience, while it also provides a cogent argument about the
processes involved to the specialist in the field.
"Uruk: The First City" is the first fully historical analysis of
the origins of the city and of the state in southern Mesopotamia,
the region providing the earliest evidence in world history related
to these seminal developments. Contrasting his approach - which has
been influenced by V. Gordan Childe and by Marxist theory - with
the neo-evolutionist ideas of (especially) American anthropological
theory, the author argues that the innovations that took place
during the 'Uruk' period (most of the fourth millennium B.C.) were
a 'true' revolution that fundamentally changed all aspects of
society and culture. This book is unique in its historical
approach, and its combination of archaeological and textual
sources. It develops an argument that weaves together a vast amount
of information and places it within a context of contemporary
scholarly debates on such questions as the ancient economy and
world systems. It explains the roots of these debates briefly
without talking down to the reader. The book is accessible to a
wider audience, while it also provides a cogent argument about the
processes involved to the specialist in the field.
The essays included in this volume analyze important historical
texts from various regions of the Ancient Near East. The
distinguished Italian historian Mario Liverani suggests that these
historiographical texts were of a "true" historical nature and that
their literary forms achieved their intended results. Liverani
focuses on two central themes in these texts: myth and
politics.There is a close connection, Liverani finds, between the
writing of history and the validation of political order and
political action. History defines the correct role and behavior of
political leaders, especially when they do not possess the
validation provided by tradition. Historical texts, he discovers,
are more often the tools for supporting change than for supporting
stability.Liverani demonstrates that history writing in the Ancient
Near East made frequent use of mythical patterns, wisdom motifs,
and literary themes in order to fulfill its audience's cultural
expectations. The resulting nonhistorical literary forms can
mislead interpretation, but an analysis of these forms allows the
texts' sociopolitical and communicative frameworks to emerge.
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