ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near East Brown University ~ Fall 2009

1. ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near East Brown University ~ Fall 2009 Presence of the Past September 15, 2009

2. The torch of civilization Tympanum over the entrance to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago

3. presence of the past history: a thing of the past? that gathers “lessons” form the past for today history – objectified, distant and mysterious? positively studied with the help of appropriate “scientific” methods (the traditional view) in this view, history is static, “out-there” as it always was! the past is always present in the present, it haunts us with its materials, texts, objects, residues, memories, monuments or ruins archaeology: a discipline of memory

4. Orthodox Christian rock cut churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia (12th- 13th centuries) and the contemporary worshippers the long-term presence of cult places

5. Ayodhya, India December 6, 1992 Destruction of the 16th century Babur mosque

6. Destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas, Afghanistan March 2001

7. Antiquarians, locals and the bedrock of Anatolian antiquity Yazılıkaya Rock-cut sanctuary (Texier 1839) Karabel rock relief (M. Busch, Bilder aus dem Orient 1864) Eflatunpınar Spring Monument (Perrot-Chipiez 1887)

8. Yazılıkaya Rock-cut sanctuary in the 19th century: documentary representations Drawings by Charles Texier (1834) Photograph by Jules Delbet (1861)

9. Hittite Spring sanctuary and sacred pool at Eflatunpinar, South-central Turkey

10. Naqsh-e Rustam, Iran (near Persepolis) Achaemenid and Sasanian rock-cut tombs.

11. Naqsh-e Rustam, Iran (near Persepolis) Achaemenid and Sasanian rock-cut tombs.

12. Rock-face relief at Naqsh-e Rustam of Sasanian ruler Shapur I (on horseback) with Philip the Arab and Emperor Valerian.

14. Akkadian words of bodily orientation and the sense of time warku: back, future panu: front, past

15. Babylonian archaeologists of their Mesopotamian past Foundation deposits: Mesopotamian practices of remembering and the building as a repository of history, an archive the politics of claiming the glorious past, and linking oneself to the long-term Mesopotamian tradition.

16. Babylon = TIN.TIRKI

18. Old Babylonian royal statues from Mari, Found in the “museum: in Babylon Memory p(a)laces: Babylon’s ancient “museum” and its “antiquities” Early Iron Age Stele of the Storm God from North Syria, Found in the “museum: in Babylon

19. The art of collecting Cabinet of curiosities Musei Wormiani Historia

20. Memory: forms of memory/residues of the past • Artifacts, objects of the past • Written documents, archives • Monuments and memorials, architectural spaces, urban spaces • Visual culture, representations, images, pictures, art • Memory of the environment, landscape, the countryside • Geological histories • Environmental histories, pollen records • Oral histories, stories from the oral tradition, ethnography

23. ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near East Brown University ~ Fall 2009 Presence of the Past, episode II archaeology and text- tense relationship September 17, 2009

24. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” Faulkner, Requiem for a nun

25. Kunstkammer/Wunderkammer: a microcosm, a theater of the world Cabinet of curiosities Musei Wormiani Historia

26. Memory p(a)laces: Modern archaeological/ ethnographic museum and its objects Modern display of material culture The ethnographic and the archaeological Cabinet of curiosities Musei Wormiani Historia

27. Memory: forms of memory/residues of the past • Artifacts, objects of the past • Written documents, archives • Monuments and memorials, architectural spaces, urban spaces • Visual culture, representations, images, pictures, art • Memory of the environment, landscape, the countryside • Geological histories • Environmental histories, pollen records • Oral histories, stories from the oral tradition, ethnography

29. in the field in the office archaeologist’s dilemma (how does archaeological knowledge get produced?) fieldwork/data processing/writing/interpretation

30. Archaeology and Text a difficult relationship

32. When the house is on fire and the children are gone Ur-Utu’s house and archive in Sippar-Amnanum (Tell ed Der) 17th c. BC Ur-Utu was a landholder and the “kalamahhum-priest of Annunitum” (chief lamentation priest) the house 225 m2 was excavated in mid 1970s by Belgian archaeologists ca 2000 tablets burnt with the house

33. In 1975 the house was fully exposed. In four rooms to the northwest tablets were found, many belonging to distinct "archives," which were sealed by the fire that destroyed the building. Altogether about 2,000 documents were found in the "house of Ur-Utu," mainly dating to the last phase of occupation (IIIb), Ur-Utu's house renovation. Some tablets were, however, archived in distinct groups for several hundred years. 1283 texts have been dated. Most of these tablets in this large house were found in room 22 (which could have served as a [sealed] storeroom), to the northwest of the central court, while the rooms 17 and 18 (forming one large residential room in phase IIId, but apparently not communicating with each other in IIIb) contained "archived" material....

34. Gudea, king of Lagash

35. A commemorative monument of the Akkadians... War booty for the Elamites...

36. Stele of the Akkadian king Naram Sin (2254-2218 BC)

37. Myth and History: Stele of Eannatum. ca. 2460 BC. from Girsu (Telloh)

38. archaeology and text- a complementary relationship • materiality of texts • material culture as text

39. What is an archive?

40. The Cairo Geniza Documents About 200,000 medieval and later manuscripts on vellum and paper that were found in the genizah or store room of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Cairo, the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were bought in Cairo in the later 19th century. Mostly written in Arabic using Hebrew Script and belonging to the Jewish community of Cairo, the date of the documents range from 870 AD to 1880. Includes religious writings, court documents, legal writings and the correspondence of the local Jewish community.

41. The Genizah: secret place, archive A genizah is a storage room where copies of respected texts with scribal errors or physical damaged, or unusable documents, are kept until they can be ritually buried. The dark, sealed, room in the arid Egyptian climate contributed to the preservation of the documents, the earliest of which may go back to the eighth and ninth centuries. Friedberg Genizah Project

42. Materiality of the text: textual records as objects of memory, texts as artifacts

43. In a nutshell Mesopotamian archival tradition

44. uruk/warka: first tablets from the storehouses of Inanna. Examples of Uruk IV (above, excavation no. W 7227,a) and Uruk III (below, no. W 14804,a) tablets

45. Cuneiform writing on clay tablet using a stylus that has a wedge shaped (cuneiform) tip.

47. Letters Literary texts, epic poetry lamentations Administrative texts, economic documents Lexical lists Contracts, land grants, sale documents, Law codes Royal annalistic texts (historical documents) Ritual texts, omen literature, (divination) Cuneiform tablet inscribed with omens Old Babylonian, about 1900-1600 BCFrom Sippar, southern Iraq

48. Nabonidus Cylinder from Ur (556-539) describes how he repaired the ziggurat called E-lugal-galga-sisa, which belonged to the temple of Sin in Ur, called Egišnugal.

49. Clay model of a sheep's liver Old Babylonian, about 1900-1600 BCFrom Sippar, southern Iraq

50. what is an archive? archival practices/record keeping as a memory practice as creative rethinking of the past Records continuum: that enhances unbroken chains of material-textual documentation of the past Legal evidence-bearing institution? Life cyclical model of archival practice: cultural biography of records from birth, active use, “retirement” and destruction (a wobbly model) Records may take on new meanings as authentic artifacts of the past