Losing One's Head in the Ancient Near East: Interpretation and Meaning of Decapitation

by Rita Dolce

Overview

In the Ancient Near East, cutting off someone’s head was a unique act, not comparable to other types of mutilation, and therefore charged with a special symbolic and communicative significance. This book examines representations of decapitation in both images and texts, particularly in the context of war, from a trans-chronological perspective that aims to shed light on some of the conditions, relationships and meanings of this specific act. The severed head is a “coveted object” for the many individuals who interact with it and determine its fate, and the act itself appears to take on the hallmarks of a ritual. Drawing mainly on the evidence from Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia between the third and first millennia BC, and with reference to examples from prehistory to the Neo-Assyrian Period, this fascinating study will be of interest not only to art historians, but to anyone interested in the dynamics of war in the ancient world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351657099
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/15/2017
Series:	Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	110
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Rita Dolce is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Near Eastern Cultures and Fine Arts at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy, and a member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria, where she has excavated for 40 years at the site of Tell Mardikh-Ebla. Her research interests lie mainly in the figurative art, urban topography and architecture of the third millennium BC in Mesopotamia and Syria. She has written numerous books and articles focusing particularly on visual communication as the language of power and a means of dissemination in the societies of the Ancient Near East, and on the urban origins of Ebla, its palatial culture and the structure and significance of cult places in this important Early Syrian kingdom.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Image Credits

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter I

I.1. From the Distant Past to the Recent Past

I.2. An Unrepeatable Act

I.3. The Headless Body: Anonymity/Identity

Chapter II

II.1. Exclusivity/Multiplicity

II.2. Exhibition/Quantification

Chapter III

III.1. What Happens to the "Coveted Object"?

III.2. Destinations/Motivations

III.3. Exhibition and Multivalence

Chapter IV

IV.1. Severed Heads and Birds of Prey

IV.2. Eannatum of Lagash and the Birds of Prey

IV.3. Mari and the Birds of Prey

IV.4. Sargon I of Akkad and the Birds of Prey

IV.5. Dadusha of Eshnunna and the Birds of Prey

IV.6. The Assyrians and the Birds of Prey

Chapter V

V.1. Moving Through Space and Time

V.2. How Does the Head Travel?

Chapter VI

VI.1. "Other" Decapitations in Times of War

VI.2. What Happens to the Severed Heads of Statues?

VI.3. Moving Through Space and Time

VI.4. Annihilation/Catharsis

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Building on a vast documentary record that covers the entire Syro-Mesopotamian tradition, Dolce's analysis offers an in-depth study in visual semiotics. She identifies specific 'semantic codes' and an explicit syntactical organization, through which a strong message was conveyed by means of visual imagery. This is iconology at its best: by highlighting the coherence of a representational program, and drawing on parallel written statements, our sensitivity is trained to appreciate the 'intrinsic meaning' of a topos such as the action of beheading – a topos with a valence that goes well beyond that of other types of mutilation precisely because of its ideological import."

 

Giorgio Buccellati, University of California Los Angeles, USA

From the Publisher