Report on The Ancient Near East Today Conference, Norman, Oklahoma, USA, September 13 and 14, 2002

 

Here is a summary of activities and discussions:

 

 

 

The Companion to the Ancient Near East. The panel discussion decided that the volume should be in social science style to save space.  Footnotes will still be possible for discussion and clarification, but merely bibliographic references will be made within the text in parentheses and refer to a combined bibliography at the end of the volume. We will adhere to Chicago Assyrian Dictionary abbreviations but will also publish a list of abbreviations used.

            Also, authors should compose a short bibliographic essay of no more than a page in typescript explaining what secondary sources would be most helpful for the beginner.

            Al Bertrand of Blackwells said authors will get a hardcover copy of the volume as well as an author’s discount of 35% on any other Blackwells publications.

            A number of new topics were proposed along with persons who might write on them, including the pantheon, the legacy of the Ancient Near East in Islam, the legacy in Judaism and Christianity, mathematics, astronomy, and the topic of What They Ate. Tawny Holm of Indiana University of Pennsylvania agreed to write a chapter on Literature.  A colleague from the History of Science suggested a chapter on cosmology. 

            Also the group discussed the intended audience of the educated but non-specialist reader. The initial high pricing of the hardcover edition of the Blackwell Companions indicates that the intent is to sell to libraries.  After 18 months Blackwells normally issues a more modestly priced paperback, which graduate students and scholars may be expected to buy. 

            Bertrand asked that we begin thinking about illustrations and indicate soon what sorts of things we will be wanting to illustrate.  We expect that the person doing art will want more illustrations than others.  Maps will not count as illustrations, but it would be good to know soon what kinds of maps will be needed too.

 

 

Dan Snell, University of Oklahoma, began the conference and introduced the volume and the conference and the geography of the region, particularly the NASA image of the world at night, which nicely highlights Egypt and Iraq, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg.

                                                           

Methods and Limits in Archeology. Marie-Henriette Gates of Bilkent University, had her paper read by Prof. Patricia Gilman, chair of the University of Oklahoma Anthropology Department.  Gates argued that archeology and history have drifted apart in the past 50 years, and archeology has gotten more expensive and has posed more anthropological questions that do not necessarily engage historians.  She called for renewed engagement from both sides. The big excavations of the 19^th to mid-20th centuries defined historical periods and answered big questions.  Archeology since 1950 has been more focused and asked social scientific questions which have not appealed to historians, even when excavations have revealed, like Ebla, unsuspected worlds. In chronology, however, archaeology has finally established an agreed upon date for the fall of the first dynasty of Babylon.  Recent research has focused less on monumental buildings than on private dwellings, but interesting results have been obtained from aerial photographs of sites and other innovations made possible by technological advances.

 

Philology as Queen of the Sciences. Gonzalo Rubio, Ohio State University, traced the use of the word philology from the ancient caring about words.  He noted that Nietzsche defined a philologist, back when he himself was one, as someone who reads slowly.  Rubio outlined the different approaches one takes to languages that are isolates, unrelated to any other, like Sumerian, as against those known to be related to other languages, like Akkadian. Rubio noted that all Ancient Near Eastern isolates are agglutinating, forming words from separate elements which do not change form when added.  Rubio then briefly surveyed our knowledge of Sumerian and Akkadian.

 

The Historian’s Task.  Dan Snell, University of Oklahoma, discussed the Ancient Near Eastern historians’ concern with reconstructing archives, ancient units that allow reconstruction of ancient categories.  He addressed some of the problems for Ancient Near Eastern historians in timely publishing their work and the necessity of cooperation between historians for the sake of better scholarship.  He commented on the need for the fields of Biblical Studies and Ancient Near Eastern Studies to interact in their publications.  Responding to van de Mieroop’s book Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History which criticizes the methodology of historians, he defined the positivist as one who would see research as finding out social scientific truths without much concern for the biases of the sources or of the modern researcher.  Discussions centered on the postmodernists’ criticisms of historians trying to be social scientists and questions of whether objectivity is possible.

 

The Degradation of the Ancient Near Eastern Environment. Carlos Cordova, Oklahoma State University, gave a spirited illustrated discussion of pollen samples and soil samples and the study of the ancient environment; he believes that pollen samples, which can have been taken only from formerly wet areas, may also be correlated in dry areas by changes in soil strata. He argued that the cedars of Lebanon actually had essentially disappeared well before the third millennium, in the time of Pre-Pottery Neolithic.  He also suggested that pollen evidence showed stress on the environment in connection with the crises at the end of the third millennium, which he blames on 200 years of relative drought.

 

The City and the Country. Elizabeth Stone, State University of New York at Stony Brook, examined how cities were built in Mesopotamia, arguing that archaeology shows the richer, larger houses, were right next to smaller, poorer houses. Larger houses were conglomerations of smaller ones, representing households gaining wealth; conversely little houses were created from larger ones. Neighborhoods were seen as discrete units with walls and gates. She acknowledged that we know much less about the countryside since literacy did not much penetrate there.

 

The Quest for Empire, 3000-900 BCE. Mark Chavalas, University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, explored what we might mean by empire, particularly in looking at the Uruk expansion into Syria from Mesopotamia at the beginning of the period. Evidence does not show that Uruk send out and established colonies, but it shows there were relationships of trade with no apparent political changes after the Uruk expansion. Chavalas remained unsure of definitions of empire, whether it implies direct administration or even imposed trade relations.

 

Medicine. Joann Scurlock, Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois, argued that Mesopotamian medical texts do not show that magic was used to the exclusion of practical remedies in healing.  She sees the asf as a pharmacist and the ~šipu as a medical practitioner and rejects the old view of their work as practical versus magical. Both the asf and the ~šipu were seen as interpreters of the signs m

ade by the spirits in the bodies of their patients. Texts had recommendations to help interpret the signs and what to do about them based on herbal and magical remedies that had worked in the past.  Some remedies used some of the same diagnostic reasoning used today.  There is clear evidence that autopsies were sometimes done.  Magical incantations were used along with herbal remedies and may have had the same psychological effects that holistic medicine has today.

 

How Religion Was Done. Gary Beckman, University of Michigan, surveyed the Hittite evidence for what happened in the cult.  There were periodic feasts and there were rituals done irregularly. In spring and autumn the royal family made a circuit and sacrificed to town deities.  On such occasions meat was consumed in astounding quantities.   There were five types of offerings: 1) attraction offerings of sweets, 2) non-blood offerings like breads, 3) animal sacrifices culminating in a communal meal for those present, 4) wholly burnt offerings, which seem to be from Syria and of course do not automatically lead to a party, and 5) god-drinking, which may be somehow eucharistic or just toasting the gods.   Beckman pointed out that scapegoat ceremonies, known only in a few instances, were not sacrifices at all but just transfers of guilt to other objects. In discussion Beckman noted we have no access to popular religious practices. 

 

The Private Versus the Public. Steven Garfinkle, Western Washington University, argued that our distinctions between private and public did not hold in the ancient Mesopotamian world. He called for a different mode of analysis when we consider economies of the Ancient Near East.  The household economy was not necessarily at odds with the larger economies of the temple or palaces.  Private enterprise was so widespread that officials were also involved. Individuals were expected to take advantage of their official positions to enrich their families. Household units controlled by the kings got bigger over time, but the cities also grew in independence. He concluded that we might use the terms institutional and non-institutional rather than private versus public to identify the differences in the roles of persons.

 

Ethnicity and the Rise of Nationalisms. Henri Limet, Université de LiPge, Belgium, had his paper read by Dan Snell; in it he argued that one could see in the Mesopotamian record derision directed at particular ethnic groups and feelings that approach ethnic pride, and such texts show how people thought about themselves and their cultural opposites.  Fueled by the Sumerians’ own view of organized city life as superior, they began to grow an idea of nationalism through myths and beliefs.  Discussion centered on language as a false tie to ethnicity and on the fact that  modern definitions of ethnicity are themselves fluid and changing.

 

Freedom As a Value. Dan Snell, University of Oklahoma, argued that there were traces of devotion to freedom as a value in the Ancient Near East, especially in Israel as reflected in the Bible, which predated Greek evidence. The Sumerian word for freedom meant freedom from slavery. The Akkadian word is based upon a word for returning, connoting freedom of movement.  The use of terms for freedom in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers was also traced. Discussion focused on the fluidity of the definitions of freedom, so that it cannot be said to be one concept.