How To Do Things With Tears

Delnero, Paul

doi:10.1515/9781501512650

Cited by 29 publications

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“…However, more extreme measures are taken as well when a sheep is beheaded and its carcass smeared throughout the cella, most likely with the aim of further protecting the space against possible invading evil (Debourse, 2022, pp. 262–267; Delnero, 2020, pp. 14–20).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Writing and imagining ritual in the Babylonian New Year festival texts

Debourse

2024

Religion Compass

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In cuneiform culture the New Year Festival was an important ritual of kingship. The most fundamental source for the reconstruction of this festival is a small corpus of cuneiform ritual texts that describe the ritual actions and prayers to be performed during the first days of the year. Those texts were written by Babylonian priests during the Persian‐Hellenistic period (484–140 BCE), when Babylonia had come under foreign rule. Why were these ritual texts outlining a royal ritual created at a time when Babylonia was governed by foreign rulers, who had little interest in Babylonian religious traditions? Why write down rituals at all? In this paper, I show how these New Year Festival texts are programmatic more than instructional, as they give shape to a new ritual paradigm in which Babylonian priests, not kings, are the central authority of the cult.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Writing and imagining ritual in the Babylonian New Year festival texts

Debourse

2024

Religion Compass

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“…Recent surveys on affects and the senses in sources from the ancient Near East include Schellenberg and Krüger 2019;Hawthorn and Rendu Loisel 2019;Nadali and Pinnock 2020;Hsu and Llop Raduà 2021;Kipfer and WagnerDurand 2021;Neu mann and Thomason 2022;and Sonik and Steinert 2023. For emotional contagion in the ancient Mesopotamian cult practices of lamenting, see also Delnero 2010 states that artworks such as divine or royal statues, monumental architec ture, and reliefs evoked in ancient viewers, including positive responses of joy, delight, and awe. 7 How affects are evoked by artworks (literary and pic torial art) and material things has likewise been studied in fields such as art history and design theory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Affective Engagements: Examples from Ancient Mesopotamia

Steinert,

Colombetti

2024

Aest

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This article applies approaches from current emotion research on material affective scaffolds—objects made and used to enhance, and more generally transform, affective states—to the emerging field of study focusing on emotions in ancient Near Eastern societies. Its main goal is to extend the framework of 4E cognition—with its central notion that human cognition is embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended—to the realm of affective states, emphasizing that through our bodily interactions with material objects we transform not just our cognitive processes but also our emotions, moods, and so forth. Thereby, the present study seeks to contribute to the exploration of the relationships between sensory experiences, emotions, moods, and the material world by investigating the affective meanings that material things acquire through people’s entanglements with them. The study focuses on one particular class of objects—Mesopotamian amulets from the first millennium BC, which served as bodily adornments but were also understood to have the power to evoke affective responses through their activation in ritual performances. Referring to scholarly compendia in Mesopotamian cuneiform texts, this study demonstrates that these objects were recommended by healing experts to influence different affective states, both in oneself and others. It examines the connection between affective states and specific material features of the amulet components (consisting of minerals, metals, and plant and animal substances). Finally, Mesopotamian views of affective states and their management are compared with those of contemporary cognitive-affective science. This comparison shows that although there are some analogies, there are also important differences that depend mainly on different understandings of the human mind and agency. byUlrike SteinertJohannes Gutenberg University Mainzusteiner@unimainz.deandGiovanna ColombettiUniversity of ExeterG.Colombetti@exeter.ac.uk

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“…The documentation of which survives from ancient Egypt (Verbosek 2011), Mesopotamia (Delnero 2020), the Near East (Jacobs 2016), and likely the Aegean as well (Younger 1998, p. 52). 37 Varying in period and style, each of the following seals shows the same motif of victor, shielding adversary, and slain individual (Kellenbarger 2023) Unless the lighter colored blue fragment with the loop-and-line motif does not belong to the scabbard-bearing monkey but an as-of-yet undepicted fifth 'slain' monkey.…”

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Potnia’s Participants: Considering the Gala, Assinnu, and Kurgarrû in an Aegean Context

Pareja

2024

Arts

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The wall paintings from the site of Akrotiri, Thera, are often considered to be instrumental to understanding elements of life in the Bronze Age. This is partially due to their high degree of preservation. The large-scale detail present in the scenes allows for a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the imagery that survives in glyptic art that, considered together with the surviving wall paintings, helps to better inform one’s understanding of Aegean life. Many of the iconographic elements and themes, however, remain at least partially enigmatic. This is particularly the case for Xeste 3, a cultic building at Akortiri, where the wall paintings contribute to a larger, programmatic cultic narrative. The current investigation seeks to better understand the monkeys scene from Room 2 of the first floor by deconstructing and examining each visual element via comparative analyses. They are first contextualized within the Aegean, then considered in light of Mesopotamian comparanda. This method allows for possible parallels between the monkeys from Xeste 3 and at least three priestly classes known from contemporary Mesopotamian tradition: the gala, assinnu, and kurgarrû. Each of these priestly classes belonged to the adaptable and widespread cult of Inanna, one of the most powerful and popular deities in Mesopotamia.

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How To Do Things With Tears

Cited by 29 publications

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Writing and imagining ritual in the Babylonian New Year festival texts

Writing and imagining ritual in the Babylonian New Year festival texts

Material Affective Engagements: Examples from Ancient Mesopotamia

Potnia’s Participants: Considering the Gala, Assinnu, and Kurgarrû in an Aegean Context

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