Joy and Happiness in Mesopotamian Royal Inscriptions

Embodied Emotions in Ancient Neo-Assyrian Texts Revealed by Bodily Mapping of Emotional Semantics

“…The consistent emphasis of internal organs and limbs can also be seen in Table 2, where 12 of the top 2 results for the emotional categories are words relating to limbs, and 8 relate to internal organs. This finding broadly aligns with the results of previous Assyriological research on (embodied) emotions, particularly in discussions of Happiness [11][12][13] , Fear 7 , and Anger 30 . For example, the liver has been discussed by scholars as the seat of anger and happiness in Neo-Assyrian texts [11][12][13]16,30 .…”

“…This finding broadly aligns with the results of previous Assyriological research on (embodied) emotions, particularly in discussions of Happiness [11][12][13] , Fear 7 , and Anger 30 . For example, the liver has been discussed by scholars as the seat of anger and happiness in Neo-Assyrian texts [11][12][13]16,30 . However, several of the categories identified by the AHEC team have not been studied in as much depth, such as Surprise.…”

“…The study of emotions in texts written in Akkadian is a recent development and has focused on individual lexemes, domains of emotions, or on specific text genres 7,[11][12][13][14][15] . The specific topic of the embodiment of emotions in Akkadian has only recently been discussed 16,17 .…”

“…These studies have revealed the frequent references to body-related processes of emotional experiences, including how Akkadian considers internal organs as seats ("containers") of emotions or embodied feelings. For example, the terms libbu (a word that can vaguely mean "inside (of the body, torso)", but can also more specifically refer to the belly, the heart or the womb) and kabattu ("liver; innards") are frequent in descriptions of embodied feelings and emotion expressions [11][12][13]17,18 . Steinert 16 also observed that some of the patterns regarding where Akkadian emotions (such as Joy, Love, Pride, Disgust, Contempt, Sadness, and Depression) were located in the body correlated with the bodily sensation maps elucidated through neuroscientific emotion research 1 .…”