Conceptions of body in Assyria of the first millenium B.C.: between materiality and textuality

• Grant number: 14/22125-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: July 01, 2015
• End date: May 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Aparecido Rede
• Grantee: Leandro Penna Ranieri
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/02441-2 - CONCEPTIONS OF THE BODY IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM ASSYRIA: BETWEEN MATERIALITY AND TEXTUALITY, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

In Neo-Assyrian period (744-627 BC), the stone bas-reliefs on the walls of the Assyrian palaces are widely used. However, investigations made by such sources feature comprehensive reductions which limit the social and cultural role of the reliefs only to royal ideology and propaganda and restrict the cultural potential of materiality as subservient to the text for understanding the Assyrian context. Thus, there is difficulty in understanding the social role of the reliefs and the materiality in this context, such materiality linked to corporeality, to material ways whereby there was the contact between people and objects. What was the body status occupied in this period? What was the conception of body in Neo-Assyrian period? What the materiality of the reliefs can prove of this concept? In addition, and the textuality: what clues it can give us to examine the treatment of the body? The goal of the research is to examine and understand the concepts of the body and the agency of imaging representations in Assyria of the late eighth century and the seventh century BC, from the historiographical analysis of reliefs from the palaces of Sargon II (721-705) in Dur -Sharrukin (Khorsabad) and Sennacherib (704-681) and Ashurbanipal (669-627) in Nineveh (Kuyunjuk) and written documents (palatial royal inscriptions, royal correspondence, literary and magical texts). Also taking corporeality as analytical "lab", through these representations, which is contextualized in its entirety and integrated with other manifestations of writing and material culture of that time, it is possible an understanding of the social role of the reliefs in the Neo-Assyrian period. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

RANIERI, Leandro Penna. Conceptions of body in the first millennium Assyria: between materiality and textuality. 2018. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.