CONCEPTIONS OF THE BODY IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM ASSYRIA: BETWEEN MATERIALITY AND TEXTUALITY

• Grant number: 16/02441-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2016
• End date: January 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Aparecido Rede
• Grantee: Leandro Penna Ranieri
• Supervisor: Davide Nadali
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Italy
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/22125-2 - Conceptions of body in Assyria of the first millenium B.C.: between materiality and textuality, BP.DR

Abstract

The Neo-Assyrian period (744-627 BC) is a moment marked by widespread use of bas-reliefs on the palaces walls. However, investigations made by such sources limit the social and cultural role of these reliefs only to royal ideology and propaganda and restrict the cultural potential of materiality as subservient to the texts 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 contact between people and objects. What was the body status in this period? What was the conception of body in Neo-Assyrian period? What the materiality of the reliefs can prove of this conception? In addition, and the textuality: what clues it can give us to examine the treatment of the body? The research purpose is to examine and comprehend the conceptions of the body and the agency of images in the Assyria of the late eighth century and the seventh century BC, through 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 (royal palatial inscriptions, royal correspondence, literary and magical texts). Also taking corporeality as an 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 may be possible to understand the social role of the reliefs in the Neo-Assyrian period.