Gesture and body senses in Assyrian palace reliefs (IX-VII BCE)

• Grant number: 18/13540-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2019
• End date: August 28, 2022
• 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): 19/16055-5 - Gesture and body senses in Assyrian palace reliefs, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to identify and examine the gestural expression and the evocation of body senses in the Assyrian palace reliefs of the first millennium BCE (9th to 7th centuries), from the palaces of Kalhu (or Nimrud, from the reign periods of Assurnasirpal II and Tiglath-Pileser III) and Nineveh (from the reigns of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal). In these bas-relief wall sculptures, implemented inside the Assyrian palaces during its imperial development, the images of the body configure the meaning of these objects. The knowledge of the historical context, the palace architecture and the relief narrative scenes has served to analyze the bodily aspects. Concerning gesture and sensoriality, the general historiography has identified, in written sources, how the senses are valued and how they constitute sensorial environments, in different places and times, as well as how the gestures appear in expressions that communicate, by body metaphors, a meaning related to behavior codes. However, in ancient or modern, Eastern or Western contexts, body gestures and senses are treated as detached research topics, mainly investigated through written documents. In the relief images, the body figures in gestures which can evocate the composition of a sensorial environment, inside or outside the image, related to lighting, sound, odor and kinesthetic experiences. Based on an approach that combines the recognized contributions of anthropology, archeology and history, it seeks to examine gesture and sensoriality, and their interconnection, from the images of the Assyrian palaces reliefs.