Thinking, Speaking and Representing Animals in Western Asia

This volume explores human relationships with animals in the ancient Near East, examining birds, reptiles, mongooses, lions, deer and dogs through archaeology, iconography and textual study. Spanning the 3rd millennium BC to Late Antiquity, it reveals the cultural, symbolic and political roles of animals across Western Asia.

In all societies, ancient and modern, animals have been of great importance to humans, being used for sustenance, transport, entertainment and emotional fulfilment. In the Ancient Near East, the cradle of domestication, the relationship between humans and animals was much stronger than it is today. The fascination animals exert on humans and the relationships between them are the subject of this book, the result of several workshops organized during the ASOR congress, where archaeologists, researchers specialising in iconography, historians, Assyriologists and archaeozoologists came together to exchange views and achieve a broader understanding of animals. Although our desired perspective is from that of the animal, in Mesopotamia the gaze is always the human one.

The book is divided in two parts: the first is devoted to small animals (birds, snakes, lizards and mongooses). The second part concerns animals worthy of the king, such as deer, lions and dogs. The articles cover the period from the end of the 3rd millennium BC to the Sassanid and Roman/Byzantine periods, with a particular emphasis on the first and second millennia BC.

Introduction

Part I: Small Animals: Birds, Reptiles and Mongooses

Chapter 1: “A Sparrow in the Hand is Better than the Pigeon on the Roof”: An Aviary in the Steppe (Khirbet Es-Samra, Jordan) – Hervé Monchot, Lionel Gourichon

Chapter 2: Mesopotamian Changes in Human-Birds-Landscape Relations as Reconstructed by Archaeological and Iconographic Data from Akkadian to Old Babylonian Period: Seals from the British Museum – Laura Battini

Chapter 3: The Reptilian Omens: Linguistic Patterns and Analogical Reasoning in an Ancient Mesopotamian Divinatory Text – Nicole Lundeen, Maya Rinderer

Chapter 4: The Mongoose, A Wild Animal in Natural, Religious and Domestic Contexts – Françoise Laroche-Traunecker

Chapter 5: Animals, Drums, and the Roll of Thunder: Animal Symbolism in an Omen Sequence from the Astrological Omen Series Enūma Anu Enlil – Lucrezia Menicatti

Part II: Animals for the King: Deer, Lions and Dogs

Chapter 6: Wisdom in Stone: A New Perspective on the Late Sasanian Deer Hunt Relief at Taq-e Bustan – Arvin Maghsoudlou

Chapter 7: ‘Pet’ Lions at the Assyrian Court – Paul Collins

Chapter 8: Mesopotamian Lions in Captivity – Chikako E. Watanabe

Chapter 9: In the Beginning was a Male: Ancient Near Eastern Visual Gender Bias of the Lion and the Lioness – Tallay Ornan

Chapter 10: Dogs in Hammurabi’s Days – Nele Ziegler

Chapter 11: Big Babylonian Dogs: Why do Big Dogs Appear in the Art of Babylonia in the Early Second Millennium BC? – Trudy Kawami

• Edited by Laura Battini